Chapter Text
Grandma says don’t go near the ocean, boys, it’s dangerous by the docks and they know she’s being serious because Great Uncle Scrooge kept on drinking his watered down tea and didn’t give them that sly smile that meant adventure or mischief or fun. Instead he just looked… sorta sad.
There’s only three rooms in the entire mansion they’re not allowed inside. One is Great Uncle Scrooge’s office, too many important papers and business things for little boys to play in, and the other two are bedrooms in the East wing, just down the hall from Great Uncle Scrooge’s own bedroom. They’re an unsightly thing, in the pristine of the mansion, locked tight and haphazardly (desperately) boarded up so even Huey’s affinity for lock-picking wasn’t enough.
Sometimes, when Louie wakes up very early or hasn’t slept at all and sits outside Great Uncle's room very quietly, watching the sunrise through the curtains in the big window at the very end of that hallway (the best vantage point other that the roof,) just left of those strange and forbidden rooms, he’ll watch Great Uncle Scrooge come out of his room. He’ll be bleary and hazy with sleep, the kind of tired where you forget things you should have remembered, and automatically go to those doors, knuckles stopping just short of tapp tapping the wooden slats nailed to the frames. He stands there for a long moment, and it gives Louie the chance to slowly escape.
(Once, when they were younger and believed, like children do, that there was something lurking in those rooms, and on one of the rare occasions Grandma brought them over to visit, years before they’d all moved in permanently, Dewey had gathered all his bravery and drawn close, peeking through the gaps in the wood-
“The door closest to the window,” he’d said, “was very white. The door next to it- the door knob was broken.”
“And?” Huey asked, leaning forward, while Louie clung to him.
“And it was open, just a crack. I could see inside.”
“What did you see?” Louie asked, eyes wide.
“Nothing.” Dewey admits, “I was too scared- but the walls, they were blue.”
They grow out of that fear, eventually, but next time they go to inspect the doors, the doorknob is still broken, but someone must have stuck something through the gaps around the boards and shut it, firmly.)
It’s strange, the way even Miss Beakley will guide them away from those doors if their play strays too close. They were allowed in all the other bedrooms, provided they were polite- Louie was particularly fond of Cousin Gladstone’s room, all of his fancy smelling colognes and sleep comfort mattress and perfectly plush and soft blankets, the best place to nap since Cousin Gladstone never stayed in the mansion. Cousin Fethrys room had empty glass tanks where he used to keep lizards and fish and tarantulas, books upon books of cryptozoology, a hand-made model of the solar system strung up that drove Huey nuts because it was wrong- but they were allowed in. Why weren’t they allowed in their own mothers? And why weren’t they allowed in-
(“You know everything?” Louie asked, peering at the girls cork board, red string tied around the photo she’d just snapped of him and his siblings and looped around Great Uncle Scrooge’s own pin, a mysterious gap where there was no picture of their mom.
Webbigail Vanderquack hummed, “About Scrooge McDuck? I’m the expert.”
“Do you know what the rooms look like? On the inside?” He asks, turning from the board, “Couldn’t we get there through the vents?”
Webby is already shaking her head no, “the vents are boarded too- the windows are the same.” She adds, before Dewey can ask.
Huey brushes his finger over the red string, “Do you know what happened?”
Webby looks more apologetic this time, when she shakes her head.
“Do you still have those nerf guns?”)
Dewey is coloring with crayons. He was too old for those now, but it was nice sometimes- he draws a lighthouse, lopsided on one side not on purpose, garish yellow light cutting across the white paper, purple-blue ocean waves because he’d used the true blue all up in different drawing long ago.
“What are you drawing?” Great Uncle Scrooge asks, walking into the kitchen, headed towards the stove.
“The ocean.” Dewey says, and Great Uncle Scrooge’s hands still on the teapot.
There’s a man who the triplets all collectively call The Fisherman. He sells jars of honey with honeycomb still inside and strawberries at the farmers market, when they were in season.
“Why do you call him The Fisherman? He’s not selling any fish.” Webby asks while Grandma haggles with a different vendor over tomato prices, voice not quite low enough for The Fisherman not to overhear.
“You don’t sell fish at a farmers market.” Louie informed her, “There’s like, fish markets or something.”
“He works at the dock, and ‘The Fisherman’ sounds way cooler than ‘The Farmer.’” Huey picks up a jar of honey and checks the price.
“Or you could always just call me by my name?” The Fisherman, Panchito, crosses his arms, smiling.
Webby stands in her tiptoes to see everything on the table, “Where’s Jose today?”
“Ah,” Panchito waves his hand, “he is doing some shopping- The holiday season is coming, and he likes for it to be a surprise.”
“Are you going to get him something nice too?”
Panchito hums, “Yes, I think so. He has had his eye on a particular ring for far too long now…”
Panchito and Jose are the kids favorite part of the Farmers market. Panchito works at the docks on a small boat, and Jose is a Bartender in the evening and a Gardener and a beekeeper in the day- once their harvest comes to fruition they take what they like and bring the rest to sell here. Most of the time Jose come alone to set up, and once Panchito finishes his work on the docks he come down to mingle and help clean up, it was a rare exception today.
Uncle Panchito always wore his work clothes to the Farmers market, it was why the triplets had given him that silly nickname- rubber boots, overalls, raincoats. Today, though, he’d come straight to the market to take over for Jose, so he was dressed down- red pants, an open front jacket, empty holsters on his hips.
Sometimes, if they were lucky, Panchito or Jose would talk about their mom, they’d both known her- but if they were extra Lucky, Gladstone lucky, they’d talk about their-
“What’s the ocean like, Panchito?” Dewey asks. The others stop. Dewey is the bravest, the boldest, and Huey and Louie stayed very very still to listen to the answer.
Panchito freezes too, pauses for a long moment, before moving to readjust the honey jars that don’t need to to be readjusted, “it is… very beautiful.” He says.
“Grandma says the ocean is dangerous.” Huey helps him straighten them out.
Panchito is quiet for a very long moment, “Your Mother, she was a pilot, you know- but your Uncle-“ Panchito smiles and it’s brittle around the edges, “He was a sailor.”
Webby carefully notes the past tense. They all take the information (a sailor-) and tuck it away quietly, a new and carefully given piece of knowledge on a man so hidden from their life.
“And the ocean is dangerous, it is unforgiving, you must be careful. Even on the shore, you must be careful. Your Uncle was so careful.”
“Did you love him?” Louie asks, eyes sharp on the fragility of Panchitos posture, the sadness in the shine of his eyes.
“We did.” He smiles, and it’s softer around the edges.
“Did what?” Grandma duck asks coming up behind them, holding a bag of tomatoes and a victorious smile.
“I promised the kids a free jar of honey next time they were all here! Just a little gift for my favorite customers.” Panchito answers brightly, spinning around to face her, all signs of mourning gone.
Grandma scoffs, teasing, “customers? More like swindlers! They’ve never paid for a damn thing from you.” She pointed out, no heat behind it, a curling smile on her bill.
“Ah call it a family discount, one hundred percent off.” He shrugged.
“Well, at least let me buy some strawberries then, and I’ll bake a pie.”
Panchito grabbed a jar of honey and a basket of strawberries, bagging them up for her, and of course he insisted she didn’t pay. Family discount.
If only.
(“Why did you stay?” Daisy had asked once, standing on the stable part of the docks, careful not to let her heels slip between the spaces in the wood.
He steps away from the boat, walks across to the end of the dock and she follows him for the privacy. They look out across the saltwater. “Could you leave them?” He says.
Daisy is quiet for a long time, “they don’t talk about him anymore, Scrooge won’t even say his name. At least they know about their Mom, but Donald...”
Panchito had bought Jose’s ring a long time ago, and two matching ones to go with it.)
“Have you ever been to the ocean?”
Webby stirred her cereal, “I was barely allowed to leave the house before you guys came along.”
“Let’s go.” Huey shoves his bowl away, standing up.
And they do. They scrounge and save all their meager allowances, doing extra chores around the mansion for pocket change. And when they have enough, they buy four bus tickets, round trip. Launchpad would have been faster, a bit more dangerous, and free- but they couldn’t have even the slightest chance of anyone in their family finding out. They would forbid them, and all will the same sadness and avoidance and secrets.
No one bats and eye when they head out the door to Funzos, and no one bats an eye when they get on the bus either. They sit quietly, even Webby and Dewey only fidget in their seats, until the bus stops at the edge of the shore. They’re not near the docks, either, but by the tourist section- the consumer beaches. They’re the only ones who get off. It’s a chilly autumn, closer to winter, and no one sits on the beach at this time of year.
The concrete is cold, the sand is colder. The smell of the saltwater clings to their beaks, foreign, and the wind blows sand into the spaces between their feathers. They trek out, slowly, to the shore. The beach goes on for miles in one direction, a lighthouse just out miles down the beach where the sand turns into rocks and solid ground, the docks just past that. In the other direction it’s more sand and beaches, before rocks and caves crawl up out of the water.
They stand there for a long time, and then when they’re done standing they sit. Webby and Huey go for a drink run, bringing back cans of Pep and little snack bags of potato chips.
“This has been completely underwhelming.” Louie says finally.
“But we are breaking the rules,” Huey points out, “that’s exciting.”
“I wonder why Mr. McDuck and Ms. Duck are so weird about the ocean. Nothings happened to us.”
“Yet.”
There’s another long pause.
There’s a splash in the water, and they all snap to it, eyes wide.
Huey stands, “What was that? Is there someone out there, in the water?”
“It’s freezing out!” Webby stands too, the others follow, “It’s way too cold for anyone to be swimming!”
Dewey hurries towards the water, the others keeping up, “Should we help?”
“What if it's not a person?”
“What else could it be?”
“A shark, for all we know!” Louie defends, “Or a squid! Or one of those fish with all the teeth and the light on its head!”
“An Anglerfish?” Webby quirks her head.
Huey pulls the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook out of his hat, flipping through the pages, “You don’t have to worry about those up here, they’re deep sea creatures. They can live anywhere thats too low pressure.”
“I haven't heard another splash, and I don't see anyone else here, it probably was just a big fish or something,” scanning the water, louie is the first to stop walking.
Dewey is the last- he stops right at the water's edge, straining to hear, to see, “Is anyone out there?” He calls, voice almost swallowed by the crash of waves. Theres is no response, only dark water and darker shapes underneath its mass. The waving of seaweed or trash or something hungry undulating beneath the tide.
The water rushes up towards him, a particularly powerful wave exploding far off from the shore, it surges forward from the force of it, crawling up the sand to touch his toes- his feet fly out from underneath him, Dewey shouts-
“What are you kids doing out here?” Cousin Gladstone almost snarls, tearing him away from the waters edge, staring intently at something just outside of reach, staring at the part of the beach where the water has carved away the sand and the floor begins to slope deeper.
He spins around, still holding Dewey by his upper arms, “You know it’s dangerous- you’re lucky I got here when I did!” He sets Dewey down, not gently but not unkind either, keeping a hold of his arm, “Come on, I am driving you home right now.”
They’d never seen Cousin Gladstone truly angry, not the way he was now, white-knuckling the steering wheel, grinding his teeth, line of tension taut around his shoulders. They ride home is silent, even Louie keeps his beak shut.
“I’m sorry.” Huey says finally, when they’re only fifteen minutes away from home, “We didn’t mean to make you angry.”
Gladstone pulls over. He stares straight ahead for a long moment, takes a shuddery sort of breath. The kids all look at each other nervously. He twists in his seat to face them- they all start to realize there’s tears in his eyes.
“I’m not angry,” he says, voice shaking on the last word before stealing again, “I was afraid.” he pauses for a long moment, “Okay and maybe a little angry, you all know how dangerous the ocean is- and you came out, alone, in the middle of November? And i can trust you didn’t tell anyone what you were doing either? Do you know how irresponsible that is?”
He reaches up to rub the bridge of his beak, as if quelling a headache, and then he turns away and cracks a small smile, “God, i’m starting to sound like you, D-man.”
“Who?” Louie ventures and Gladstone jerks, as if he’s been struck.
“I…” He swallows, “Uncle Scrooge and I will tell you, okay? We’ll both tell you when we get back to the mansion. I think it’s time we stopped hiding everything.
(Except that he doesn’t. They get home, the kids are grounded for three weeks and sent to bed early, and when they sit by the vents they can hear Cousin Gladstone and Great Uncle Scrooge arguing- they cant make out the words, but they can hear how loud they are, how angry they are.
Gladstone leaves in the middle of the night.
Webby comes down for a glass of water and finds him standing in the kitchen, staring out the window, “Hello Mr. Gander.” She says, stepping around him to get a cup.
He jumps at her voice, smiling, “Good morning Webs.”
“It’s the middle of the night.” She points out, turning the faucet on, “Did your talk with Mr. McDuck go okay?”
The smile fades, “No, it did not. Grandma agrees with him, im out voted. Looks like you’ll have to wait until you’re older.”
“What’s the big deal, anyway?” She frowns, “We go on death defying adventures every other week.”
“The ocean is different. You don’t understand- it's dangerous to be in the water.”
Webby frowns, “but you were, when you grabbed Dewey, and you weren’t in danger. The water wasn’t even that deep.”
Gladstone smiles vacantly, “I’m sure Uncle Scrooge will tell you when you’re older.”
Webby sighs, “I just hate all the secrets, you know?” She finishes her drink, setting the cup in the sink, “I’ll see you in the morning Mr. Gander!”
“Goodnight, Webby! Sweet dreams!” He calls after her.)
The streetlights are on, the gap between the lights throwing the cab of his car into blackness, jarring in its emptiness. There is music playing, softly. Gladstone drives on silently. No cops pull him over for speeding, no twigs or branches block his way.
The sand is colder now, without the sun, and the water is black.
His luck has run out, it seems.
Gladstone was known to disappear, to be whisked away on one free trip after another and not be bother to call, especially if he and Great Uncle Scrooge were having an argument.
There’s a green car abandoned in a no park zone, in front of the beach. It mysteriously never gets towed.