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Gosalyn comes home from school one day to find her grandfather lying at the bottom of the stairs.
She’s ten years old and dinner is burning on the stove, filling the entire house with a suffocating, acrid stench and black smoke that hovers just below the ceiling. The smoke alarm is shrieking painfully and she covers her ears, pressing her hands against the sides of her head so tightly that it feels like she might just break her skull open like Grandpa did. But her skull stays intact as life pours out of his, all of his bad science puns and lullabies and love amounting to nothing more than a red puddle on the hardwood floor.
She refuses to climb the stairs in the first foster home she’s taken to. The walls in this house are white and hanging on them are framed photographs and boring art. The photographs are of the same white family smiling the same white smile in front of a beach, in front of towering redwoods, in front of a matte blue background.
Before Gosalyn found Grandpa dead at the bottom of the stairs, he said, A family photo is a photo you take of the family! None of this paying a fancy photographer business or finding that postcard perfect background.
Gosalyn asked, Can we take a picture right now, Grandpa?
She was sporting a cracked beak and black eye from her latest hockey game, and missing one of her front teeth that they would never get around to replacing, so the question came out sounding more like, Cam ee ‘ake ‘icture ‘igh ‘ow, G’ampa?
He said, You bet! And despite being the city’s foremost scientist, would ask her every time without fail, Uh, hun, can you show me what button I need to press to get the camera to turn around?
The first foster home smells harshly of Pinesol, and it burns the inside of her nose. Gosalyn won’t even climb the first step, digs her heels in, screams. She wants their townhouse, she wants her old school, she wants the raccoons that will sometimes sneak into their backyard and make a mess of their garbage cans. She wants her grandpa, and she wants to be happy again.
Her first foster mother’s pretty manicured nails bite into the delicate skin of her wrist, leaving crimson crescent moon marks behind. Gosalyn retaliates by biting her arm and the lavender taste of her perfume blooms across her tongue before her foster mother’s palm blooms across her cheek.
Gosalyn’s last foster home doesn’t have stairs but it does have five other children who like to punch and pinch and kick and a foster father who they must call Mr. Cormorant or sir, or Mr. Cormorant, sir.
Before Gosalyn found Grandpa dead at the bottom of the stairs, he made sweet blueberry pancakes and said, You’re the best, mijita.
Mr. Cormorant, sir says, children should be silent unless spoken to and won’t say a word to them for days on end. He doesn’t allow sugar in his house, so all the kids eat the same flavorless, slimy oatmeal that fills the kitchen with the fetid stink of warm milk.
She finds a piece of a broken fence post that looks almost like her old hockey stick and urges the other kids to throw something for her to hit. They are all as restless and unhappy as her, all of them craving chaos as a way to gain some measure of control over their lives. One of them finds a stone that’s smooth and nearly flat, almost like a puck, and she swings at it with all her might. The stone sails through the air in a blink and smashes through one of Mr. Cormorant, sir’s windows with the sharp cacophony of shattering glass.
Mr. Cormorant, sir stands over her as he makes her pick up every last piece, scattered like glimmering stars across the swirling carpet of his sitting room.
He says, You’re going to be a problem aren’t you?
Five months after Gosalyn finds Grandpa dead at the bottom of the stairs she runs away from her last foster home.
It’s six days before Christmas and the lights hanging off every house lead her down the street. They’re pearlescent and warm against the dark of night, their glow bouncing off the snow in a kaleidoscope of color. She bundles herself in the biggest jacket she can find in the hall closet, her boots and a scarf that’s so long she winds it around her neck three times and it still hangs halfway to her knees. The cold bites her nose, and her puffing breaths cloud in the air as she runs down the sidewalk, her footsteps crunching in the pristine, unshoveled snow.
Gosalyn spends her first two days as a runaway living behind the movie theater. She eats the stale popcorn and cold hot dogs they throw out and when she gets thirsty chews on the cleanest snow she can find. She thinks she might join a circus or search for Santa Claus, now that she has all the time and freedom she could want.
But the temperature drops on the third day, until her teeth won’t stop chattering no matter how much she runs or breathes warm air into her palms. And she runs a lot, from the concerned expression in the eyes of strangers, the spinning lights of police cars and the stark black uniform of officers. But on the third day she runs until she’s nearly lost, and ends up no warmer for it.
The darker it gets the more tired she becomes, and she finds herself in an abandoned park by the time she realizes she can walk no further. Gosalyn spots a bench covered in a thin layer of ice with some newspapers scattered beneath. She crawls under it on her hands and knees, the rough concrete catching on the material of her gloves. She curls up tight, wrapping the newspaper around herself, and what part of her scarf she doesn’t use as a pillow she uses to cover her face. She falls asleep to the tolling of a faroff church bell.
Gosalyn’s dreams are fraught. She sees a darkness without end, a cold so bitter that it turns her heart to ice. Her grandfather falls from a great height, and even as she reaches for him she finds herself rooted to the spot and his fingers just barely brush against hers. As he falls he says, Can you hear me? I need you to wake up, kid, please, god wake up.
A rough hand shakes her awake after what could easily be minutes or hours. She feels numb, physically and emotionally, and she’s long past the point of shivering. Her fingers are curled and frozen stiff, and her mind is sluggish. Still, she forces her eyes open even as her eyelids hang heavy like lead weights.
When she does, a brilliant white light immediately blinds her. She’s too weak to cry out, but she does make a muted sound of pain and clenches her eyes shut again.
Above her, a man says, “Oh thank God. Sorry about that, you can open your eyes now.”
Gosalyn does so, slow and suspicious at first, but she’s not blinded again. Her vision blurs, cutting in and out, and all she sees is a mass of purple. She forces herself to blink hard without allowing sleep to drag her back under, and the image before her begins to clear.
There’s a duck crouched on hands and knees just beside the bench. He’s gripping her shoulder with one hand and holding a flashlight in the other, though it’s off now.
He’s wearing a purple mask, costume and cape.
“Can you hear me?” he’s asking, “Are you hurt?”
Gosalyn manages to jerk her head in what passes for a no.
“C-cold,” she stutters.
He breathes a heavy sigh of relief.
“Yeah, I bet, kiddo.”
The next moments go by in a haze.
He unclips his cape with one hand and reaches for her with the other. She can’t offer much help as he carefully tugs her out from under the bench, her legs refusing to listen to her and her arms so stiff she can barely clutch at the front of his uniform. Once he has her in his arms he wraps her in his cape and shockingly, she begins to feel a little bit warmer. Her fingers tingle with feeling again.
She hears the words, emergency blanket, hospital, and she’s being lifted up, a hand under her shoulders and bent knees. The warmer she becomes the more she shivers, great shudders that wrack her body violently.
Gosalyn buries her face against his chest, fighting to keep her chattering beak still. A dark shape looms out of the corner of her vision and she turns just enough to make out the purple hull of a jet, gleaming dully in the gray light of a rising dawn.
He bundles her inside and lays her flat on the long backseat. Gosalyn watches with dull wonder as the cockpit seals shut above them, before her gaze drifts to the gently falling snow one the other side of the ovular windows.
He procures another blanket from somewhere and he tucks it around her carefully at the same time he turns to say over his shoulder, “Thunderquack. Duckburg General.”
The jet rumbles to life beneath them as the front console blooms in purple light. They begin to rise, and because it scarcely feels like they’re moving Gosalyn can only tell because the view outside the window begins to blur.
The superhero doesn’t seem aware of her shock as he turns the driver’s seat around to face her and sits down, not steering the jet in the slightest as it weaves past skyscrapers and telephone lines.
“How do you feel?” he asks.
“Y-you’re Darkwing Duck,” she breathes.
He smiles crookedly at her surprised expression.
“I am. What’s your name?”
“G-Gosalyn,” she forces out, her beak chattering so badly it’s a struggle to force the words. “I w-watched you on the news all the t-time.”
Before Gosalyn found Grandpa dead at the bottom of the stairs, they would catch up on Darkwing Duck’s exploits every morning and afternoon. On weekends Grandpa would let her sit on the floor in front of the TV and watch Darkwing leap and punch and make bold declarations with a bowl of cereal in her lap, often making a mess when she tried to copy his moves.
Her foster parents either didn’t have cable, told her it was too violent and wouldn’t a little girl like you want to watch something a little nicer? or like Mr. Cormorant, sir, didn’t allow them to touch the television at all. She’d had her phone to try and catch highlights, but Mr. Cormorant, sir had confiscated it for a reason she couldn’t quite recall.
“Really?” Darkwing asks brightly, looking startled and pleased.
Gosalyn nods. There are a million things she wants to ask him, everything she’d ever imagined she’d say if she ever got the chance to meet him. But her eyes feel heavy and her body sluggish, and she struggles to keep her eyes open.
“You can go back to sleep,” Darkwing says, petting her hair gently. “You’re safe now, kiddo, I promise.”
Gosalyn tries in vain to reach out to him, her hand stuck in the layers of blankets between them. She’s terrified that next she wakes Darkwing won’t be there and she’ll find herself back in her narrow bed in Mr. Cormorant, sir’s house.
“Don’t go,” she mumbles.
“I’ll be right here when you wake up, Gosalyn,” he assures. “I promise.”
With his promise ringing in her ears, she surrenders to sleep much unlike last time, surrounded by warmth and no longer alone.
Gosalyn wakes up in a hospital room, pale light thrown across her bed from the window to her right.
To her left is Darkwing, so incongruous against the light blue walls that he looks almost otherworldly. He’s messing with something on his phone, brow furrowed, until she moves slightly on the bed and makes the blankets rustle.
“Gosalyn,” he says, looking up with a smile. “How do you feel?”
His reaction almost brings her pause. She can’t remember the last time someone’s been happy to see her.
“I’m okay,” she means to say, but it comes out a croak. Her throat feels like it’s been scrubbed with steel wool and she feels like the beat up old stuffed crocodile that she would never let Grandpa throw out and forced to keep tossing in the washing machine whenever it got too filthy.
Darkwing chuckles a little at her perturbed expression.
“You developed a fever just a little after we got to the hospital. They gave you some medicine and you knocked out for the whole rest of the day. You’ve been asleep for...about twenty hours.”
Gosalyn slumps back into her pillows. “Whoa,” she says hoarsely.
That makes five days since her flight from her last foster home. A new record if the older kids are to be believed; the longest someone had lasted after running away from Mr. Cormorant, sir’s was four days before they brought themselves trudging back, or the police did it for them.
She’s distracted from all the gloating she won’t get to do when Darkwing leans forward in the plastic hospital chair, expression sharpening in seriousness.
Gosalyn’s stomach bottoms out.
“Kid, you realize how much worse things could’ve gone don’t you?” he asks in that way adults do when they don’t expect you to answer the question. “If I hadn’t been patrolling, if I hadn’t noticed you, well…”
He trails off, glancing away tersely.
“I coulda died,” Gosalyn says quietly.
Darkwing looks back at her, pained. “Y-yeah. What were you even doing out there, Gosalyn? Did you run away from home? I couldn’t find any identification on you, not even a phone. Your parents must be worried sick.”
Gosalyn is too tired to cross her arms over her chest, otherwise that’s what she would be doing. She too tired to even lie.
“I don’t have parents,” she says, almost lazily. It’s the same tone she’s used to freak out nosy strangers even before Grandpa died. But for the first time she feels a pang of guilt for the alarmed expression it prompts in Darkwing.
“I...I’m sorry, Gosalyn,” he says quietly. It’s maybe the most sincere apology she’s ever received, and it discomfits her.
She shrugs. “I didn’t even know them.”
And it’s true. But the ache, that gaping empty space that Grandpa left behind pains her now more than ever.
“Well you’re not living on your own,” Darkwing goes on, rallying quickly. “You must have a —a foster home where you’re—”
“I’m not going back there,” Gosalyn bites maybe a tad viciously, and her panic propels her up in bed. Her head immediately starts swimming, and she woozily supports her weight on one shaky, outstretched arm.
“Whoa!” Darkwing exclaims, standing with arms outstretched. With gentle hands, he eases her back against her pillows. “It’s okay, kiddo. I promise, no one’s going to make you go anywhere you don’t want to go.”
“O-okay,” Gosalyn stammers, still dizzy, but mostly just surprised. She’s never been given a choice before.
Darkwing sits back down. But now the line of his shoulders is tense and he looks stern in a different way than before.
“Can you explain why you don’t want to go back to your foster home?” he asks, and he sounds like a detective on one of the crime shows she used to watch.
Gosalyn shrugs uncomfortably, bunching the blanket beneath her hands. She can still feel Darkwing’s shrewd gaze on her, though.
“Have they ever hurt you?”
Gosalyn’s first instinct is to say no. It’s what she and the other kids at Mr. Cormorant, sir’s have taught themselves to say to the social worker when she comes calling. They’ve all been bounced around so many homes that they’re tired . Even if they’re never adopted, staying in one place is good enough, even if that place is Mr. Cormorant, sir’s home.
Even if he made Trudy Clearfeather wash her hands with boiling water for handling his coffee mug without cleaning them the first place. And had Julius Birdview scrub the bathroom floor with his toothbrush after picking his nose in front of him. And if one talked back or ran in the halls (or broke a window) they would sleep in the hall without a pillow or blanket. And if they were given either one, everyone would go without breakfast.
They went many days without breakfast.
“Um,” Gosalyn mumbles, in the absence of anything else to say.
But that’s apparently enough for Darkwing, who settles against the back of his seat with a short nod and a troubled expression.
“Well you won’t be going back, obviously. Are there any other kids there?”
“Five,” Gosalyn says quietly. “Six, with me. But he might’ve already brought someone in to replace me.”
“Why do you say that?” Darkwing asks quietly.
Gosalyn shrugs. “Mr. Co….it’s where the bad kids go. The ones that’ve been kicked out of too many homes.”
“Gosalyn,” Darkwing says, laying one of his hands on top of hers. “I know this is hard. But I need names, addresses, something to make sure that I can help the other kids too. Do you think you can do that, kiddo —oh. Oh! N-no, it’s okay!”
She’s prided herself on being tough these last five months. On not letting the stupid social workers with their fake smiles and faker sympathy get to her, the distant and uncaring foster parents and the constant moving and the kids that went through her stuff and stole her handmade Darkwing Duck t-shirt and her bag of coins from around the world that Grandpa had collected for her.
But Darkwing Duck, the Darkwing Duck, found her and stayed with her and believed her, and he was nice and a little bit dorky, so Gosalyn figures that this is as good a time to cry as any.
Darkwing’s hands are fluttering over her, looking aghast as great big tears roll down her cheeks. He looks so ridiculous, purple hat and mask and all, that she starts laughing despite her sobs.
“Er…there, there?” he says, phrasing it like a question as he tentatively pats her on the shoulder.
“You actually want to help?” She asks as she messily wipes away her tears.
“Of course,” Darkwing replies at once, though his confident grin looks a little shaky in the face of her tears and blotchy cheeks. “I’m a superhero! Kind of comes with the job description.”
“I thought superheroes just caught bad guys and helped old ladies cross the street,” Gosalyn says. “Like Gizmoduck.”
Darkwing barks a laugh that startles her.
“I’ll have to remember that one,” he says. His expression quickly turns into one of grudging respect. “But even ol’ Giz is more than that. Do you like science? He’s sponsoring a bunch of STEM programs for kids if you are. As for me, well.” Darkwing rubs the back of his neck, glancing away. “I think that helping kids like you is just as important as catching bad guys. Maybe even more important.”
Gosalyn squints at him keenly. “Were you a foster kid too?”
Darkwing laughs again, though more subdued than before. “Nah. Sometimes wished I was, but no.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Gosalyn says somberly, and giggles when Darkwing fixes her with a shrewd look.
“Alright, kiddo. Do you think you can tell me about your foster home now?”
Gosalyn shrinks a little into her pillows.
“Just the name and address for now?” She asks quietly.
Darkwing nods. “Just the name and address for now.”
Gosalyn rattles them off, and Darkwing jots it all down on a notepad. He’s pulling out his phone when a nurse comes in bearing a tray laden with breakfast. The nurse looks at Darkwing a little sourly.
“Mr. Darkwing,” she says, curt.
Darkwing nods distractedly at the her.
“Okay, Gosalyn, I’m gonna make a few calls. I’ll be right in the hall. Make sure you eat your breakfast, okay?”
Gosalyn sticks out her tongue as she glowers at the bowl cream of wheat before her. “But hospital food is gross.”
“I know,” Darkwing replies with a sympathetic wince. “But you’ve still gotta eat it.”
She sticks her tongue out at him as he steps out of the room. Darkwing sticks his tongue out back at her, then coughs in embarrassment when the nurse gives him a withering look. He quickly closes the door behind him.
The nurse hangs around long enough to ask Gosalyn a few questions. How does she feel? Is the bed too high, too low? Do you want me to let that purple weirdo back in here? Before long, she leaves Gosalyn to her tray of prison food. She’s just begun prodding the chocolate pudding, which looks the least harrowing, when she hears a raised voice coming from the hall making little effort to be quiet.
Darkwing.
“—don’t think I need to remind you that I’m a consultant, not an agent. This is me, consulting! Not everything has to be the end of the world...Yes, this is just as important...It’s six kids, maybe seven, that need to be relocated to safe homes and their foster parent brought in to face charges—yes, charges, for neglect if nothing else...No, I plan to get the full story soon...Of course I trust her! She was frozen half to death, all on her own in the middle of the city. Kids don’t do that if their parent’s not letting them eat junk food before bed. She didn’t even have a phone, I think it might have been taken from her….Yeah...Alright. Thank you, Gryz— rude.”
There’s a few moments of silence before she hears Darkwing start talking again, though this time all she hears is the first sentence before his voice fades to a faint murmur.
“Director Hooter, there’s a little girl here…”
Gosalyn’s forced herself to eat the pudding and is eying her orange juice dubiously when her door opens again.
“Your friends will be put with new families by the end of the day, kiddo,” Darkwing says as he closes the door and sits back down at her side. “SHUSH will make sure they’re in good homes this time. And they’ll be checking in now and then so that they stay that way.”
“Shush?” Gosalyn repeats. “What’s —”
“Anyway!” Darkwing continues brightly. “The doctor’s given you a clean bill of health. You just need to take it easy for the next few days, so no more falling asleep in the snow.”
“I didn’t make a good Goscicle?” Gosalyn jokes weakly.
“The worst,” Darkwing replies, giving her with a stern look that his smile softens significantly.
Gosalyn lowers her head, avoiding Darkwing’s gaze by staring at her hands. “So...um...where am I going?” She keeps her gaze down as Darkwing tentatively answers.
“Well, there’s a Mrs. Cavanaugh in St. Canard who’s happy to have you. If you’re feeling up to it, you can be with her and her family before Christmas.”
Gosalyn’s quiet anxiety, her disappointment at having to be parted from Darkwing, is all secondary as air escapes her lungs in a pained rush, leaving her hollow and starving for breath. It’s like she’s been kicked in the gut, and a chill worse than what she suffered during her three days on the run descends over her. She’s wrapped her arms around her midsection before she’s even conscious of moving.
Space is a vacuum, Grandpa said, before Gosalyn found him dead at the bottom of the stairs. They were stargazing on the roof of his lab with a massive, high-powered telescope, as a way to make it up to her for working all day. Theoretically, that means it’s devoid of all matter. But no vacuum is truly perfect, not even in interstellar space. There’s always that one carbon atom every cubic meter ruining every scientist’s day.
A vacuum could be opening in the middle of Gosalyn’s chest now, crushing in its almost-emptiness.
“Gosalyn?” Darkwing says, sounding worried. She feels the ghost of his hand on her hair before it lands on her shoulder.
“When’s Christmas?” she whispers.
“T-today’s Christmas Eve,” Darkwing responds. “Gosalyn, kiddo, what’s wrong?”
Gosalyn shakes her head, fighting a losing battle with the burn of tears against her closed eyelids.
“I-I’ve never had Christmas without Grandpa,” she whimpers, like it’s a shameful thing.
She certainly feels that way: ashamed by her tears, ashamed that Darkwing is seeing them, ashamed that she’d forgotten what had always been her and Grandpa’s favorite holiday.
Plugging in Grandpa’s superconductor Christmas lights for only five minutes because they would burn out people’s corneas if stared at for too long, staying up late in the living room with her homemade Santa trap, making paper planes and complicated gliders out of her wrapping paper in the morning.
She’d forgotten that even without Grandpa, Christmas would still come.
Gosalyn doesn’t think she can face a new foster home and her first Christmas alone all at once. But what choice does she have? Stay in the hospital for another two days? Run away again?
“C’mon, kiddo,” she hears distantly, momentarily distracting her from her downward spiral. “Talk to me.”
She realizes she’s done her best mimicry of a pillbug, hunched over on her hospital bed as though ill. Darkwing’s hand is on her back, rubbing in gentle circles. As she comes back to herself, so too does an embarrassment that sets her cheeks blazing.
Gosalyn uncurls, and as Darkwing’s hand falls away her chest feels uncomfortably tight. She opens her mouth, to apologize, she thinks, for making Darkwing Duck have to babysit her for so long.
“I’m sorry about your grandfather,” Darkwing says, before Gosalyn can get a word out.
She’s heard variations of the same condolences more times than she can count. Dozens, probably. But none of them have felt genuine until now.
“You must miss him a lot,” Darkwing continues softly. He takes off his hat, placing it at the foot of her bed. Beneath his hat, his hair is almost ridiculously neat, not flattened or in disarray, and his perfect hair amuses Gosalyn for some reason though she can’t bring herself to smile much. He folds his arms, leaning forward and resting his elbows on her bed.
Gosalyn rubs her cheek a little self consciously but nods all the same.
“I never knew my mom and dad. It was always me and Grandpa until…” She shakes away the darker memories, the body lying at the bottom of the stairs. “We did everything together. He went to all of my hockey games, no matter how busy he was. We watched Darkw—y-you on the news, and he helped me set traps for Santa every year. Grandpa said he had some questions for him but I think he just wanted to see how the reindeer fly.”
Darkwing’s smile is very, very sad. That’s new too—sympathy, not pity.
“Your grandpa sounds pretty great,” he says.
Gosalyn finds she can’t quite bring herself to respond, so she just nods again.
Darkwing speaks again after a moment, voice hesitant in a way she’s never heard.
“I understand why you don’t want to go to Mrs. Cavanaugh’s just yet. It would probably be...overwhelming, to say the least. But it’s still the holidays, and you shouldn’t be all on your own, so if...if you want, you can stay with my partner and me for a few days. My headquarters are completely secure. You can rest and take your time giving me your full statement about your time with Cormorant.”
Five months of duplicity and lovelessness has Gosalyn’s gaze snapping to Darkwing’s face, disbelief roaring between her ears. But there’s no mockery in his expression, nor has there ever been, and he’s plucking at a corner of her blankets in a nervous tic he doesn’t even seem to be aware of.
And Gosalyn, though unused to sincerity, has not forgotten what it looks like.
“This headquarters of yours,” she says deliberately slow, “Are we talking Fortress of Seclusion here, or like a gross cave…?
“Hey!” Darkwing barks, but he’s laughing too much to be properly affronted. “For your information, my headquarters are way cooler than Supermutt’s.”
Gosalyn sniffs, folding her arms over her chest in the haughty way she sees actresses on TV do. “I guess I’ll just have to see for myself.”
Darkwing smiles, disarmingly kind. “I guess you will,” he says, and drops his hat on her head, where it falls over her eyes.
“Thunderquack,” Darkwing says, once they’re bundled inside his plane (he’d parked it on the roof, which hospital security must’ve loved). “Take us to the Tower.”
“Do you ever fly this yourself?” Gosalyn asks as they take off, watching the yoke smoothly maneuvering on its own like there are invisible hands controlling it.
Darkwing shudders. “Oh, geez, no. My partner does most of the actual flying. I’m learning but,” he laughs, “I don’t exactly have the best teacher.”
Gosalyn is soon distracted by the view of Duckburg racing past, finally able to appreciate it now that she’s not half-conscious. Blanketed in snow, every skyscraper glitters with white light, and the tumult of cars locked in a standstill resemble a carpet of shimmering, iridescent beetles. The world from so far away seems small and altogether too fragile.
She gives a start when they leave the city behind and find themselves gliding over water. Darkwing looks giddy when she glances over at him, and when he notices her staring he points out the window.
“No, no, look we’re almost there!”
Gosalyn obliges him and gasps when the Thunderquack shoots up off the surface of the water, rising alongside one of the towers of the Audubon Bay Bridge. Once they’re about halfway up they level out and hover for a split second before the tower begins to rearrange itself, an entrance opening seamlessly in what had been solid, unyielding metal.
The Thunderquack slips through and stops on a landing pad of some sort, and the plane’s engine quiets as they begin to ascend. Outside the cockpit there’s absolute darkness, but inside it's aglow with soft purple light from the plane console, and Gosalyn marvels at it.
“Better than the Fortress of of Seclusion huh?” Darkwing says smugly.
Gosalyn affects an unimpressed look. “I don’t know,” she says with a shrug. “Dark and creepy? It looks more like a cave to me.”
Darkwing’s headquarters remain dark, even as the Thunderquack docks in an expansive room. But here it seems purposeful, maybe because of her. There are tall tinted windows all around keeping the sunlight out, and in the shadows she can make out raised platforms and massive unlit computer screens. Clearly, where Darkwing does his superheroing.
But he doesn't let them linger, gently ushering Gosalyn along past all the cool stuff hidden in the dark to a plain and unremarkable door. But once they step through the doorway, she understands why.
They leave behind the Thunderquack, the computers, and the shadows; they leave behind the headquarters and enter into a home.
She notices the difference before she understands it.
They enter into a living room with a couch and armchairs and a television mounted on the wall. The ceilings here are lower, no longer so high that they seem without end. Through an open doorway on the other side of the room Gosalyn spies what she thinks might be a kitchen. Before she can snoop further, Darkwing is leading her down a short hallway and to a room that seems half guest room half storage space. There’s a bed bigger than any she’s ever slept in, as well as several cardboard boxes that have been shoved into a corner, labeled things like DW COMICS and LP STEERING WHEELS.
“You should get some sleep, kiddo,” Darkwing says, setting her duffle bag down on the end of the bed. It has new clothes, pajamas, toothbrush and, inexplicably, her cell phone, which she knows Cormorant, sir locked in his desk drawer over a week ago. When Darkwing saw it all he’d done was shake his head with an incredulous smile. “She’s a sneaky one, that 22,” he’d said, and refused to elaborate on what that means.
“I was sleeping for a whole day!” Gosalyn retorts, even as she takes a running start and leaps onto the bed, laughing all the way down as Darkwing makes an aborted sound of alarm and reaches out as though to catch her.
“You had a fever the entire time, I wouldn’t exactly call that restful,” Darkwing responds with a hint of reproach. “Now, I’ll let you get settled,” he says, as he makes to leave. “I’ll be just down the hall if you need me, okay?”
“Okay,” Gosalyn replies, muffled against her pillow.
She listens to the sound of her door closing before turning on her side. There’s a window across from her with glass that’s clear and looks out onto the bright, frigid waters of the bay. The way it divides St. Canard and Duckburg is evident, and she can see the opposing harbors of either sister city from her vantage point.
“I wish you could see this too, Grandpa,” she whispers. A laugh bubbles up in her throat. “You’d wig out if you saw Darkwing Duck’s hideout.”
It’s her first time speaking to Emmett Waddlemeyer in five months. The answering silence stings, but maybe not as much as it used to.
Despite Gosalyn’s protests, she actually falls asleep rather quickly. She’s staring out the brightly lit window, closes her eyes for a moment, and opens them again to find the world outside has turned dark. With night fallen St. Canard and Duckburg gleam behind a flurry of falling snow, like a shaken snow globe.
But what really wakes Gosalyn is the smell of food cooking. Onion and potato, the richness of oil. Though it smells like nothing she knows, she is reminded of her grandpa’s cooking more than she has in any foster home. His dizzyingly complicated Thanksgiving dinners with all his colleagues, and the smaller, quieter Christmas dinners with just the two of them.
She climbs out of bed, her clothes rumpled and slept in, and creeps through the door even though she knows there’s no need to creep. The smell hits her full force once she’s in the living room, and she hears the sizzle of frying food, smells thyme and parsley and sweet barbecue. She follows the smells and sounds to the kitchen, wondering if she’s to be greeted by the sight of Darkwing Duck in an apron on top of his usual cape. So far he’s struck her as the kind of person her grandpa would call more likely to burn water than boil it. But who knows, she might be in for a surprise.
She rounds the doorway into the kitchen and finds that she’s definitely in for a surprise because it’s not Darkwing in front of the stove at all. Darkwing isn’t even in the room.
There’s a tall, broad shouldered, red haired man cooking something on a pan that’s sizzling. Standing where she is, half hidden behind the doorway, the man is parallel to her and she can see a bit of his face. The months she spent with Mr. Cormorant, sir have made her nervous around tall men, but despite his size, this man looks kind.
He notices her lurking before she can decide what to do.
“Hey!” he says brightly, “Gosalyn, right? Are you looking for DW?”
It takes her a moment to understand who he means. When she does, it comes as a relief. She hadn’t wanted to sound pathetic by asking.
Still feeling off kilter, she nods mutely.
“He had to make a call,” the stranger says, still smiling, “he should be out in a sec.” He gestures to the empty table behind him. “Do you wanna take a seat? You can be taste-tester.”
Gosalyn hesitates. The man doesn’t give any indication at having noticed, turning his attention back to whatever he’s cooking rather than waiting for her response as she might’ve expected.
She decides to sit down at the kitchen table.
“I’m Launchpad,” he says as she’s pulling her feet up onto the seat cushion and tucking her knees under her chin. He throws a smile over his shoulder and Gosalyn lets herself relax a little. This close, she can see a few other covered dishes on the stove, and the counters are littered with bowls and spills and spice jars. The table she’s sitting at has the makings of place settings for three.
“You’re Darkwing’s partner,” she says, “right?”
Launchpad’s smile, if possible, brightens. “That’s right,” he says. “Three years and counting.”
“Do you fight crime too?” Gosalyn asks, her confidence buoyed by Launchpad’s eagerness to reply. Darkwing Duck’s fights are rarely captured in their entirely, too much chaos coupled with crazy villains and a very slippery hero did not for good television make. But she thinks she remembers seeing a broad figure at Darkwing’s back once, the sleeve of a leather jacket in the corner of an interview, the suggestion of red hair.
Launchpad laughs. “You bet! Though mostly I just make sure DW actually remembers to eat. Speaking of which —” he pauses to scoop whatever he’s cooking onto a plate and holds it out to her. “Here ya go, taste-tester. What do you think?”
Gosalyn takes the plate. Upon it is a single, slightly misshapen disc made of grated potatoes, fried golden and smelling faintly of garlic and onion. She’s never seen anything like it and it makes her mouth water, as it did upon waking her, and she only makes herself blow on it for a few seconds before she’s trying to take a bite. She pays for her impatience with a burned tongue.
“‘S good!” she gasps, ineffectually trying to fan her mouth. Launchpad fairly beams, and that almost takes the sting out of eating something far too hot. She manages to swallow her bite and resolves to let the rest cool a moment.
“What is this anyway?” she asks curiously.
“Latkes,” Launchpad says, cheerfully turning back to the stove to fry more, “my family’s made ‘em for Hanukkah every year as long as I can remember. I figured, after the last few days you’ve had, you could use a warm dinner.” He glances furtively at the open doorway. “And don’t tell DW I told you this but he wanted to make tonight a little special for you. We haven’t had time to do anything big the last couple years, just light the menorah and eat store bought jelly doughnuts.”
Embarrassment blazes a hot trail through Gosalyn and she puts down her latke just as she was about to take another bite of it.
“He —you didn’t have to do that,” she fumbles out, and the thought that they felt obligated to cheer up sad, stupid orphan Gosalyn makes her feel ill. “You guys are superheroes, I’m just the dumb kid almost got herself frozen to death.”
“Hey,” Launchpad says, not smiling for the first time. He lowers the heat on the stove and takes the seat beside her.
Gosalyn hides her face in her folded arms to avoid his gaze.
“We didn’t have to do anything,” Launchpad says, expression serious but voice remaining gentle. “We wanted to make a big dinner. We wanted to take a break from patrol. For you and for us. We wanted to make tonight special because you’re a special kid and you deserve to be told that more often.”
Tears well up in Gosalyn’s eyes and she brushes them away with a huff. Launchpad continues to watch her expectantly, finally waiting for her response, and she allows a small, pleased smile to slip through.
“I think your latkes are burning,” she says, and laughs longer than she has in weeks when Launchpad leaps away from the table in a panic.
When Darkwing enters the kitchen Launchpad is already stacking the latkes on a plate, hiding the slightly burned ones on the bottom at Gosalyn’s suggestion. The table is set and the covered dishes that she noticed earlier have been revealed, though she doesn’t know what they are ( brisket and kugel, Launchpad says, and promises to explain over dinner). There are sweet smelling candles lit around the kitchen, and Gosalyn feels contentment fill her as surely as the warmth of the stove.
“Darkwing!” Gosalyn exclaims when he steps through the door, but falters when she actually takes in the sight of him. She recognized him on instinct, but she has to do a double take when she realizes it’s the first time she’s ever seen him outside of the costume. He looks simultaneously younger and older, with an open face that the mask couldn’t hide. It did hide the dark circles under his eyes, the lines of stress and suredly exhaustion that accompany them.
He’s also wearing the gaudiest sweater she’s ever seen, a dark blue monstrosity with yellow stripes and a dozen little Stars of David wrapping horizontally around each sleeve and another dozen menoroth trailing along the front of the sweater. On top of the menoroth is an appliqué of a pair of dreidel.
She laughs at the sight of him and claps her hands over her beak a second too late. But Darkwing’s expression brightens, and he approaches her first.
“You got something to say about my fashion choice?” he asks wryly as he kneels before her.
“Not a word,” Gosalyn says firmly, though fails to keep a straight face.
Darkwing rolls his eyes with a chuckle he tries to mask as a sigh. He pushes himself back to his feet and joins Launchpad by the stove.
“LP,” Darkwing greets him simply, smiling softly. He tugs on Launchpad’s arm and Launchpad obliges him by bending over enough for Darkwing to kiss him on the cheek.
“DW,” Launchpad returns, practically grinning. “What’d Director H have to say?”
Darkwing waves a hand dismissively. “Oh you know, the usual gloom and doom. F.O.W.L. is watching our every move, yadda yadda. Oh, and I found your sweater. It was in a filing cabinet for some reason?”
He hands Launchpad a bundle of blue fabric Gosalyn hadn’t noticed he was carrying. Launchpad unfolds it to reveal light blue sweater with little white menoroth and Stars of David near the collar and hem, and across the torso sparkly gold letters read HAPPY CHALLAH DAYS.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for this,” Launchpad exclaims, “I'm gonna go put it on real quick, I’ll be right back!”
He kisses Darkwing briefly before hurrying out of the kitchen.
Darkwing shakes his head, chuckling, as he watches him go. He goes to finish Launchpad’s task of organizing the latkes on their plate.
“Sorry for not getting back sooner,” Darkwing says as he returns to the table to set down the latkes. In the span of a few seconds his expression has become troubled. “Sometimes being a superhero means sitting in long meetings.”
He seems genuinely worried that he’s hurt her feelings or made her think he was ignoring her. It floors Gosalyn to realize that those fears never even crossed her mind. From the moment she woke up in the hospital with Darkwing waiting beside her she knew she could trust him. Maybe even before that, falling asleep in the Thunderquack with violent shivers and his hand on her hair, making a promise to a stranger’s child that he had no obligation to keep.
Gosalyn makes a show of groaning. “Are you seriously ruining being a superhero for me? On the third day of Hanukkah?”
Darkwing barks a laugh, his frown giving way to a relieved smile. “I take it you and Launchpad got along.”
“He’s teaching me how to play dreidel after dinner,” she sniffs, fighting a smile when she resists Darkwing’s attempt to ruffle her hair.
Darkwing laughs again, but it’s a quiet, embarrassed sound rather than the startling, bombastic one she’s grown fond of. He steps away, probably thinking she wants space, but of course that’s not what she wants. All she’s had for five months was space, as foster parents and siblings held her at arm's length because they knew she wouldn’t be around for long.
She doesn’t want Darkwing to start treating her like something temporary.
His back is turned when she hugs him, wrapping her arms around his middle and burying her face against the side of his ridiculous Hanukkah sweater. Darkwing makes a startled sound above her before his arm winds around her shoulders and his hand goes to cradle the back of her head.
“Gosalyn?” he says quietly.
She hugs him even tighter, and wonders how despite all of her wildest imaginings, Darkwing Duck turned out to be better than she could have hoped.
“Can I, um...can I still see you guys when I’m at Mrs. Cavanughs?” she asks, muffled against his sweater. “I know you’re superheroes and you’re busy with fighting bad guys and being in boring meetings —”
“Whoa, hey,” Darkwing says, pulling away to look her in the eyes but Gosalyn Gosalyn refuses to stop hiding her face. “Of course we’ll see each other again! It’d be kind of a jerk move if I just disappeared.”
“It would,” Gosalyn agrees. “I’d tell everyone where your hideout was.”
“Ouch,” he says, chuckling hoarsely. “Remind me never to get on your bad side, kiddo.” His embrace tightens too, like he’s afraid she’s going to be snatched out of his arms.
“We’ll see each other again,” he says once more. “I promise, Gosalyn.”
There will be a day in the future when Gosalyn has a home and family dinners like she used to, but also not. It won’t be her grandfather on the other side of the table, pointing out constellations, singing her lullabies. Instead there will be two, and though their love with be just as fierce, it will be different. There will be more danger and the threat shadows hold will be real, not just a child’s shapeless fears of the dark. But there will also be flights above a glittering city in a craft of her father’s own design. There will be bumps and cuts and bruises and her dad bandaging them and chastising her and kissing her on the forehead just before he grounds her for a week.
But that day is not today.
Today Gosalyn stands in a kitchen warmed by good food and Darkwing’s embrace, secure in the knowledge that she is safe, and it is enough.
For now, it’s enough.