#Dewey i think might be one of the few that's full

[cursegirlrabbit]

No one:

Me: What if ducktales had quadrants.

so enjoy Dewey Ducks quadrants according to me!

his matesprit (aka romantic partner) is of course Cecilia who belongs to @battlecry51

his moirail is gosalyn, i feel they would be a fantastic platonic duo with Gos being the more rational of the two.

I think Dot and Dewey being kismesis (aka Rival lovers) would work so well, completing for the spot light but never actualy trying to harm each other or their love of drama.

And Lena is the one the two go to when their little rivalry goes a bit to far (aka Auspisticism) she’s the one who has to separate the two and calm them own and mediate between them.

[diomcsimon]

Being Scrooge McDucks twin ☕️

Head canons of what I imagine it would be like Scrooges twin.

Gn Reader

I want to mention that English isn't my first language and I am dyslexic so there might be a hand full of grammar mistakes.

🪙 You two most likely grew up close

🪙 So when Scrooge got his number one dime you refused to let him go without you

🪙 You two worked hard to where you two are now

🪙You two faced a lot of dangers together but with each other you guys were unstoppable

🪙 Then came the day when Della and Donald needed to be taken care of, you didn’t have a problem with this they were family after all

🪙 Well things happen and you for became a strong team that all sorts of mysteries around the world

🪙 when Della had here three eggs you became even more protective of her, tbh you probably saw her as a daughter in a way

🪙 When Scrooge told you about the spear of saline and how it was going to be a gift for Della, you were a bit unease

🪙 You knew that Scrooge wouldn’t allow harm to come to her but you also knew that Della was a curious woman and would find out sooner than later

🪙 So together you helped Scrooge build it but then Della found out about it and took it out for a test drive

🪙 You got a panicked call from Scrooge all you could make of it was “Della found it “ “she’s in a meteoroid storm” and that was all you needed to hurry your way to him

🪙 When you got there you saw Donald with the eggs heading out angrily and refusing to talk as you made your way further in there you saw Scrooge leaning over a counter of controls and a big screen only saying the words “signal lost”

🪙 You called out to Scrooge and when he turned to look at you your heart broke, he looked as if he had been crying for decades and was still panicking

🪙 Rushing into action you ran over to him comforting him and trying to understand what was going on

🪙 Together you search for Della spending enormous amounts of money but to no avail

🪙 You also tried to get in contact with Donald but he showed no interest in the dangerous life

🪙 When Beakly came around with baby Webby, you and Scrooge took them in and you made sure Webby felt at home and welcome in the machine

🪙 You made sure he knew he could come to you if things ever got too tough and you did send him some gift money and present to the boys from “ secret Santa”

🪙 So when one day you and your brother were coming home from work you were more than happy to see Donald in the driveway (unlike a certain someone)

🪙 You were more than happy to take care of the boys, even if it was just for a few hours

🪙 But Scrooge had other plans. When Scrooge but the kids in the old storage room you were ready to protest but Scrooge was quick to snap at you as well

🪙 Not wanting to anger him more you headed to your office to think

🪙 Wile in your office you heard sounds coming from the vents and the next thing you know four kids fall out of your ceiling vent

🪙 But to no surprise Webby is the firs one to jump up screaming "GOOD MORNIG Y/N"

🪙 Happy you greeted the kids before the were quick to run out, soon deciding to follow after them to make sure the don't get into too much trouble

🪙 Finding the kids looking around the garage

--------🪙---------

Walking into garage I saw the kids looking at the neglect artifacts. I saw one of the triplets putting sticky notes. My attention is then brought to the one in blue, what was his name again? Oh yeah that's it Dewey. I see the painting that Dewey is looking at and feel a sting in my heart as I realize its the one with our old team on it. "It's fake" Louie says before I'm fast enough to protest Webby beats me to it " What no it's not right Y/N?" " It's true it's real I still remember that like it was yesterday " I say recalling the old memory.

"Oh come on are we really stupoustu believe that?" Dewey asked. As I wen't to answer he starter walking around wile pointing to different things clainig they were fake, I rushed after him worried hell get hurt. When he opens a chest with the ghost of a pirate.

Acting quickly I grabbed Dewey and guidet the others to cover. As I tride to think of a plan I see the triplets panicin "Hey it's going to be okey im going to take care of this, you four stay here until its safe"

Just when I was obout to jump into action I hear my brother yell " what in dismal downs is going on in here ?!" oh great now that. “What are you three doing out of your room?” He yelled to the kids "We've got this. There are four of us and three of them. If we, wait never mind, they teamed up" "Ah good, that means only one target" Scrooge said ready to lunch at the ghost. " No, get back your old!" Dewey yelled after him to no avail.

"Oi Beastie, what's it gonna take to shuffle you off to the afterlife?" Scrooge yelled pointing his cane at the ghost "The head of Scrooge McDuck!" it yelled "Would you settle for his hat ?" Scrooge asked launching at the ghost. " You kids stay here !" I yelled leaping out of the hiding spot.

"hey need help Scrooge ?" "Well I'm certainly not agains it"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's sorta all the motivation and ideas I have for now. I might make more later if I get motivation and ideas :))

[atalossofwords]

YOU TASTE THE SILVER - IvanTill WIP (Part 7)

Somehow, these two last POVs turned out bigger than I expected. I think I can keep up the one POV change per day here before I post the full chapter on AO3, but I don't promise anything.

Also, I have plans for how many chapters it'll be! Yay me.

ON AO3 - part one - part two - part three - part four - part five&six

Till was... nervous. For more than one reason.

Firstly, he was getting ready for Mizi's concert. He'd be nervous enough to go to any show, since crowded places made him antsy, but this was a meet and greet. He bought a new jacket exclusively for this, and was trying very hard not to be weird about using perfume and generally dressing up for the occasion.

Secondly, he had Navi's number. He hadn't said anything after that first exchange, too awkward to try and make small talk but he found himself... wanting to.

He refused to let Hyuna send the messages, since she was halfway ready to demand to see Navi's ID. It was awkward but then... Then Navi had said all those things, about how much he liked Till's music, how Till deserved more recognition than what he got...

It made Till's stomach swoop, his cheeks colored red.

It reminded Till of those days when he had only 100 followers, when Navi would send 100$ donations solely to max the character limit as he talked about how much he liked Till's lyrics, how his mixing made him feel, how he couldn't believe Till didn't have a record deal yet.

After that short text conversation, Hyuna had changed her "bored office worker" theory to a "disillusioned producer", and for once Till was inclined to agree.

Still meant he was far from understanding why Navi would send him so much money.

"Till, are you ready?" Hyuna calls out, startling Till out of his thoughts. He gives a last once-over to his outfit, deems it ready, and goes to greet her.

Hyuna is wearing a black tank-top, cargo pants, hiking boots and a leather jacket he's sure once belonged to Dewey when he still ran with a motorcycle gang. She rolls his eyes at his face.

"Ready to go? We need to be in the venue in half an hour if we want to get in at a good time." He nods, checking that the clear bag he's bringing has all his necessary documents.

Tickets? Check. ID? Check. His first Mizi album and custom photocard binder? Check. A handwritten letter for Mizi? Check. Extra pens in case he or other fans need it? Check. A truly unholy number of phone charms he made himself the night before to exchange with fans? Check. He makes grabby hands to Hyuna, waiting until she puts all her stuff in the bag as well before shouldering it.

"You're such a mother hen." She says, grinning. "I heard we might not be allowed in with food, so I sent Isaac to get something from the convenience store we can eat on the way."

"Oh, good idea. He's meeting us there?" He asks, perking up. He really wasn't looking forward to surviving on granola bars for the day.

They end up meeting Isaac in the car, since he and Dewey are driving them and Hyuna wanted to re-touch her makeup. Isaac gets them both sandwiches, as well as a pack of chips to eat in the queue. He also gets two starbucks packaged drinks, black coffee for Hyuna, and caramel frappuccino for Till.

Luckily, the queue isn't too big; the meet-and-greet isn't open for a lot of people, so Till spends his time waiting by chatting with fellow fans, discussing the new album, and even meets one of his own fans, Mizi's Boots, who he remembers as an occasional chatter who mostly comes for his mixing streams.

She's very flustered that he remembers, but eventually they settle into some more normal conversations, Hyuna teasing them both about bringing so many phone charms to trade. He makes sure to put hers on his phone right away, since she takes care to pick one that matches his streaming set-up.

It also reminds him that... he has Navi's number.

He should send a message, right? Just to say he's at the venue. He did a few lives since getting the tickets, and only commented that he'd be going on the last one, so as to not give his fans any time to buy tickets to search him out instead of Mizi.

Navi had said nothing to indicate he was the one who sent the tickets, a simple "I hope hyung has fun!!" was all he sent.

He decides not to overthink it, and takes out his phone to take a selfie of him, with Hyuna in the background talking to a fan of hers. He hunts for Navi's contact.

You [ 4:44 ] On the line to see Mizi. Thanks again for the tickets. [IMG.7347]

He closes his phone, ignoring the flutter in his stomach to focus on the experience at hand. It's almost time to go in.

The queue moves forward,

"Chill, Till. You've watched these events like a thousand times on livestreams, it's going to be fine." Hyuna says, after they're already seated in the auditorium. He's glad his fan was seated far away from them, since he'd feel awful if she watched him losing his cool like this.

"Okay, but what if I trip and fall right in front of her? What then?" Till frets, combing one hand through his hair. Hyuna rolls her eyes, opening her mouth to tease him some more when the lights dim and a manager comes on-stage to announce Mizi.

Till immediately forgets his nerves, leaning forward to watch better. Mizi walks on-stage already waving, a radiant smile on her face. She's dressed more casually than she usually is for shows, with her glasses on. Her long pink hair is left free, bouncing as she moves to say hi to everyone on the first roll.

Till doesn't even see Hyuna settle down, focused on Mizi. She does a little QNA, pointing at people to answer. Most questions are pretty simple, like how's Mizi's doing, what's her favorite song from the newest album, favorite snack, and so on. She even calls on Hyuna, who asks if Mizi likes video games.

(Apparently, she's an Animal Crossing player. Till is so endeared, he loves her, oh god.)

After that fanfare, she sits on the stage, legs dangling closer to the first row, and sings My Clematis with her guitar. She thanks everyone, asks for five minutes to get some water, and the fansign begins.

Till has... a vague idea of the hour or so that happened between then and his turn. He knows Hyuna leans in to talk to him, mindless chatter about their streams and their next collab, about how Luka's workflow is increasing so she's thinking of paying for another chat mod.

In the blink of an eye, he's sliding on a chair in front of Mizi, and out of the hundred times he's imagined this meeting, he'd never have though of this.

She squints at him, tilting her head to the side, and says; "Oh, you're Till, right? The streamer?"

Till's face is so hot he thinks he's going to die.

[rangerstark25]

Here’s the full set, as promised :)

I drew these for a school project, for which I won’t explain the parameters because I’m not sure I understood them correctly myself! I chose to draw 5 canonically (with 1 exception) autistic characters, each representing a trait associated with ASD :D

First up is Quinni Gallagher-Jones, from Heartbreak High (the 2023 reboot)! I love her so much, and the actor who plays her (Chloe Hayden!) is autistic herself too! Quinni is the only one of these characters to actively state she is autistic. She’s also shown wearing noise-cancelling headphones to help with audio-related sensory issues, as in my drawing of her :)

Number two is Huey Duck from the Ducktales reboot! This is the character that isn’t exactly canonically autistic, but he is shown stimming several times, which we affectionately refer to as his Happy Flappies! I think Astro-Boyd was discussed as being autistic, but just because he might be doesn’t mean Huey can’t be (it feels canon to me so much that I was about halfway through this before I realised Huey wasn’t canonically autistic actually). Also Dewey and Louie definitely have both different presentations of ADHD (this isn’t canon either but come up, hyperactive Dewey and inattentive Louie are right there)

Next up is Entrapta from the She-Ra reboot (wow that’s 3 for 3 on reboots!) I love Entrapta, although I do wish her character was treated a little better. One of my favourite things about her is the detail that she will only eat food if it’s tiny (and seems to only like fizzy drinks), which is what I depicted here!

For number four we have my current hyperfixation, Donatello from Rise of the TMNT! It took me too long to start watching this show, I was already hyperfixated after just seeing a few clips. I haven’t seen any other TMNT series (sorry) (I did watch bayverse after seeing ROTTMNT) but I already know I like the Rise artstyle most (in addition to my favourite character being canonically autistic). I kinda failed to show what I wanted to with this drawing (Donnie’s special interest in tech, I had SHELLDON with him in the sketch) but I’m still happy with how it turned out overall. Please dismiss the fact that I drew the spider-shell arms while he’s wearing the hover-shell. My favourite thing about this one has got to be how well I feel like I managed to mimic the Rise artstyle!

And finally we have Abed Nadir from Community! He’s the oldest character of the bunch (in the sense that Community is from 2008) and yet he’s one of the best autistic characters in media to date! In the drawing I tried to show the way he communicates through use of movie and TV references.

I spent way too long on all of these, but I do think they turned out well. Unsurprisingly to most, each of these characters are my favourites from their respective shows (some are tied with other characters, but I still think it counts)! I do think it’s funny that two of these characters are played by Dani Pudi. It was also surprisingly difficult to choose what outfits to draw the live action characters in. The temptation to add headcanoned pride-flag stickers or pins next to the neurodiversity symbols on these was high, but I resisted for the sake of canon! The headcanons will live on in my head rent-free anyways.

Anywhizzle, I’ve been rambling on for long enough, so enjoy the post, I’mma head out (feel free to ask any questions you may have in the notes or my ask box or whatever, I’ll probably answer :))

~ Madelyn

[popculturebuffet]

Next up for Disney TVA, who is your favorite character from the cartoons in the second half of the Disney Afternoon era (1993-96): Marsupilami, Aladdin the Series, Gargoyles, The Shnookums & Meat Funny Cartoon Show, Timon & Pumbaa, Quack Pack, and Mighty Ducks the Animated Series? Skipped Bonkers since you said in the last ask that you haven't seen it yet.

Okay so getting this out of the way again (And yup haven't seen bonkers) So in addition to bonkers Marsupliami (though ti looks good and snookums and meat . Aladdin the Animated Series: No faviorite as I've only seen maybe one episode in recent years , but I do hear it's a fun adventure show and remmeber it being okay as a kid. never realized as a kid the two dtv movies werne't their own movies but the pilot for the show and it's finale respectivley (both still stand find on their own and return has if nothing else I can remmeber your only second rate)

Gargoyles: I LIVE AGAIN! I really need to watch this series in full at some point.. honestly reviewing it might not be a terrible idea as it'd at least get me around to it. I'll figure it out. Faviorite is Xanatos. Even just READING about him I loved the guy, a villian so damn good at gambits tv tropes named it after him and whose clever as he is self serving. The show itself is again one I BADLY need to watch as i've only seen a few scattered episode but the one that sticks in my mind I Had on vhs in high school, Deadly Force sticks out. It handles gun saftey.. in a way that dosen't feel hackned or over the top. Elsa gets shot.. but she made the mistake of leaving her gun unmprotected and apparently the show is consitent in making sure she never does again. IT's a show with a deep intretsing mythos, voice acting royalty, and is worth a look. Again I wouldn't mind doing a retrospective at some point (Splitting season 2 up a bit ) covering the first two seasons, the slave labor graphics comics and the recent revivial comics following up on those. Not plugging there either I just think gargoyles is neat. It's disney's equilvent to batman the aniamted series in my mind and it's a shame they never really captlized on it

Timon and Pummba: Only seen some of this for a review, it seems.. okay. Not terrible by any means but nothing I really want to watch despite loving these two characters.

Quack Pack: Daisy whose redesign while attractive is also fun and is that nice sweet spot of being fed up with donalds shit sometimes but not you know cheating on him, abusing him or everything three cabs daisy did. Don't be three cabs daisy folks. The show itself i've only seen a few eps of, some for reviews some on my own time but honestly.. it's okay. It has a reptuation for being awful, for being garbage that brought down the whole disney afternoon.... but really.. it's fine. I think a lot of people raging against it forget that donald getting into domestic scraps is just as much a par tof his dientity as donald duck the greatest adventuerer who ever lived. most of his shorts come from some small incident such as his car breaking down, a raido cooking show or his cousin showing up to eat everything he has. So going back to that with a bit of advneture weirdness ocasionally thrown in seems fine. Some plots do sound.. insane but the show seems okay. The versions of the boys.. are a bit weaker but it's less for characterization (thier about the same as they were in ducktales just older) , and more for trying to make them sound cool and that despite giving them unique va's.. they didn't do much in the ones i've seen to actually defenrtaite them. And honestly the redesigns are solid

Daisy and Donalds are great an dth eboys are fine. Their hair and Louie's backwards hat are 90s as hell but honetsly they aren't half bad and now I think about it dewey's would perfectly fit the 2017's dewey's love of attention and need to be seen as a jock. The show is far from perfect and some episodes seem nuts again like Huey's dental surgery turning him into a super villian.. but overall it's just fine. Not super mediocre, but not as bad as it gets a rep for. Also the humans thing... eh why not. I prefer an all furry universe, but I get Donald has interacted with humans before.

Mighty Ducks: One I haven't revisited and don't really.. intend to. It's a weird piece of the duckverse, with aliens, 90's super powers and hockey. I might check it out for the novelty as I have gained a love of hockey due to certain canadian television series

But otherwise it's just kinda.. there. There are other 90's action shows to visit. Gargoyles is just down the block. BTAS exists. I just really.. dont' care.

[johannestevans]

New Works Update - 17/02/2023

Good morning!

Time for a round-up - I've had a bunch of new works published the several weeks, and I also have a bunch of new media recs.

Media Recommendations

The Quiet Girl (2022, dir. Colm Bairéad) - This is a new Irish release and was Oscar-nominated, and it's honestly a beautiful little film - it's primarily as Gaeilge with a little English mixed in, and it's so full of love and care and compassion. It's big childhood autism feels and delves so much into being seen and cared for by adults outside of your actual parents, and how assuring that is whilst also not being the same? Another Irish release was obviously The Banshees of Inisherin (2022, dir. Martin McDonagh), which is set on an Irish island in the early 20th century, and it's also very real on top of being bitingly funny, and I loved it.

Nanny (2022, dir. Nikyatu Jusu) - This movie fucking slaughtered me, it's so incredibly crafted and the end reveals hit me like a ton of bricks. It's about a Senegalese woman who takes up nannying work in Manhattan wanting to save money to also bring her son over from Senegal - it's haunting and there's layers of creepy, supernatural happenings on top of the casual racist cruelty and self-centredness of the people around her, especially the parents of the child she's looking after.

M3GAN (2022, dir. Gerard Johnstone) - I fucking loved this movie, I've seen it a bunch of times in a few weeks. I was really excited when I saw it was being released, and it was honestly even more fun than my expectations. It makes some great critique of AI and commercial AI projects, and while there's some comedy and wry jokes in this, it doesn't take away from the emotional punch of the commentary on children's lack of autonomy, childhood loneliness and isolation, and the avoidance of caregiving responsibilities. I have a non-fiction piece written on this one below!

New Non-Fiction Published

M3GAN and a lonely child: M3GAN (2022) on child neglect and avoiding one’s caregiving responsibilities

“She’ll take care of the little things, so you can spend more time doing the things that matter.”

A 10k essay delving into themes of caregiving and neglect in M3GAN (2022) across Gemma and Cady, Celia and Dewey, and Holly and Brandon.

On Medium / / On Patreon

Fast "Who am I?": A Fun Game to Play with Friends

A silly fun game to play rapidly with your friends and loved ones in 2023.

On Medium / / On Patreon

New Fiction Published

Erotic Short: Used

A captain makes use of his cabin boy early in a morning.

1.7k, rated E, cis M/trans M. More of Captain Ian Chisholm and Lluw! Featuring somnophilia, D/s, anal sex, size difference and size kink, mild objectification, quiet sex, and then threats of fisting.

On Medium / / On Patreon

Erotic Short: Coaxed

An adventurer helps a drider through his rut by taking his clutch of many, many eggs.

4.6k, rated E, giant M spider/trans M half-elf. Amaethon is a half-elf who combines sex work with adventuring to create wonderful monsterfuckery - I think I might do more with him because this was great fun.

This erotica is deeply weird, and I'm delighted to introduce it: featuring oviposition and inflation, cervical penetration, huge size difference, huge belly bulging, body horror (including threats of bursting/popping), banter between a predator and prey, overstimulation, venom/drugs, suspension bondage.

On Medium / / On Patreon

Slice-of-Life/Romance Short: Hit Me

A blackjack dealer notices a lonely young man.

1.7k, rated T. Just some quiet companionship and bonding over loneliness in the early 1800s.

On Medium / / On Patreon

Erotic Short: Backfire

Two witches work off steam after a spell backfires.

Rated E. 650w. Featuring vaginal sex, huge size difference, belly bulges, rough sex, D/s.

On Medium / / On Patreon

Romance Short: Hungry

A journalist observes a hunter skinning a deer.

1.5k. Just a bit of romance and slice-of-life between a hunter and a journalist observing his work.

On Medium / / On Patreon

Slice-of-Life Snippet: Doze

Just a little Christmassy snippet!

On Patreon

Erotic Short: Sheathed

A young man uses his coach’s mouth.

1.2k, cis M/M, rated E. Featuring blowjobs with throat-fucking, size difference, gagging, mild objectification, rough sex, coming in pants, and age difference.

On Medium / / On Patreon

Romance & Comedy Short: Hitting the Books

A young man returns to his old school to teach, and attempts to pursue his old history teacher.

Rated M, 12.6k, cis M/M. A man returns to his old school to teach, and also returns to his old school crushes.

Obviously there's a big age difference here and a teacher fucking his ex-student, some implied BDSM, some daddy issues, some sex at work, et cetera. Adapted from a TweetFic.

On Medium / / On Patreon

Erotic Short: Running the Table

A trans man is the favourite pocket on the pool table.

Rated E. Cis M/trans M/cis M. 4k. Featuring consent play with a prenegotiated rape roleplay, object insertion (not sanitary, not safe, just sexy), double penetration, begging, tears, size difference, age difference, lots of anal play, belly bulging.

Jock and Phineas first appeared in Centre Pocket, where Jock initially makes the threat of the pool balls.

On Medium / / On Patreon

Horror Short: Green Thumb

A farmer tries to impress his new neighbour.

2.6k, rated M. A chicken farmer tries to impress his new neighbour by growing him some flowers, but everything that he grows dies. Adapted from a TweetFic.

On Medium / / On Patreon

Slice-of-Life Short: Tomorrow

A shop worker takes sandwiches to some engineers.

Just a little bit of slice-of-life, 800w!

On Medium / / On Patreon

Serial Update: Rescue Dogs

Chapter Fourteen. Cecil goes to therapy. It's been a hard week.

On Medium / / On WorldAnvil

Erotic Short: Fresh Bounty

A bounty hunter takes a young wizard to the king's court.

1.7k, rated E, cis M/trans M! Power play with a lack of negotiation, but fully consensual enthusiasm for it, cockwarming, threatened overstimulation, D/s, implications of public use, and sex on horseback!

On Medium / / On Patreon

Slice-of-Life Short: Little Crush

A muscle man has a crush on the boss’ new secretary.

1k. Just a tiny bit of slice-of-life, a member of the Pike family crushing on Gellert Osgodby!

On Medium / / On Patreon

Fantasy Romance Short: The Mermaid and the Dockworker

A merman saves a fisherman from drowning, once.

4k, rated T. Just a cute one here with a merman who saves a fisherman from drowning, and the fisherman saving him back! There are descriptions of fear and drowning in this, but no other particular content warnings.

On Medium / / On Patreon

Romance Short: Something Sweet

A woman sometimes takes a moment to watch a baker at work on her morning commute.

870w, F/F. Just a little slice-of-life and crushing on a stranger!

On Medium / / On Patreon

Horror Short: Wild Country

A young woman walks home on a foggy night.

3k, Gen, rated T. First person POV, originally posted on /r/NoSleep.

On Medium / / On Patreon

Serial Update: An Uncommon Betrothal

Chapter Fifteen! Alexos and Harry have Larry between them. Literally.

It's just porn in this chapter - Alexos and Harry spitroasting Larry Kidd and showing him a VERY good time.

On Medium / / On WorldAnvil

[loorain]

Sims 4 Fontenot Legacy - Childhood Begins

The morning after the birthday party, the house is still in disarray. Scarlett wakes up first to start dealing with the mess, followed by the other adults and eventually the kids. The girls have another big day ahead of them, as it is their school orientation day. They're excited to meet other students and find out what elementary school is all about.

While the girls head off to school and Sigrid assists with the day's clean-up process, Robin borrows Sabrina's computer to finish up something he's been wanting to do for a long time.

As the family's youngest residents gain more independence but more costs, Robin decides it's finally time to get a more traditional job to support his family. After a few emails, he's able to secure a job at Dewey, Cheatem, & Howe! It's an entry-level job, but he's confident he has the skill set to work his way up the corporate ladder quickly.

It's not the only big thing happening today. Oh no, the family is having one more big event to celebrate the start of a new chapter in their lives.

The girls return from school with the neighbors' kid, courtesy of Audrey and her ever-friendly personality. However, there's also some additional guests at the house, unbeknownst to them.

Sigrid: Well look who it is! You have a good orientation day? See you've already invited a friend over.

Audrey: Mom, what's this? Why is there a carrier here?

Sigrid can't help but chuckle at the complete ignoring of her comment.

Sigrid: Oh, this old thing? Well, your dad and I thought it might be nice to invite someone over ourselves.

Audrey: What... do you mean-

Alma: A PUPPY!!!!!

Without another word, Alma is rushing to the puppy at the speed of light.

Alma: Hey there, little guy! I'm Alma! You and I are gonna be best friends!

Audrey: A puppy?! Really mom?!

Sigrid: Well your father and I thought it'd be nice for you to have a buddy to play with. You know, someone other than your sister when you two get on each other's nerves.

Audrey: This is the best day ever!

Sigrid: Now remember, caring for a puppy is a lot of responsibility. I need you both to help take care of things, okay?

Alma: We will! We'll go on walks, play with him, train him, everything! Promise!

Audrey: Yeah, what she said!

Sigrid: Okay, okay. Well, don't waste any more time talking to me. Go talk with your sister and decide on a name for him!

Robin has been quietly watching all of this unfold. As the girls greet and play with the puppy, he walks over to his wife.

Robin: Think we did good?

Sigrid: Pft, I think we just earned ourselves "Parents of the Century".

Robin: Ooh, I like the sound of that. Think they'll erect a statue of us in honor of this moment?

Sigrid: If they do, I hope they take some creative license and sculpt a few pounds off my waist.

Robin: Think they'd pump up my muscles a little bit? Oh, maybe a majestic beard would be nice too.

Sigrid: You going full Viking on me now?

Robin: Hey, I'd look good in a tunic! Hand me a sword and shield!

Alma interrupts the banter between the two and comes rushing over to her dad, giving him the biggest hug ever.

Alma: Thank you, thank you! You're the best!

Robin: Aww, you're very welcome, baby.

Sigrid: So have you two thought of a name for him yet?

Alma: I think so!

In the chaos of the new arrival, Audrey's buddy Jalisa gets pushed to the wayside. But, of course, Audrey never abandons her friends.

Audrey: Jalisa! We just got a new puppy! Alma and I decided to name him Ziggy!

Jalisa: So cool! I wish my parents let us get a puppy. Mom's allergic to their saliva, though. Says it gives her the "heebie-geebies".

Audrey: Well you can come over and play with Ziggy as much as you want!

Jalisa: So cool!

Audrey and her pal celebrate the day by spending some time in the treehouse! (Alma was there too, actually, but decided to play by herself in the enclosure. Typical Alma 😆)

All in all, the twins first full day of childhood was a success! A great orientation day, new friendships, and a belated birthday present so wonderful it'll leave a lasting impression on the entire family!

And of course, let's formally introduce the newest addition to the legacy house: Ziggy Lay!

[saltedsolenoid]

a rant about dt-17's finale and how it somewhat destroys the themes of the cartoon

ducktales (2017) spoilers for the finale under the cut. every day i tag spoilers for something more and more silly.

can i be honest with you guys? i kinda fucking hated the whole twist of ducktales' last episode. Now, now, i haven't watched it in a while (like five months) but my point still fully stands:

Webby being Scrooge's biological daughter was completely fucking unnecessary. Though I will admit that it has a few perks-- accidentally confirming that Scrooge was trans being one of the bigger ones-- the reveal ultimately serves to disservice the importance of found family.

Family of all kinds is the driving force of DuckTales, from Ms. Beakley to Lena to, hell, one could argue the Beagle Boys. For almost the whole show, Webby was meant to be the keystone of this entire theme. She integrated herself as an extra sibling to the triplets, she adopted Scrooge as her own uncle, and none of this was hampered by the fact she wasn't related by blood to any of them. If anything, this added to her character, by the idea that she never fit in with any of them, and her arc was growing to realize that a family full of adventures like she always wanted doesn't have to be a descendant of McDuck, that she could help shape that family on her own. This is especially important as you remember that in the early episodes, Webby had little say about how her life was lived, secluded from others by her overprotective guardians.

Many people also tend to say that Webby's being a genetic clone of Scrooge ''explains'' her extensive research to him. To that I say, no! That was a typical special interest for her, especially considering how she envied Scrooge's adventurous lifestyle at the time! And throughout the series, there are many parallels between Scrooge and Webby, such as their love for adventure or their almost blind-seeming courage, which proves that they were intrinsically tied through blood. While I do see some merit to that idea, this is much better explained by how she was raised in such close proximity to him and his affects left on the world. You spend years studying some guy, you're bound to pick up on his mannerisms and ideals.

A few other notes: I believe that the finale was horribly rushed, but that seems to be an effect of the production, so, whatevs. Going away from Webby, I also don't particularly like how May and June lacked their prior connection as Daisy's nieces. Although that connection was established, it seemed flawed and almost out of place. Also, the reason why Webby was made-- and this could easily be me just forgetting things-- lacked context or explanation. yeah, yeah, whatever, McDuck blood, but. I don't know. I think that the reason the writers added this subplot in was to explain Webby's ancestry, but there are just. So many better ways to do that.

Despite all my deep-burning hatred for the twist, I guess I do see the appeal, but I would find it much more rewarding if Webby actually searched these answers out for herself after seeing Della and the boys reunited, which, please do remember, she worked together with Dewey to do! She's a naturally curious person, she likely wouldn't just accept that she knows nothing about herself if she found even one inaccuracy to the story Beakley told her about her past. In a perfect world, I think that she'd see this as a new mystery to unravel and might persue it with Scrooge if timings were right, which would lead to a MUCH more emotionally satisfying conclusion to an arc about her heritage.

[mcrcki]

Was that [ABIGAIL COWEN]? Oh no no, that was just [TATUM RILEY], a [CANON CHARACTER] from [SCREAM]. They are [EIGHTEEN] years old, use [SHE/HER], and [ARE] aware that they are not actually from Washington DC. Too bad they can’t stray from this city for long.

how long has your character been here

tatum’s been here for about a three years, give or take a few months

what is your character’s job

she’s a college student , majoring in social work. she wants to be a victims advocate , and is currently working between different temp jobs but trying to get some intern work inside the court system within the city. 

where has your character been pulled from in their fandom

she’s pulled directly after said mr ghostface killed her

has any magic affected your character

nope, she’s still the same old tatum, just much less dead

and any other information you might find useful for us and the other members to know!!

starting off this with, i am unfortunately obsessed with the scream franchise and will ramble about every aspect of the first movie specifically but also the sequels after. also scream 5???????????????? many thoughts still. cannot wait for my head to BE SO FULL ABOUT SCREAM 6. anyways, i am just a little obsessed with tatum and her entire vibe throughout the movie, she’s so fucking iconic so anyways here’s me rambling about my girl

the younger sister of dewey riley, lifelong best friend of sidney prescott, girlfriend of stu macher.

truly the more carefree, over the top, bubbly bff to sidney’s sort of reserved personality.

has some of the best one liners in the movie please

literally coined the name ghostface thank you v much

is killed by billy but has no idea who was behind the mask. she personally still has no clue what really happened that night and she doesn’t like to think about it. tends to stay out of garages and doesn’t like being in locked rooms. deals with a lot of the trauma from it still but she tries to put it behind her

she’s got more important things going on than dwelling on what happened in woodsboro

is currently in college with an undeclared major, cause she’s debated between psychology, criminal justice, journalism, and just dropping out and going to cosmetology school. sort of all over the place with school right now as she still struggles with feeling like the life she lives right now is even real

has FINALLY settled on a major and a path in life. she is going to be a victims advocate, she wants to help people !! she wants to do good in this world !! she’s going to make something of herself in this next chance at life

has a decent social media presence and enjoys doing that as a hobby and would love if she could make some serious money off of it. 

takes self defense classes with buffy summers, and enjoys it a lot. happy to help people learn to defend themselves too

did punch billy loomis in the face and is still v proud of that (even if it gave him his memories back rip)

she’s the kind of person to absolutely hype you up but also tell you all the harsh truths you need to hear before someone who cares less about you tells you

would give you the shirt off of her back but also leave you on read if you asked her some question she thought was stupid

truly just trying to live her life right now, trying to put woodsboro behind her and just enjoy the life that she never got the chance to have

connections :

✩ roommate(s)

she has an apartment off campus and would love to have one or two roommates

truly open to anyone and everyone, they could get along, could hate each other, be absolute opposites or too alike it clashes, whatever you like friends !!!

✩ friends

just be her bud pls

she’s been here for a year, and is 100% a very sociable person, so she would reach out and try and make friends in either school or her jobs.

✩ past hookups/exes

she’s been here for a year, and definitely would have fallen down the path of ‘this will distract me’.

she’s bi but leans towards men

✩ classmates

just any college students??

tatum hasn’t decided her major at all yet so she’s just in like general classes for her degree instead of any focus yet, so would absolutely be down to run into just about anyone

✩ coworkers

she’s probably picked up a couple part time jobs in retail/waitressing so would be down to grab a connection that way!!

will eventually work in the court system so if anyone is in that line of work, she’ll be around!!

✩ emergency contact

listen, she definitely has like at least one friend she calls when she feels like something is wrong, someone she calls when she needs someone else around with her, just a shoulder to lean on when she gets stuck in those “i was murdered” headspaces

✩ self defense class friends

girl is one of the only people to fully fight off ghostface, like her and sid kicked both of their asses, she knows how to fight and definitely kept it up in the city

[cherryplasmids]

───clueless to all the signs;

pairing: dewey riley x law student!reader

prompt: dewey's been in love with you since forever, but always believed you were out of his league. it takes you thinking he's dating gale for him to finally confess.

word count: 1.5k+

notes: beta??? we die like men always. pumped this out in a few days because i realized i hadn't written anything since june. uni is kicking my ass. ── check out my other works; horror movie masterlist & other masterlists

“Why didn’t you tell me they were coming?!”

Dewey scrambles to brush crumbs off his khaki uniform and tugs at his hair, using the reflection of a cake-stained small dessert spoon until Tatum takes pity and provides a compact mirror. No matter how much spit he uses, a patch of hair stubbornly remains upright. 

Of course, the one day he needs to look perfect—the Californian humidity ruins it. 

He asks Tatum for gel, knowing full well she carries a miniature beauty supply store in her school bag instead of notebooks. Naturally, because he’s done some unknown godforsaken thing that haunts him to this day, Tatum doesn’t have any.

Resigning at the state of his hair, Dewey shoves the bulky police cap onto his head in a huff. 

As a law student at a prestigious school, you’ve been too swamped to visit him—Woodsboro. If he had time to prepare, he would’ve glued his hair down and then applied hairspray to seal it. His uniform would’ve been ironed to perfection. He would’ve worn the only expensive and barely used cologne; the one you mailed him a year ago for his birthday. He would’ve picked you up at the airport in his police cruiser. 

Totally not to show off or anything.

Tatum shrugs, digging into his New York cheesecake, leaving her own dessert untouched. “I thought you knew.”

“Obviously not! Does mom know?”

“Relax, doofus. You kissed her with your massive Transformers headgear and totally barfed on her skirt in front of the whole school.” Dewey cringes and snatches his plate away. Tatum sticks her tongue out. “If she stuck around after that, what makes you think she gives a shit about a wrinkled shirt?”

At 14 years old, Dewey snagged a bottle of wine from his moms cabinet. It took only a few sips before Dewey got drunk-the ultimate lightweight-and began rambling. In the midst of his slurred rant about geometry class were compliments directed at you. You easily returned his awkward flirtations. Within seconds he was on you, headgear smashing into your mouth, busting your gums enough for them to start bleeding. 

He didn’t speak to you for over a week.

The next year, at 15, you and Dewey tried out for the school play at his behest. Unsurprisingly, you got the lead while he got an insignificant role with only a handful of lines. Still, Dewey was nervous because he shared a single scene with you. Right before the play, he chugged two lukewarm cartons of milk and scarfed down three slices of pizza from the school cafeteria to calm him down. 

By the time his scene arrived, his stomach twisted into knots, tightening at the bright lights and echoing voices. When he approaches you for the scene, dressed prettily in all white with a bright smile, he swears it’s reserved only for him. The pressure of his heart rapidly pounding in his chest mixed with the nausea bubbling in his stomach until it finally ruptured. 

All over you. 

Tatum does have a point, though. Even after those two events—and plenty of other embarrassing instances—you still stayed. Saw him through the headgear, through his early volunteering days as junior cop, and his disastrous anxiety-ridden senior year. Only leaving when Woodsboro couldn’t offer the extensive law program of your dreams.

But that’s what friends do. Right?

“Besides, who doesn’t love a man in a uniform?” Tatum continues, shoving her compact back in her cheerleading duffle bag. 

“My muscle mass in my upper torso area does help my boyish good looks.” Tatum mutters a soft gross under her breath. “Do you really think she might like me?”

“God, Dewey. You are helpless.”

He shakes his head, trying to shake off the confusing mixed messages Tatum is giving. “I won’t be seeing her, anyway. I’ll be very busy being your chauffeur.” 

“Righttttt, about that…”

Tatum gets out of her seat, a smile stretching on her rose-painted lips as she notices your car pulling up across the street to park. Just as you exit your car, another vehicle pulls up right in front of Tatum.

“I’m riding with Mia today. Stay out as long as you’d like.” 

With a wink, Tatum jumps into Mia’s car before Dewey can blink. 

He scrambles to stand up from his seat when he notices you, ripping his uniform hat off and pressing it against his chest. His voice is soft when he says your name. 

You giggle and he clenches his hat tightly, heart jumping at your bright smile. “At ease, officer Riley.” 

Okay. That was hot. 

You slide into Tatum’s seat and he immediately returns to his own. “You look really good, Dewey. The pictures Tatum sent me don’t do you justice.”

Dewey briefly ducks his gaze from you with a shy smile. “I could say the same about you, though. You’ve always looked very pretty.”

Your eyes briefly widen before settling into an eye smile. “Such a flatterer. Your new girlfriend helped you with that?” You tease, picking up a clean spoon, digging into the untouched dessert Tatum left while Dewey sputters out denials.

He realizes midway that you’re eating your favorite dish-meaning Tatum set him up knowing full well how flustered he would be. 

“Gale Weathers! As your first girlfriend?” You exclaim, bringing him back from his mental tirade, he’s preparing for Tatum tonight. “Very impressive, Dew. Very impressive.”

He ducks away from your gaze again and scratches his neck. “Gale is…nice.” 

She’s actually not, and only is kind when she wants the latest scoop. From a career standpoint, Dewey admires her no nonsense approach and adamant energy to finish an assignment-no matter how wrong the outcomes may be. 

On a personal level, Dewey dislikes Gale for using him to get confidential police information and to Sidney. 

Okay, so in the beginning he didn’t know he was being used, genuinely thinking that Gale was into him. It wasn’t until Tatum all but beat him to realize that the ��soul-sucking snake’ was married to her job and not interested in dating a dorky dude who still collects Garbage Pail Kids. 

“It’s not fair that you’ve gained all this confidence after I left.”

“What do you mean?”

You swallow and shrug. “Well, you know, I’ve always thought we’d make a cute couple, but you were never ready for a relationship back then. Now I come back and you’re with a celebrity.” You hum briefly, tapping the spoon against your lips. “Makes a girl feel some type of way.”

Dewey short circuits, heart pounding so hard against his chest he’s surprised you can’t hear it. But he can. It’s the only thing he can hear besides the million and one thoughts rushing through his head like some Tron program. 

His head is starting to hurt, burdened with all the what-ifs. What if he confessed the day after the wine incident? Or kissed you at the local diner after senior prom? Would you have wanted him-shy, doofy, and weak- to go to college with you? 

Now he’s thinking about all the potential dates you could’ve had on campus. Coffee dates. Late night library study sessions. Movie nights at his dorm. Maybe a banquet dinner if he bravely trudged through various hazing sessions. Or a fancy one at one of your law events. 

“I’m such an idiot!” Dewey mumbles, slouching forward to press his forehead against the green translucent table. 

“Uh, Dewey? You alright? You’re like, really red.” 

It feels like he opened a hot oven and the heat bursts out against his satin skin. Sweat builds at his hairline or under his mustache or sideburns—he can’t tell. All he’s focused on is you. Your concerned expression, the way the sunlight highlights the bridge of your nose, a dessert crumb on your bottom lip.  

But, all the words he’s always wanted to say jumble in his brain, so he settles on “I love you.” 

Then he panics because his brain is catching up to his words—his life-changing, friendship-shattering declaration, and immediately jumps in to apologize. His eyes are darting around, hands waving into the air. His rambles are less than an apology and more of word vomit expressing even more embarrassingly his decade-plus affection for you. 

He sweats more. 

He immediately halts when he feels your hand gently grab his own. “Dewey.” He looks up to find a contented smile on your lips. “If you’re not busy with the Gale Weathers, I would really like to take you on a date tonight.”

His heart stutters. “Really?” You nod. “I get off at 6:30.”

Your lips stretch out more. “Great! I’ll pick you up at 8, Officer Riley.” You lean over to peck him on the cheek. 

He watches you stand and leave, only to turn around when you get to your car to wink at him. When you’re safely in your care and drive away, Dewey lifts his hand up to touch the cheek you kissed.

The what-ifs still swim in his brain. At least now, he has hope to finally achieve them.

general taglist: @empress-writes , @alexxavicry

horror movie taglist: @callmemeelah

[mighty-ant]

darkwarrior rises, part one

ao3 

“Gos. 

“Gosalyn. 

“Gosalyn Waddlemeyer.”

She glances up from her phone when Drake’s voice reaches that particular shade of frustrated that precipitates a lecture. “Yeah?”

His hands are on his waist, and in full Darkwing getup he might even look intimidating to someone who hasn’t seen him cram himself into a filing cabinet in lieu of a hiding spot. To Gosalyn’s eyes, he just looks tired. 

He holds his angry face for just a couple more seconds before it, and his shoulders, drop with a sigh. 

In this corner of Dr. Gearloose’s lab, chairs and tables cleared of equipment have been tucked out of the way while the main area is in use. Gosalyn camped out over here almost the second they arrived, leaving the adults to talk while she scrolled mindlessly through the memes Dewey sends to the group chat and pretended her hands weren’t shaking and her breathing hadn't gone funny. 

Drake sits down on a stool across from her and she has to resist the really immature impulse to stand up and walk away. 

He leans forward, like he’s angling for meaningful eye contact. Good luck, buddy. 

“You can’t give me the cold shoulder forever,” Drake tries to joke. He’s smiling, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

Gosalyn scrolls back through Dewey’s outdated “you know I had to do it to em” meme and Huey and Louie’s outrage and Webby’s confusion in the replies. She ignores the tightening in her stomach, telling herself it isn’t guilt that’s making her feel sick. 

“No, not for forever. Just until the inevitable heat death of the universe.”

Drake whistles. “That long, huh. Don’t you think that’s a little overdramatic?”

Gosalyn can’t help but roll her eyes. “You’re one to talk.”

Drake opens his mouth like he’s gonna argue before he seems to remember what he’s wearing. He closes his beak and adjusts his cape with a little rueful smile. “Y’know what? Fair enough.”

That surprises a laugh out of her and she puts down her phone, briefly forgetting that she's been pretending to ignore Drake. His grin widens, and the tension that a week’s worth of frowning and worried looks has put on his face falls away so that he looks thirty-three again instead of sixty-three. 

And for a couple seconds it’s…nice. Comfortable. Like things are back to normal, her new normal, where she can actually admit to herself that she enjoys spending time with Drake and doesn’t think he’s a nerd 100% of the time. Where she can admit that just being close to him is the safest she’s felt since Grandpa ran out of their home rambling about the end of the world and never. came. back.

Until now. Until today. Today Gosalyn gets her grandpa back and she’ll be with her family again, where she belongs. Her real family. 

Gosalyn drops her head with a scowl, severing the moment with the force of a crossbow bolt. The last breath of their laughter hangs in the air, obtrusive as lingering tendril of Drake’s smoke bombs, and her feathers prickle as the awkward silence extends. Out of the corner of her eye she watches Drake flinch like she’s slapped him, and that just makes her scowl harder. 

She’s angry with herself for being lulled into familiarity, for being so weak. Grandpa is coming back and this…whatever she has with Drake is coming to an end, like it was always meant to. 

“Gos,” he says quietly, like she’s made of glass and he’s afraid she’ll shatter. “These last few days haven’t been easy, and I know you’re upset with me. But maybe we should talk—”

“Is everything okay with the Ramrod, Darkwing?” Gosaly interrupts, clipped, businesslike. 

Dispassionately, she watches Drake curl in on himself a little. “Gos,” he tries again. “You know you can call me Drake.”

“But you’re in the suit. I thought I was supposed to call you ‘Darkwing’ when you were in the suit.” 

He tries to make eye contact again, expression beseeching, but Gosalyn lets the moment stretch as she stares doggedly at her dark phone screen. Drake must know she’s looking at nothing, he is a detective after all, but he doesn’t call her out on it. Instead he just sighs, the sort of punched-out, exhausted sound that he only makes when he’s alone, or thinks Gosalyn can’t hear him. 

“Yeah. No, yeah, you’re right, Gosalyn.”  

He raises himself back up, straightens his broad shoulders until they’re back at superhero shape, and tucks all signs of tiredness behind a mask far broader than the purple piece of fabric on his face. But actor or no, he can’t hide the lines of concern that’re tight around his eyes. 

“The Ramrod experiment today…I know what you want to happen, and I want that too, believe me, but I think you might need to be ready for…for it not to work out. And I need to know if you’re gonna be okay.”

“Yeah I’ll be fine,” Gosalyn says, flippant. She finally unlocks her phone and stares at the group chat she left open. “Cause it’s gonna work.”

It looks like Dewey’s started a passionate defense of the later High School is a Musical sequels at some point, which Louie has been repeatedly shooting down while Webby keeps requesting a movie night because she’s never seen them. Gosalyn is pretty sure they’re all at the mansion, no wacky escapes for anyone but her today, which means that they’re probably using the group chat for her benefit even if she can’t bring herself to contribute. So she won’t feel so alone today. 

Huey’s text, the most recent, proves her right: 

We’re all thinking of you, Gosalyn. I hope the test goes well. 

No useless platitudes, only logic and support. Classic Huey. 

The rest start chiming in after him, now that Huey’s given the okay to acknowledge the dimensional portal-sized elephant in the (chat)room. 

Lou-Lou

yeah what brainiac said

Pink Death

WE LOVE TOU GOSALYN!

*YOU

Do the Dew

you GOS this! 

get it? gos this, got this 

  Dewey also texted her on his own, with a lot less terrible puns this time. 

I really hope you can see your grandpa again

We’re all here for you no matter what happens

Gosalyn’s eyes burn, but she ignores that too. 

“Hey, Gos. DW.”

Launchpad’s voice comes as a start even though he speaks quietly, with none of his typical overexuberance. 

She and Drake turn toward him at the same time—Drake, she realizes, had been watching her the whole time, stricken but silent. 

Drake clears his throat. “Yeah, LP?”

Launchpad smiles, warm as anything, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Fenton sent me to come get ya. They’re just about ready to get started.”

Gosalyn throws herself out of her seat before Launchpad’s even done talking, her gut lurching with equal parts dread and anticipation.  

“What! Why didn’t you just say so?”

 He chuckles. “I think I just did!”

Unlike some masked avengers Gosalyn could mention, Launchpad’s been reassuringly normal, not harping on her or trying to make motivational speeches to take away from the sting of being grounded. 

The two of them have hung out all week, ostensibly to make sure she’s following Drake’s rules (the stipulations of her grounding being: homework, dinner, then bed. no patrol or anything else fun in between), but all that means is that Launchpad is the one picking her up from school, cooking dinner, and making ‘I don’t know’ faces at her physics homework more often than usual. 

Not that Launchpad hasn’t already been hanging around the apartment a lot recently, and not just to keep her company while Drake’s out on patrol. 

On school nights—Before the Events that Led to her Grounding—Launchpad would commandeer the kitchen, with Gosalyn as his helper, and coax Drake into joining by making him taste tester for the insane number of multicultural dishes he somehow knows off the top of his head for someone whose garage freezer contains only frozen burritos and Pep. She overheard him telling Drake that a lot of his exes liked cooking and liked imparting their expertise even more; it had been funny to watch Drake blush before screwing his face up into an expression of rapt determination and insisting Launchpad teach him too. 

When Gosalyn first met Drake and Launchpad, six months and a reality-destroying interdimensional portal ago, she thought they were already a couple. She learned (with the help of some side-eye exchanges with Dewey) that the truth was far worse—they were both pining. Hard . 

Even in the middle of chasing down the Fearsome Four, the literal supervillains of their childhood (and adult) fandoms brought to life, Gosalyn would catch them watching each other with an unutterably (disgustingly) fond look whenever one of them was distracted. Drake’s the most egregious offender, confident one minute and then stumbling over his words the next if Launchpad pats him on the shoulder or smiles at him a few seconds too long. 

They have in-jokes and sing theme songs to shows that haven’t been on the air for two decades and Gosalyn would almost feel like the token brown character unwittingly tagging along behind the main characters in a cheesy Hallbark rom-com if Drake and Launchpad weren’t so determined to include her in their lives. 

If it’s not cooking lessons then it’s movie nights because, despite Drake’s insistence to the contrary, not even Darkwing Duck can patrol every night. It’s long drives to Duckburg in Launchpad’s truck while rocking out to heavy metal, Launchpad offering to braid her hair after her shower, where he tells her about his little sister, Loopy, who he hasn’t seen in a few years because she’s traveling the world on her motorcycle. They create a routine where they speak back and forth in Spanish so he “doesn’t get rusty,” and Drake, bless him, does his best but he still sounds like he’s talking around a beak full of peanut butter. 

It’s Drake who sacrifices hours to the nearest megamart so they can hunt down everything on her list of required school supplies, and is even excited to debate the merits of a glittery purple pencil case versus the green one with the logo of the St. Canard Ducks hockey team. Once they’ve checked everything off the list and they’re tired and irritable after being around too many people, Drake treats her to ice cream and they sit on the hood of his car with the radio playing, letting the sound of nearby traffic wash over them without any need to break the silence. 

Drake gives her pointers when she’s designing her Quiverwing Quack costume and then makes it himself, two weeks of mornings hunched over his sewing machine with durable fabrics sourced from Fenton resulting in her very own superhero suit, like something out of her wildest dreams. It’s slick, with a hood and her own mask, made of mostly dark greens and gray with little bits of purple threaded throughout. She has a utility belt and a harness on her back for her crossbow and she’s never felt more badass than the first time she tried it on.  

Even though her specialty is ranged weapons, and Drake wants her as far from the bad guys as possible while still letting her join him on patrols (for now), he still puts her through her paces, teaching her the right way to throw a punch (or several), how to fall without hurting herself, and how to use her opponents’ size against them. 

“Again,” he’ll say, not even out of breath while Gosalyn sweats buckets and shoves her drenched bangs out of her eyes. “Bend your elbow a little. There you go. Again. Good. Now a kick. Higher. Again. Good!” 

After training, when she’s sprawled on the mat like a starfish, he’ll plop down next to her with a bottle of water and encouragement to offer. Both are eagerly accepted.

“I know this is rough, but you’re getting better every day, Gos. Heck, you’re miles ahead of where I was at your age.”

Gosalyn guzzles half the water bottle before taking a breath. “So what you’re saying is, I could’ve beaten you up?”

Drake rolls his eyes. “You and half the kids in my class.” 

Gosalyn laughs and laughs until Drake tells her to “Shush up and drink your water. I can’t have you passing out on me,” but he’s smiling too. 

At least, that was the state of things up until a week ago, when Drake turned his back on everything he’d ever taught her and grounded her, like she was a child and not a superhero too.

To add insult to injury, she’s barely even seen him since Fenton let them know about the first test of the Ramrod 2.0, reverse-engineered from Grandpa’s notes and Fenton and Gyro’s weird, genius know-how. Drake was still pale and shaky when he agreed to meet Fenton at the lab the following week, before Gosalyn snatched the phone out of his hand and demanded Fenton give her a full rundown. When she turned back around, Drake was gone and Launchpad had taken his place. 

Before she could convince herself that Drake had fallen into the St. Canard sewer system and disappeared, she overheard a few whispered phone conversations Launchpad made in the living room, and deduced Drake had fled to the Tower, as far from her as he could get and still be within the city limits. 

So for a week, instead of Drake muzzily dragging her out of bed, all squinty-eyed and in his fuzzy pink robe, nagging her about her latest history quiz, she got Launchpad knocking on her bedroom door to the tune of “Shave and a Haircut,” wide awake at 7 am and saying, “Morning, Gos! DW told me to ask if you have enough money for lunch today.” 

No calls or texts, just Launchpad relaying what Drake said to tell her, what Drake asked, without ever acknowledging that Drake was avoiding her, bridging the tenuous divide between them with the sheer force of his positive personality. 

When Gosalyn did bring up the Drake Mallard-sized shape missing from Drake Mallard’s apartment, Launchpad’s seemingly permanent 100-watt smile dimmed into an expression more private and small than he ever wore around anyone who wasn’t her or Drake, and an indecipherable emotion swirled in his dark eyes. It reminded Gosalyn of hunching at the railing with the Fearsome Four and Bulba looming beneath them, Launchpad’s hand on her shoulder the only point of warmth when fear had frozen her body. 

This is real life, where there’s real danger. 

Yeah, and sometimes you lose.

“DW’s been busy with more superhero stuff than usual. He’s helping Fen—uh, Gizmoduck—with security at the lab while they finish work on the new Ramrod. There's still a lot of FOWL agents hanging around and we don’t wanna take any chances.”

That still didn’t explain why Drake was gone 24/7. If he and Gizmoduck were taking turns guarding the Ramrod, on top of Fenton already being one of the people working on it (neither he or Launchpad would recognize subtlety if it walked up and introduced itself, and it was impressive that Drake was still in the dark), then Drake should be able to spend days or nights at the apartment. But he wasn’t. Probably because he didn’t want to be around Gosalyn any more than he needed to, seeing as how they were going to rescue Grandpa soon and she’d finally be out of his life. 

And Gosalyn was just fine with that. She was. 

She could even convince herself that she’d imagined the sound of Drake’s footsteps outside her bedroom twice, on Monday and Friday night (and that she’d learned to recognize Drake’s footsteps at all), and the creak of her doorknob as he opened the door to check on her. He’d done it before, like when she got really sick with the flu and when he heard her wake up screaming from nightmares of red rooms, of falling, of Grandpa running out the door and never coming back. 

When it was the latter, Drake would sometimes let her watch bad horror movies on the couch until she fell asleep again. If she was crying so hard she could barely breathe, he’d press her hand over his heart and count aloud, taking deep, exaggerated breaths until she wasn’t hyperventilating anymore. Other times, when she woke up shaking so badly she thought she was gonna rattle apart, Drake would gather her up like he could keep her one piece through his strength alone, and the thing is, he wasn’t entirely wrong . 

Grandpa’s hugs, while painful to remember, were plentiful and freely given, surrounding Gosalyn in his love and his warmth. He always smelled a little like his Melbournes, which he only smoked when he was alone outside and working through an experiment in his head. 

Drake hugged her like he was afraid someone was going to snatch her out of his arms, but that never made her feel less safe. “Safe” had become a foreign concept to her since Grandpa raised his bloodshot eyes from the Ramrod’s latest diagnostic report and ran out of their workshop, ran out of her life, and left her alone. 

Then Drake jumped off the side of a building to save her. He didn’t even hesitate. And he caught her again, when the Ramrod was rubble and her chest cracked open and her legs gave out, spilling her grief and hopelessness across that tile floor.  

But just because Drake had done all of that before didn’t mean he’d done it this time. When Gosalyn stealthily raised her head from her pillow, her bedroom door was closed and the hallway had been silent. It was stupid of her to think he might come back to the apartment just to check on her. That’s something family would do, and like she’d told Drake before, they weren’t.

Her real family’s waiting for her on the other side of a portal, in an underwater lab that Grandpa will love, and Launchpad is blocking her exit. 

She has to get a hold of herself. Gosalyn feels jittery, like she’s downed an entire pot of Drake’s extra strength-black as my soul-sludge he calls coffee, and she can’t stop her hands from trembling. She stuffs them, phone and all, into her jacket pockets before anyone can notice and starts to move around Launchpad, hoping that distance between her and Drake’s hangdog stare will let her get a handle on her nerves.  

She doesn’t expect Launchpad to smile at her approach (well that part doesn’t surprise her) and drop to a knee.

“Hug for luck?” He spreads his arms, warm and welcoming as he’s been since the day they met—more, even, as Launchpad’s love for the people around him seems to grow exponentially by the day. She and the other kids have come to the consensus that Launchpad gives the best hugs—second only to Uncle Donald’s, is the triplets’ predictable caveat. 

But Gosalyn can’t bring herself to stop, not now, when Grandpa is finally so close. Not even for one of Launchpad’s all encompassing bear hugs. Soon she’ll have to get used to going without them, after all. 

Instead she stands on tiptoe to quickly kiss Launchpad on the cheek. “Maybe later.”

He stands back up like nothing happened. 

“No problemo, Gos. Oh, but Fentonino’s got a bit of a safety spiel for us so don’t go too far, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” 

But even as Gosalyn throws the words over her shoulder, part of her hesitates. Maybe it’s something about Launchpad’s voice, a tension beneath his usual levity that strikes her as out of place. Maybe she’s just nosy, and wonders what her two guardians might have to say when she isn’t in the room. 

Whatever the reason, despite the squigglyness in her gut urging her to keep walking, to block out the sound of conversation, to go check on the Ramrod like she wants to, she steps around the corner, out of sight, and listens. 

But for a long time, neither Drake or Launchpad say anything. 

It’s Launchpad who breaks the silence, more hesitant than Gosalyn’s ever heard him.   

“She looks excited.”

“Yeah.” Drake, by contrast, sounds almost noncommittal. 

A longer, silent moment stretches between them. Gosalyn strains to listen. 

Again, Launchpad breaks the quiet. But this time his voice breaks, too. 

“If…if it doesn’t work—”

“Then we try again.” Drake rolls right over him, stubborn as anything. “We make sure they keep trying.”

Launchpad sighs quietly. Gosalyn imagines he’s put his hand on Drake’s shoulder. 

“You know I’ll do anything for her too, but this…all this is a little out of our wheelhouse. I might not get the science of it all but I do understand that it…it might not work, Drake.”

Drake snaps. “And what do you expect me to tell her! That she’s stuck with us?” 

“Would that be so bad?” Launchpad asks quietly. 

Gosalyn’s stomach gives a traitorous lurch, swooping somewhere down by her feet. Would it be so bad? She hasn’t even let herself consider it. 

“No!” Drake blurts at once. “God, of course not. At least…but she’s made it clear she doesn’t want us around. That’s more important. If…if worst comes to worst, we’ll find someone else. A family she’ll be happy with.”

“…aren’t we—?”

“We’re not her dads, Launchpad. You have to let it go.”

She’s never heard Drake talk to Launchpad this way. Hard. Angry, almost. Because of her . 

Abruptly, a shiver works its way down Gosalyn’s body, making her feathers stand on end. She shouldn’t be listening to this. She never should’ve eavesdropped. 

Gosalyn barely resists the urge to cover her ears as she hurries away, not that it would do anything for the voices ping ponging around in her head. She doesn’t know what exactly she’d wanted to hear, but she’d never thought it would leave her feeling even worse than before. 

The last six months, Gosalyn’s felt like the three of them have been holding a broken plate together with their bare hands, the pieces shifting but stable. But as soon as Drake reached for the crazy glue, Gosalyn let go of her side, and the entire plate fell apart and shattered into even smaller pieces on the floor between them. 

When she had trouble making friends, Grandpa would tell her it was because she had a lot of spirit. But now she wonders if that was just a kinder way of saying that she’s just too much for anyone who isn’t family. 

“What can you tell me about the differences between the Ramrod 1.0 and the Waddlemeyer-Gearloose-Cabrera Super-Collider?”

Gosalyn makes a show of rolling her eyes. “One of them takes a lot less time to say?” 

Fenton laughs, a reedy, unselfconscious sound. “Well, you’re not wrong, but that isn’t exactly what I meant.”

He paces in front of her, Drake, and Launchpad with a whiteboard behind him covered in equations and complex scrawl that go over even Gosalyn’s head. While unfamiliar, it reminds her of what she’d see in Grandpa’s workshop back home. Fenton gestures to it as he launches into his science spiel, wild-eyed and eager, with purple, bruise-like circles under his eyes, evidence of his weeks and months of sleepless nights and tireless work. A pair of massive safety goggles hang from around his neck.  

“The original Ramrod, or Reality Altering Mechanism, was a feat of engineering to be sure, but it was closer to a blunt instrument than anything else.” Fenton grabs a piece of paper and pencil from a nearby desk, and folds the paper in half. “The multiverse exists in a natural balance, but with the wrong tools that balance can be disturbed, even fractured. And when that happens, the resulting surge of energy can destroy entire realities. The Ramrod,” he says, poking the pencil straight through the folded paper, “ punched holes between realities every time it was used. Used enough times, and our reality would’ve collapsed in on itself, maybe even taken others with it.”

Behind her, Gosalyn hears Drake gulp, and she can relate. Her own palms are clammy within her clenched fists. She won’t soon forget the overwhelming red glow of the Ramrod portal, bright as a sun but all sharp angles, vibrating the air with its wrongness. 

“So, this super thing… doesn’t do that?” Launchpad clarifies hesitantly. 

Fenton points at him with a grin. “Correct, LP!” 

Out of the corner of her eye, Gosalyn sees Drake bristle at the nickname, and she laughs before she can stop herself, even if she does disguise it as a cough at the last second. As if Fenton isn’t already dating Gandra, the coolest lady alive. 

Fenton cheerfully (and maybe a little manically. She’s a little afraid to know when the last time he slept was) launches back into professor mode. “The Super-Collider is a participle accelerator that Dr. Gearloose and I created, with help from Dr. Waddlemeyer’s notes on trans-dimensional travel that forgoes the Solego Circuit altogether. The goal is to bridge the gap between dimensions without causing them to crash into each other, which means that we need to be precise. Instead of punching holes in other dimensions, we need to be able to shuffle past them like playing cards. So, what we’ve devised is a little like a DNA tracker. 

“Instead of, say, typing ‘Darkwing Duck’ into the console and getting twelve completely different Darkwings from twelve completely different dimensions, we can pinpoint a specific person that matches a genetic profile that we provide, and summon them to our dimension with the Super-Collider.”

“Twelve Darkwings? I think that much ego trapped down here  would blow the roof off the Money Bin,” Gosalyn snarks out of habit, but the back of her neck prickles with uncertainty. Behind her, Drake huffs, predictably offended, but she can’t even bring herself to smile. 

Fenton goes on like he’d never been interrupted, which is probably a useful skill to have for a superhero and scientist for the richest duck in the world. 

“Of course, this is all theoretical. We haven’t had the ability to do any earlier tests of this magnitude.”

Drake bristles. “Wait a minute, Fenton. Are you saying you’ve never even turned this thing on before?” 

“Well, the power cells are fully charged and I triple-checked the wiring, but I’m guessing that isn’t what you mean,” Fenton says. He shrugs apologetically. “This isn’t the sort of device we can activate on a whim. It’ll take a very specific set of circumstances for it to work, and that’s if we’re lucky. Which brings me to my next point: safety procedures!”

Gosalyn and Launchpad groan in unison, but Drake only nudges Launchpad to cut it out. 

“The Super-Collider has its own gravitational field, much like the Ramrod did. So stay behind this safety line, where you’ll be out of range of its effect.” Fenton points to the striped line of tape on the floor as he explains. “Dr. Gearloose and I will be manning the controls, so we’ll be the first to know if something goes wrong on our end.”

“‘Wrong’ how?” Drake asks warily. 

Gyro, who up until now has been busy tinkering away in the control booth (or just avoiding the interlopers in his lab), chooses that moment to chime in snidely. “Oh, you know, there’s always the possibility that we’ll bring multiple dimensions crashing into each other, thus creating a black hole under Duckburg, and rupturing the space-time continuum anyway. Little things like that.”

Gosalyn can practically feel Drake and Launchpad recoil behind her, second-guessing why they were even here. Like they could’ve kept her away. 

And it’s not like Gyro’s wrong , technically, but he doesn’t have to be such a jerk about it. He’s already turned around, ignoring them again, but she makes a face at his back anyway. How someone as sweet as Boyd could have him for a dad she’ll never understand. 

Fenton claps his hands together, smiling with determination. “And that’s why it’s important we stay behind the safety line!”

When the three of them entered the lab and saw the Super-Collider, the first thing Drake said was that it looked like a Stargate. While embarrassingly nerdy, and a reference more than twice her age, he also wasn’t wrong. The Ramrod had looked more like a giant suspended raygun; the Super-Collider is a giant metal ring, at least twelve feet tall, with lightbulbs embedded in each segment. It doesn’t look like anything Grandpa might’ve built, and maybe that’s just as well. His last invention got him stranded in the vastness of the multiverse, after all. 

Gyro insisted on running the last round of calculations himself, so now they’re just…waiting. Rather than retreat back to the storage area she’d camped out in at the start, Gosalyn just takes a seat on the floor, well beyond Fenton’s safety line. From down here, the Super-Collider looms high over her head, poised to swallow her whole. 

Drake and Launchpad are standing off to the side, their heads bent close together, speaking too quietly to be overhead. If she were to guess purely based on Drake’s grave expression and Launchpad’s unhappy one, they’re discussing what to do if this first test of the Super-Collider fails. 

But it won’t. She knows it won’t. It can’t .

“Hey, Gos. ¿Qué estás pensando?”

She shoots Fenton a dry look. “Oh, I dunno, maybe what I’m gonna have for lunch tomorrow.”

He laughs quietly, taking a seat beside her. “Yeah, okay, dumb question, I get it. Big day, huh?”

“The biggest,” Gosalyn agrees. She buries her hands in her hoodie pocket before she can start wringing them like some scared little kid. “I wish we could just get it over with.”

“I hear your subtle attempt at getting me to rush Gyro, and I am respectfully ignoring it.” 

Fenton looks at her sidelong, and some of the superhero persona he tends to don around her slips off his face, like a loosened mask. His cheerful, untiring veneer turns into something more tired, but natural. The change from Drake to Darkwing Duck isn’t too different. Both of them end up looking…smaller. But not in a bad way. Less larger than life and untouchable.  

This Fenton looks like the one who whined when his mamá showed his baby pictures at the dinner table last month. 

“I know it’s hard,” he says gently. “But try not to get too worked up over this test. It’s only the first, after all, and with experimental technology at that. It may not turn out the way you want it to.”

“That’s what Darkwing said,” she grouses and tries to ignore the cold tightening in her gut at the thought of failure.

“He’s a smart guy.”

That startles a laugh out of Gosalyn before she can help herself. She blames it on nerves. “But he still hasn’t figured out that you’re–!”

Fenton waves frantically at her, looking amused but trying to hide it. “Shhh! If he hasn’t figured it out by now…”

When Drake glances over at them, likely perturbed by their poorly stifled giggles, he just shakes his head. Gosalyn hears him mutter, “I’m not even gonna ask.”

“Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera,” she demands, whispering as loudly as she dares. “Have you been secretly evil this whole time?”

He ignores her question, just like a secret evil genius would. 

“IDing secret identities aside, Darkwing is good at what he does. Great, even. And no matter what, you’ll have Dra-Darkwing in your corner. Him and Launchpad.”

Gosalyn looks away, the cold uncertainty creeping back in. “I dunno. Things have been…weird.”

She can feel Fenton’s smile drop before she sees it, the easy comradery born from long meals around Gloria Cabrera’s dinner table turning brittle in the air between them. 

“I’d be surprised if they weren’t. When we heard…” Fenton says haltingly before trailing off altogether. 

Gosalyn can’t bring herself to look at him. Stupid, stupid stupid. This is what she gets for bringing up her problems with other people. They’re her problems, ergo, she deals with them. 

Fenton clears his throat, but the smile in his voice rings false. 

“Anyway, like I was saying, Gos, you don’t need to be here every time we test the Super-Collider. You don’t need to…put yourself through that anxiety and potential disappointment.”

She takes a breath and forces herself to look Fenton in the eye.

“If it was your Mamá, would you be here? Even if you knew there wasn’t anything you could do to help?”

Fenton visibly startles, leaning back as if she’s struck a blow. “I…” he opens his beak and closes it again. 

“Doctor Intern.” 

It’s Gyro, actually acknowledging them instead of staring at a computer screen. He raises a single eyebrow. 

The Waddlemeyer-Gearloose-Cabrera Super-Collider is ready for its first test. 

Fenton stands, and when he turns back to Gosalyn, he offers her a hand to help her get back up too. 

When all is said and done, Gosalyn will learn that the portal was open for a grand total of one minute and thirty-four seconds.  

At the moment, all she knows is how bright it is, a miniature sun beneath the arch of the Waddlemeyer-Gearloose-Cabrera Ramrod. It bathes the lab in waves of pulsating white light, like sunlight through the ocean’s surface, and anticipation crackles through the air like a storm before a lightning strike. 

At the controls, Fenton is back to looking giddy behind his bulky safety goggles. Even the perpetually scowling Dr.Gearloose cracks a smile, though it looks a good deal more Mad Scientist than Fenton’s does. 

Gosalyn’s heart gallops wildly, rattling against her ribcage as the command screen flickers, scanning through countless dimensions at a rapid pace. The portal is scarcely more than a sliver in midair, no broader than her palm. They’ve never been closer to finding her grandpa. 

This pinhole-sized portal  is nothing like the chaos that nearly tore apart McDuck Labs (and all of reality) six months ago. It’s everything her grandfather wanted the Ramrod to be, before Bulba twisted its intentions and his dream. 

Unconsciously, Gosalyn takes a step forward. She’s barely even moved before a hand snaps out, gripping her by the shoulder and drawing her back between two sturdy bodies. 

“Gosalyn, stay behind the safety tape,” Drake chastises, shouting to be heard over the roar of the Super-Collider, which is only a little quieter than a jet engine. Even with the mask, his face is twisted in worry, and she rankles under the weight of his concern. 

“I’m fine,” she snaps, shaking him off. 

The hurt that wrenches Drake’s expression is stark in the light engulfing the room, and his outstretched hand hovers in the insurmountable, short distance between them. He drops his hand instead of reaching out to her again, and Gosalyn stubbornly ignores the twinge of guilt it incites. 

She turns back to the portal just as the floating ribbon of light widens, splitting open slowly to reveal more of this silver, swirling void on the other side. 

“We’ve found a match to Dr. Waddlemeyer’s genetic signature!” Fenton cries. “Keep back, everyone, as we try to triangulate the source.”

Without meaning to, without thinking about it, Gosalyn moves forward again. 

Grandpa , she thinks, and perhaps even says aloud, but the words are lost to the chaos. Months of guilt, confusion and fear can finally come to an end, and she’ll be where she belongs. She’ll be back with her real family. 

The eye of the rift darkens as a shape begins to take form on the other side. 

For an instant, her heart skips a beat. Then it starts up again in double time, shooting frenetic energy thrumming through her body, from the crown of her head down to her fingertips. 

“It’s him,” she breathes, and believes it utterly. 

“Gosalyn!” Drake barks sharply. He rarely yells, and never at her, unless he’s just knocked out a thug she didn’t see coming or she’s jumped out of the sidecar before it’s made a complete stop. 

When Gosalyn ignores him, she feels Launchpad’s hand graze the back of her jacket next. “Kiddo, hold on!”

This time, when she steps forward, it’s with intention.

Grandpa’s back, which means she doesn't need them and they don’t need her. 

Without warning, the portal shudders and warps and the crimson of her nightmares replaces the pure white of a stable dimensional rift. Alarms shriek and sparks fly from the controls beneath Gyro and Fenton’s hands.

 “Get back,” one of them yells. “The rift is losing stability!”

Gosalyn’s vision contorts and her stomach swoops dangerously as her feet leave the ground. 

All she sees is red and all she hears is Drake screaming her name, until everything fades away and she stops hearing or seeing anything at all. 

.

.

.

.

.

“GOSALYN!” 

[cowboycakes]

Loyalty

Chapter One: Memories

Pairing: Levi Ackerman x fem!Reader

Synopsis: You are a Marleyan warrior who holds the Jaw Titan, tasked with infiltrating Paradis and destroying it. But what happens when love causes you to betray your mission?

Themes: NSFW, 18+, action, betrayal, multi-chapter series.

Warnings: Female bodied reader, explicit sex (penetration/riding, gentle and fluffy, Levi is a virgin), violence/severe injury and blood/battle scenes, threats, mentions of death. Profanity. Spoilers seasons 1-4.

Word count: 2.7k (recently edited to make it flow a little better!)

Note: This story contains spoilers for all seasons of aot (not the manga). It is canon divergent (reader has the jaw titan rather than Porco and reader is on the mission with Reiner and Bertholdt.) Some scenes differ/are more rushed than the scenes they line up with in the actual show. This first chapter is set in season 3.

●・○・●・○・●・○・●・

The most important lesson you'd learned on this journey was that you couldn’t help who you fell in love with. Love would strike you like a viper by surprise, sinking its fangs deep inside of you and injecting you with lethal poison. Your poor soul was so torn.

The viper in question manifested itself as someone quite inconvenient. A raven haired man - the strongest, most cunning, most selfless man you’d ever observed. And all the while, he was still an island devil.

You were supposed to strike back at the viper, sinking your much larger set of jaws into his heart. Your mission - and specifically your mission - was to end him and his kind. The remaining Ackermans were dangerous. They were a threat to your and your comrades’ titan powers. The goal was to get close to him, to find his weaknesses and strengths. To know his ins and outs like the back of your hand. And then you’d have the advantage. Then you would kill him.

That plan had obviously backfired.

You stood on top of the wall now, alongside Reiner and Bertholdt after they’d just exposed the entire mission to Eren and the others. You could feel the static in the air from a few yards away. They were about to transform.

That wasn’t the problem, though. The problem was that the duo was looking right at you, waiting for you to slash your hand and join in. To rush to their side and eat Eren while you had the chance. Then you could all go home and be celebrated as heroes.

Instead, you were staring back at them - a big, sweaty, teary-eyed, nervous mess.

It was time to betray your homeland.

“I’m sorry Reiner, Bertholdt…” you sob, pulling your hand to your mouth, “but my loyalties lie elsewhere, now.” You rip your teeth through your hand.

Three bolts of lightning shake the wall simultaneously. You emerge in your strongest form - the jaw titan. Your titan had a hardened face like a skeleton with an elongated jaw that stuck out like a wolf. Sharp ridges lined your mouth like fangs, and bright red orbs glowed through your eye sockets. A mane with a color that mimicked your hair grew down from your neck.

You were terrifying. Which is why you needed to get the hell away from these scouts before they decided you needed to die.

You had no interest in defeating Reiner and Bertholdt, that was Eren’s problem now. You were more concerned about the captain on the other side of the wall. He could certainly handle himself, but Zeke had quite the throwing arm. Things could go south very quickly.

You launch yourself down the wall, using your giant talons to slow your fall. You scan the field as you descend, trying to find any sign of Levi.

A voice booms your name to the left of you as you reach the ground.

It’s Pieck in her titan form.

Pieck was like a sister to you. It’s been so long since you’d seen her. You feel a tinge of regret now. Pieck was never going to see you the same again.

You narrow your red eyes at her and charge with full force. Your jaws snap at her heels as she whips around and runs full speed across the field. You finally see who she was running to - Levi and Zeke. Zeke was cut out of his titan form and being held by the hair in Levi's hand.

You pick up your pace, grazing Pieck's legs with your sharp teeth. She stumbles when the two of you go over an indent in the ground, only a few yards from your destination. Her mishap allows you to sink your teeth into her legs. She turns around to bite your neck in response, crushing your weakest spot. You jolt your head, flinging her away from you.

She gets up fast after hitting the ground, continuing at full speed toward Zeke and Levi. You are quick to go after her again, but slow down once you see Levi drop Zeke and bolt out of Pieck's way.

Did he really just give up Zeke that easily?

Suddenly, you feel someone cutting through your titan's nape.

Your vision goes dark.

Out of the darkness, you’re thrown into an old memory. Ah yes, you remember now. All of it is so vivid, right in front of you again.

You’d sneak away to the Captain's office at night frequently. You’d tell yourself these visits were for the mission, to aid you in knowing your victim a little better. His weaknesses could certainly reveal themselves in the comfort of his study. But they certainly weren't for your mission anymore. You’d started to simply crave his company.

You’re walking down the dim halls when you hear two sets of footsteps approaching, quite rapidly. You’re met with two giant bodies slamming into you from behind, grabbing your arms to keep you from running.

“You know, Y/N, I’m getting worried about these visits of yours,” Reiner says, tightening his grip on you. You yelp. “There’s only so much you could be talking about in there with him. There’s only so much shit you could be making up about yourself. He’s going to catch on.”

“He isn’t!” you struggle, “And I’m more clever than these sluggish devil bastards! I’m getting all the information I need!”

“Guys, keep it down!” Bertholdt whispers, frantically looking around to make sure no one was eavesdropping.

Reiner let’s go of you as you topple to the ground in front of him, your hands and knees landing on the cold brick floors below.

“Kill him faster,” Reiner whispers. The two of them make their ways back to their rooms in silence.

You finally stand up when you can’t hear their footsteps anymore, dusting your knees off and collecting your nerves.

You were the oldest titan shifter on the mission from Marley, quite a bit older than Reiner and Bertholdt. You were supposed to be bossing these little shits, not the other way around. But it seemed they were always calling the shots. You deserved to carry out your particular mission however you pleased.

Levi's door is cracked open a bit further down the hall, allowing some faint light to spill into the hall. And inside, there he was as usual, sitting at his desk with a tea and reading some boring literature that you could never understand.

“Long day?” he questions without looking up from his book.

“Yeah,” you sigh, plopping your body down onto a leather sofa near his desk. You lean back into it, reaching your arms up to stretch out. “Thanks for always letting me join you in here. It helps me de-stress.”

You had made a routine of coming in here after a fateful night in the dining hall, after you and Levi realized you could click really well in conversation. You two had shared your entire life stories with each other by now - yours obviously contorted to fit a reality that didn't consist of you being raised in Liberio. You'd grown very close to him, way closer than you had with anyone else in the Scouts. Even though he'd never met the real you, you could relate to him - his struggles and his past especially. His cynical personality had a strange and almost addicting way of brightening your day, and you'd always make sure to tease him for it. Not to mention how handsome he was. He'd catch you stealing glances at him sometimes, but you had a feeling he secretly liked the attention.

If you didn't know better, you'd think you were falling for him.

Your favorite stories of Levi's were of the Underground. It was such a peculiar concept to you, even though it faintly reminded you of life in Liberio. You realized that the people living in the Underground were lucky, in a way. They were oblivious to the world above, secluded from wars and titans. If only every other circumstance of theirs wasn't so unfortunate.

You smile at him as he finally looks up from his book.

“Your tea’s over there,” he says as his eyes dart to the coffee table.

You quickly grab the tea and move it to your mouth.

It was way too hot.

You feel titan steam shoot up from your lips. It had really burned you that badly. You slap a hand over your mouth before the steam could escape, the sound echoing off Levi’s office walls.

“What’s the matter? Tea’s gone cold?” Levi questions, his voice dark. His eyes had been on you the whole time.

“Hmmph?” you say through your hand.

Levi gets up and advances across the room, stopping just in front of you. You’re still frozen on the couch.

“I said, what’s the matter?” His hand meets the one still clamped over your steaming lips.

“Is there something you need to hide under there?” Levi’s finger slips under one of yours, forcing it away from your face. Then another.

Oh shit.

This was a setup. He was actually on to you.

Shit! Regenerate! Faster!

Another finger is forced away from your face. You close your eyes tight, focusing all of your energy to your lips.

This may be it. Right here. Reiner and Bertholdt were going to kill you.

The final two fingers are pried away at once. You open your eyes to look up at him innocently, no steam in sight.

“Uh…” you stutter.

He sighs.

“Sorry. Just trying to keep tabs on who my enemies might be.”

“So you… burned my mouth? Dickhead,” you laugh. You needed to come off as clueless as you could.

Levi’s eyes delicately scan your dewey face. Your lips were still throbbing and swollen. You always wondered if that’s what had compelled him.

He leans down, kissing you softly. Your eyes were wide and your face was motionless for a moment. Then you returned it, cupping a hand sweetly around his jaw.

In a flash, you’re transported to another memory.

You're sitting down on a wooden bench on the outskirts of the combat training arena. You remember being so tired on this day.

You lean your head back and close your eyes, letting the sun soak into your sweat-covered skin. Eventually, a shadow blocks the light shining on you.

You open your eyes to see Levi.

“Want to spar?” he taunted.

“Hell no,” you pant, still limp on the bench.

“You sure? Might be fun to have your ass kicked three times in one day.”

You chuckle at him.

Levi sits down next to you, leaning forward to support his elbows on his knees. The two of you sit there quietly, your ears filled with the sound of summer insects and a cool breeze through the trees.

Your eyes eventually wander to Levi again. He looks upset all of the sudden.

“I’m sorry for kissing you,” he states.

You’re shocked he’s actually bringing it up. After the kiss broke, he just went to sit down at his desk. He acted like none of it had ever happened.

“No, don’t be. I kind of liked it,” you confess, leaning forward to be at his level.

“This can’t continue.”

You feel a tight sensation in your chest. You’re hurt.

“Tell me about it,” you sigh, putting your head in your hands and thinking back to your real duties for once. You were only making things more complicated for yourself.

Of course, it did continue. The two of you avoided each other for a couple of lonely weeks until you nearly ended up in a titan’s mouth on a mission. It had you gripped tightly in its hand, completely helpless to it in your human form. You were about to transform when Levi swooped in and sliced its nape.

He helped you to your feet once the titan hit the ground and scolded you for your carelessness. You just stared back at him once he was quiet again. And he stared back at you. For a bit too long.

That night, you ended up in his office again and performed a teary-eyed confession about your feelings for him. It was in those moments that you discovered you didn’t care about the mission anymore.

You’re thrown into another memory.

This one was so intimate. So special. You never wanted to forget it.

“I’ve never,” Levi pants underneath you, “done something like this before.”

You’re straddling his thighs, tracing circles into his abs with your fingers.

“That’s ok, I’ll guide you,” you whisper.

Candlelight glows off of both of your naked bodies in Levi’s dimly lit bedroom. A surprise make out session led to Levi being curious, and the both of you taking all your clothes off in a rush and throwing each other onto the bed in desperation.

You move your hand from his stomach to his erection. Levi lets in a nervous breath once you make contact.

“Hey, you’re gonna do great,” you say sweetly, “you still wanna do this, right?”

“Yes, I do. Just nervous I’m not gonna… do it right.”

It was ironic to see humanity’s strongest so nervous about what was between your legs.

You shush him quietly as you move your lips down to his tip, slowly taking his length into your mouth. You drag your lips up and down as he lets out tiny grunts and bucks his hips up slightly to meet you.

Once he’s warmed up to your touch, you scoot up over his legs until you’re almost straddling his length.

You look up at him to see his eyes wandering over your bare body, lingering in your more intimate spots.

“You’re really beautiful. I’m not sure if I’ve ever told you that,” Levi murmurs as he moves a hand up to glide over the side of your waist.

“You too,” you smile at him. “Are you ready?”

He nods.

You lift yourself up gently before easing him into you. The perfect sensation of him pressuring your walls made your breath hitch. You feel him let out a huff of air once he's fully inside.

You start to rock your hips up and down rhythmically as you lean forward to place your hands on his collarbones. He gently thrusts back to meet your hips. His mouth was parted, his face was flushed and sweaty. He grips the sheets in his hands as you continue riding him.

Everything felt so warm and wet. So gentle and passionate.

Both of you let out little whines as you speed up.

"How can I," he moans, "make you... finish."

You grab his hand from the sheets and move his finger to your clit, pleasuring yourself with it for a moment.

"Just like that," you whisper. "You're doing so good."

The two of you continue rutting against each other on the bed - two wet, tingly, whiney, pleasure-filled messes.

All of it felt so right. It was honest.

The memory gradually crumbles in front of you, plunging you back into the darkness.

It wasn’t the intimacy, the long talks, or the sex. It was none of that.

It was the fact that he was a brave and honest thing in your world full of lies. It made you fall for him.

Levi made you rethink your entire role in this war. What right did you have to come and destroy people’s lives? These people were innocent for all you knew. They were the victims. But they had spirit, guts, and passion that no one on Marley did. You related to them. You loved them.

So whose side did you really belong on?

And why were you being shown these memories?

And what was this bloodcurdling noise suddenly ringing in your ears?

It sounded like… your screams.

You finally enter reality again with a gasp, coughing up leftover fluid in your lungs from your titan form. You look down frantically at your body to see all of your limbs severed. Someone had cut you out of your titan form.

The culprit was crouched right in front of you.

Levi.

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Hi guys! I've been sitting on this fic for awhile, unsure if I wanted to post it or not - I sort of wasn't confident abt it. But I hope some of you like it! I will be coming out with another chapter soon. Also, if you left a request, I promise it will be up soon! Lots of love - Shep

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[therivergirl]

Plz write some fluff moment with donald, daisy and girls ^^

OOps, some angst might have snuck in by accident too...sorry... But only a tiny bit, I promise!

Living with Donald and Daisy was weird. Nice and cosy, they had to admit, but weird.

Well, it wasn't entirely correct to say they lived with Donald and Daisy. They had their own room at the manor, why someone would give them a whole room was still beyond them, where they slept and spent some of their time.

Only a few days have passed since they came to Duckburg from the Lost Library. And, even as they dealt with the loss of their mum, Black Heron, they realized they were happier than they have ever been. Most of the time they spent with Webby, Huey, Dewey and Louie and their friends when they would visit.

Donald and Daisy dealt with some nebulous paperwork. May and June did not know full details, but they knew it had to deal with them being adopted. One day they had to meet a woman, a family/adoption lawyer named Barbara and that was the extent of their involvement. They did hang out with their new...parents. It was a bit difficult to think of them as such, let alone call them that out loud. Donald and Daisy were once, neither ever scolded May if she was to quiet or June if she started crying. That felt strange. But it also felt good.

It filled the girls with the kind of warmth they have not known yet.

One day, the fifth day after the McDucks defeated F.O.W.L. Daisy took the girls into her apartment in the city. It was their first time there, as Daisy, despite apparently having her own living space, lived with Donald on the houseboat.

"Whoa, this apartment is really pretty," May said, impressed with shiny furniture and a cozy, yet modern blush pink sofa.

"Why is there so much fabric around, though?" June asked.

"Well, some of it is always here, but most of it, especially those big, bulky rolls there, are here because my boss, Emma Glamour, kicked me out of my working space when I told her I have to sitch to working online while I travel," Daisy explained, "and I was not going to leave all of my fabric there."

"They are very pretty," May said. "What is this one?" she pointed to a light, airy fabric.

"That is lightweight linen," Daisy said, "It's very good for shirts and summer dresses. Now, I took you here for a reason. I'm assuming that, when you were with F.O.W.L., you were not given a choice of clothes?"

May's expression turned downcast immediately and June moved closer to her sister. "No," June muttered after a few moments.

"Heron said we should look like Webby. Bradford got angry when he couldn't recognize us, so someone suggested we should be colour-coded," May muttered.

"Pepper got tasked with it. She was nice, she let us pick our favourite colours!" June said, a small smile appearing on her face.

"Well, I'm glad you like cyan and yellow," Daisy said, "but now I'm asking you, do you like that style of clothes too?"

"They are ok," May said, averting her gaze. They were already given a room, three very tasty meals a day and snacks in between and so much more. How could they now ask for new clothes...even if she did really dislike wearing the vest...

"May, June," Daisy said, sitting on the sofa and gesturing for the girls to join her, "you don't have to pretend to like something if you don't now. You can be honest."

"So we can....change it?" June asked shyly.

"Yes, that is why we're here," Daisy said, "one of my favourite things to do is making clothes for people in my life. And you two are included. So, I would like to make each of you a dress, or a blouse, or whatever else you want."

"Our own personal dress?" May wondered.

"Yes, if you'd like," Daisy smiled softly. "I will have to take your measures, that's why I brought you here, most of my equipment is here, and then, you can pick the style you like and I'll make your clothes in the next two days."

"That's very nice of you," May said, "Thanks,"

"You're welcome, dear," Daisy said, "Is there already something you like?"

"A dress like that?" May pointed to a mannequin dressed in a simple pink dress with slightly floaty skirt and straps, "but yellow!"

"Does it have to be a dress?" June asked.

"No, it can be whatever you want." Daisy said, "Well, I would prefer if you didn't pick a tailored jacket. That is, you can freely pick that, but it will take me a bit longer to make."

"Oh no, I don't want a jacket. I would like overalls!"

"Like the ones Della had for gardening?" May frowned, "Those are weird!"

"No! They looked cool! Can you make them?" she asked Daisy.

"Of course!" Daisy said, "Now, I will help you choose the fabrics because not every fabric can be used for every garment."

"Cool!" May exclaimed, "What is this one for? Is it good for my dress?" she pointed to light yellow cotton.

"Wow, you have an instinct for this!" Daisy said, "That cotton is perfect for a dress like the one you want. In fact, that dress there is made of the exact same fabric but dyed pink."

"Aw, I don't know which fabric to pick," June said, feeling a bit self-conscious.

"That is ok," Daisy said, "most people wouldn't know. I'm assuming you want denim overalls?"

"Um, yes? I think denim is the material of Della's?"

"Yes, it is. And I have the shade I think you would like here very much," she said pulling out a roll of light blue denim. "Here is is!"

"Yes! It's so nice!"

"Ok, now! Let's take your measures and then we'll go for a bit of clothes shopping!"

"But you said you will make us a garment each already," May said.

"Well, I'm not having you wear the clothes you dislike any further. And, since I'm not a wizard, I can't make clothes appear out of thin air. So, we're going to get you each a few more items until your outfits made by me are done, how about that!"

"Can we get hamburgers on your way there?" May asked.

"Ugh, no! Why are you and Webby obsessed with those!"

"Because they are good!"

"Nuh-uh! Pizza is soo much better."

"It isn't!"

"It is!"

"Hey, hey girls, don't fight!" Daisy warned gently, making both of them let out small gasps.

"Sorry, Daisy," June muttered.

"It's ok. There is no need to fight. Because, first, it's ok to like or dislike hamburgers. And secondly, I know a place that serves amazing hamburgers and amazing pizza? How about I give Don a call and tell him to meet us there after we get you two some new clothes, huh?"

"OK!" May said.

"Yeah, that sounds awesome!"

....

Daisy and the girls left the boutique with a new bag with a beautiful cardigan for May and a new scarf for June, for once it gets cold. Daisy insisted they visit a few smaller shops, all held by her work colleagues or acquaintances.

They met with Donald on the way to the restaurant. May and June were already dressed in their new clothes.

"So, how did the shopping go?" Donald asked. His voice was still a bit weird, but May and June realized it wasn't as hard to understand once you started to get used to it.

"I love cardigans!" May said. "And this dress is nice, but Daisy's will be even better!"

"And the overalls are ten times better than the skirt!" June said.

"I'm glad you like them," Donald said, "and now, lunch! What are we having?"

"Hamburgers!" May exclaimed.

"Pizza!" June shouted. "Ugh," June rolled her eyes with a surprising bit of attitude, "Daisy and May want to have stupid hamburgers!"

"They do?" Donald feigned surprise.

"Yes!"

"Can I tell you a secret?" Donald said to her in a conspiratory tone, "I'm also on team pizza."

"Um, sorry, could you, um, repeat that?" June asked shly. She felt really bad every time she misheard Donald.

"Yes. I said I'm also on team pizza," Donald said, a bit slower this time.

"You know Daisy and I can hear you, right?" May wondered.

"Well, shucks, I was caught," Donald said, "Now, are we going to Olives and Oregano?" Donald asked, "They have good burgers too!"

"Yes!" The girls exclaimed in unison.

Donald and Daisy looked after the two, as they rushed to the top floor of the mall where the restaurant was. It was lovely to see them already acting like normal kids. They wished the moments like that would only grow more numerous.

....

After lunch, the four went to the park. June wanted to play freesbee, but, after Donald got hit in the head with it for the fifth time, they all decided that a simple walk would be safer.

"Can we go to that wall-climbing place?" June asked, "I saw it on a billboard! I would like to try it, please?"

"I don't," May said immediately, "But if we have to..."

"We don't," Donald said immediately and June's face fell. "That is, we don't have to go, but we can go. And if we do, we don't all have to participate. We can enjoy different things. May, you can sit it out and just watch others climb,"

"And cheer me on!" June said, "Wait? So it means I CAN GO???" she let out an excited scqueal and started jumping around the park.

"Yes, but only the lights wall for the first time," Donald's dad mode kicked in. "That is, if Daisy is ok with it."

"As long as they have the safety rope, it's fine with me. I tried it in the past and it's safe."

"EEEEEKKK! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" June jumped around and hugged both of her...parents.

"Daisy," May asked, "do you have a notepad? I would like to draw? While June climbs."

"NO! You have to cheer me on!"

"Ughm fine! Then while you get all the safety gear on!"

"Ok than, you can draw!" June said.

"Yes, of course," Daisy said, reaching into her purse, "you know I never go anywhere without one!"

"Thank you," May said, much more calmly than June. She hesitated for a moment and gave a brief hug to both Daisy and Donald and then followed her sister who had already ran 50 yards in the direction of the rock climbing wall.

"Well, they seem to be doing great," Daisy said, her heart full.

"Yes, they are," Donald said and took her hand, "and so are we," he smiled at her and they shared a brief kiss, then rushed after their daughters.

[luluwquidprocrow]

(the three-part folding mirror)

the denouements & the snickets, olaf, r, olivia 

teen

15,985 words 

The year the schism gets worse is the year one of the quarterly information costume parties is held in the grand ballroom on the third floor of the Hotel Denouement. 

@lyeekha won my commission in the @asoue-network fandom against hate raffle and asked for the denouements, so i put together some shenanigans with the denouements and the snickets, with slight ernest/lemony kit/dewey frank/jacques, and a few other associates hanging around ~ 

some minor warnings – language; smoking; brief mention of murder; referenced parental death; identity anxiety about being seen physically and personally 

title from i am alone by they might be giants 

10:59 PM—The Ballroom—East Drink Table

Kit skirted the perimeter of the crowded ballroom, stopping at the side wall by the drinks, one eye on the table and the other on the dance floor. She couldn’t put her back to it. Not now. There was a tall, potted boxwood nearby, unreasonably lush, almost slouching against the decorative golden pillar beside it. She picked up one of the wineglasses, the only signal she could think of to properly get his attention. She’d have to find Lemony as well; where was he?

The plant coughed.

“J,” Kit whispered, “listen to me.”

A few of the branches parted, and Jacques’s blue eyes appeared out of the green. “What happened?”

Kit breathed slowly. Her free hand curled into a fist, crinkling up the fabric of her dress. She swallowed. It did not help. She gripped the glass. Beneath her feet, the floor gave a slight shudder as the clock out in the lobby readied itself to chime the hour.

“Someone in this very room has—”

WRONG!

7:25 PM—Above The Lobby

It was Saturday night, and Saturday night always meant one thing—Guess The Guest.

Ernest stood in the small alcove situated around the gears of the hotel clock, far above the lobby, and looked down. Like any other night, the sleek gold and red lobby was filled with people, loitering around the front desks and the fountain and each other before they made their way up to the grand ballroom on the third floor. Well, the ballroom was different. This was a work event, as Frank had so brilliantly labeled it on their schedule, so no one was a regular guest tonight. Frank, who had never appreciated the joy in making up grandiose lies or exaggerated half-truths about the strangers who came in and out of the hotel, certainly wouldn’t appreciate the thrill in watching all of his associates in costume and trying to guess who was who, either. Dewey thought the game was slightly mean, because Dewey was just too kind for this sort of thing.

It was good that Ernest was not Frank or Dewey. Not right now, anyway. Ernest knew how to get joy out of the little things.

He watched a flash of green scales move erratically through the lobby, a cheerful voice calling enthusiastic greetings that echoed all the way up to the ceiling—Montgomery. There was a reason he did undercover work so sparingly. Two women in nearly identical butterfly costumes by the door, one purple and one white, hand in hand, standing close together—Ramona and Olivia. It was nice to see them together. A woman with a deep blue dress that swept around her like a wave—Josephine, here alone. Ernest had it on good authority that the Anwhistle brothers weren’t coming. Another loud voice, but deeper, following the confident swath a tall figure in black cut through the crowd—Olaf. Ernest turned away, in time to catch a glimpse of a long red cape shifting from behind one pillar to another around the edge of the room, carefully avoiding Olaf—aha. Kit. Which meant another one was nearby. Not that the Snickets had arrived together, because none of them ever did, but where there was one there was always at least one other, ready to make a decent amount of trouble. (Ernest liked trouble. The little things, of course.) And there, near Ramona and Olivia, Lemony Snicket, a figure shaped in grey shadows.

The alcove door opened. Ernest knew exactly who it was, so he didn’t give him the courtesy of turning around, keeping his eyes on Lemony. Grey was a fitting color on him, on the long line of his shoulders, his legs. Ernest’s stomach flipped over, once.

“It looks like a full house tonight,” Frank said, standing beside Ernest. He adjusted the sleeves of his jacket and folded his hands behind his back. “I wasn’t sure.”

Ernest leaned a hand on the alcove railing. “Takes more than a murder to stop a party, I suppose,” he said.

Frank didn’t reply, but Ernest knew that for once he agreed. The double murder in Winnipeg two months ago had, like any other sudden, suspicious death they’d dealt with over the years—Ernest shuddered and flexed his fingers—barely made a ripple in VFD, except that after the funeral, everyone had closed ranks significantly tighter.

This worried Frank; this did not worry Ernest. Very little truly worried Ernest, at the end of the day. That, of course, only made Frank worry more, but Ernest couldn’t help that. Frank would find something to worry about if Ernest was still on “his side”. Ernest had much more pressing commitments than the heavy, idle worry that everyone else shuffled between themselves without any results, and it wasn’t that he’d be found out. It was change. The real kind of change, not the noble one, not the fragmentary one. Change Ernest could see.

He shifted his hand on the railing once more. If he kept thinking about it, he was going to argue with Frank, and they’d rehashed the argument so many times the past few months without any resolution that it was better, Dewey had eventually insisted, if they just didn’t talk about it at all. So they wouldn’t. Ernest stood next to his brother, and the silence dragged out between them, punctuated by the soft ticking of the clock gears, and they wouldn’t talk about it. Not at all.

“Ernest.”

Almost.

“Frank,” Ernest said back, in the same critical tone, tilting his head to the side and giving his brother a look.

Frank shot him a flat and unimpressed stare in return. At least he still did that. “Promise me you won’t do anything—” he paused, his face pinching in an aggrieved sort of way before he settled on a word. “—rash tonight,” he finished.

Ernest laughed. “I don’t intend to do anything rash, Frank.” Of course not. You couldn’t carry out a pre-established plan rashly.

“I should hope not. I—”

The door opened, again. Dewey burst into the alcove, all smiles as always, and stopped on Frank’s other side and leaned over the railing, gazing into the lobby. Like Ernest and Frank, he wore the muted red manager uniform, because somebody had said it was the “host prerogative” to not dress up for a costume party. Somebody had felt bad about it when Dewey was disappointed, but somebody had still not relented, and there they were, a matched trio, everything outwardly perfect.

“Everyone’s costumes are so beautiful,” Dewey said. “Who’s that, in the big blue dress?”

“Josephine,” Ernest and Frank said at the same time.

Ernest raised his eyebrows. Frank, stooping so low as to actually guess the guest? Even Dewey blinked at him in surprise. The tips of Frank’s ears went slightly pink, but he didn’t say a word.

“Oh, Frank, you left your name tag downstairs again,” Dewey said. He pulled the name tag from his pocket, the slim gold rectangle glinting briefly in the soft light of the alcove, and pressed it into Frank’s hand.

“Thank you,” Frank murmured. But when Dewey turned away, Ernest saw the tag disappear from Frank’s fingers, most likely slipped up into his sleeve. None of them wore their name tags with regularity—the black ‘manager’ embroidery on their jackets was really enough—but Frank’s kept showing up places, and Ernest and Dewey kept giving it back to him, every time. Ernest didn’t quite know what to make of it. He wondered about asking Frank about it, but he didn’t want Frank to take it as another argument. Ernest didn’t actually enjoy arguing with Frank. About small things, sure, like Dewey’s stupid poetry and Frank’s inane hotel schedules, the sorts of things brothers argued about. But Ernest was sure Frank would make it into another one about VFD.

Dewey was studying the lobby, one hand on his chin. Ernest watched him go from one friend to another, then stop when he got to Kit’s red cape sweeping towards the stairs. It was an unusual color for her, but Dewey, whether he thought it was nice or not, knew how to identify someone from the pieces they let slip through too. Kit was straightforward about everything, and the way she walked, determined and with an endpoint in sight, was no different.

Ernest and Frank exchanged a quick glance.

“So,” Frank drawled, “when’s the wedding?”

“I look best in black,” Ernest put in. “Take that into account, Dewey.”

“I look best in blue,” Frank said. “Take that into account.���

Dewey’s face went its typical six shades of red, flushing through to his ears as well as he jumped back from the railing and sputtered, “What—we’re not—we haven’t even—I don’t—Kit’s not—you two are impossible.” He stormed out of the alcove, shutting the door with a slight snap behind him, because Dewey had never slammed a door in his life.

Ernest enjoyed a brief chuckle with Frank before his brother fell silent again. The lobby crowd was thinning as everyone made their way to the elevators or the stairs, or to the bathroom, or, perhaps, to some clandestine hallway somewhere else. Ernest could see the ring of neatly-trimmed boxwoods lining the lobby now. He wasn’t sure, but he thought there was one more than usual, sitting right inside the door.

He leaned forward, squinting. “Did we always have a boxwood there?” he asked.

Frank moved his head down a fraction of an inch and considered the lobby. “Of course,” he said. Then he straightened his sleeves one more time, and left the alcove.

7:35 PM—The Lobby

Among the Snicket siblings, there was an ongoing discussion about the best hiding place. Kit preferred the quiet, professional approach. She stood behind newspaper stands, put her face into books and brochure racks, stayed in the shadows of a store awning. Lemony was difficult about it. He thought the best place to hide was the least likely place someone would look for you; the place you wouldn’t look for yourself. He took dangerous perches in train station windows, seats in restaurants he vocally hated, or sophisticated and cramped corner cafes that had never heard of a root beer float.

Jacques, meanwhile, with a lifetime of hiding experience, always liked to hide in plain sight. People barely ever remembered what was right in front of them as long as it appeared relatively normal. And there were a number of options—a large potted plant could be overlooked among a dozen other potted plants, people received packages every day and wouldn’t notice if there was one more oversized box, every city park lost track of how many statues were supposed to be there, even a regular man in a fine suit crossing the street or driving a taxi was expected and forgettable. Another boxwood was just another boxwood sitting in a free space in the empty Hotel Denouement lobby, slowly making its way to the ballroom for optimal eavesdropping. Another volunteer in costume was just another volunteer in a lion costume borrowed from Bertrand, for the moments tonight when Jacques had to communicate information to an associate.

That was the point of the party, after all. Jacques couldn’t deny that everyone liked dressing up—he liked dressing up, a little—but the main objective for most of them tonight was the passing of relevant information that had happened in the three months since the last official gathering (not counting the funeral). It should have been at Winnipeg, as they usually were, the organization taking over the Duke and Duchess’s sprawling, sparkling mansion, the couple’s easy laughter flowing from room to room. Jacques didn’t blame Ramona for not wanting to do it after what happened there. He doubted she’d actually been in the mansion since, although it was entirely hers. But the Hotel Denouement was a suitable replacement. It was too public to ever lose its neutral position among both sides. No one was going to get killed here, Jacques was certain. But he was mildly worried something else would happen. He didn’t know what. But something.

Especially considering Lemony was here. Not that his brother was a troublemaker—Jacques would never say it out loud, at least—but because Lemony wasn’t supposed to be at the hotel tonight. He had told Jacques that he was going to be with Beatrice and Bertrand, who were working on plans for an upcoming assignment. This meant two things—one, that Lemony had lied to Jacques. But Jacques had counted on that. He had assumed, however, that Lemony meant the three of them were finally going on a date and hadn’t wanted anyone to know. Two, that if Lemony never did anything idly, without a specific purpose, then he was here for an unknown reason. Something else was going to happen, Jacques was certain. Something Lemony wanted to be here for.

First, though, he had to get the boxwood he was hiding in from the lobby to the ballroom upstairs. The pot was significantly heavier than Jacques had counted on.

8:05 PM—The Ballroom—Main Doors

Every time they all got together, Frank was so amazed at how many of them there were. Despite some noticeable gaps—Beatrice’s overbearing presence, for one, which Frank was happy to do without for an evening—the grand ballroom had barely any free space. Every available and noble associate was here, and it filled Frank with a sense that everything was going to be alright. All these people, including himself, doing what was necessary to keep the world quiet. Tonight would be fine. Ernest wouldn’t do anything regrettable; Dewey would forgive him about the costumes and the gentle ribbing; the meeting would pass without incident. Tomorrow would come. Sometimes Frank almost thought that it wouldn’t. Typically when Ernest was being difficult, but tonight even he seemed to agree that the organization—their organization—was impressive.

He spotted a potted plant by one of the drink tables, a boxwood that matched the ones lined around the room and back in the lobby. One branch was bent out of place. Frank would have to have a word with the person responsible later. But he should fix the branch now.

Everyone he passed on his way across the room gave him a quick nod, a brief smile. Frank returned it as that familiar buzzing started under his skin, like it tended to in groups. He shrugged it aside. He gave the controlled smile of a manager with everything in place, and no one said a word.

All of a sudden, his view of the boxwood was blocked. Through the mass of associates came Olaf, head to toe in a suit and mask of black, spiky fur, smiling with all his teeth, unceremoniously pushing a woman in a silver dress painted like a large, rocky moon aside on his way towards Frank. Frank steeled himself. You never knew what you were going to get with Olaf, if he would try and charm you with a reckless humor or annoy you with a joking cruelty. It was one of the many reasons Frank had never particularly cared for him.

“Ernest!” Olaf exclaimed when he got close. He hooked an arm through Frank’s. “Lovely to see you, wonderful party.”

The cold, dark hand twisted its way along Frank’s insides. It gripped down through his chest, put a film over his eyes that made the room seem distant and wrong. The party continued around him, Olaf was still talking into his ear, and Frank couldn’t hear any of it. The name tag pressing into his wrist up his left sleeve didn’t help. Just because it was his didn’t mean it was him. His name meant nothing if no one was going to care about who it was, about what made Frank instead of Ernest or Dewey. No one should need evidence to tell the difference. No one should make a mistake between the three of them. How many times would it happen?

Time was still passing. Frank blinked once, twice, until Olaf’s voice filtered back in and the noise of the ballroom swelled up once more.

“—incredibly delicious, I have to say, but, to be frank with you—ha! This champagne has seen better days, which one of you is responsible for this travesty?”

Frank smiled, a little turn of the corner of his mouth, the professional smile of all three of them. If Olaf wanted Ernest, alright. Frank would be Ernest. “Frank,” he said. The word sounded like it couldn’t possibly have come out right, but Olaf didn’t break his stride, so it must have.

“That does not surprise me in the least,” Olaf said. “Meanwhile, allow me to take up one single minute of your time,” he continued, and pulled Frank into the shadows by the door. Frank’s stomach gave a terrible lurch as the stark terror he woke up with every morning came back, riding over the dissonant gap he still felt between his body and his brain. What did Olaf want with Ernest? Had Olaf found out about him? Frank had covered up for Ernest before, but would he be able to keep doing it if more people knew?

“Have you thought about it any more?” Olaf asked, leaning close.

The sheer relief that Olaf didn’t know battled with the swooping fear that Ernest was doing something new Frank didn’t know about, and with Olaf. He remembered, with startling clarity, the last time he talked to Kit, when she told him that Olaf had been spouting dangerous ideas about the organization and trying to rope in as many people as possible. It was one of the reasons, according to the rumors Frank had heard elsewhere, why he and Kit had ended their relationship. What was he trying to get Ernest into? Ernest needed absolutely no encouragement, and neither did Olaf. He had to say something.

“I have,” Frank said. It was the safe answer when you were pretending to be someone else.

Olaf grinned again, big and excited, which was a terrible sign. “And?”

“No,” he said, because it was also the safe answer, and the faster Frank could untangle Ernest from whatever trouble he was into this time, the better. “Sorry to disappoint,” he added, with the cool tone Ernest used.

Olaf frowned. “Really? I must admit, I am a little surprised. I mean, I know you weren’t entirely on board, but you’d given it a shot before, and I was hoping you’d come around again.”

Before? They’d talked before? Frank thought a series of incredibly inappropriate words Beatrice was always using that he would never say out loud.

“But!” Olaf pivoted quickly, in his speech and his actions, spinning on his heel away from Frank and shrugging broadly. “Who am I to bend your arm about it! I’ll keep you in mind, though, in case.” He showed all his teeth, his eyes glittering. “And keep me in mind, next time you have anything else worth sharing, will you?” He flounced off again, tearing through the crowd.

It took a few minutes for Frank’s heart to go back to where it was supposed to be from where it was thundering in his throat. He put his hands in his pockets and gripped the fabric, something real and his to hold onto.

Anything else worth sharing. Since their apprenticeships, Frank and Dewey and Ernest had been tasked with organizing a great deal of information, mostly about the history of the organization, but sometimes, and especially as they got older, the very information that was passed along between volunteers. It was part of the reason Dewey had started building his personal archives in the basement. He liked the business of collecting facts. Of course all three of them were still being given that information. Of course Ernest still had access to every single piece of that information. Ernest, collaborating with Olaf, Ernest, sneaking around behind Frank’s back, Ernest, who had promised, at the beginning of all this, that he wasn’t going to jeopardize their positions by doing something stupid.

Ernest, what are you doing?

8:40 PM—The Archives, In Progress

Dewey was not hiding. He liked parties a great deal, and he loved people, but like his brothers and everyone else, he too had his own appointment to keep tonight.

His just happened to be in the basement.

He still sort of felt like he was hiding, especially the further he went into the archives. But things always needed organizing, and while he waited, he had to do something to keep his hands busy. He searched for a set of organization accounting records for five minutes before realizing he’d already shelved it, last week.

So Dewey was nervous. Plenty of people were nervous. Olivia went around all the time being nervous and no one gave her any grief for it. But Olivia didn’t have a sister to give her any grief for it. And Dewey didn’t mind, not really. He loved it when his brothers teased, because it meant they were getting along. But this time it was slightly personal. Because he was meeting Kit, and he was nervous.

Kit was—well, normal. Like Dewey was normal. He loved his brothers, but Frank was high-strung and made it everyone else’s problem, Ernest was often disagreeable for the sake of it, and with the Snickets, Jacques was always hiding in furniture and Dewey didn’t think he’d ever seen more of him than one hand and possibly an eye at a time, and Lemony was wonderful but sometimes too cryptic and morbid for Dewey’s taste. He liked things a little more sensible, comfortable, pleasant. And Kit was organized, reasonable, quiet when other people were reading, cool under pressure. She let herself get lost in books and people she cared about, underneath all the professionalism. Her smile was a careful, slow thing, something private she only showed you if she genuinely liked you. And it meant a lot to be on the receiving end of that smile.

His brothers didn’t get it. He wasn’t involved with Kit, and he wasn’t going to ask her out, because you didn’t do that with Kit. If Kit wanted to spend time with you, that was her own choice. She never did anything she didn’t want or she hadn’t thought through first. That she wanted to spend time with Dewey, specifically, to see him, and no one else, was nice. It made the whole of him feel all tingly and weightless. He wanted their meeting in the archives to be as nice as that feeling.

Dewey grabbed a set of Agatha Christie translations he kept on hand for when things got boring (rarely, but Beatrice got bored easily, and if you gave her a translation she sat down for a while to prove she could read it) and walked to the next aisle to shelve them. His foot snagged on something in the middle of the floor and he stumbled, hugging the books close to his chest so they didn’t fall. He turned around to see what it was, and found Kit blinking up at him with wide eyes from where she sat on the floor, a thick book open in her lap, her long red dress pooled around her on the floor. Her dress had an off-the-shoulder neckline, but most of her shoulders were covered by the matching red cape pulled around her. In the wide diamond of skin left between the cape and the top of the dress, he could see the sharp edge of something black around her collarbone, a point of the nearly-finished tattoo she’d been getting done. The red sleeves disappeared into short white gloves, with her hands folded together at the bottom of the book pages. Oh. Dewey’s heart pounded for a horrible, exhilarating moment, his mouth going dry. He swallowed once, twice, a third time.

“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling wryly, closing the book and sliding it gently back in the middle shelf. “I got distracted.”

“Oh, no, that’s completely understandable,” Dewey said. He folded himself down beside her, crossing his legs, still clutching the books to him. “Happens to me all the time. What were you reading?”

Kit smiled again, and it was that slow, beautiful smile, her eyes lighting up. “Have you heard,” she said, “about the cookiecutter shark?”

Dewey had absolutely heard about the cookiecutter shark. “Isistius brasiliensis,” he said. “It can travel in schools, and it bites little circular sections out of fish, like a cookie cutter. Have you heard about the brownsnout spookfish?”

“Barreleye fish, has mirrors in its eyes. Toothless upper jaw,” Kit replied easily. “Anostraca.”

“Fairy shrimp, they swim upside down,” Dewey said. He leaned forward, grinning. “Sometimes even found in deserts. Frilled shark?”

This was his favorite game, with his favorite person, in his favorite place. Both of them were librarians, or librarian-adjacent, so he and Kit dealt in information, not only about nobility but about the rest of the world around them. And the whole world was so fascinating, and there was so much to know and share, so how could you not try and see who could stump the other first?

“An eel-like living fossil, with six pairs of gill slits. Chaunacidae.”

Dewey scrunched up his face, thinking. “I think you got me there,” he admitted.

“Sea toad,” Kit said, looking pleased, “and coffinfish. Deep-sea anglerfishes. The sea toad has fins that can be used as leg flippers.”

“Really? Wow.” Dewey made a mental note to check that out later. He hoped, on the scale of unsettling sea creature to pleasantly spooky sea creature, that it was somewhere in the middle. “So besides oceanic intrigue,” he said, “what else is going on with you?”

“I’m supposed to get something from Frank tonight,” Kit said. “But, I also came to give you this. From Bertrand,” she clarified, and then picked through the seams of her dress, which revealed themselves as hiding at least ten different pockets.

When he had the time, Dewey wanted to study clothing design. Kit and Beatrice always found the place for so many pockets that you could never see from the outside, and Dewey wished he had the same capacity in his slim manager’s jacket and trousers for all the things he wanted to carry around. Poetry; chocolate-covered pretzels; the pencils Kit always left behind; spare buttons; sturdy rope, in case he needed it; maybe a mini chess set. He’d have to work on it. Maybe he could hide them in shoulder pads, or his shoes.

Kit pulled out a book from a side pocket. Dewey finally put the Agatha Christie down, piling it in a neat stack between them, and took the book. It was the one Bertrand had spoken to him about last week—Undercover Underwater: Diving For The Truth, a truly terrible murder mystery novel he said Dewey had to read to believe. He was greatly looking forward to it.

“That was awfully sweet of him,” Dewey said, running his thumb over the cover. He looked for a place to put it, and then just put it on top of his book stack. It felt a little sacrilegious, if it was as bad as Bertrand said, to put it on top of Christie, but he didn’t want to misplace it. “Thank you very much.”

Kit shifted on the floor and put her back to the bookshelf. “Did you hear the Anwhistle brothers finished building that marine research and rhetorical advice center?”

“Yes,” Dewey said. “I guess that’s why they aren’t here tonight? Josephine was all alone when I saw her earlier.”

“They should’ve celebrated with the rest of us,” Kit said. “What a massive architectural achievement—and I wanted to hear about the leeches, too.”

“Yes!” Dewey exclaimed. “Have you seen them yet? I haven’t.”

“No,” Kit said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Not in person. Ike gave Lemony one of the earlier ones as a paperweight some time ago but I haven’t been able to see their recent work yet. I hear the teeth are impressive.”

“Cookiecutter shark impressive?”

Kit grinned. “Potentially.”

Dewey laughed. He wished he and Kit could go see them, together. For the scientific curiosity. For spending time with someone who really, really wanted to see him. No, for the oceanic intrigue, of course. “You know—” Oh no. He hadn’t intended to actually start the sentence, but it was out, and Kit was looking at him expectantly, and Dewey was rapidly losing all handles on the conversation. His face was heating up. Everyone else made talking to people whose company they enjoyed look so easy, but the words jumbled together in his mouth. “We should—go? I mean—not right now, but, soon, we could—to the research center—for the leeches, for, for science.”

Pink colored Kit’s face under the freckles along her nose. “For science,” she said. Then—“Not a date,” she added firmly.

“Definitely for science,” Dewey insisted. “Oceanic intrigue, and everything.”

“Yes,” she said, blinking quite a few times. “That would be fine.”

They stared at each other for the longest minute of Dewey’s life.

“We should probably get back up to the party,” he said. The archives were feeling much, much too close, all the books and shelves pressed up against him, the point of Kit’s tattoo still peeking out from under the edge of her cape.

Kit nodded quickly. “Yeah.”

8:55 PM—The Ballroom—Near The Piano

Next—Jacques had to find Olivia.

He abandoned the boxwood by the east wall, for the time being, out of sight near the piano, where a man with a white half-mask played a pleasant Beethoven sonata while a woman in a sharp, pointed gold suit argued with a man dressed as an octopus with a hat. They did not notice Jacques, even in his own costume, but he noticed them. He noticed everyone in the room so singularly. He’d almost forgotten so many people could be in one place at the same time. You spent a lot of time alone, hiding in small spaces, you got used to yourself.

Olivia was easily identifiable. Nothing she did could ever disguise the tightly-wound nervous energy coiled inside her, not the shimmery white butterfly wings curled over her shoulders or the mask of purple flowers on her face. Something always gave her away. Tonight, it was her hands, twisting together as she talked to someone in a large, leafy tree costume, so consuming Jacques couldn’t make out the face. He scanned the crowd, trying to locate Ramona in her reversed purple wings and white mask. He saw her making her way towards one of the drink tables. Ramona wouldn’t leave Olivia alone for long.

The tree left soon after, and Jacques made his way over to her, getting a decent amount of elbows into the side along the way. “Olivia,” he said, when he stopped in front of her.

Her eyes passed over him and onto the rest of the room, like she was staring straight through him. Jacques frowned. He’d certainly said something. He’d certainly moved, Olivia was right in front of him. People moved around them without sparing him a second glance; someone said a cheerful hello to Olivia and she returned it. His voice dried up in his throat, like if he tried to speak he’d never make a sound. When was the last time before this he’d spoken out loud? No one expected him to talk, in his line of work. When had he done it? No, perhaps she simply hadn’t heard him.

He cleared his throat a few times. That was a sound. That was undeniably a sound. Jacques existed here.

He touched his hand to her wrist. “Olivia?”

Olivia jumped nearly a foot. She turned her head from side to side frantically, and Jacques gave her a short wave.

“Oh!” Olivia pressed her hands against her chest and laughed, breathless. “Oh, Jacques, you startled me. How are you?” she asked, as unfailingly kind as always, as if he hadn’t just frightened her. She looked like she wanted nothing more than for Jacques to tell her the long, substantial answer, instead of the polite one. He almost did. But Jacques was here for business.

“Fine,” he said. “And you?”

“Alright,” she said, still smiling. “Ramona’s gone to get some champagne, would you like to join us?”

“Not tonight,” he said. “I have a message for you.”

Her bright smile faltered, her hands seizing together again. “I see,” she said quietly. “What is it?”

“We’d like you to take up the outpost at Caligari Carnival.”

Olivia blanched. “The—the hinterlands?” she repeated. Her voice trembled. “That’s, ah, terribly far away, isn’t it?”

“It is a distance from the city,” Jacques conceded, “but not far.” It was far from Winnipeg, though. It was very far. Eventually, Ramona would be back there, at least in some capacity. Things would be different, especially if Olivia was wanted in the hinterlands permanently.

“Jacques, I really—I don’t—I’ll think about it,” she said finally. “I promise, I’ll think about it.”

An assignment from headquarters was not exactly optional. Her eyes darted somewhere behind him, and Jacques knew who she was looking at. She and Ramona had just gotten together only recently, before the Duke and Duchess’ deaths. Any kind of love was difficult within the confines of their organization, but the solace here, Jacques thought, was that she and Ramona were both there. They would never be that far away. They might see each other a good deal less, but they would see each other.

“You can take your time to leave, if you wanted,” he said.

“I’ll think about it.” Her voice was firm. “But, thank you for letting me know, Jacques.” She gave him her soft, breezy smile again, and slipped off through the dance floor.

Jacques watched her go. They would see each other. That was an invaluable thing, in their line of work. Being seen. Sometimes even the best person you loved with your whole being couldn’t see the part of you that mattered. To be seen when you disappeared from the rest of the world—that was worth holding on to. It would be difficult. But he had no doubt Olivia and Ramona would do it.

The floor rumbled, like it always did before the lobby clock chimed.

9:00 PM—Room 687

Miranda raised an eyebrow. “Does the clock always sound like that? Like it’s saying wrong?”

“Incessantly,” Esmé sighed, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I think Frank’s responsible. Heaven forbid he goes an hour without reminding everyone else how little he thinks of their decisions, you know.”

9:00 PM—The Ballroom—North Drink Table

The hotel was not Winnipeg. But right now, that was exactly what Ramona wanted. The modern angles, the warm, well-lit ballroom, the dark corners and firm rigidity of it all currently felt homier than the soft, open pinks and whites of the Winnipeg mansion. She was glad to have another excuse to avoid it and the constant questions. Tonight, she was going to see her friends, and dance with Olivia, and drink champagne, because Olivia said every occasion was cause for celebration and champagne, and Ramona was going to have a good time. She picked up two champagne flutes from the table and took a sip of one in the careful way her mother taught her, so she didn’t leave lipstick on the glass. Her heart stuttered as she saw the press of plum purple streaks on the glass when she pulled it away. The hotel clock was chiming, sounding like a heavy, distorted vibration of a word. It was right. The lipstick was wrong.

Who had done it? Everyone wanted to know. The firestarters? Likely, but they had been quiet for some time, and Ramona wasn’t going to point fingers without evidence. Some older enemy? Ramona didn’t know enough about whoever that was to consider them. Someone new?

She didn’t want to think about it. Her parents were dead, and she’d found them, and she didn’t want to think about who could have done it or why they did. It wasn’t going to change that it had happened. Ramona wasn’t looking for answers. She was looking for—

An arm slung around her shoulders, jostling her and the champagne, which sloshed around in the flutes as she lurched forward. Scratchy fur and outrageous cologne bore down on her, and she knew exactly who it was.

“My dear duchess,” Olaf said, squeezing her tight. “How have you been?”

Ramona found it in her to roll her eyes. Some people didn’t like Olaf, which she completely understood. There was something about him though, as brash and outlandish and obnoxiously tactile as he was, that had to make you laugh sometimes. She felt comfortable, close to a friend. “Just peachy,” she said. She offered him the other champagne glass; she could get another for Olivia. “Champagne?”

“Oh, absolutely not,” Olaf said. He hooked his free hand around both glasses and set them back on the drink table. “Look, I wanted to give you my sincerest condolences—” And he did look sincere, sliding around in front of her, his hand still on her shoulder, the joy immediately gone from his face and replaced by an uncharacteristic seriousness. She was struck by it, by how glassy and shiny his eyes were under the dark of his mask. “I’m sorry about your parents, Ramona.”

Her mouth wobbled at the edges. She knew Olaf could understand. They’d had similar positions in the organization their whole lives—their parents their chaperones, their time split between assignments and society, the safety that existed in his manor as well, its own controlled pocket of the world, like Winnipeg had been, like the Hotel Denouement was, too. She thought of the Count and Countess, still alive. She hoped they’d stay alive.

It wouldn’t do to cry at a party. Ramona picked up her flute again and took another small sip. “Thank you,” she said.

And just like that, he straightened up and pulled away from her. Some of the mirth found its way back into the shape of his mouth and his arm found its way back around her, this time a tight grip at her waist as he steered her back into the crowd. Ramona felt slightly less consoled than ten seconds ago. Easy come, easy go, with Olaf. “I hate thinking about you all alone in that big house,” he said with a sigh. “All that room, all those things—remember when I knocked into that vase in the hallway?”

“Very vividly,” Ramona said.

“A glorious time!” he crowed. “Well! At least you’ve got all of us, haven’t you. What are your friends if not your family, et cetera, et cetera.”

But he still understood. That was what made it so important to be here tonight. What were all the people in the room, the friends she’d grown up with, people she knew and loved, if not her family as well, just as much as her parents had been? They were more than associates or volunteers, stepping in around her not to fill a void, but to offer back some little part of what had been taken from her. Her throat tightened up as she thought about it. Everything they did was hard, but it was also so special. Ramona wanted to hold it close to her and never let it go.

“And what wouldn’t one do for one’s family, am I right?” Olaf continued. “So, if you ever need me for anything—a shoulder to cry on, although certainly not in this jacket, or, say, a partner in crime, or a willing participant in any daring assignment you might come across otherwise—do not hesitate to let me know, okay?”

“Of course.”

“I mean it.”

Ramona stumbled to a halt as Olaf stopped abruptly. He looked down at her with a gash of a grin. “People like you and me, we’ve got to stick together, duchess.” He gave her a squeeze one more time and then finally let go, dashing away.

Goodness, but he was rough about things. Ramona gave herself a shake, trying to collect herself back into order. She stood up on her toes to try and see where he’d gone. She didn’t get much more height, already being in heels, but she did manage to see him already making grandiose hand gestures across the room to those white-faced triplets Ramona had seen once or twice. They were younger than she was, still in their training. The three of them stared at Olaf with three immaculately raised eyebrows. Ramona chuckled a little, dropped back down, and went back for Olivia’s champagne glass.

9:40 PM—The Ballroom—Center

Over an hour had passed, and Frank hadn’t seen any sign of Ernest. He had better things to be doing than keeping track of Ernest, and yet here he was. He couldn’t have gone far—the hotel was enormous, but it was a hotel. The whole world contained on nine floors. You couldn’t disappear from it.

Frank edged his way through the dance floor, searching for him through three separate groups of associates doing three slightly different versions of a circle dance. A snake and a tree frog whirled past, a phantom with them, a tangled shape of dark greens and blacks and bright blues and exuberant laughter. When they’d gone, Frank found himself in the center of the floor and face to face with Dewey, coming towards him from the other direction, his cheeks pink.

“Are you alright?” Frank asked immediately.

Dewey blinked. “Of course,” he said. “Just dancing. Is everything okay?”

He should have known, but Ernest had him on an edge he hadn’t expected to be tonight. He tried to look apologetic but wasn’t sure how well he succeeded. “Have you seen Ernest?”

“Not since earlier,” Dewey said. “Oh, and Kit was—”

“When you see him, could you tell him I’m looking for him?”

Dewey’s shoulders drooped down. “If I see him,” he said. “Then I’ll tell him.”

“Thank you,” Frank said, and he meant it. He smiled at Dewey until he smiled back, and then Frank moved past him, pushing back into the crowd.

He hadn’t meant to be short about it, but Frank’s worry never came out like he wanted it to. It became biting irritation instead, or a slow-simmering temper he never let boil, or professional, distant orders about hotel business, or a refusal to talk at all in case he said the wrong thing. More often than not, he still wound up arguing with Ernest. He didn’t argue with Dewey, but their conversations were so much more stilted than they should have been lately.

But it was because he feared Ernest was going to slip away from him one day and never come back. Realistically, it was unlikely. After all, Ernest was still here. Indecision entering their home hadn’t taken him away from it. But what if that changed, one day, and it was Frank’s fault, because he reacted too quickly or too slowly? And Dewey—Dewey was so sweet and so kind Frank thought the world might crush him. He had to keep them close, and he had to keep them safe. It would’ve been so much easier, though, if Ernest wasn’t so difficult about it, if Dewey understood that Frank didn’t want anything to happen to him, if they would listen.

Frank glanced at his watch. It was getting late. He’d look for Ernest on the way, but for one small hour, Ernest was going to have to wait.

9:59 PM—The Floor Behind The South Drink Table

Through typical party events, The Herpetology Squad (Plus Hector) found themselves on the floor behind one of the drink tables.

“So how do you tell them apart?” Gustav asked, stirring his drink with a spoon. “Because, and I do feel terrible about this, but I can’t do it. We’ve known them for ages, and I can’t do it.”

“Frank is taller,” Monty said immediately, and very confidently.

“What, no, he can’t be taller, they’re triplets,” Hector said. “Do genetics work like that?”

“Hey Haruki,” Monty called around Gustav and Hector, “do genetics work like that?”

Haruki leaned into Hector’s shoulder and considered it. “I’m really not sure,” they said. “But, I always figured, Ernest was kind of quiet, and Frank was kind of stern, and Dewey was kind of, well, kind.”

“But that seems so reductive,” Gustav pointed out. “You can’t just identify a person down to one base trait and leave it at that. And I say this as a screenwriter and director. You need to be creative.”

“All your characters sound exactly the same, though,” Hector said, frowning. “Or, like, so different, I don’t think you’re keeping track of them between scenes.”

“Oh, that’s awfully rude,” Haruki said.

“No, he’s right,” Gustav said. He hung his head into his hands, his glass tipping sideways through his fingers. Haruki reached over and grabbed it, twisting their arm around and up to slide it back onto the drink table where it’d be safer. “I always thought they did, and now I know for sure. I’ll have to renounce film making and go back to herpetology. Or, submarines. I can’t disparage your honor too, Monty.”

“Oh, Hector, you hurt his feelings,” Monty said. He patted Gustav on the back consolingly. “Gustav, you write wonderful scripts. I loved the, the Werewolves In The Rain.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“I can’t handle a drunk Gustav,” Hector said, closing his eyes. “Gustav, I’m sorry. To be fair, I only watched—what was it—” He waved his hands around. “—the one with the—you know—”

“Vampires In The Retirement Community,” Haruki said.

“And it was once. And—hey, weren’t we talking about something else?”

10:10 PM—The Short Hallway Between Rooms 40-45 and 46-49

Unassigned numbers within the Dewey Decimal System were not the trouble they appeared to be to a hotel based on it. They still existed in the hotel, no matter how much Ernest had protested that it made no sense to have rooms that had no theme or purpose in a hotel whose very purpose was theme—Frank and Dewey’s rebuttal was that it made no sense to nonchalantly remove numbers out of their sequential existence because they didn’t fit in neatly otherwise. They existed. They didn’t have themes, even this stretch of ten, which had been previously designated but was now just a blank space between encyclopedias and magazine publications, which left the rooms relatively blank and boring, typically unnoticed and unused, but they still existed.

In the brief, dark hallway between the two sets of unassigned rooms, Frank could sit on the bench against the wall, and he didn’t have to think about family or the hotel. Frank sat featureless in the shadows and thought about himself. Usually, it meant he felt better about everything. But tonight, with the worry set aside once more for now, all he felt was that chill through his insides again, when Olaf mistook him for Ernest.

He took the name tag out of his sleeve and turned it over in his hands. Frank was a man in a manager’s jacket, with a face that looked like two other faces, someone who could be anyone. The name tag did nothing but identify him without caring who he was. What was it that made Frank himself, the imperceptible, innate existence of him that mattered? His love for Ernest and Dewey? Visible. His organization? Trivial. The fear he was going to lose everything? Meaningless and a weakness, in the face of everything else. It was hard to say for sure. He had gone his whole life getting mixed up with Ernest and Dewey and it was exhausting to keep trying to prove he was real when it felt like the world was rubbing him out. He leaned his back against the wall.

He heard Jacques before he saw him, like always. Exact, economical footsteps, nothing extraneous, the tap of his expensive shoes on the rugs, the swish of his jacket. Everything measured, as it had to be.

Jacques appeared around the corner, that bent piece of the boxwood plant stuck in his hair. He seemed to brighten when he saw Frank, like Frank’s presence set something off inside him. Frank watched him. What did Jacques see, when he looked at Frank? What was it that made Jacques notice, over and over again, over other people? How was Jacques so certain that when he looked at Frank right now, at that moment, that Jacques was looking at him?

Jacques sat down next to him on the bench. Frank had seen him in a mask earlier, something terrible and orange, but it was gone now, and he faced Frank fully. He was inches away from Frank, and Frank could see every part of him, even in the dark—the calm, if tired, resolution in the set of his jaw, the way he waited, still and patient, as if he could do nothing else. He had the darkest eyes of his siblings, a steady and unchanging deep blue.

“That which is essential is invisible to the eye,” Jacques whispered.

Frank let out the breath he’d been holding. How long ago had he said that to Jacques? “I initially said that to insult you,” he said.

“It was deserved,” Jacques said. “And I never forgot. Do you know how I always know it’s you now?”

“Enlighten me.”

He put his hand against Frank’s jacket, resting his fingers against the fabric to the left of the buttons. Jacques kept it there, and he didn’t take his eyes off of Frank for anything, not even when the heartbeat under his hand sped up. Frank felt almost split open to the core. He always did, every time. Jacques saw whatever it was. The man who was always hiding knew exactly who he was, because he looked.

“How very sentimental of you,” Frank managed. His breath hung between them. He traced the side of his thumb over the collar of Jacques’s shirt, just below the skin. If he moved his hand just a centimeter he’d be able to feel his heartbeat as well.

“It’s the truth,” Jacques murmured. “Sentiment is—dangerous. Truth is immutable.”

“Do you know how I know it’s you?” Frank said against his mouth.

“How?” Jacques asked.

Frank finally pulled the branch out of Jacques’s hair. “You do terribly stupid things.”

Jacques laughed, and the sound vibrated all the way down through Frank’s throat.

10:19 PM—Room 366

Frank had to be somewhere. Kit was not overly concerned with finding him, but she would rather do it sooner than later. She worked from the ground floor up, combing through the hallways but finding no sight of the Denouement, until she was on the third floor again. The faster she found Frank, the faster she could, maybe, go back to talking to Dewey. About completely professional things, of course. The fact that she felt different when she was with Dewey was simply because he was pleasant, welcome company. He wanted to look at leeches with her, for the delight of science. They expected nothing from each other but a nice time.

She immediately pictured Beatrice waggling her eyebrows at her, if Kit had said that out loud. Not that kind of nice time, she thought, but the mental Beatrice kept laughing joyously at her.

“He’s a nice person,” she grumbled to the empty hallway. He was calm. Regular. Okay. The exact opposite of everyone else, Beatrice. Could she go five minutes without them all picking apart her romantic life? This was why she wasn’t interested. This was why it was strictly nice. There were other, more important things that needed her attention.

The door to Room 366 was ajar, and Kit, who had naturally been trained to investigate the suspicious, investigated the suspicious. She slid herself carefully through the gap in the door and into the dark room. She’d been in there a few times to know it was an absurdly comfortable meeting room, with plush chairs and a bookcase that spanned the length of the far wall. A figure sat against the side wall, reaching up and tapping ash from a cigarette out the open window. For a moment, they looked like a blank, featureless shadow, until a light outside the window shifted and Frank—no, Ernest’s face resolved itself in front of her. The tip of the cigarette burned bright orange against his fingers.

“I heard about you and Olaf,” he said. “Would you like an apology, since I’m sure you’ve been getting enough I told you so’s?”

Kit sighed. “I really don’t want to talk about it.” But she shut the door and walked over, sitting down on the floor beside him. She took her own pack of cigarettes out of one of her dress pockets and accepted Ernest’s lighter to light one. She never carried her own.

“He did,” she muttered, giving the lighter back. She brought her legs up and wrapped an arm around them. “Tell me, I told you so. Not in so many words, of course, but I knew he was thinking it.”

“Ah,” Ernest said. “The disappointed look of, I’m not going to say it, but I’m going to think it, in your general direction. Which is worse.”

“Exactly,” Kit said. “At least argue with me so I can tell him he’s wrong.”

Ernest breathed out a long line of smoke. “Yes.” She thought he was going to say something else, but when he didn’t, Kit pressed on.

“He acts like it was my fault,” she said. “Should I have known better? I—” It was a harsh thing to admit, but she and Ernest didn’t do this to lie to each other. “Yes. Fine. But he acts like I can’t be left alone now to make my own decisions. He keeps following me, hanging around.” She slouched against the wall. “My own brother thinks so little of me.”

Ernest hmmed. “Well—”

“Do not. Do not say I’m short. I’m not short. Jacques has one inch on me, Ernest. Esmé is short. I’m not short.”

“Sorry,” Ernest said, laughing.

“Say it,” she said, and pushed her elbow into his side.

“Ow—Kit, you are anything but short.”

“Thank you.” She took her elbow back. The two of them sat in silence, blowing out small circles of smoke as the cigarettes smoldered down. “What’s Frank disappointed about?”

Ernest waved his hand with the cigarette dismissively. “Frank’s disappointed he can’t find a tie that matches the custom paint in the lobby,” he said. “It doesn’t take much for him. I was five minutes late, I didn’t give him the mail on time, I missed a meeting, and he just—” He did an obviously perfect impression of Frank’s unimpressed stare.

Kit snorted. She had to admit, Frank did look like that a lot, even if you caught him in a good mood.

“If he wasn’t so difficult,” Ernest muttered, “he’d be almost bearable.”

“Wouldn’t they all,” Kit sighed. “Brothers.”

“Brothers,” Ernest agreed.

10:25 PM—The Ballroom—West Hors d’oeuvres Table

Dewey stood at the hors d’oeuvres table, away from the crowd of his friends, surveying the food. At least, with everything going on, there was always good food to look forward to. It was awful to glare at it like he was. He’d felt so good after talking to Kit, and now he was glowering at little rows of canapes like they were the source of his problems.

He wasn’t usually upset with his brothers. No matter what they did, he knew they had their reasons, and Dewey loved them regardless. But sometimes they really were impossible. Frank’s quiet temper and Ernest’s secrecy and indifference had driven such a wedge between the two of them that when Dewey suggested they didn’t talk about it, it had seemed like the best idea at the time to get them to go forward. Otherwise, he’d been worried that Frank was going to say something he’d regret, because he wasn’t going to change Ernest’s mind, and Ernest might’ve done something terrible. Dewey didn’t think he was capable of something truly terrible, because Ernest was his brother, and he knew Ernest. They both believed in a right way to live, just in different ways, so Dewey respected him. You couldn’t let anything change that. But he was still as worried about Ernest as Frank was, and he had just wanted the arguments to stop.

But it had led to Frank and Ernest almost refusing to talk to each other, ninety percent of the time. The other ten percent was pleasantries or conversations that skirted the edge of an argument, which was worse. Dewey particularly hated it lately, when he was asked to pass messages between them, typically from Frank. He wasn’t a messenger system, he was their brother, and he was, in fact, if either of them cared to remember, the oldest. But they treated him like someone to protect because he wasn’t as forceful as them. He frowned down at a section of tiny shot glasses of—he picked one up. Gazpacho. It looked so charming and Dewey couldn’t even appreciate it.

What it came down to was, the schism couldn’t come between him and his brothers if they didn’t let it. Just like his current irritation couldn’t come between him and his brothers if he didn’t let it. He considered it, because he was angry, but he didn’t let it change anything.

He found a narrow, palm-sized spoon from one of the other hors d’oeuvres and poked at the gazpacho with it. He thought, for a moment, about the Anwhistle brothers, sitting in their brand new marine research and rhetorical help center, probably having a lot of fun together talking about fungi and grammar. Gregor and Ike were two of the most different but most companionable people Dewey knew. Nothing got between them. They probably didn’t forget who was the oldest. Who was the oldest out of them, anyway? They probably didn’t let it matter.

Oh, Dewey was letting it get to him. He piled some of the gazpacho onto the spoon and took a bite. He wished Bertrand had been able to come. Bertrand would’ve loved the appeal of the gazpacho as well. Bertrand didn’t have a single sibling to complain about and he would’ve enjoyed the gazpacho wholesale. He could’ve stood around with Dewey at the table, and maybe they’d have brought in Lemony, too, and talked about flavor profiles. Lemony, who was legitimately the youngest of his siblings, commiserating over cold soup about how they never stopped trying to protect him either. Who could possibly think Lemony of all people needed protecting, too? There was always that quiet, competent energy around him.

Dewey finished the gazpacho and put the jar on a passing hotel attendant’s silver tray. Where was Lemony, actually? He was sure he’d seen him earlier. Dewey remembered, because it was the first time he’d seen Lemony in a long while. Wherever he was, Dewey was sure it was probably more enjoyable than here.

10:32 PM—The Ballroom—Dance Floor

“Josephine,” Olaf said, sidling up behind her, “Jo, angel of my eye—”

“The correct word for that expression is apple,” Josephine interrupted. She did not take her eyes off of her plate of puff pastry. “We’ve been over this.”

He continued, persistent as ever, his smile stretched like candy. “Would you do me the honor of dancing with me, angel of my apple?”

“No.”

10:45 PM—The Elevator

The night was passing by, and Kit still hadn’t found Frank. She’d made it all the way up to the ninth floor with no sign of him. Was he the type to be on the rooftop sunbathing salon? Unlikely. But she should check, just in case.

She had her hand against the rooftop door when the elevator dinged behind her. Kit turned to look. The elevator doors parted, revealing the gold-walled interior with rather harsh lighting, and there was Frank, standing with his hands folded behind his back. He caught Kit’s eye and gave her a slight nod. “Kit.”

“Frank.” She stepped into the elevator beside him and pushed the button for the third floor. As the doors closed, she smelled smoke for a moment, and her heart leapt before she realized the cigarette smoke must’ve clung to her gloves. She tugged them off and stuffed them into one of her pockets.

“I heard the Anwhistles finished the research center,” Frank said, as the elevator started to move down.

“Yes.”

“And the mycelium—are they still working on it?”

“As far as I know, yes.”

Frank sighed. “Do you have any concerns?”

“Some,” Kit admitted. There was no denying it was dangerous. Necessary, but catastrophic if it ever got out of hand. “If anything happens, it can be dealt with.”

“Good,” Frank said, decisively. Silence dropped through the elevator, the hand counting down the floors moving slowly from eight, to seven, to six. Frank raised an eyebrow; Kit realized she’d been staring at him. “Is something wrong?”

“I was under the impression that there was—” More, or something else entirely. It was Kit’s understanding that Frank was to give her a list. There was usually only one kind of list that mattered in their organization, and unless she had radically misjudged the ages of the Anwhistle brothers after personally knowing them for years, they wouldn’t be on that list. “—something more specific,” she wound up finishing.

Frank looked at her with his impassive, unimpressed mask. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

The hand moved again, six to five to four. Kit had the strangest sensation that she was missing something. She should’ve been given that list, not subjected to a brief interrogation, especially about something she was already aware of. The smell of smoke flitted in front of her again.

Disbelief shot through Kit like an arrow, pushing the air from her lungs. She felt like the floor was dropping out from under her. She didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t. She stared at the man in the elevator, and he stared back, cool and collected. It couldn’t be. Because that would mean—but the longer she looked, the more certain she was.

“Frank quit smoking,” she said quietly, “but you didn’t.”

The corner of his mouth turned down. “I—”

Kit slammed her hand against the stop button on the button panel, and kept her hand there, boxing him in against the wall even after the elevator had halted, the counting hand stuck between four and three.

“Don’t lie to me, Ernest.”

One Month Ago—City Headquarters

It wasn’t like there was, say, an initiation ceremony or anything. They’d been through that already, there was no need to do one again. You knew what you were getting into this time, you were just, “changing sides”. And it was so subtle that it barely mattered. Nothing about Ernest’s life really changed otherwise. He ran a hotel with his brothers. He ranked tea brands with Dewey during lunch. He played loud music in Room 784. He carried a lighter in his pocket that he used for other things. He went to headquarters, sometimes as himself, sometimes as Frank, never as Dewey. He acquired messages, and took his sweet time delivering them or delaying them, spaces of time where nothing changed, either. He almost wondered what the point had been, until he overheard Frank spout off some noble patter again. At least he wasn’t like that. At least Ernest knew better.

And since nothing had changed, no one knew. Not even the “firestarters” knew there was another one, namely because Ernest hated the name and disliked a great deal of them, but also because Frank made him be so careful about it. He thought a few people in VFD suspected, or at least suspected someone of switching, because everyone could feel something was happening and they were trying to pinpoint a source, and it was only a matter of time before someone suspected a Denouement. Triplets were naturally suspicious. But it wasn’t like they could do anything, even if they ever had proof—how often did anyone know which Denouement they were talking to, anyway? It was likely Ernest could exist like this for the rest of his life.

The thought almost stopped him on his way into the city headquarters. Day after day of calculated, performative nonsense without an end in sight. Age sagged through him. His bones were too heavy and to move them another step was impossible. He kept walking.

What had made Ernest change? That, exactly that. Change. He’d lived in VFD for practically his entire life, and nothing was different there, either. There had been no great strides made towards the nobility they all talked about, only tiny little steps that were easily set back. Ernest watched his friends and his family get sucked in by this big, dramatic fight that never ended, a fight none of them had ever initially had a part in. He’d learned that you couldn’t achieve “nobility”, whatever that even was, by a bunch of absurd spy behavior and kidnapping, or by coded messages and age-old discussions that went nowhere, or by acting like information weighed more than your life, by pretending any of that was normal. None of it did anything. Ernest was going to find some way to make something happen, to make what they’d lost worth it, and if it meant Frank thought he was a traitor, fine. He’d do it even if Frank didn’t appreciate that Ernest was doing it for him.

The note for Frank that he’d intercepted said that there was a file under the fifth floorboard of the back staircase in the city headquarters. Frank was supposed to give it to Kit.

He made his way to the back staircase. It went up to the observatory, which no one had used since Esmé burned that spot into the rug with her telescope out of protest. The corridor and the staircase were, predictably, deserted. Ernest slowly lifted the fifth board, but it came away without resistance, so he pulled it up all the way and saw the slim folder waiting inside. He took it out, replaced the floorboard, and sat down at the bottom of the stairs. He opened it.

He wanted to crumple the folder in his hands but he made himself breathe and look at it. It was the upcoming recruitment list. There were some he recognized faintly, distant associates, long-lived families in VFD, but a majority of the names he’d never seen before. New families to carve apart. He flipped through the pages—addresses, dates, times. A few photographs. Ernest closed his eyes and held them shut tight. When he opened them, he was still looking at the folder.

Of course none of it mattered, he thought bitterly, shoving the folder into his jacket. He could intercept or stop a thousand messages and there would still always be more. There would always be more children, more fires, more lies, and he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t stop it.

Ernest leaned the side of his head against the banister. He thought about Olaf, suddenly. He’d been trying to corner everyone lately, Ernest among them, talking his ear off about big ideas that Ernest agreed with, but Olaf had a habit of taking an age to follow through with them. Ernest did not have the time to wait an age. He’d shared some information with Olaf a few times, on the off chance that it would spur him into action, but Olaf had hidden it away, for “later”, and it obviously had not helped.

Maybe the only way you could fight a long game was to play the long game back. Maybe that was what Olaf was doing. He was on to something, at least, with his words. Maybe Ernest could try again. Maybe he could learn to wait. Maybe the payoff would be worth it. Maybe.

Ernest stood up. He didn’t at all feel like going home, but he wasn’t going to stay at headquarters any longer.

The staircase creaked. When he looked up, he saw Lemony Snicket at the top by the observatory door, standing like he’d always been there.

“What are you doing up there?” Ernest asked.

Lemony watched him carefully. Ernest got the distinct feeling that he was being appraised. He shivered. When they were younger, you could look at Lemony and see the gears working in his head, like watching—yes, like watching change take shape and form and meaning before your eyes. Lemony Snicket was going to do anything, lead them all anywhere. Ernest hadn’t been foolish enough to believe a twelve-year-old in a brown hat was going to demolish VFD from the ground up. Then Lemony had disappeared, and in the years after resurfacing at sixteen, he looked less and less like that powerful, mythical figure everyone had worshiped and more like he’d seen too much. Ernest sympathized.

But here, Ernest finally saw it, that hunger they’d all talked about. In his eyes, bright blue in the shadows. Physical change, a juggernaut of determination. Ernest’s breath caught in his throat.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Lemony said softly. “Do you think we could talk?”

10:50 PM—The Elevator

Damn.

The disbelief on Kit’s face was gone, replaced by a blazing, dangerous fury, the threatening and exacting professionalism she hid inside her on full display. She wasn’t all that short, Ernest thought, inanely. He wasn’t going to be able to bluff out of this one. She knew. It was significantly more terrifying than Ernest had imagined it would be. How stupid could he have been, to forget about the way that cigarette smoke would cling, to think Kit Snicket wouldn’t notice. “Kit—”

“How long?” Kit demanded.

“Does it matter?”

He could see that it very, very much did. Kit was already disgusted over dating Olaf; that she’d spent so much time with Ernest when he wasn’t on her side was going to eat her alive, Ernest knew. He winced.

“It wasn’t personal,” he tried.

She glared at him. “What were the names Frank was supposed to give me?”

That, he was going to hold on to. They’d already burned the papers, anyway, up in the observatory. No one was going to get that list now. “I guess you’ll never know,” Ernest said.

Her hand clenched on the button panel. She stepped closer. For a wild and uncontrollable second that seemed to spin out into eternity, Ernest imagined she was going to kill him.

“The elevator is going to start again,” she said lowly. “We’re going to walk out into the lobby. You’re not going to make a sound. We’re going to go to headquarters.”

Ernest didn’t like what he was going to do next. But he was always going to have the upper hand for one distinct reason.

He swallowed and straightened the edge of his sleeve. “Who’s going to believe you, Kit?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“Regrettably for you, I am at a distinct advantage,” Ernest said. “You and I are the only two people in this elevator. You did think I was Frank. Who will be able to figure out who was who when you try and tell on me? Who can really know for sure?” He hesitated, but it was true. “Why, I could be Dewey, even.”

Kit slapped him across the face, her cheeks flushed a fierce red. The force of it stung hard, knocking Ernest’s head to the side. She removed her hand from the wall and stepped back.

“Does it help if I’m sorry?” he asked, gingerly rubbing the side of his face.

“You aren’t,” Kit said.

Ultimately, it was true. He wasn’t. He was sorry he’d been caught more than that he’d done it. Ernest regretted nothing about what he’d decided to do. Not in his line of work; and Kit was the same, too. But he was sorry he was going to lose a friend.

Kit didn’t have friends, though. You were with or against Kit Snicket, and she always made that abundantly clear. Ernest touched his cheek again, and then lowered his hand.

“I’m not,” he said. He took the elevator key out of his pocket and put it into the lock on the button panel, watching Kit the whole time. She watched him back. The elevator slid into motion, settling down on the third floor.

The doors opened.

11:00 PM—The Ballroom—East Drink Table

“Who?” Jacques asked.

Kit turned slowly back to the dance floor. Was one of them still here? Had she been followed out of the elevator? She locked eyes with a Denouement across the room. Which one? Was it Frank? Was it Ernest, again? Was it Dewey? The clock was still rumbling under her feet. The glass trembled in her hand and she felt almost sick, anger and shame and fear churning through her. She was in a nightmare and she couldn’t shake it off. The triplet held her eyes for a long moment and then walked away.

“Kit.” Jacques had a hand on her arm; he must’ve gotten out of the boxwood. “Who?”

But she couldn’t get the words out, not here. Ernest was right. She was at a disadvantage when she couldn’t prove it. If she pointed the finger now, what would be done? What could be done? How could he do that to Dewey and Frank? To put them in the position where they’d unknowingly cover for him merely by existing? Did they know at all?

What would she do if her own brothers—no. She couldn’t even think it. Kit couldn’t fathom the idea of her brothers doing anything like this.

“We have to find Lemony,” Kit said.

11:02 PM—The Ballroom—Main Doors

Frank still couldn’t find Ernest. He did not have the time for him to be hiding like a child; where was he? Frank had looked everywhere over and over and was back in the same ballroom again, scanning through the associates for what had to be the hundredth time. He caught Kit’s eye—and stopped.

There was cold and intense fear looking back at him. It was unbearable to have it directed at him, and Frank turned away after a few seconds.

Ernest. A thousand possibilities ran through Frank’s head, each of them worse than the last. He had had enough. Frank strode towards the main doors, just as he saw Ernest making his way out of them as fast as possible. Finally. Frank followed him out into the hallway and grabbed onto Ernest’s arm, whirling him around.

“I asked one thing of you tonight,” Frank said.

“Don’t do anything rash,” Ernest repeated. He wrenched his arm out of Frank’s grasp and put his hands in his pockets. “And I didn’t, thank you.”

“Apparently I wasn’t specific enough,” Frank said. “When I said that, I clearly meant, don’t do anything stupid that’s going to compromise the family and our position in it. What information have you been giving Olaf?”

“Who said I was?”

“Olaf.”

“You know, that hurts a little, that you’d believe Olaf over me.”

Frank’s jaw clenched. Fine. Olaf was less important, anyway. “Then what did you do to Kit?”

Ernest raised an eyebrow. “Did I do anything?”

It was agonizing, seeing such a carefully blank mask on your own face staring back at you. Frank didn’t hate him, but he came close. “What have you done, Ernest? Do not lie to me.”

Something fractured through Ernest’s expression. “I just—miscalculated,” he muttered. “She found out.”

“She found out?” Frank echoed, his heart skittering in his chest. It had finally happened, and Frank couldn’t protect Ernest this time. Kit wouldn’t keep this a secret, not by a long shot. By morning—by midnight, because nearly the whole organization was already here—everyone would know. And Ernest didn’t seem the least bit concerned about it. “Ernest—”

“It’s fine,” Ernest said coolly. “Considering she can’t prove it.”

The world detached from Frank’s consciousness. Kit’s fear made a sudden, terrible sense. Ernest had used him as a shield between himself and the organization, on purpose, he’d positioned Frank and Dewey as pawns whose only use was whatever Ernest wanted. Frank could feel his hands shaking. They didn’t feel like his hands.

Ernest sighed. “Don’t look like that,” he said. “You’ve pretended to be me, that’s the only way you would’ve found out about Olaf. Don’t act like you didn’t use our face as an advantage too. That’s what we do. That’s what this family does.”

Anger burned through Frank, hot behind his eyes. That had been different. A sharp fury that had been building somewhere inside him all night snapped apart. “You are not a part of this family.”

He regretted saying it the second the words were out. Of course Ernest was still his brother. That was an immutable fact. But Frank was so tired of trying to hold onto Ernest when Ernest so blatantly didn’t care. He wasn’t looking at family, he was looking at a stranger, who stole his face, who used his name, who threw it around like it meant nothing, who denied everything noble and proper and real. It wasn’t how a brother was supposed to act. But it was how Ernest acted, and now Ernest was staring at him with an open, wounded expression, something Frank hadn’t seen since they were children.

Frank ran a hand over his face. “I didn’t—”

“No.” Ernest’s jaw trembled for a second, his mouth pressing into a thin, flat line. “I don’t think I am.” He took one step back, a hard glare in his eyes, and then walked away from Frank.

11:20 PM—The Rooftop Sunbathing Salon

Ernest hadn’t figured on Frank being angry, because, primarily, he hadn’t figured on Frank finding out at all. He hadn’t figured on Kit realizing what he was doing, either. Well, that was on him, but Frank didn’t need to be so—he didn’t have to say—

Shit, Ernest thought, breathing hard. He came to a stop in the dark, empty hallway some floors up from the ballroom and let himself think it, pressing his palms into his eyes. Shit, shit, shit. He’d have a brother after this, sure, a family member who stood by him and ran a hotel with him and played nice, but he didn’t know if he’d have his brother. He would have an associate, like everyone else, a found family of people who loved on conditions, not a family. Not his family.

He had to find Lemony. Just because he’d been hiding all night didn’t mean he was exempt from this.

Lemony disliked heights, open spaces, and decently-sized bodies of water, which was why Ernest found him on the roof, sitting on one of the pool chairs, his mask discarded beside him. He was studiously avoiding looking at the pool or the ocean or the night sky, dark and enormous above him. The rooftop salon was never used at night, but there were small lights along the edge of the pool and the railing, giving off slivers of stark white light. The brief anger Ernest felt downstairs evaporated the longer he watched Lemony not-watching the world around him. He wanted to say a million and one things to him, but the one that came out was, “Why do you keep doing this to yourself?”

“What do you know about exposure therapy?” Lemony offered as a response.

“Enough to know you probably shouldn’t use it for heights,” Ernest said. “Among other things.”

“Point taken,” Lemony said. “What would you say if I told you I was now too frightened to move?”

“That you brought it on yourself,” Ernest said, but he didn’t mean it. He walked over and sat next to Lemony on the pool chair. Ernest stole a quick glance at him again, brief and fleeting. To look consistently was dangerous; Ernest always had to make a distinct effort not to touch.

“Your sister found out,” he said. “Not about you, but about me. She also hit me.”

Lemony’s head shot up. “What?” He reached out, his fingertips lightly brushing Ernest’s jaw as he turned his face towards him. They trailed warm over his right cheek, where his skin still smarted from Kit’s hand. Here in the dark, Lemony’s eyes were so bright again, full of concern, directed right at him. Ernest held himself so still, barely breathing.

Falling in love, if you could call it that, with Lemony was what Ernest personally considered the most ill-advised thing he’d ever done, even after lying to Kit. Lemony loved other people, and it was clear in everything he did, in the way he looked when they weren’t there. But Lemony understood what Ernest wanted, and Ernest craved that with a destructive ache.

Really, who else were they supposed to fall in love with but each other? They didn’t know anyone else. No one was going to get this life but them. It was probably why half of VFD had a crush on Beatrice, honestly. It was terrible, but none of them seemed to be able to stop doing it. Ernest included.

“You—” Lemony’s hand jerked back, shrinking down between them onto the chair. “What happened?”

“She knew I lied,” Ernest said. “About the information and about being Frank. I got out of it, but—she won’t trust us again, I think. And Frank—probably won’t trust me either.”

“I’m sorry,” Lemony said. “I didn’t mean for—”

Ernest shook his head. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said. It wasn’t. He and Lemony had both just wanted something, desperately. Ultimately, they’d still succeeded, in the end. They had. Change he could hold in his hands had happened. He still felt hollow about it all, everything drained out of him, but he didn’t regret doing it. Not at all. The hurt would go away and he’d do it again. “What we did—that mattered.”

“It did,” Lemony whispered. “But I never like the cost.”

“Why did you do it?” Ernest asked softly.

Lemony smiled ruefully. “I guess I didn’t want to stop trying.”

The real, noble answer, Ernest thought. Why the “firestarters” and Ernest would never get him. He raised his hand. Slowly, without looking, he put it on top of Lemony’s. Lemony turned his hand over and gripped Ernest’s tightly. He knew that the way Lemony would try from this moment forward would be different than the way Ernest would, and he wanted to have this moment while it lasted.

Ernest stood, tugging Lemony up with him, and let go of his hand. “You should go back downstairs,” he said.

11:30 PM—The Ballroom—South Drink Table

The party would be over soon, but you’d never know it, the ballroom still thronging with people. But most of the dancing had died down, and Dewey was taking mental stock of how clean up would start. He found one of the attendant’s silver trays and picked it up, estimating how many glasses he could fit on it.

Frank came back into the ballroom and made a beeline for him, pale. Dewey’s shoulders tensed up yet again. What had happened now?

“I can’t believe it,” Frank muttered, grabbing a wineglass.

“Whoa, hey, hold on.” Dewey took the wineglass back and set it off to the side. “What happened?”

“He—” Which meant it was Ernest. Again. Dewey’s patience with both his brothers tonight was wearing extraordinarily thin. “He’s been passing information to Olaf this whole time.”

“To Olaf?” That was not what Dewey had been expecting. A flare of worry burned through him and curled his hands around the tray. “But—”

“No,” Frank said. “This time, I’ve had enough. I’m tired of covering up for him, and he’s going to have to deal with this mess himself.”

Olaf was certainly a threat in one way or another, but it seemed a disproportionately vicious answer for Frank. Dewey frowned. “Did something else happen?”

Frank looked so—frantic, was maybe the word, a terrifying energy breaking out of him in quick bursts of anger on his face. He looked at Dewey, and the emotion seemed to cage itself back in.

“He was found out,” Frank said quietly. “About being a firestarter.”

Dewey had counted on it happening. It seemed unlikely that it would be able to remain a secret forever. It still hurt to hear. Things wouldn’t be the same as they had been, if people knew about Ernest. Dewey imagined the division between the three of them only growing larger, and he didn’t know if he’d be able to do anything about it if it got too wide.

Something broke in Frank’s expression again, and Dewey startled—it looked like guilt. “Don’t defend him,” Frank hissed. “Dewey, he’s going to get away with it. He’s going to ruin what we’ve worked for, what you’ve worked for in the archives—do you want all of that information in the hands of the enemy?”

Dewey clutched the tray. “Ernest isn’t the enemy,” he said, darkly. The agitation from earlier at the hors d’oeuvres table shot back into him.

“You know exactly what I mean,” Frank said. “I—”

Dewey slammed the silver plate down on the drink table. A real, genuine slam, like he’d never done before, the glasses around it rattling. Frank stared at him, gaping a little.

“He’s still here,” Dewey said. “That’s enough.”

“Dewey—”

“That is enough.”

12:00 AM—The Lobby

Jacques had never seen Kit so unsettled. Even when she’d been arrested she’d kept her composure. But she stood beside him in the empty lobby, tapping her foot against the floor, her arms crossed over her chest. He still couldn’t get out of her what had happened, but it was obvious from her face in the ballroom that whoever betrayed them had to be one of the Denouements. It was a sobering realization, the worst possible outcome of the schism that had been building for too long. One of three identical triplets being a traitor complicated matters, although it was easy to figure out which one it was that had done it. Things were going to change after tonight.

He took a small, brief moment to appreciate that Kit actually wanted to stand next to him and acknowledge him as her brother. Lately, he’d gotten the impression that she couldn’t stand him. But now she needed him, and it was a relief to Jacques to still be needed by his siblings. He never thought he did that successful a job of managing to keep them all together.

The elevator dinged, and Lemony stepped out, adjusting his jacket. The only evidence he’d been at the costume party was the mask tucked under his arm, because his suit was as plain as ever. 

“Finally,” Kit muttered, and she ran over to him, throwing her arms around him and hugging him tightly, something none of the siblings had done since they were children.

Lemony froze, and then hugged her back. He met Jacques’s eyes across the lobby.

Jacques knew it, immediately. Lemony had played a part in what had happened tonight with Ernest. It shouldn’t have surprised Jacques as much as it did. Lemony had held a perilous position in the organization for years now, and this wasn’t the first time he had wound up disagreeing with Kit about recruitment. But it was the first time it had involved other people. That made it dangerous.

Lemony shook his head a fraction of an inch. Part of Jacques relaxed. The three of them might still be okay. He wondered, with a slight jolt, how the Denouements would fare. 

Kit pulled away from Lemony. “Where were you?”

“Did you know the rooftop sunbathing salon has night lights?” Lemony said. Jacques couldn’t help but chuckle as he walked over to his siblings. “Very pleasant. I recommend it.”

Kit rolled her eyes, and she led Jacques and Lemony through the lobby and out of the hotel.

“I’ll drive you both back,” Jacques said. “It’s on my way.”

“You brought the taxi?” Lemony asked.

“Regrettably,” Jacques sighed. “I still seem to have it.” Headquarters refused to take it back for some reason, even after Jacques insisted he didn’t need it. It had been six months since the initial assignment with it and he was still driving it, and probably would be, for the foreseeable future. He took his keys out of his pocket.

“I’ll drive,” Kit said.

“You will not drive,” Jacques said.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you correctly,” Kit said, snatching the keys out of his hand and walking briskly out of his reach. “Jacques, did you say something about hives? There aren’t any bees nearby.”

“Trees?” Lemony said. He jogged ahead a little and caught up with Kit’s pace. “They do look particularly lush this time of year, now that you mention it.”

“No one is in a rush, and Kit, give me my keys you are not going to drive—” His siblings raced ahead of him down the front drive, and Jacques ran after them into the night.

1:55 AM—The Ballroom

Olivia and Ramona stayed on to help the Denouements clean up. Ramona had insisted, saying that it was no trouble at all, and she owed them for being so kind to host the party. She was very good at insisting; Olivia had never seen anyone able to resist the charm of Ramona cheerfully demanding she was going to help and they were going to have to deal with it. She hid her smile in the champagne flutes she was stacking on a tray as Ramona talked with one of the triplets on the other side of the ballroom. She picked up the one rimmed with half-rings of Ramona’s deep plum lipstick and giggled.

She’d have to tell Ramona about what Jacques told her, of course. But for once, Olivia wasn’t all that worried about dealing with it. It had been an extraordinarily pleasant night otherwise. Ramona was happy, some of the glow back in her face, so Olivia was happy too.

All the glasses were stacked, the plates piled together, the tablecloths folded up, the lights finally dimmed. There was only one Denouement left in the room, and he stopped Olivia and Ramona on their way out. “Olivia, could I speak with you?”

“Of course,” Olivia said.

“I’ll wait for you outside,” Ramona said, squeezing her hand, and she disappeared down the hallway, the hem of her dress sweeping the floor behind her.

Some people expected Olivia to be able to tell the Denouements apart, and some people expected her to be as clueless as most others as to who she was talking to. It wasn’t terribly hard to tell them apart, because Olivia liked to pay attention, but what she could never remember what when she was supposed to know and when she wasn’t. Here, she knew the one in front of her was Frank, most definitely. There was a weight to the way Frank carried himself, not like he assumed he was in control, but like he assumed he had to be.

“What is it, Frank?” Olivia asked.

He hesitated, which was rare for Frank. “When was the last time you saw Miranda?”

Olivia blinked. Had she misheard him? “What?”

“Miranda,” Frank said again. She hadn’t misheard. “When was the last time you saw her?”

Miranda?

“I—I don’t know,” she said quickly. “I—” When was the last time she saw Miranda? Years and years ago, wasn’t it? Shortly after they’d been taken. Olivia hadn’t minded. Miranda was older than her, not by much but by enough, and enough that they weren’t kept together. Miranda had thought it a chore to look after her, and Olivia hadn’t liked being seen as a chore. She wanted a sister, not a babysitter. So she’d been okay when Miranda was gone. They went to different classes, made different friends, passed each other in the hall without saying a word until their apprenticeships, where Olivia was shuffled around from chaperone to chaperone and Miranda—went where? What had become of her?

The questions spun through her head, dizzying, but they kept coming. What did Miranda look like, now that she thought of it? Had she looked like Olivia at all? Would she recognize her own sibling, like she could easily identify the Denouements? Would she know Miranda if she saw her in a meeting, on the street, at one of these parties, if she was an enemy? But what made a person wasn’t appearance—how did Miranda act? What made Miranda, in the way Frank’s quiet made him? How could she not know what made her sister? Miranda was her sister and it hit Olivia, squarely in the chest, that she didn’t know a single thing about her.

She pressed her knuckles to her mouth, her gaze darting across the floor. How had she gone all this time without thinking about her? How could she not know? How much had she forgotten?

“I’m sorry I asked,” Frank was saying. “Olivia. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Olivia whispered. She took one step back, then another, almost hitting the edge of her dress with the point of her heel, and another, then made herself turn around and leave, back downstairs, through the lobby, anywhere else but there.

Olivia hurried out into the night with the front doors banging open after her; the humid air was sticky on her skin, sitting heavy in her lungs as she tried to inhale. She saw Ramona past the front archway, leaned back against her car a way down the front drive, her shoes beside her and her feet in the grass, the shape of her soft and fuzzy in the heat. Olivia tore off her mask and scrubbed her hand over her eyes, wiping the tears on the side of her dress.

There was a weight on her shoulders, more than just the heat. She had the horrible sense that she was going to turn around and see Miranda. Olivia wanted to leave. She wanted to leave the city, she wanted to go somewhere she’d be away from this. She wanted to take Ramona—would Ramona go with her? She had her own things to care about besides the violent anxiety shaking Olivia from the inside out. She had a duchy to take care of. She didn’t deserve to have to deal with Olivia.

We’d like you to take up the outpost at Caligari Carnival. The carnival was miles from the city, out in the hinterlands, flat and desolate blankness. Maybe she should go. Maybe that would be better. She would be away from the city and be one place where no one had to bother her and she couldn’t bother anyone else. Maybe.

Olivia squeezed her eyes shut again, and when she opened them the tears were gone and Ramona came into focus, all of her slender and beautiful in the moonlight. Olivia ached to look at her.

She went over to Ramona and slid her hand into hers, tucking her face into the smooth skin of Ramona’s shoulder. “I want to go somewhere else,” she whispered.

“Hey,” Ramona said, her other arm coming up and folding around Olivia, drawing her close. “We can go anywhere you want.”

Behind her, through the open front doors, Olivia heard the hotel clock starting to chime again.

[stargaze-sunflower]

I really loved Dewey and Louie together in the finale, so I wrote something that could’ve happened off-screen :] 

Louie has a bit of a panic attack here, so be aware of that. Also there are spoilers for The Last Adventure.

Ao3 Link

.

The series finale of Ottoman Empire was not more important than finding FOWL, or dealing with Webby’s clones, or making sure that his family was going to be safe, but it was a lot easier and less stressful of a thing to focus on. There were too many angles for this one, and they were bouncing around his brain like the ball in a pinball machine, giving him a headache and keeping him in a constant state of heightened anxiety. He was overwhelmed, simply put, and all he wanted was to settle down and watch his favorite show.

Dewey was there, and that helped, even though his brother was more keen on adventuring than Louie was. Dewey was there, and he stayed, even when it became obvious that Webby was up to something, even though he had to be curious about the mysteries that were currently unfolding in the mansion. Dewey stayed and watched his show with him, and got emotionally invested right along with him, and that meant the world to Louie, even if he didn’t say it out loud.

And then Huey had barged in, out of breath and ranting about evil clones, and Louie just spared a moment to thank the universe for letting him at least finish his show first.

Webby had overheard, and she’d been understandably upset, but it still hurt to know that she was angry with them. She’d mentioned how they should understand wanting to know more about their family, and finding long lost members of it, and man, he did, but it wasn’t that simple. Della returning hadn’t been all sunshine and rainbows. It hadn't been an evil-clones-stealing-powerful-artifacts situation, but it hadn’t exactly been easy, either. Webby knew that. Webby was ignoring that. Webby was just thrilled to have sisters.

It made him feel a little more isolated, since apparently he really was the only one who seemed to have trouble accepting new family members. Huey and Dewey had accepted Della, and now Webby was welcoming her genetic twins with open arms and a bleeding heart. It brought up the memories of how alone he’d felt, back when everyone was excited for Della to be home and he couldn’t seem to get a grip and just be happy like everyone else was. He had been to only one to hesitate.

It struck him then that Webby was going through the same thing, but in reverse. No one else was ready to accept the clones as her family, and no one shared her opinion, and so Webby was alone in her feelings, just as Louie had been.

After Webby left the room, Louie and his brothers sat in silence for a minute or two, the ending credits of Ottoman Empire playing quietly in the background.

Eventually, Huey sighed and stood up, twisting his hat anxiously in his hands.

“I’m gonna go talk to her,” Huey said, worry in his voice. “I don’t— I didn’t mean to make her upset.”

“We know,” Louie said gently, and Huey quirked a thankful half-smile in his direction.

“I’ll be right back,” Huey said, and then he left.

Louie and Dewey shared a weighted, concerned look, because sometimes it felt like their family was falling apart, and it reminded them that it had happened before. They’d grown up on a houseboat with only each other and Uncle Donald to call family, and that was because adventure had torn Scrooge and Della and Donald apart. Sometimes, in his darkest moments, Louie felt like the same could happen to them at any time. Usually, though, he had faith that his relationship with his brothers was stronger than that. Or at least, he had hope.

Louie sighed quietly, and then he noticed something out of the corner of his eye – something that he wasn’t expecting – and he blinked in surprise.

Huey had left his JWG behind. He never left that book behind. He slept with the thing, for crying out loud; he kept it on the bathroom sink when he showered. Huey must’ve been really out of it and distracted, to have forgotten it like this. It made Louie’s chest tighten, for some unexplainable reason; it made him worry.

Louie turned to Dewey with the book in his hand, and Dewey’s brow furrowed slightly when he saw it, even as he huffed a laugh.

“Guess we finally know what gets Huey to leave it behind,” Dewey said, amusement not quite managing to conceal the undertone of concern.

“I guess so,” Louie replied, and he stared down at the book in his hands for a few long seconds. “Should we…Should we take it to him? We should, right?”

Dewey shrugged, seemingly nonchalant, and stood up too quickly to be casual.

“Yeah, probably,” he said. “I want to check on Webby anyways.”

“Yeah,” Louie repeated, seeing the half-truth for what it was, and they left the room to go find them.

They looked in a few different places in the mansion, lightly teasing each other the whole time, trying to ignore the faint dread rising within them. And it wasn’t too hard, but then they walked into Webby’s room – destroyed, messy, signs of struggle, open window, escape route – and everything came crashing over them. They stood with wide eyes, unmoving in the doorway, almost afraid to go farther in. The JWG in the pocket of his hoodie suddenly felt heavier.

Webby was gone.

Webby was gone, and Huey was gone, and no one had been here to stop FOWL from taking them. No one had even noticed yet. Although maybe it had just happened? But that was almost worse, because it meant that they had been just barely too late to help. And where was everyone else? What if they’d all been taken, too? What if it was just him and Dewey left all alone just because Louie had wanted to watch Ottoman Empire?

Realizing that he was spiraling at an alarming rate, he shook his head and braced himself with a hand on the doorknob.

“They’re gone,” Louie heard himself say, and he shook his head again, trying to dislodge his own heartbeat from the inside of his ears.

“It—They can’t have been gone for long?” Dewey said, sounding baffled and scared. “We just saw Huey. We just— He—"

Louie backed slowly out of the room, feeling like every second that he looked at it was making him panic more and more.

“I’ve gotta— I’m gonna go look for the others,” Louie told Dewey, and his brother gave him a single nod and a quick pat on the shoulder.

“I’ll look for clues here,” Dewey said, voice shaking a little, and Louie turned to race down the hallway, heart pounding and breaths coming unevenly.

He burst into room after room, and when he finally found someone, he almost missed it.

Scrooge was lying unconscious on the floor, and Louie couldn’t breathe – he could hardly think. There was something extremely terrifying about the great Scrooge McDuck knocked out and curled up on the ground. It finally made things feel real, and scary, and impossibly big and loud. Webby was missing, his big brother was missing, and his Uncle had been bested.

Louie tried for several minutes to wake Scrooge, his voice getting shakier and shakier with each plea. His hands were trembling as he reached out to shake his Uncle’s shoulder, just like he used to do to Uncle Donald when he was little and had a nightmare and he was asking to sleep in his uncle’s bed—

Louie was crying, he realized, and he was hyperventilating, and he slid down into a hunched position on the floor and tried to get ahold of himself. His hands were shaking violently, and every now and then a full body shudder would travel from his aching, heaving chest throughout the rest of him. His lungs hurt, and he felt like he was getting too much oxygen and not enough at the same time, and he just wanted everything to be okay. Why was everything always going wrong?

He shoved his hands into the pocket of his hoodie, hoping to stifle their shaking, but he was met with the hard surface of Huey’s JWG. He pulled it out of his pocket almost desperately, and a new wave of tears poured out of his eyes and as soon as he laid eyes on it. His vision blurred, and Louie curled up further, his knees almost to his forehead and the JWG clutched tightly to his chest. He was so, so tired of the world falling apart. And he wished his family didn’t have to always be at the center of it.

The already open door to the room Louie was in banged against the wall suddenly, and he jumped almost a foot in the air, his head snapping up to meet Dewey’s bewildered gaze as his brother entered the room.

“Louie? What’s—” Dewey’s worried voice cut off as his eyes landed on the unconscious form of Scrooge. “Oh.”

Louie frantically wiped at his face with one hand, still holding the book tightly in the other. Dewey came closer, his eyes bouncing between him and Scrooge.

“Is he— Will he wake up?” Dewey asked, and Louie shrugged, his breath hitching as he tried desperately to blink tears from his eyes.

“I don’t— I tried but— but he won’t— He—” Louie cut himself off with a gasping breath, hyperaware of the oxygen flowing haltingly in and out of his lungs.

“Hey, it’s okay, Louie. It’s fine.” Dewey was kneeling in front of him suddenly, grabbing one of his hands in a gentle hold, looking at him with eyes that were worried, but reassuring. “We’ll be okay.”

“How can you say that?” Louie asked quietly, breaking eye contact to stare at the JWG in his lap. “Webby and Huey are missing, and Uncle Scrooge is unconscious, and— and Uncle Donald is going to leave and he might have left already—”

“And none of that is forever,” Dewey interrupted, with his trademark determination and optimism. “We’re going to get Webby and Huey back, and Uncle Scrooge will wake up, and you know that Uncle Donald would never leave when we need him. If he’s left already, he’ll be coming right back the second he hears what happened.”

Louie leaned his head tiredly against Dewey’s, sighing deeply and nodding, his breaths finally slowing down and evening out a little.

“And you’ve still got me,” Dewey added, smiling a bit. “For whatever that’s worth.”

“It’s worth a lot,” Louie said, nudging his brother in the side. “And you’ve got me, too. We’ve got each other.”

“Yeah,” Dewey agreed, and they both looked down at the JWG sitting innocently in Louie’s lap, unaware that it’s owner was in the hands of the enemy.

“He said he’d be right back,” Louie said quietly, feeling small and young, and Dewey squeezed the hand that he was still holding lightly.

“And we’re gonna hold him to it,” Dewey said, though his voice trembled. “He just might need some help, this time.”

“Well, he’s always helping us,” Louie said, newfound purpose growing into tentative confidence. “It’s about time we return the favor.”

Dewey grinned at him, a little shaky around the edges but otherwise unbreakable, and Louie couldn’t help but smile back, even though it was with less enthusiasm.

“Ducks don’t back down,” Dewey said, and Louie huffed a short laugh, which made Dewey smile wider.

Usually, Huey helped Louie when he panicked like this, but it turned out that Dewey wasn’t half bad at it, either. Maybe it was a triplet thing, or maybe he just loved and trusted his brothers enough that they knew him like the back of their hand. Either way, Louie was incredibly thankful, and he felt extremely lucky to have them, and deeply happy that they loved and trusted him in return.

“Ducks don’t back down,” Louie repeated, and he gave the JWG one last look before sliding it back into his hoodie pocket.

Next to them, Scrooge made a muffled groggy sound of pain, and Louie and Dewey shared a determined look.

“Let’s go find the others,” Louie said, new hope in his voice as he stood and helped Dewey to his feet. “We’re gonna get our siblings back.”

And Dewey could hardly disagree with that.

[lettheladylead]

The Golden Heir Chapter 6 - Blood [Ch1] [Ch2] [Ch3] [Ch4] [Ch5] [Ch7] [Ch8]

Dickie opened her eyes to find herself tied up and in a room with a lot of unfamiliar faces. There were a bunch of tied up kids, and two little girls talking to them, and then a surprisingly familiar person was tied to two other people in the corner of the room.

As the boys (triplets? They looked familiar, like she’d seen them on the news) turned to talk to the one little girl that was tied up, Dickie looked over at the adults and sat up straight to make sure she was seeing things right.

“...Gyro?”

Everyone in the room turned to look at her, and everyone looked massively confused except for the two girls that weren’t tied up.

Gyro in particular looked like he was understanding the situation less and less. “...Dickie? Wha...what are you doing here?!”

She looked around the room and noticed that one of the triplets was staring at her like he knew her from somewhere. The other two were animatedly discussing how their Uncle Scrooge was faring in a fight and Dickie finally realized who they all were - Huey, Dewey, and Louie, Scrooge McDuck’s nephews! She wasn’t an expert, but she’d read articles about their family before.

“I’m, uh...not really sure,” she said quietly. “My grandma told me to just do whatever these weird bad guys said or else they’d hurt me, so…”

“Your grandmother…?” Gyro mumbled, looking around the room. “I don’t understand, I thought they were just taking people with a connection to Scrooge.”

The little girls looked at each other and started giggling as the triplets and the other little girl leaned towards each other. Dickie wondered if they were trying to break the ropes holding them up, but that definitely wasn’t going to work. She opened her mouth to say something again when the screen on the wall blipped and suddenly they were all able to see something very frightening.

The two people she’d interacted with earlier - Heron and Bradford, apparently - were standing atop some sort of structure looking even more evil than before.

“Hi Mommy!” June said with a little wave.

“Each of them will soon be erased from existence as well,” Bradford said, and Dickie propped herself into a fully seated position and then tried to scoot closer to Gyro and the other adults.

She didn’t understand what was happening at all but she could see behind Heron was a small group of people chained up and hanging near the edge of the tower, overtop of what seemed like a swirling vortex of doom. Though she could only see a few strands of blonde in the far corner, Dickie knew exactly who was out there.

“Granny…” she said softly, almost too soft for anyone to hear.

Louie, though, glanced back at her with a confused look on his face.

Everyone was silently watching the scene folding outside until Bradford suddenly shoved Heron into the vortex. Dickie wasn’t able to hear everything they said, but she was pretty sure that wasn’t a part of the plan based on how upset the two girls got.

“MOM!”

“NO!!!”

They yelled out and cradled the screen which had turned to just noise.

The girl that was tied to Gyro spoke up. “Wait, he’s gonna get rid of his own team, too?!”

“Do you know how replaceable clones are?” Gyro responded as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

The two little girls turned towards them looking somber and Dickie finally started to realize what was happening. Those little girls must’ve been misguided clones of the other little girl that looked just like them. The one the triplets called Webby.

She still didn’t know what this all had to do with her grandma or with her. Why had Bradford needed her to get that weird piece of paper? Was that the Papyrus that he yelled about before killing Heron?

“Bradford’s lying! Mom told us the story of the Papyrus of Binding. It can only be found by a direct descendant of Scrooge!” the red triplet explained. “I didn’t find it!”

“Me neither!”

“Nah-uh!”

Webby looked confused. “But then...why did Bradford try to have me find it?” She swung around for a moment. “I’m not...I mean...what Granny told me earlier…”

The boys looked at each other. “What did she tell you?”

“That I’m not really her granddaughter…” Webby said sadly, staring down at the floor. “That she found me as a baby in F.O.W.L. headquarters. And Bradford said I was made by F.O.W.L. But...why?”

A heavily-accented voice filled the room with a sing-song response. “Well, obviously they were trying to create a descendant of Scrooge McDuck!”

Everyone stared at the man holding the harmonica and he looked back as if he hadn’t said something strange. “What?”

“So you’re saying…” Huey’s face contorted through a hundred expressions as he put his thoughts together. “May and June are made from Webby and...Webby is made from...Uncle Scrooge?”

Webby’s mouth was hanging open. “Bless me bagpipes…”

“Wait, so, like, does that make Webby Scrooge’s daughter?” Dewey mumbled. “Then why didn’t the Papyrus appear for her?”

“I guess the Papyrus didn’t count it,” Huey said. “If Webby is a genetically modified clone, then I suppose she isn’t technically a descendant.”

“But that doesn’t change the fact that they have the Papyrus!” Webby yelped. “So then...how did…?”

Louie’s eyes widened and he turned the group of boys around to look back at Dickie. She knew she needed to say something but felt awkward interrupting during this moment of revelations for their family, but she was starting to come to a conclusion of her own and that needed her full attention.

“Your name is...Dickie, right?”

Gyro looked between Louie and Dickie and almost jumped when he realized what was happening.

“Yeah...um…” Dickie mumbled, looking down at the floor.

“You look a lot like our Aunt Goldie,” Louie continued. The other kidnapees in the room gasped, Gyro and Von Drake excluded, and Louie nodded feeling very confident in his conclusion.

“...Aunt Goldie, huh?” She looked up at Louie and grinned sheepishly. “To me, she’s just...Grandma Goldie.”

“WHAT?!” Huey shouted, shaking the boys around. “Grandma like...like grandma grandma? Goldie O’Gilt?!”

“...yeah.”

Webby was staring at her so intensely and Dickie couldn’t look back. “So...did the Papyrus appear to you?”

Dickie nodded after a moment of hesitation. “He didn’t tell me what it was! I was just following orders so he wouldn’t kill anybody!”

Gyro let out a loud, inhuman noise. “You’ve been related to Scrooge this entire time and never thought to mention it?”

“Well I-I didn’t know!” Dickie yelled, struggling against the rope around her. “She always told me she didn’t know who my grandpa was!”

The kids all looked at Louie, knowing he had a special relationship with Goldie and might have more insight on this situation than the rest of them. He just shook his head. “I’m sure Aunt Goldie had her reasons for keeping this from Uncle Scrooge.”

“Or maybe she...she really didn’t know!” Dickie chimed in. “Just ‘cause this Bradford guy figured it out doesn’t mean Granny knew, right?”

“Oh, she definitely knew,” Von Drake said suddenly, making everyone look at him again. He seemed to have all the answers that no one else did. “Sure, Goldie likes to have fun, but she’d never carry a baby to term unless it was ol’ Scrooge McDuck’s, no doubt about that.”

“...how can you possibly be so sure about that?” Gyro said with a judgemental glare. The girl between them grimaced.

Von Drake opened his mouth to answer, but then stared at the gaggle of children in front of him and quickly shut his beak. “Ah...well. Just, ah, take my word for it.”

Dickie frowned and stared down at the floor. “So...what? I’m...Scrooge McDuck’s granddaughter? And that’s why they brought me here and tied me up? This is kind of insane, you guys know that, right?”

“Considering I just found out I’m a genetically modified clone of your grandpa…” Webby started, pouting her beak. “I think it’s not the craziest thing we learned today.”

“...that’s a good point.”

“Hey!” Dewey spoke up, spinning the boys around. “Does this make you Webby’s niece?”

Dickie and Webby looked at each other curiously. “I never imagined myself with an aunt that’s, like, half my age.”

Webby smiled awkwardly at the older girl and started to respond when her clones finally spoke up after staying silent for so long.

“So that’s it? That’s why we were made? So Bradford could find some dumb piece of paper and get rid of us?!” May shouted, staring down at her hands.

“...we weren’t even good enough to do that. We never have been.”

Dickie watched the girls talking to each other as Webby went into a little rant about family, and leaned back against the wall behind her. Sure, alright, she was technically Scrooge McDuck’s family. But that was just through blood. She definitely didn’t feel like his family. She didn’t even know him.

Knowing that her grandma kept this from her made Dickie feel like she wasn’t even a part of the family she knew. Of course families kept secrets from each other. Even the family in front of her - as much as they loved each other and kept each other strong, they clearly had a lot of secrets that’d just come out in the last day. Maybe she shouldn’t be so picky. At least she didn’t just learn she’s a clone of the richest guy on earth.

“Please...help us save our family,” Webby finished, and the two other girls looked at each other for a moment before smiling and reaching out to undo their knots.