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mighty-ant · 3 years ago

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Same As It Ever Was, Part Two

Ao3

Part One

It took a few months of practice, but Drake managed to successfully circumvent his circadian rhythm.

Dusk to dawn are his new waking hours, and blackout curtains let him sleep through the hours of the day when the rest of the world is buzzing and bright. Even when his patrols are less than exciting, training and biking back and forth across the city (and enduring WANDA’s attitude) exhaust him in ways not even stunt work did. Instead, they remind him eerily of long nights as a dual theater/chemistry major.

The nights’ accumulations of aches and pains usually make for dreamless sleep. Even his recurring nightmare of Jim’s immolation, which takes on the fictional spin of his childhood hero reaching out to him through the flames, becomes a twice-monthly occurrence instead of twice-weekly.

Then Gosalyn breaks her way into his life, all sharp bleeding edges and utter disregard for personal safety.

Then reality as they know it is almost torn apart.

It’s fitting, then, that Drake’s nightmares become an almost daily occurrence. Precious hours of sleep elude him as he tosses and turns, ripped from one terror to the next, each more real than dreams have any right to be.

Bud Flud tips over the railing, falling into a chemical bath of his own making. He goes under with an almighty splash, the stray droplets burning holes in Darkwing’s coat. Flud’s hand flails above the surface, his fur and skin already beginning to slough off.

Negaduck looms over Gosalyn, his costume acidic yellow and angry red, sneering from the opposite end of a revving chainsaw raised high over his head.

Bulba chuckles, his voice so deep it reverberates through the air. “I have always been a gambling man.”

Gosalyn is thrown off the roof of St. Canard Tower, 60 stories up. Darkwing’s stomach plummets with her, but he can’t do anything but cling to the roof’s edge, desperately hoping that the Thunderquack is quick enough to save her.

Gosalyn is thrown off the suspended platform of McDuck Labs, disappearing over the side with a scream. Drake throws himself after without thought, without hesitation, only a prayer and a half-cocked plan that has never worked before and a desperate refusal to abandon his newfound charge, even to the perils of gravity and the unforgiving ground rushing up to meet them.

Drake wakes up in the pitch dark of his bedroom, the blackout curtains unfurled, and his body heaving for breath among the tangled sheets. For one long, heartstopping moment he doesn't recognize where he is.

On instinct, he palms the left side of the bed, expecting to find a familiar, sleep-warm body curled up beside him. A chill sweeps through him when he finds nothing but ice cold sheets undisturbed by any body but his.

With a clatter, he scrambles to yank his phone off the nightstand, panic sealing his voice like a vice. 9:47 a.m. it informs him, the screen nearly blinding him with its brightness. Two hours since he fell asleep.

He dials feverishly, hands shaking and heartbeat rabbiting, as every worst case scenario rattles through his head.

Launchpad answers on the third ring. “Hi, Drake? What’re you doing up?”

The sound of his voice pops the anxiety swelling in Drake’s chest as a needle does a balloon, and the breath he’s been holding rattles out of his chest, painful in its acute relief. “N-nightmare,” he stutters, dropping his head into his palm like there’s a fifty-pound weight attached to it. “Where are you? I didn’t-I didn’t hear you go downstairs.”

There’s a rustling sound over the line and when Launchpad speaks again his voice comes through more clearly, as though he’s moved the phone closer to his mouth. “Huh? I’m in Duckburg, buddy. Well, we’re actually flying to Cape Suzette right now. Mr. McDee’s got a meeting with some billionaire down there and the kids wanna squeeze in some light treasure hunting.”

Now that Drake knows to listen for it, the chaos of the airstrip comes through under Launchpad’s words: rumbling engines and the chime of the Cloudslayer’s instrument panel, even McDuck’s aggrieved shouting. Which would all be fine if Drake didn’t know Launchpad retired as McDuck’s pilot years ago and that McDuck himself, going on in years, was out of the adventuring business altogether.

Or was...was McDuck scarcely back in the game, after a full decade out of the public eye?

Uneasiness spreads through Drake’s veins as if there’s a block of ice lodged behind his ribcage, just begun to thaw. He remembers Launchpad smiling at him from across the kitchen table after a long night of patrol, rumpled and soft in the dim light. He remembers reaching across the table without hesitation, taking Launchpad’s bleeding knuckles in a gentle hand before replacing his touch with gauze and saline.

“Thanks for always having my back,” Drake had said.

Hadn’t he?

Drake turns, laying a hand flat on the cool, empty side of his bed. The side of his bed that’s been empty for... geez, more years than he cares to recall. The pulsing ache of what began as a crush on Launchpad and grew into a great yawning pit of love with a capital “L” rises to the forefront of his mind like a suckerpunch, leaving Drake winded and unspeakably exhausted, a rubber band stretched past its limit.

“DW?” Launchpad is saying, sounding more worried by the minute. “Drake, are you sure you’re okay?”

Drake rubs his eyes so hard he sees spots. Blinking through the blackness, he scans what he can see of his bedroom in the weak light of his phone screen: the overflowing laundry basket, the framed Darkwing Duck: First Darkness poster that never got to see the light of a theater marquee, the hood of Gos’ Quiverwing costume that he’s been repairing. All evidence of the room’s sole occupant, in the apartment he subleased during the first six months of his stint as Darkwing.

“Yeah,” Drake sighs, knowing better than to play it off with false positivity that Launchpad will see straight through anyway. “Yeah, sorry, LP. Just, uh, nightmares y’know.”

Launchpad makes a soft, sympathetic sound that hits Drake for six. He was the first one to call Drake, almost a year ago, when the pain of Jim’s loss was still fresh and their nightmares were flooded with flame and wild, hateful eyes.

“He’s really gone,” Launchpad murmured that night, voice trembling. Drake sat at his kitchen table in his boxers and sleep shirt, phone pressed tight to his ear. The table had still been cluttered with the contents of his trailer, decades of carefully curated memorabilia for a man who hated him and who’s legacy he hoped to carry.

“They didn’t find anything?” Drake asked quietly, rubbing his purple mask between forefinger and thumb like a good luck charm. He knows what Launchpad will say before he says it—if they found even a scrap of evidence that Jim survived, Launchpad would’ve broken down his door to tell him.

Launchpad sniffs, poorly muffling the sound of his tears. “No. Nothing.”

“You did everything you could to save him, Launchpad,” Drake vows, that conviction searing through him white-hot. They barely knew each other, but already Launchpad was the best man he had ever met.

“So did you,” Launchpad retorts, no less steely, and it’s a wonder how Drake can hear the smile in his voice.

In the far more complicated present, Launchpad speaks urgently, but no less gently, and jars Drake from his reverie. “Do you need me to come over? I can probably get Della to cover for me—”

“No, no!” Drake laughs hoarsely, dragging a hand over his burning eyes. “I’m fine, LP, I promise. Just woke up a little out of sorts. Sorry to worry you.”

“You don’t need to apologize for that,” Launchpad chuckles, intimate against his ear, and a flush crawls up the back of Drake’s neck, briefly fighting back the ice cold uneasiness of his waking. “Okay, I gotta go, Mr. McDee’s giving me the angry eyes,” Launchpad says, nearly giving Drake whiplash with the change in tone.

“Don’t forget to call Gos when she gets out of school,” Drake manages, wishing all the while that Launchpad was right in front of him, his to hold, his to wake up next to when his nightmares became convoluted and endless and he burst awake feeling as though he was going to vibrate apart.

“I will. Get some rest, DW,” Launchpad retorts, warm and well meaning, but the beep of the call ending leaves Drake feeling cold all over again.

He drops the phone into his lap, staring at nothing long enough that the screen goes dark. Drake knows that he won’t be getting any more sleep today than he did yesterday.

Drake also knows that something’s wrong, something deep in his head that he can’t put words to. He also knows that it’s getting worse.

Fenton and the acrimonious Gyro Gearloose have been working to reverse engineer the Solego Circuit for the last two months, without much success.

They could’ve had the real thing to experiment on if they’d had time to retrieve it from McDuck Labs before it was stolen by the bruiser with a steel beak.

Having kept an understandably close eye on the lab in light of recent events, Drake arrived on the scene mere minutes after the alarm was tripped, just in time to be brutally and rapidly smacked around by the best hand-to-hand fighter he’s ever faced. He woke up on the floor of the lab with the alarms still blaring, his beak cracked, head throbbing more than usual, and failure settling sour in the pit of his stomach.

The rooster is another stranger who he feels he knows—Special Agent Steelbeak, FOWL’s chief enforcer, his mind screams at him but surely that name would be too on the nose (pun intended).

In any event, the Solego Circuit is gone and so too are their chances at finding Waddlemeyer and fulfilling his promise to Gosalyn. Or so Drake thinks, dreads, agonizes over, until Fenton tells him otherwise.

“We already knew the circuit was unstable,” the scientist says over video, deep circles under his eyes and hair in disarray.

Drake knows Gizmoduck has been running Fenton especially ragged lately, and they haven’t been able to meet for coffee in weeks. “Reverse engineering a faulty piece of tech would just give us another faulty piece of tech.” Fenton rubs his eyes with the back of his hand, smearing some sort of grease (hopefully nontoxic) across his forehead. “We still need to figure out who stole the Solego Circuit in the first place, but it’s not necessary in order to rebuild the Ramrod. I have copies of Finch’s and Waddlemeyer’s notes, and that should be enough.”

“FOWL,” Drake blurts, and Fenton blinks at him, weary and perplexed. “The steal-beaked thief. He-he probably works for FOWL, right?” It’s more likely than not, he knows, even if their intelligence on FOWL high command is a pittance outside of Heron and Buzzard. However, his fragile certainty is not the result of deductive reasoning (bad guy + Finch artifact = FOWL master plan) but the chaos that’s taken reign inside his head.

He’s more afraid of being right than of embarrassing himself if he’s wrong.

So when Fenton nods, Drake’s heart drops to the pit of his stomach.

“I think you’re right. Mr. McDuck and the kids were in Istanbird last weekend looking for the Split Sword of Swanstantine, and Huey told me he saw someone matching the description of the rooster you fought, along with a couple other villains we’re familiar with.” Fenton smiles tiredly. “I’ll send you the updated SHUSH intelligence briefing.”

“Okay,” Drake says, sagging behind the control panel. Fear thrums at the back of his mind like an irregularly plucked guitar string, because the longer he stares at Fenton the less of Fenton he starts to see.

At least the Fenton he knows. Or thought he knew.

The hair is the same, perpetually unruly, but his feathers fluctuate from light brown to stark white, the purple three-piece suit replaced with a messy tie and oil stained shirt.

Drake remembers Launchpad introducing them, the Tower’s elevator doors opening to disgorge the wrinkled duck whose arms are overflowing with blueprints and whose words run together with ideas for his new HQ.

Drake remembers Launchpad opening the front door to an uninvited guest who steps through the doorway already speaking a mile a minute, tossing his bizarrely heavy briefcase into Drake’s arms when he opens them to herd this stranger right back outside.

“How ya doin’, Drakeroonie?”

“Drake?” Fenton says in the present, or what he thinks is the present. “You okay?”

Drake kneads his brow with a knuckle, clenching his eyes shut until white spots pepper his vision and temporarily overwhelm the red tinge at the edges of his sight. “Yeah, just tired. You’ll keep me posted, pal?”

“Of course.”

Drake’s usual strategy of ignoring a problem until it goes away isn’t working out this time.

The Fearsome Four descending on St. Canard have done wonders for the crime rate (which Drake tries not to feel too happy about, because crime’s bad ), making it so his patrols go long into the night and into the early hours of the dawn. On school nights the only crime fighting Gosalyn accomplishes is against the dastardly forces of eighth grade homework, so Drake spends most of his nights hopping from rooftop to lonely rooftop.

When he’s lucky, Launchpad will be in the country and eager to join him, filling the empty, gaping space at his side where his best friend is meant to be. When he’s really lucky, Launchpad will join him and Gosalyn on patrol, whooping and hollering as they rocket down the street in the Ratcatcher 2.0, bolstered by Launchpad’s solid presence at his back, bursting with pride as Gosalyn’s skills grow, so confident in the Kevlar-weave Quiverwing suit he made for her.

He still sees double sometimes, two Launchpads smiling at him, two Gosalyn’s scowling at him, and red bleeds in from the corners like blood spilled in still water. But darkness is what he feels most comfortable in and the heart pounding, ear ringing fervor of running down bank robbers, dodging swinging fists and delivering punches that hit true let him ignore the headaches and the deep claws of fatigue buried deep in his brain.

But the brilliant adrenaline-bright burn of patrol has to come to an end with Drake squinting at the rising sun, the world turning washed out and sepia toned. He’ll drop Gosalyn off at school or Boyd’s or with the McDuck kids before returning to the Tower where he works the heavy bag until his knuckles creak and ache under the boxer’s tape, practices kata until the muscles of his thighs burn. That’s all before he drops onto the lumpy sofa bed and hopes he’s exhausted himself enough to sleep through the rest of the day.

Nothing ever seems to be enough.

He watches Negaduck claw through the churning, rainbow whirlpool of reality. He watches Gosalyn sing a lullaby. He walks down the stairs of a home he’s never seen and knows where every room is. He greets faces he’s never met but whose names are carved on the lining of his heart.

He’s lucky if he gets two hours of sleep a day; to make it through the rest, he fills and drains and refills so many pots of coffee that his hands shake when he sits still for too long. He pops painkillers for the headache that never went away, and worsens with every nightmare. It’s like his college days of surviving on caffeine and anxiety, if he’d been losing his mind at the same time.

Despite his best efforts, Gosalyn and Launchpad start to worry.

Which, of course they do, he’d almost be offended if they didn’t. In a fit of desperation he looks up his symptoms, which was exactly the last thing he should’ve done. When one searches “reason for headaches, constant nightmares, and hallucinations,” it’s unlikely that one’s going to like the answers.

So while he spends his days worried that he’s got some sort of tumor devouring his gray matter, he also pretends that everything’s fine, with varying success.

When Gosalyn goes treasure hunting with the McDucks in a swampy Belizard jungle and comes back with a thick, phlegmy cough and a 99.5 degree fever, it takes everything in him not to rush her down to the emergency room. Only her protests at being moved, even to sit up and sip some Coopbell’s Soup, and the reassurance of one of the nurses at her doctor’s office keeps him where he is.

“You have a thermometer there with you?” the nurse says gently, the phone pressed between his ear and shoulder. His attention is devoted to Gosalyn curled up pitifully beside him, shivering under his blankets—his room has a television, and it was a no-brainer to offer her what little distraction he could, even if she’s too sick to enjoy it now.

Drake brushes the sweat soaked bangs back from her forehead, his own furrowed in pain to match hers.

“Y-yeah,” he answers quietly. He’s already exhausted his supply of anxious rambling and he just wishes for an easy fix, something to make Gosalyn magically better.

“Keep an eye on her temperature through the night,” the nurse says. “It shouldn’t go any higher, but if it does and it stays up, you can take her to the hospital. Remember, plenty of fluids and plenty of rest.”

He doesn’t allow his voice to shake, not with Gosalyn right there, always listening when she shouldn’t be. But he hopes the depth of his gratitude comes through. “Thank you. I just...thank you.”

“You’re doing just fine, Mr. Mallard,” she says kindly.

Drake ends the call, and resolves to send her some flowers at the doctor’s office.

Next to him, Gosalyn groans.

“Hey, slugger,” he whispers, “how’re you feeling?”

“Gross,” she mutters, keeping her eyes tightly shut. He only has one lamp lit but even that seems to prove too much for her pained senses. “Cold. Everything hurts.” It’s close to a whimper, and Drake’s heart seizes. His crime-fighting partner hates being vulnerable, desperate to never be perceived as weak, not knowing that she’s the strongest person he knows. He should tell her, once she’s better.

Briefly overwhelmed by her trust in him, hardwon over the months, Drake blinks away tears he knows would embarrass her if she were cognizant of them.

“I know, Gos. I’m sorry. You can take more medicine in a little while, but just try to sleep, okay?”

Gosalyn grumbles unintelligibly, which Drake can’t fault her for. He resumes combing his fingers through her hair, which seems to ease a fraction of the tension in her small body. Unbidden, he recalls the song she hummed to him months ago in the gloom of the Tower, exhausted by nights of endless pursuit and disappointing dead ends when they first began the search for Dr. Waddlemeyer.

Close your eyes, little girl blue,

Inside of you lies a rainbow.

Yellow, blue, red, blue,

purple too,

Blue, purple, and green,

then the yellow.

She tilts her head back, cracking open one fever-glazed green eye. “How do you know that song?”

“What do you mean?”

“Grandpa made it up.” Gosalyn sniffles, hiding her face in the comforter tucked up to her chin. Drake doesn’t think about sick teen snot and just makes a mental reminder to wash all of his bedding in the morning. “When I was little. He wasn’t...he isn’t good at that stuff. Coming up with rhymes. Said he has no imagination.”

No clever deception could hide the tremble of her shoulders as she cries, her typical defenses nonexistent in the wake of her illness-induced fatigue. Drake presses a hand between those shaking shoulder blades, offering comfort but not wanting to overwhelm, as a dull sort of disquiet thumps at the back of his mind.

How does he know the words to Waddlemeyer’s lullaby? They rolled off his tongue without hesitation, hovering in his memory within easy reach. Surely Gosalyn must’ve sung it in his earshot at some point without either of them realizing. That can be the only explanation.

Right?

He starts humming again, but not wanting to aggravate reopened wounds, he fishes for new lyrics to add to the lullaby. A decade in the theater serves him well for more than just coming up with heroic declarations when an entirely new verse trips past his teeth with almost no effort. Almost as if he’s sung it before.

Rest your head, little girl blue,

Come paint your dreams on your pillow.

I'll be near to chase away fear,

So sleep now and dream 'til tomorrow,

I'll be near to chase away fear,

So sleep now and dream 'til tomorrow.

Gosalyn sniffs. “You’re not a horrible singer.”

Drake gasps, pressing a hand against his heart. “Please, stop. Your praise, it’s-it’s too much. You’ll give me a big head.”

“Too late.”

“Ouch. Give your old man a break, huh?”

He speaks without thinking and freezes, fearing he’s gone too far. It’s almost too easy to think of Gosalyn as his own when he’s standing in the kitchen with a robe on over his undersuit and packing her lunches, or checking over her homework and surreptitiously texting Donald to help him confirm her math answers, or correcting her aim at the target range.

It’s not just the false memories tricking him into believing he’s already adopting her, even if there’s nothing he’d like more. To be a family. To have a family again.

Gosalyn scoots closer to him, quieting his racing thoughts simply through want of being near him.

“You are pretty old,” she mumbles thoughtfully, her stuffy nose making her voice thick and sleepy sounding.

Drake snorts a laugh, and pretends it isn’t tears making his eyes burn. “Thanks. You want me to keep singing or not?”

Gosalyn’s wiggle is vaguely reminiscent of a shrug. But quiet, almost lost to her phlegmy throat and the low volume of the television, she starts humming her grandfather’s lullaby.

He brushes her hair off her pale, clammy forehead and starts to sing his verse, not bothering to wonder how he came up with the lyrics if they’re bringing his daughter any measure of peace.

“Are you okay?” Launchpad’s voice crackles through the radio in his helmet headset.

Drake rolls his eyes behind the barrier of his visor. “I really wish people would stop asking me that.”

He passes downtown traffic in a blur, the Ratcatcher 2.0 purring beneath him as WANDA navigates him through a sea of green lights. But his best friend is the last person to be distracted by high speeds or quick turns, and Drake doesn’t have to look over his shoulder to know Launchpad is frowning at him.

“Drake.” Uh oh. Dropping first names while he’s still in costume is never a good sign. “You still haven’t been sleeping.”

He can’t help but wonder how Launchpad knows that. Does he watch Drake as closely as Drake watches him? Second-guessing every glance and smile, every bone-cracking hug that leaves him feeling invincible, bolstered by a love he is afraid he’s imagining and is not brave enough to return?

Or, more troubling, has Drake been getting sloppy in his delirium? He hasn’t noticed any slip ups on any of their patrols together, and even half-conscious he’s always been able to fight. But Launchpad has always known him better than he knows himself. Maybe Drake missed something, some revealing stumble.

Swerving around a semi-truck and into the leftmost lane of traffic, Drake is briefly arrested by the pale glimmer of dawn reflecting off the multi-paned skyscrapers at the fringes of the financial district. He’s not usually out this late (or early, if one wants to get technical) but their stakeout at the docks ran long.

“My sleep schedule’s all over the place, you know that.” Drake takes his eyes off the road long enough to throw Launchpad a quick smile and yup, there’s the frown he was expecting. In all fairness, he downed two five-hour energy drinks before leaving for patrol with the express purpose of avoiding sleep for as long as possible. That will hopefully mean less—

“Are you still having nightmares?”

Drake is seriously starting to regret outfitting their helmets with commlinks. Sure it makes it easier to hear his partners over the cacophony of traffic, the roar of the engine and the crushing wind, but at what cost? He doesn’t have an easy excuse for avoiding Launchpad’s earnest questions anymore.

“Sometimes,” he replies, knowingly vague. The roads quiet as they enter a residential area, lit skyscrapers giving way to brownstones and apartments with dark windows. It’s almost peaceful.

Drake’s nightmares are insidious things, slow to build, but constant. What starts as memory, real memory, unravels into memory that is and isn’t his (Gosalyn falls from the side of McDuck Labs, Gosalyn falls from the roof of St. Canard Tower). He faces off against the Fearsome Four in battles that never happened, battles that shouldn’t be possible because they’re works of fiction returned to their own reality.

Even when he dreams of innocent, happy things (the younger, yellow-feathered Gosalyn clearing her throat before warbling her grandfather’s lullaby with childish skill), Drake still bolts awake drenched in sweat with no idea of where he is. His hands shake all the time unless he clenches them into fists and it's not just lack of sleep that’s to blame for the way he feels as if he’s being split in half.

“You call me almost every morning,” Launchpad persists, and Drake’s traitorous heart skips a beat. He should probably stop the bike so they can actually have this conversation that Launchpad’s insisting on, but they’re almost back. They just have to make it back. “You hang up before I can answer, but I can still see the call, y’know?”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I-I wake up a little disoriented sometimes and you-you’ve always been good at bringing me back to earth.” Drake turns his wince into what he hopes is a halfway convincing smile. He’s no stranger to making a fool of himself, but when he’s around Launchpad the heat in his cheeks always flares extra hot, his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, and his natural clumsiness turns him into a walking natural disaster.

Launchpad chuckles, filing his helmet and spreading through Drake like the first sweet sip of Gosalyn’s pricey hot cocoa. It’s almost enough to banish the exhaustion that drags down every limb and muscle, hangs heavily off his eyelids and the corners of his smile.

“Always happy to help,” Launchpad says, effortlessly charming as only he can be. “But…” Uh oh, that tentativeness is back. Launchpad isn’t letting this go. “It’s been going on for a…a while, DW. We’re worried about you.”

Drake snorts uneasily as they cruise down another quiet street. “‘We,’ huh? You and Gos talking about me behind my back?”

“Well, yeah.”

And ain’t that just a kick in the ribs? He’s pulled off enough crazy stunts to earn Launchpad an entire head of gray hair (and the beautiful son of a gun could pull it off, too) but Gosalyn shouldn’t have to doubt his sanity too, vigilantism aside. No kid should ever doubt whether their guardian has their act together but especially not his kid, who he’s let down so many times already.

Before Drake’s spiral of self-loathing can drag him too deep, Launchpad draws him back to the tempestuous surface.

“Have you thought about bringing it up with Morgana? Maybe with her magic you can figure out what’s causing the nightmares and you can finally get some rest.”

It’s a pretty good idea. Scratch that, it’s a great idea. Drake probably should tell an expert on strange goings-ons about the storm in his mind, the shaken snow globe of his brain that just won’t settle.

But he’s afraid. Scratch that, he’s terrified. His memories meld and churn and spit out Pigcassos, living puzzles with the wrong pieces jammed together until it’s impossible to discern what the pictures were meant to be.

He remembers Morgana. He knows Morgana; ruby eyes and a mischievous smile, her black raven feathers always shiny and silky despite whatever concoction she has brewing in her cauldron. She’s the friend he never saw coming.

But there’s another Morgana that he knows just as well, can recall their meeting and the fleeting attraction he felt for her with frightening clarity. This one is mysterious and elegant, green-eyes, white feathers, a duck.

Geez, he hopes whatever’s messing with his head isn’t racist.

“Or maybe Webby and the kids know something,” Launchpad ponders aloud, oblivious to the latest of Drake’s mental breaks. “She said they went into Lena’s dreams once to fight Magica. Maybe you need to fight your dreams too?”

Dawn is rising over St. Canard, painting the near-empty suburban street in rosy morning light. The pulse of traffic is muted here, sounding further than it really is. Launchpad seems to come back to himself with a start, turning this way and that in the open confines of his sidecar. His brow furrows beneath the sweep of his bangs.

“DW, where are we going?”

Drake is practically delirious with relief as the familiar houses sweep by, deaf to the pulse of concern in Launchpad’s voice. “What do you mean? We’re going home.”

537 Avian Way is a lighthouse on the edge of gnashing sea: red roof tiles and cream colored walls, the old oak tree he’s always reminding Gosalyn not to climb. It’s a two-story middle finger to Drake’s ten years of self-imposed isolation as Darkwing Duck. It’s the embodiment of suburbia. It’s tripping on Gosalyn’s sloppily discarded sneakers on the stairs and Launchpad burning dinner in the kitchen. It’s home. It’s–

The dirt lot of an empty construction site.

Drake can feel Launchpad’s stare boring into the side of his head and imagine the confusion and fear on his face–fear for Drake, for his sanity, because after all his empty reassurances this really doesn’t look good.

But Drake doesn’t understand what’s happening. Why the home he remembers buying, the home he built with his daughter and his-his husband, never seems to have existed in the first place. Drake remembers shambling through the front door, still sporting bandages and broken bones from the explosion on Canard Tower. He remembers the wobbly chair at their dining table that they always left for guests to use.

He remembers everything. And yet. And yet.

There’s another life that is just as familiar to him, a life that includes a two-bedroom apartment and disassembled crossbows cluttering his coffee table, an entire bridge and a bay between him and Launchpad, who isn’t Drake’s anything (anything more than friend).

The directions to 537 Avian Way are sewn into the back of his heart, but 537 Avian Way doesn’t exist. Drake’s starting to wonder if he even exists.

The press of Launchpad’s hand is tentative against his back, but it still blazes through his suit’s kevlar mesh and under-armor like a brand. Drake realizes that he’s left the engine running on the Ratcatcher 2.0 and hastily powers it off. The gaping silence it leaves behind is ten times worse, and it’s so easy to look to Launchpad for reassurance, nevermind that it’s his first time properly doing so since he got on the bike

Launchpad smiles, inviting him into levity, but his eyes are searching. “If this is home then I think I know why you haven’t been sleeping great.”

Drake wheezes out an approximation of a laugh, desperate to put Launchpad’s mind at ease. “Sorry, guess I was more tired than I thought. This is-this is where I used to live,” he lies, and hopes that for once Launchpad doesn’t see through it. “Before they tore it down. Obviously.”

Launchpad’s grip shores up on his shoulder, grounding him instead of treating him like glass. “Maybe I should drive this time,” he jokes, his own fatigue roughening his voice.

“Yeah, yeah sure,” Drake says, barely hearing Launchpad because he bought it. He immediately feels unbearably guilty about lying, but what’s the alternative? Letting Launchpad know that these nightmares, these memories, are ridding him of what little sanity he had to begin with?

Whenever Launchpad smiles at him, takes his hand and looks him in the eye, the moment stretches into an anxiety-wrought infinity as Drake waits for the other shoe to drop. Launchpad smiles at Drake like he knows that his hope, his faith in him, wasn’t misplaced. And Drake tries to meet that smile unflinchingly every time, certain that if he ever falters Launchpad will confirm his worst fears: that he doesn’t deserve to be Darkwing after all.

That he doesn’t deserve Darkwing’s life, either of them.

He and Launchpad switch places, Drake plopping into the roomy sidecar. He’s barely bucked his seatbelt before Launchpad guns the engine, and they peel out of the construction site in a cloud of dirt.

It’s deceptively easy to let himself be lulled by the thrum of the engine, the hypnotizing flicker of passing streetlights. Launchpad’s too tired to pull off any crazy stunts of his own, so the ride is almost peaceful. As Drake loses his battle with sleep, he muzzily watches Launchpad glance down at him. His expression is cracked open, dread making him look older than his thirty-three years.

Maybe Launchpad hadn’t bought his lie after all.

For all his fumbles and foibles, Drake is fine.

They’ve got bigger things to worry about now than the mess going on in his head. FOWL’s final plan, whatever it is, is ramping up, Fenton and Gearloose’s attempts at reverse engineering the Solego Circuit have hit a deadend, and Gosalyn has hockey tryouts next week.

By comparison, the memories are manageable. He’s handling it. Really.

Until the night Drake forgets he can’t fly.

Perhaps it’s the pressure of the job–since the Fearsome Four ran rampant through the streets, giving the green light to every petty vandal and supervillain, crime in St. Canard has gone from a standstill to a sprint. Drake goes on patrol nearly every night, alone or otherwise, and it feels like he’s beating back the tide with a cardboard shield and a sharp stick.

More likely is the detached, unreal feeling of living with ghosts that his mind has invented, the exhaustion and fear of seeing familiar strangers in the faces of his friends, in his sleep, everywhere he goes, losing his grip on which life is and isn’t real.

The end result is the same. Drake goes out on patrol and somehow forgets that he can’t fly.

He’s running across a roof, and when he runs out of rooftop he simply leaps, jumps right off a twelve story building without even looking first. He expects the Thunderquack to be there to catch him.

The Launchpad he knows built it before their first mission.

The Launchpad he knows has only ever seen it on TV.

Back on the roof, Launchpad’s voice cracks through his ear in harsh panic, forgetting codenames. "DRAKE!"

A smaller building, three floors shorter and twenty feet down, saves his life. Barely.

Drake hits the fire-escape and rolls, tumbling down a flight of metal stairs and then another. His response time is delayed, three months of nightmares, sleep deprivaition, and terror finally, finally, taking their toll and the back payment is steep.

The railing on the second fire-escape is old, and it gives way under his weight. Drake rolls straight off, plummeting the remaining five stories.

In a smattering of luck that he didn’t know he still had, he doesn’t faceplant on the pavement and break every bone in his body. There’s a comfy dumpster waiting for him at the bottom, and it only hurts a lot when he crashes into it. Launchpad would be proud.

Drake loses time from the moment of impact. A glass something broke beneath him and the shards are digging into his side, not penetrating the suit but still painful. He’s surrounded by refuse and rot that has been left to fester and the stench is nearly enough to knock him back out the instant he wobbles to consciousness.

The commlink in his ear is rough with static and the sound of harsh panting. It takes him a second to realize there are words coming through, too. Well, mostly one word in particular.

“Drake! Drake, can you hear me? Are you okay? Drake, sweetheart, c’mon, I need you to say something.”

Instinctively, he opens his mouth to answer. Launchpad asks so little of him, only wants him to be the best version of himself he can be. Drake has never heard him sound so scared. But he blinks and loses more time before a word can pass his beak. Maybe he makes some sort of sound. Maybe a groan.

When he opens his eyes again, the hazy, orange glow of the nearby streetlight has been blocked out by Launchpad’s silhouette.

“Drake,” Launchpad gasps, like it was torn from him. His hands hover over Drake, afraid to touch. Not sure where he’s hurt. Considering the last three months, they can definitely count a head injury.

“Hey, LP.” Drake squints up at him, his vision only tunneling a little. “Srry. Was expecting th’ Thund’quack,” he slurs.

Launchpad chuckles hoarsely, shakily, as he brushes some of Drake’s hair back from his forehead. It feels nice. Really nice. He closes his eyes under the caress.

“It-it was meant to be a surprise. I’m building it now, it’s almost done. How’d you know, Drake?”

The exhaustion that has been dogging at him for months sinks its claws into him, and this time Drake is helpless to resist its pull as it steadily drags him under.

He sighs, and the movement sends a twinge skittering across his ribs, shock dulling the pain. Oof. He’s gonna feel that when he wakes up.

“Ya’ already built it,” Drake mutters, letting his eyes close. He knows he was supposed to keep the memories a secret for…some reason. He’s too tired to recall what it was. “Or, th’ other you. The other you in our other life. Where we’re old ‘n married.”

“Married, huh?” Launchpad’s voice breaks.

Drake nods, a tiny movement because his head is really starting to hurt. His skull feels like it's rattling apart, a star about to go supernova, but he’s too tired to react to the pain anymore. He’s conscious enough to thank every star above, every god and goddess, that Gosalyn isn’t here to see him like this. That she’s far from this filthy alley, safe at a sleepover with her friends.

“It was nice,” Drake manages. He wants Launchpad to know that, at least. “But wasn’t our world. Felt wrong. Confusing. The nightmares…”

He blinks again and when he pries his eye open, Launchpad is in the middle of a sentence.

“–hold on, Drake,” he says. “Help’s on the way, okay? Just hold on, sweetheart.” His palm is warm on Drake’s forehead so he sees no reason to protest, even if he doesn’t know what’s going on. Launchpad is here, so he knows he’s safe.

“M’kay,” Drake sighs. When he closes his eyes, the blinding red glare of the Ramrod is painted on the back of his eyelids. He feels the red grow, leaching into his veins, threatening to consume him. He’s almost tired enough to let it. “Take care of Gosalyn, huh?”

He hears Launchpad calling his name again, his voice rising and breaking in desperation but it’s very far away. Everything feels distant: the stink of the garbage, his aching body, Launchpad’s warm palm on his forehead. His sinks into the swirling, crimson void that maybe should’ve claimed him three months ago and sees a dozen different lives go by.

He’s Quiverwing Duck.

He’s Darkwarrior.

He’s little Drakey.

He’s Darkwing Duck.

He’s Drake.

He’s lost.

Drake wakes up, and that alone is a surprise.

He recognizes the residual tang of Morgana’s magic in the air by the way his feathers prickle and the scent of parchment lingers in his nose. He’s gone crawling to her for enough healing spells–afraid to let Gosalyn see him come home from patrol with a black eye or shallow knife wound–to know when one’s been cast on him, and if Morgana’s nearby then he can’t be anywhere too dangerous.

That assurance keeps him from panicking as he becomes aware of beeping machinery and quiet voices, and the full body ache of a recent beating that no healing spell can eliminate completely.

Drake opens his eyes and immediately slams them shut again when he’s overwhelmed by a sharp blue light. Figures he’d survive falling off a roof only to get blinded.

Beside him, someone gasps.

“DW?” That’s Launchpad’s deep, dear voice, incredulous or otherwise. That’s his broad, calloused palm wrapped around Drake’s hand.

“Is he awake?” A child says, his child. Her voice trembles and immediately sends Drake clawing out of the tarpit of unconsciousness.

He jerks upright, pulse hammering in his ears and heart just about leaping out of his chest. “Gos?” he croaks. It’s too much all at once; his vision warps into a kaleidoscopic blur and pain lances through his ribs that only feel recently healed. His head pounds in time with his pulse.

“Whoa!” Launchpad again, and Launchpad’s hands on his shoulder and back easing him back down. “Easy, DW.” Drake can hear the smile in his voice and also how it shakes. “Gos is right here.”

Now that he’s slightly more awake, he realizes that he’s laying flat on a cot that’s about as comfortable as a plank of wood. It’s not doing his aching body any favors.

Drake tries to just open his eyes this time, without trying anything fancy like sitting up. The world spins away from him for a moment but he focuses on the two blurs leaning over him until he can make out the faces of his daughter and best friend.

Launchpad’s hat is missing and his hair is in disarray without it. Or maybe he’s been running his hands through it, in the way he does when he’s truly nervous. Beside him, Gosalyn is pale and red eyed, her cheeks lined with drying tear tracks. Drake hasn’t seen her cry like this since he gathered her into his arms by the smoking ruins of the Ramrod, and fear seizes him anew.

But Gosalyn smiles despite her tears, disarming him utterly, before she throws herself over him in a clumsy hug.

“You’re okay,” she breathes, muffled against his shoulder, as Drake’s arms come up instinctively to hold her close. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

Tension sweeps out of Drake's body, practically leaving him boneless. She’s safe. Launchpad is safe. His family is safe. “Course I am, kiddo.” He rubs between her shoulder blades like he did when she was sick. “Course I am.”

“You almost weren’t.”

Drake jerks in surprise at the sound of Fenton’s voice. He looks past Gosalyn, seeing some kind of machinery attached to his cot but ignoring it in favor of his friend, standing across from him. It’s easier for Drake to focus now and he recognizes the curving concrete walls of Gearloose’s underwater lab high above him, though he’s only been here in person once or twice.

Gosalyn leans back to let him sit up properly, if not without Launchpad’s help. She keeps a firm grip on Drake’s cape, like he’s gonna make a break for it the second she looks away.

“Fenton, buddy?” Drake asks slowly, when the silence persists and neither a bizarrely reticent Fenton or Launchpad seem to want to break it.

Fenton wrings his hands as he approaches the end of Drake’s cot. “Your friend, Morgana, she stopped by to heal your, uh, your injuries. But… Launchpad told us that you’d been having nightmares.” It’s not a question, but Drake finds himself nodding just the same. A glance Launchpad’s way reveals nothing–the pilot is staring down at the knee he’s bouncing anxiously, one hand still wrapped tightly around Drake’s. “Nightmares about an alternate reality. One similar to this one.”

“I…yeah,” Drake says, at a loss. “Basically. It’s, um…” He’s hesitant to elaborate with Gosalyn beside him, but she scoots closer to him like she can already guess what he’s thinking. “It isn’t just nightmares, it’s every day. All the time, just, faces and voices in my head.” Drake doesn’t add how much it hurt.

“And now?” Fenton presses urgently. “Can you still hear them? See them?”

“Well.” Drake stops. Every feather, muscle, and tendon aches like he’s come out the wrong end of a sparring match with Penumbra. His suit still stinks a little of the garbage he fell in, and his recent bout with unconsciousness did nothing for his near-delirious state of exhaustion.

But his mind is quiet, for the first time in three months. His skull doesn’t feel eggshell thin, brittle against the onslaught of memories and feelings he doesn’t understand.

“I-I can think clearly,” Drake says, when Fenton, Launchpad and Gosalyn keep watching him, leaning forward like they’re waiting on bated breath. He inhales and exhales deeply, his poor ribs creaking, but he feels light as air. “I think they're gone.”

“Of course they are,” Gyro remarks flippantly as he walks in behind Fenton, messing with something on his tablet instead of fully acknowledging the four other people in the corner of his lab. “We’ve reversed your atoms’ state of cellular decay, ergo eliminating the dimensional vertigo.”

Despite Gosalyn being best friends with this guy’s kid, Drake has only spoken to Gyro a handful of times. Each time has left him feeling mildly insulted and tempted to pity-buy Fenton a fruit basket for putting up with him almost every day.

Hearing the science mumbo-jumbo go whooshing over his head, Drake rubs his tired eyes and sighs. “In English, professor?”

Gyro finally looks up from his tablet to glare at him, but Drake couldn’t be less affected by his ire if he tried. “You are sitting in an atomic cradle,” Gyro says, coming over to pat the mechanism protruding from Drake’s uncomfortable cot. Hanging over him is what looks like a single fluorescent tube light, glowing faintly blue. “The energy it generates was enough to stabilize your decaying cells so that you can keep functioning in this dimension without your body and sanity deteriorating.”

Drake blinks. That’s...not what he expected. “Huh. How did my cells get, uh, ‘destabilized’ in the first place?”

Fenton drops into the open seat beside Launchpad, where Gosalyn must’ve been sitting before Drake woke up. He’s pale beneath his tan feathers and his hands hang loosely between his bent knees. Fenton might be a slight man, but Drake’s never thought of him as frail until now.

“You didn’t tell us you’d been exposed to the open rift.” Fenton gives Drake a look like he just kicked his puppy. Or like Drake’s the kicked puppy.

He flounders, recalling a feeling of weightlessness as the whorling red of the Ramrod overwhelmed his vision. So much had been happening: Bulba’s face under his fist, Gosalyn’s sacrifice, the resulting explosion. “I didn’t realize…”

“Your atoms came into direct contact with the atoms of another dimension, which made you an anomaly in this one,” Gyro snaps bluntly, and he doesn’t stop there. “Those ‘nightmares’ were your body glitching as it tried and failed to process the living matter of two different Darkwings from two different realities. This dimension was trying to actively reject you!” Gyro shuts his beak with an almost audible clack, glancing away with what could almost be described as discomfort. “You must’ve been in excruciating pain.”

Drake laughs. It’s a terrible sound, hoarse and reedy, but his only alterative would be something mortifying like bursting into tears. Moonlanders above, he is tired.

He doesn’t think Launchpad could look more devastated. Not even the aftermath of Jim was this bad.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Launchpad asks quietly. He hasn’t let go of Drake’s hand. A ridiculous, pining part of him hopes he never does.

Fenton comes to his rescue. “He wouldn’t have known to. That much stimuli applied directly to your brain, you wouldn’t have been able to put into words what was wrong.” He sighs, shoulders bowing even further. “But I should’ve noticed. We’ve spoken, I-I don’t know how many times! We treated Mr. McDuck and the boys within hours of exposure, but it never even occurred to me to evaluate you too! And you were right there. Of course there was a risk. I’m sorry, Darkwing, for all of this.”

Drake never knows what to do when people apologize to him—it’s usually the other way around, so he doesn’t have much practice. He sort of wants to pat Fenton on the shoulder, but he barely has the energy to lift his arm right now, much less stand and cross the gaping chasm of three feet between them.

He settles for a tired sort of smile. “It all worked out in the end, huh? Don’t beat yourself up over it, Fenton. Half the time I just thought I was going crazy.”

“Jury’s still out,” Gosalyn mutters from where she’s molded herself to his left side. He huffs a laugh, less hysteric than the last but far more exhausted.

“Oh, just you wait, kiddo, you’re gonna get it for that one.”

“Good luck catching me,” she retorts, smug as anything, and it’s welcome departure from tearstained cheeks and frightened eyes.

Launchpad leans forward and wraps his free hand around Drake’s knee. His touch scorches through Drake like a brand and he’s definitely got a guardian angel or something that keeps his sleep-deprived self from blurting out an undignified squeak at the contact.

“So, he’s okay now?” Launchpad is asking, all business with his deep, worried voice and heavy brow. “We can take him home?”

Fenton seems to startle. His guilt has been radiating from his slumped shoulders in waves but then he straightens, tucking it all behind his eyes. Very professional, very practiced. Maybe Fenton learned it from Gizmoduck.

“Yes, of course, you can all go home,” he says, still speaking a mile a minute in classic Fenton fashion. “Darkwing, I can’t imagine how much sleep you need to catch up on, so no patrols for at least a week, okay?” Fenton grins crookedly. “Doctor-Intern’s orders.”

For once, no patrol sounds good. Without the threat of his mind literally, for real and for true, splitting apart and the cavalcade of nightmares that followed, sleep sounds amazing. Drake could probably fall asleep sitting up right now, glaring laboratory lights and all, but he wills his hazy mind to focus because he would love a good day’s sleep in his own bed for the first time in three months.

Drake shuffles to the end of the cot, letting his knees hang off the side. Even that small movement drains him what little energy he had to begin with. “Thanks for all your help, Fentonino. Now if someone wants to be ready to catch me before I fall on my face, I’d really appreciate that ‘cuz I basically feel like wet spaghetti looks—”

Launchpad shuts Drake up with as little effort as it takes to scoop him up off the flat cot and into his arms in a fireman’s carry.

“Buh?” Drake manages, sputtering, surprising himself when his flagging body has enough energy to splatter his cheeks with a fierce blush. Launchpad’s grip is gentle but sure across his shoulders and around his bent knees, holding Drake close to his broad chest and the warmth he gives off like the engine of his favorite joyrider/prop plane. It’s enough to lull Drake into a doze, though he still catches Launchpad’s quiet words before the elevator doors close on them.

“I’ve watched you fall enough times tonight, Drake.”

He wakes up again when they arrive in the parking garage.

The light outside the entrance is painfully bright, though thanks to his exhaustion-overloaded senses, he can’t distinguish it from dawn or the middle of the day. He should probably ask someone what time it is at some point. Maybe even what day it is. Knowing Gearloose and Fenton’s brand of mad science, he wouldn't be surprised if the atomic cradle thing knocked him out for at least twelve hours.

They walk up to Drake’s beaten-up old Dog Intrepid that he’s had since college, and Gosalyn scurries forward to open the door to the backseat before climbing in and scooting to the far end.

Launchpad surprises him again by setting him on his feet by the open door. Drake feels himself swaying a bit but then Launchpad’s hands settle on his shoulders, big, warm, and grounding. He looks Drake full in the face and he wills himself to focus when he processes the lines of stress around Launchpad’s eyes and the veiled grief within.

“We’ll talk more about this later, cuz I know you’re dead on your feet.” He’s using that gentle, cajoling tone that only comes out when Drake gets lost in his head and Launchpad takes it upon himself to fish him out. “But this can’t happen again, DW. You’ve gotta tell us when something’s wrong, okay? So that we can help you, like you would help me or Gos.”

Drake blows out a long breath, reaching up to grip Launchpad’s wrists with trembling fingers. He knows he can be a glutton for punishment sometimes, but how much pain might he have spared himself if he’d trusted them with his fears? Allowed himself to be vulnerable instead of layering denial upon denial and letting a bad situation turn near-catastrophic?

He can feel Gosalyn watching him from inside the car, and it’s a sobering reminder of what’s at stake now. He isn’t alone anymore.

“I’ll...I’ll do my best, LP,” Drake manages around a weak but genuine smile.

Launchpad tugs him forward, and Drake expects one of his all-encompassing bearhugs. He doesn’t expect the kiss pressed against his forehead or the way Launchpad lingers close, flooding Drake’s senses with the smell of leather, sweat and a trace of his aftershave, still clinging to his feathers after so many hours.

Ever since Launchpad fainted on him at the signing, Drake’s known how much bigger the man is than him, in both height and heft. But for once that size difference isn’t just daunting or enticing–the way Launchpad looms over him is reassuring, and Drake is compelled to lean on his strength rather than force himself to be the pillar.

“DW…you know we love you, right?” Launchpad murmurs the words against his skin and Drake’s knees nearly give out on him.

Beside them, Gosalyn’s determined little voice pipes up. “Y-yeah. We love you, old man.”

He breathes out shakily, dropping his forehead against Launchpad’s broad chest. Drake’s eyes burn and his hidden smile trembles. “I love you guys, too,” he mumbles against Launchpad’s shirt. It’s as much an admission as a promise; he won’t take this life with them for granted ever again.

With the last of his energy spent, Drake moves on autopilot as Launchpad helps him lay down across the backseat. Gosalyn bundles her extra hoodie on her lap, the one Drake always keeps in the car for her in case she gets cold, for him to rest his head. The larger part of him that is used to getting back up, alone and anguished, rails at the thought of putting any burden on his daughter.

Before he can put up any sort of protest, Gosalyn is bundling his cape around him like she first did back at the Tower so many months ago, urging him to sleep. Drake starts to lose time after that, his blinks turning increasingly slow and heavy. He hears the Intrepid’s engine cough and grudgingly turn over and sees the streetlights on the Bin’s bridge flickering past. Launchpad glances back at him from the driver’s seat and Drake tiredly returns his smile when their eyes meet.

Gosalyn’s arm is wrapped around his shoulder, her fist clutching a handful of his cape again. With heavy, clumsy movements he loosens her grip and holds her hand in his. Warm and close and real, and it’s all the reassurance he needs to finally let go.

As Drake sinks into his first peaceful sleep in three months, Gosalyn’s voice follows him into dreamland with a lullaby. The lyrics strike him as familiar, though he can’t quite place the reason why.

Rest your head, little girl blue,

Come paint your dreams on your pillow.

I'll be near to chase away fear,

So sleep now and dream 'til tomorrow,

I'll be near to chase away fear,

So sleep now and dream 'til tomorrow

#ant writes #longass fic #drakepad #they finally deal with the craziness inside drake's head #after a good chunk of angst #inspired by spiderverse and crisis on infinite darkwings #many many references to DW91 #good dad darkwing #good dad drake #darkwing duck #made-up science galore #launchpad mcquack #gosalyn waddlemeyer #gosalyn mallard #fenton crackshell cabrera #gyro Gearloose

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