Chapter Text
Gladstone Gander was lucky. It was the first thing anyone ever said about him. He wasn’t all that surprised to hear it come from the nurse. The man had taken one look at whatever chart Gladstone had at the end of his hospital bed and whistled.
“Well, aren’t you a lucky one?” The nurse chuckled, and Gladstone rolled his eyes as the nurse straightened out the bedsheets. “Usually a fall like that causes more than a few broken bones.”
Gladstone hadn’t fallen. He had jumped. Mati-SHE used to wax poetic about what it would feel like to be a bird in flight. She had said that the wind under your wings must surely be addictive. That as you dived the air would surely taste fresher than any air you had ever breathed.
She had been right.
She always was.
Gladstone hated it. Because every word that came out of her mouth had been a lie, and therefore even the words she hadn’t uttered were screamed now from his subconscious. He had found something he would never be lucky enough to find again.
All he’d had was luck, and when he had been with her, he’d never needed it. He was nothing without his luck. She had abandoned him because of it.
He was used to being used.
But he wanted someone to use him.
If he wasn’t useful, if he wasn’t lucky, he wasn’t anything. And so he had jumped. And it had been addicting, the wind fresh in his lungs like a memory of a thousand mountains, wind through his curls like a thousand detangling hands. Wind pressing on him like he had a purpose.
It felt like the only good thing he’d ever done, dying in the river that had brought her into his life.
The nurse continued to ramble. “Unfortunately we can’t get your emergency contact on the phone, Mr Gander. Do you have someone else we can call?” The large bear looked so concerned about it that Gladstone actually felt a little bad.
Donald must have broken his phone. It happened pretty often, to the point that Donald had installed a house phone in the boat. Gladstone didn’t know that one’s number though. Donald didn’t give it out very often, and it was mostly used by the boys anyway.
Gladstone didn’t really want Donald worrying about him anyway.
The nurse looks at him expectantly, and Gladstone felt the need to mock the man, accent and all. Did he have someone else to call?
Gladstone recited the number. It’s not like the call would be picked up, after all. Gladstone had picked the person least likely to care that he had ended up in the hospital. And if it was, well, Mr Nurse would certainly be getting an earful.
-
Gladstone glared at the IV in his arm. He did not want to be here, in this disinfectant smelling room. He didn’t like hospitals. He associated them with stress and tears and watching his parents choke on their own spit. As his mother swelled with anaphylaxis and his father turned blue.
Gladstone supposed he was disappointed, in a way. He was here because he had failed, not because he had succeeded. His disappointment didn’t make the IV itch any less underneath his skin.
The door to Gladstones corner of existence opened with a surprisingly gentle hand, and Gladstone adjusted the destination of his glare. Scrooge McDuck stood in the doorway, and Gladstone lost his glare to a slow blink. The old duck stepped into the hospital room, holding himself as if he was a naughty child facing their parent. It was an absurd image, and Gladstone couldn’t help but laugh in the face of it.
“Hey-o Uncle Scrooge.” Gladstone smiled at him as he always did, wide and fake. It was never real where anyone could see it. “What brings you to visit little old me?”
Uncle Scrooge looked at him as if his world was imploding. Gladstone had only seen it once, in the aftermath of Della’s disappearance. It was a sad look, the look of a man who was drowning in it.
“Hello, lad.” Uncle Scrooge smiled a small sad smile. “I was told that you jumped off the Audubon Bay Bridge.”
Gladstone shrugged. “Well-“ He gestured toward the room. “Got me a pretty good hotel room.” He pretended as if he hadn’t just compared a place of utter agony to a place of utter relaxation.
Uncle Scrooge winced, and then released a sigh. “I’m familiar with the feeling.”
What.
Uncle Scrooge lowered himself into the chair by the side of Gladstone’s rock hard bed. Gladstone pressed himself farther into the too-soft pillows and tried to reconcile the duck who mocked everything he was with the duck next to his bedside. The nice Uncle Scrooge seemed like a pipe dream. A hallucination of grand proportions.
Uncle Scrooge wasn’t nice. Wasn’t soft.
Not to Gladstone.
“Donalds waiting outside with Della and the kids.” Uncle Scrooge took the silence as some kind of… Gladstone didn’t even know. He rallied a response.
“Really? Donnie didn’t exactly pick up the phone.” Gladstone didn’t want the kids to know. Oh boy, Gladstone did not want the kids to know. The boys liked him to much as it was, and the girl was pushy, and…
“That would be Bradford’s fault. Donald lost his phone to the solego circuit, and hasn’t replaced it yet.” Uncle Scrooge gave an amused smile to Gladstone, as if he was sharing gossip instead of saying something that sounded like complete nonsense to Gladstone. It wasn’t, he knew who Bradford was, he just didn’t know what that had to do with phones. Or what a solego circuit was.
He wanted to ask, but then the door opened.
Uncle Scrooge twisted in confusion, just the same as Gladstone, and it rooted a sliver of fear deep into the lucky duck’s bones. A yellow duckling pushed open the door. Uncle Scrooge’s confusion evaporates. Oh. Gladstone could have sworn the girl wasn’t this.. shy? Cautious might have been a better word.
“Hello, May. Is something wrong?” At Uncle Scrooge’s words Gladstone’s confusion grew. Hadn’t the girls name been Webbigail? The yellow duckling shook her head decisively.
“Nope.” May takes a step forward. “I.. uh.. Heard you liked plants.” The girl extended an African Violet. Gladstone heart lurched. “I painted the pot for you too.. its technically terracotta..”
Gladstone extended his fingers, and was gifted with the violet, as May’s hands held onto the sides of the smooth stone for stability. A realistic violet spanned the side in paint.
“Thank you..” Gladstone can’t help but mutter.
“You’re welcome!” May stood up impossibly straight, and in an instant, Gladstone could tell how much work she had put into the gift.
“When did you get this lass?” Uncle Scrooge interrupted. Gladstone felt himself tense, having forgotten the man was there. May moved toward the tiny side table, safely depositing the potted plant.
“I convinced Donald to take me to the store.” May paused. “And Della to let us stay up past our bedtimes so that I could go to said store.” She shrugged. Gladstone doesn’t know how that explained anything, but Uncle Scrooge laughed.
“Ah, the terrors of co-parenting with your sibling.” Uncle Scrooge made direct eye contact with Gladstone. “Right. Gladstone, this is my-uh, May. This is May.”
The yellow clad duckling rolled her eyes. “May Aurielle Finch. Technically speaking this is my Da.” May threw an arm out, hands flailing in Uncle Scrooge’s direction. “He just doesn’t want to explain to every person he knows the existence of triplet children at the age of over 150.”
“Where did Finch come from?” Uncle Scrooge was ignored.
“Triplet children?” Gladstone asked, amused.
May nodded seriously. “Yes.” She turned to Uncle Scrooge. “Did you not hear the cover story? 22 and I came up with it.”
Uncle Scrooge shook his head. Gladstone listened as the girl explained the story succinctly.
Uncle Scrooge was sexually assaulted, the rapist had three eggs, and put one them up for adoption, and Webby was adopted separately from May and June, who were raised as twins. May and June’s mother and stepfather had died in recent months. The triplets had been reunited under their father’s roof. All of it was technically true.
(Uncle Scrooge had his genetic material stolen, and the thief produced three clones with it. One of the clones was adopted and the other two were raised as twins by their creator, who called herself their mother. Their co-creator had killed their mother and then died himself last month, and now Webby, May, and June all lived in McDuck Manor.)
“Where did the Finch come from?” Gladstone asked, repeating Scrooges earlier question.
“Isabella Finch was Bradford Buzzard’s grandmother. As Bradford has been claimed as our step-father, it was only appropriate.” May shrugged.
“What reason did you come up with for the separate adoption of Webby?” Uncle Scrooge grumbled, as if he had pulled the story apart at the seams.
“Della.”
Gladstone blinked. What.
“Della?” Uncle Scrooge echoed. “What about her?”
Oh. Gladstone laughed. “You hatched around the same time as the boys, right? So this Webby was put up for adoption separately to cause the guilt of having lost a kid, which would remind him of having lost Della, which meant your mom could manipulate more child support out of ‘em.”
“Yep.”
“Ah.” Uncle Scrooge looked like he’d been gutted. Because he knew it would have worked, had this woman arrived with 2 that were supposed to be 3.
Gladstone suddenly understood his Uncle’s earlier comment. Of course he knew the feeling. Who wouldn’t want to join the child they were never getting back.
-
He hadn’t wanted to see the purple guy. Because who truly wants to be saved in this situation. This “Darkwing Duck” as he called himself, stood awkwardly in the doorway. Gladstone wanted to scream. To have itched the needle out of his arm and put it in the dudes eye. But that wouldn’t fix anything.
(Darkwing would just stand there, with a needle in his eye, and continue as if nothing happened. Darkwing would comfort Gladstone, offer him a spa treatment as he screamed and cried. As he tried to escape, tried to die, tried to keep from being eaten alive.)
(Gladstone blinks, and suddenly he remembers that’s not how it works… He’s not Liu Hai’s prisoner anymore. Darkwing would be the one to scream and cry. Not.. not the other way around.)
“So…” The superhero wrung his hands. “Wanna talk about it?”
Gladstone raised an eyebrow and gave the duck a wry smile. “Talk about the whiplash that comes from suddenly losing your momentum?” He had dislocated his left shoulder and broken three bones in his right arm. He’d also pulled a muscle in his leg.
“No!!” The superhero flung his hands out. “No! I meant, uh.. Talking is supposed to help when someone attempts this sort of thing right? Like why they wanna do it?”
Gladstone sighed, and twisted to look at his newly gifted violet. Plants were his only real friends in these kinds of conversations. They were his only friends, period. No one liked him. She had proven that years ago. And reproved it the last time he’d lost his luck. He hadn’t even known that she was there. She certainly hadn’t cared that he had been. She’d been to preoccupied with stealing her amulet off her niece.
“Look, DW.” A young voice interrupted. “I love you and all, but Gladstone isn’t the type who responds well to strangers prying.” It’s May. She was holding a box of chinese takeout.
“Sorry?” The superhero twisted, flustered. “You.. you know who I am?”
May squinted at him. “Is that a question you’re asking as Darkwing Duck, or as Drake Mallard?”
Gladstone let out a whistle as the purple superhero desperately attempts to cover up his super identity. May, who looked like a deer in headlights, slipped past the superhero into the room. She immediately hit the nurse call button by the bed. The bear ushered himself in shortly after, and the purple clad superhero turned to leave as he arrived.
“Hi! I wanted to know if Gladstone was allowed to take his brace off to eat?” May showed off the bag of Chinese food. “I can spoon feed him, but I think he’d get.. weird about it.”
The nurse frowned at May. “Do you have an adult with you?”
May wordlessly pointed at Gladstone.
“Seriously?”
May shrugged. “It’s a free bus system. Besides, Launchpad’s in the lobby.”
“If this Launchpad is an adult, I’m afraid they will have to be in the room with you young lady.” The bear crossed his arms, causing his scrubs to crease.
“Uh…” May vibrated in her seat, anxiety clear. Gladstone took pity on her.
“Nurse…you are aware that Sunshine here is family, right?” He inclined his head to the 12 year old who was slowly sinking in her seat. “Isn’t strong family ties and a support system part of the whole.. recovery process?”
The nurse frowned. “Her being family doesn’t change the fact that she’s an unaccompanied minor.”
“Look, can I have my food please? Sunny went through the trouble of getting it, and now you’re kicking the kid out.” Gladstone could feel his smile start to strain. A red headed pelican stuck his head through the door.
“Hey, May! DW and I are gonna join you and Gladstone!”
May lost all of her tense muscles in an instant. “Thanks Launchpad! Is Gos coming?”
“Yep!” The nurse eyes them, and huffed.
“No. Mr Gander cannot have is brace removed.” He uncrossed his arms. “But you may keep him company. Visitor Hours end at 8 o’clock.”
The nurse stormed off, and Launchpad entered with a duck who was obviously Mr. Purple, and a dark feathered girl about the same age as May. Launchpad’s arms were laden with snacks from the vending machine. They sat in silence for a bit, arranging their food on the table in the corner of the room.
The dark feathered girl finally cracked. “Oh, come on! This is the guy Darkwing pulled out of the river right?”
Mr. Purple sighed. “He didn’t wanna talk about it Gosalyn.” Gosalyn, now named, groaned. May silently opened up a container of Chinese food. Gladstone could smell the sweet sauce from across the room. Oh.
“Here.” The tiny sunshine deposited the container on the tray attached to the bed. “It’s Sesame Shrimp. I.. I heard you liked it.”
Gladstone didn’t know a single person who knew him as well as this child. Shrimp. Plants. What was next? Was this random duckling going to kidnap him as Liu Hai had? The Toad had been the only other person to do this. That and Mat-HER. Who had she gone to? Where had she gotten this information?
It’s only when he saw the girl’s wrist, hidden underneath the slightly to big sleeve of her cardigan, that he knew. Oh… Oh…
The girl had plucked the soft down of her wrist straight off. She had obviously tried to stop. There was lotion on the empty spot, as if it would keep the skin from itching. Sunshine was the perfect nickname for this one.
-
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray. You’ll never know dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.