Disclaimer: The Mighty Ducks and all other Disney characters do not belong to me and I make nothing off of this story.

A/N: We're on the home stretch people and I am so grateful that you have stuck by me all this time. By the way – Sip Poker is not spelled wrong. They are not Stripping every time they lose, they are Sipping. You also have to drink when you are caught bluffing. It's hilarious!

Chapter 28

Phil looked through the windscreen with mounting apprehension. He could see a large crowd of reporters gathered in front of the Pond and he wondered who had leaked his release to them. Tony's driver pulled up alongside them and turned to him:

"There you go, safe and sound."

"Until I step out you mean." Quipped Phil. "It looks like a feeding frenzy out there."

"I think you're going to have an escort." Said the driver pointing behind Phil.

He turned to see Wildwing coming towards the car. He was surprised to see the rest of the team were waiting on the steps. They were all dressed in civilian clothes and Wing wasn't wearing the Mask, which was another surprise to him. Wing opened the door and he stepped out. Immediately the questions started and Wing said:

"Say nothing until we get up top there."

He propelled Phil though the mass of people and up the steps where he took a place behind a stand that was bristling with microphones. Phil stood a little behind him, astonished to see Wing willingly talk to the press.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the press," he began.

The seething mass of curious humanity quieted down and he continued.

"I would like to officially announce that Phil has been proven innocent and all charges against him have been dropped. As it is a Friday today, he will be resuming his duties as our manager as of the next week, giving him a chance to rest up after the terrible ordeal that he has been through in the last few days. I ask you please to refrain from harassing him in this time period, so I would like to give you the opportunity now to ask any questions that you might have."

The reporters stumbled over one another to get their question in first and Wing pointed at the closest one.

"How did Mr. Palmfeather get cleared?"

"An anonymous tip came through to us."

"Did it have anything to do with the strange girl that was seen with you guys on several occasions?"

"She is just a friend of Phil's that happened to arrive when this started."

"Is it true that Mr. Palmfeather was framed by his partner?"

"We cannot comment on that matter at this time."

This was like waving a red rag at a bull and the press surged forward, shouting more questions. Before it could get out of control, Wildwing held up his hands and said:

"Okay, we have to wrap this up now. Thank you for coming."

He turned his back on them, despite them still shouting questions at him and hustled the team through the doors into the pond. Grin locked the doors behind them and then Wing breathed a huge sigh of relief.

"I am so glad that that's over with!"

"Hey, uh, guys..." began Phil, but Wing held up a hand and said:

"Hold onto that thought Phil, we have to go and check on something down below. Come with us and we'll talk there."

They made their way towards the elevator but instead of boarding it, Wing made a left and trotted down the corridor. A confused Phil followed, not sure what was going on. His confusion evaporated when they turned another corner and he was confronted with the banner and his friends. Willy picked up a tray and handed round glasses of champagne and then he raised his glass and said:

"To Phil's return."

They all clinked glasses and drank. Then Dive started the chant of: speech!

Phil looked around and cleared his throat.

"I just want to say thank you to you guys, for believing in me when no one else did. You stuck by me and that means more to me than any amount of money"

He raised his glass and said:

"To my friends."

Again they clinked their glasses and Phil looked at each and every person there but his gaze lingered the longest on Red. He opened his mouth to speak but she shook her head, winked and mouthed the word: later.

Suddenly the buzzer from the food warmer went off and Dive and Duke shouted in unison:

"Food!"

That started the party in earnest and Dive soon had the music going while Tanya plied Phil with a plate of food.

"You probably didn't eat well there." she insisted. "Look, you're thinner already."

"Okay." He accepted the heaping plate and began to eat. He sat himself down in the corner and unobtrusively observed the team. Tanya had wandered away and gone to stand by Grin, who was also getting some food. She slid an arm around his back and he looked down at her and popped a canapé into her mouth.

Phil watched the by-play incredulously and wondered what else had changed while he was out of the loop. He turned his attention to Wing who was sitting talking quietly to Mal. He knew that those two were attracted to each other and he wondered who would bend first.

Dive was busy flicking through his CD collection with Willy and Duke was conspicuously absent. He looked around for him and spotted him going towards the other end of the room with two plates of food. Looking past him, he could see Red straddling a chair, her arms folded over the back and her head resting on them. Like him, she had been watching from a distance. She looked up at Duke as he neared with the food but he was too far away to hear what they were saying.

Red looked up as Duke approached with two plates of food and she raised an eyebrow and said:

"Glad to see you've got an appetite."

"Ha ha." He smirked. "One of these is for you. Here."

He held the plate out to her and she eyed it warily before taking it. She didn't have an appetite but she didn't want to hurt Duke's feelings, since he had made an effort to get it for her.

As he sat next to her, she was having a silent conversation with herself.

Why would I care about hurting his feelings? How did that happen?

Maybe it's time you started to care about someone else. A little voice suggested.

Immediately she squashed that thought and firmly told herself:

No! You are not going to let him get under your skin. Letting him would be dangerous and stupid.

The irritating voice came back with:

What would it matter if you admitted that you liked him, the time is nearly up anyway and then nothing matters.

It would hurt him. To let him in and then do that, I won't do that.

So you do feel something for him. The little voice said smugly.

Aarrrgh! Shut up!

Red huffed out a sigh, thoroughly disgusted with herself and then turned to face Duke as he spoke to her.

"You okay there?"

"Yeah, I'm just glad that this is almost over."

"Almost?"

"Just a few loose ends to tie up."

"One of them being Jack and the gang?"

Red sat quiet for a moment, thinking on the choices that she had made regarding Jack and then nodded.

"Yeah. There are a few issues that I have to clear up with Jack."

"About his brother?"

Red turned to look at Duke and asked:

"Nosey aren't you?"

"Just curious." He said mildly.

"Yeah it's about his brother. But I'll tell you guys the whole thing in the morning, I don't think my crap is what anyone wants to hear tonight."

Duke was about to tell her that her past wasn't crap when they were interrupted by Klegghorn, who had arrived late.

"I, uh, um..." he started to stammer.

"Save it." She said shortly. "I'll be outta your hair in a few days."

She turned her back on him and continued to pick at the food that Duke had brought her. Klegghorn glared at her back for a moment and then stomped away. Duke chuckled and she looked at him.

"What?"

"You really don't like him do you?"

"He's a good cop and a jerk at the same time and we just don't get along."

"How come?"

"Tomorrow." She groaned. "Can't we just have fun tonight?"

Duke pretended to be shocked and gasped:

"Fun! You actually want to have fun?"

"Ha ha." She said, throwing a fake punch his way.

He dodged and decided to make the most of her strangely pleasant mood. He looked her up and down and asked:

"Nice jeans, what did you fight with?"

She looked at the pants she had borrowed from Willy's closet and had to agree, it did look like she'd been in a fight with something. They were light blue and had horizontal rips in the front, all the way down the leg. Although they were from Willy's thinner days, they still rode low on her hips. She had teamed them with a T-shirt that advertised an obscure brand of vodka, hiding the skin that peeked out from the waist.

"They're from Willy's younger years, when he was in a band." She explained. "Its not like I have any of my clothes y'know."

Duke was puzzled for a second and then remembered that she had lost everything in the fire and the clothes that she had been wearing that day, were damaged beyond reason. A guilty flush spread across his face and she spotted it.

"Hey," she said quietly. "I needed a new wardrobe anyway."

He grinned, quickly got to his feet and held out a hand to her and said:

"C'mon, lets go see if we can pester Dive."

As she stood up, Red asked:

"Why would we want to do that?"

"Well, ya see..."

As they walked towards Dive, he explained the pranks that they had played on each other. Dive had seen them coming and was listening to the conversation as they approached. He grinned when he realized that he could tell Red a few of Duke's less elegant moments. The two mallards soon had her laughing and smiling as they regaled her with numerous stories.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Mal and Wing were oblivious to the rest of the room. They were deep in conversation about the things that they liked about earth.

"I mean," said Mal. "It's not Puckworld, but there are a few nice things here. I don't find the place so bad."

"Yeah, it's grown on me too but the one thing that I miss is the snow." Said Wing pensively. "I'm sure you do."

"Yeah." She sighed. "It's a little warm here but it's better than limbo. Besides, there are colder places here that we can visit in the off season."

Wing nodded and then noticed her cup was empty. He stood up and picked it up along with his own. Mal looked up at him and he could feel himself drowning in her liquid eyes.

"You going to get refills?" she asked.

Instead of the positive answer that he intended to give her, Wing lost control of his tongue and was horrified to hear himself blurt out:

"Go on a date with me Mal."

Mallory was stunned, she had never expected Wing to be so forthright and by the expression on his face, he didn't expect it either. She raised an eyebrow and asked:

"Excuse me?"

Wing knew that it was too late to retract his words and in a way, he was relieved to finally get his feelings out in the open. He had a chance at this and he wasn't going to blow it by backing down. He sat down again and reached across the table for her hand.

"Just one date Mal, please." He asked earnestly. "If it doesn't work between us, then we lost nothing."

"Nothing to lose but everything to gain." She whispered. "It's a date."

They sat and stared into each other's eyes, the empty cups, the party and everything around them a blur.

Mal looked into his honest eyes and knew that she couldn't wait for a date that they hadn't made yet, she couldn't wait anymore. She leaned across the table towards him and found that he was already meeting her halfway. Their beaks locked together and they left the world behind them.

Phil noticed it and walked over to Dive, Duke and Red and said to them:

"Have you guys noticed that?"

They looked at the engrossed pair and then Duke said in an amused voice:

"I wonder what took him so long. He's been mooning over her for months."

Dive snuck up to them and waited for them to come up for air. When they broke apart, he smacked Wing on the back and said:

"Way to go big bro, you have good taste."

Wing groaned and Mal hid her face in her hands as it turned nearly the same colour as Red's hair. Then she looked up and asked:

"What do you mean, good taste? He has great taste!"

They all laughed at the double meaning of that sentence.

By an unspoken agreement, the team gathered together with the five humans around the main table and started to put the pieces together.

"What happened with Magnus?" asked Phil. "He was my friend."

"Was." Said Red sourly. Money has a funny way of changing people and not always for the better."

"But how did he do it?" asked Wing.

"It's quite complicated but the easiest way to explain it is think of it this way, every time Phil bought something from Icetech for you guys, he signed an invoice. Now what they were doing is making fake invoices from signed copies and submitting them to the accounts department. Since they were signed by Phil, they passed them for payment. When Icetechs accountants saw the deposits, they tried to allocate the money and then Magnus would call them and say that they had overpaid them and that they could return the money to a 'holding account'."

"That was actually his account." Said Duke, catching on.

"Exactly." She nodded. "As far as the Pond's accountants were concerned, they had paid all the invoices and Icetech's accountants were happy since they were paid."

"But how did it go wrong?" asked Wing.

"A new clerk was hired a few months ago and she noticed that a few of the accounts were a little untidy. She requested copy invoices from Icetech, who gladly supplied them and then she couldn't make the figures match up, since they supplied her with the real ones."

"So she took it to Monica who took it to Magnus who pinned it on Phil." Said Mal.

"The financial gain I can understand," said Duke. "But why Icetech?"

"Magnus is a silent partner of the company and owns a substantial amount of stock. He promised to sign it over to the owner, Mike, if he went along with the embezzlement."

"Why didn't he just sell the shares legally?" asked a very confused Mal.

"Tax." Said Tony. "He would have to pay a substantial amount of tax if he sold the shares on the market. So he decided to embezzle what they were worth to avoid the taxes."

They sat quiet for a moment, digesting this information and trying not to ask the question that was buzzing in all of their heads. Eventually Dive's curiosity won out and he asked:

"So how did you figure it out?"

Red gave a pointed look at Klegghorn and said:

"Let's just say that I made a few educated guesses. Then it was all up to Tony and his gang."

"How educated?" asked Wing.

"I used to work for Tony." She said, irritation showing in her voice. "Look, I thought that we could do 'show and tell' tomorrow. I'm sure that none of us want to spoil the party by talking about the downer that is my life."

"Sure," agreed Wing. "Tomorrow the facts, tonight, the fun."

Red raised her glass and said with a grin:

"I'll drink to that."

The tension dissolved and soon they were talking nonsense and laughing and having a good time. While in a conversation with Wing about autographing bodyparts, Phil let out a huge yawn. Wing smiled and looked at the clock and then did a classic double take.

"Holy cow!" he exclaimed. "It's after four in the morning."

That brought everything to a sudden stop and tired faces looked around at each other. Dive and Tony were slightly plastered since they had been playing Sip Poker with Willy and Duke. Red had been playing referee so she was still fine. Tanya was sleeping against Grin's shoulder while he and Mal were talking. Klegghorn had left a while ago.

Red came over to Phil and said:

"I'll see you tomorrow. If you don't want to hear what..."

He cut her off by saying:

"I'm ready to hear the whole story. Please, let me be there for you."

"Thanks." She said softly, not wanting him to see how grateful she was that he would be there when she told her story to the others. They joined the team as they surveyed the remnants of the party. Silently and unanimously, they decided that clean up could wait until the next day. Wearily, they staggered towards the door and Duke turned to Red and asked:

"Where are you gonna stay now?"

"I'm going to persuade Willy to loan me his couch for a few nights." She said with a shrug. "I mean, I already raided his closet, what's a sofa between friends?"

"Why don't you stay at Phil's place?" asked Wing. "Surely it would be more comfortable?"

Red pulled a face and said:

"Comfortable maybe, but not very secure. I'm a little too popular with the wrong crowd remember."

"True," He agreed. "I just wanted to make sure that you were safe. Let us know if there's anything we can do for you."

Red could feel his genuine concern for her wellbeing and she reacted as she always did, by pushing them away.

"Why," she said sharply. "Just because I yanked Phil out of trouble doesn't mean you owe me anything."

She turned on her heel and walked down the hallway, not waiting for Willy and Tony. The two men bid the team a hasty goodnight and dashed away, catching up with Red. They were soon out of sight.

The team and Willy descended down to the base where they went straight to bed without any more conversations. Soon, everyone was fast asleep, all except one. Duke was lying in the darkness, thinking.

Duke's thoughts:

As soon as one us show concern, she hardens up and pushes them away. Why? What makes her resist emotional connections? It's like she tries to make sure that the only thing people feel about her is dislike and distrust.

He carried on with his musing until sleep overtook him and he drifted away into dreamland.

At Willy's apartment, Red was sitting on the sofa, listening to Willy's steady breathing. She had not even attempted sleep, knowing full well that it would be unobtainable. She wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her head on her knees. As she always did with people, she had tried to keep them at arms length but this time, they had managed to put a few cracks in the wall that she had around her and it was making her uncomfortable. She was deep in her thoughts and soon drifted into a light daze, where she had the strangest dream.

RED'S DREAM:

She was still sitting on the sofa when the front door opened and someone stepped into the room. As they came out of the shadows, she wasn't surprised to see herself. She sat on the sofa's other end and stared at herself.

"So, I guess you're here to try and talk me out of it." She snapped.

"Damn skippy I am." Said Red2. "This isn't a good idea and you know it."

"What else am I supposed to do?"

"What about the police?" asked Red2. "Surely they can put him away and then he can't touch Phil any more."

"You're grasping at straws. You know that even in the joint, Jack can still reach out and hurt Phil."

"But this?" she said plaintively. "How does this solve the matter?"

"It's permanent. When it's all over, then he wont be a threat anymore."

"Yeah well, you don't get more permanent than dead." Snapped Red2.

"I don't hear you coming up with anything better y'know."

"I just don't think that it will stop him."

"As twisted as he is, he sticks to his word." Insisted Red.

"You don't know that!" shouted Red2. "You're just hoping that he will. What if you're wrong?"

"I'm not wrong!" yelled Red.

"You're running!" screamed Red2. "You don't want to admit that you might actually feel something for these people and this is an easy way out for you."

"Easy?" yelled Red. "How do you call death easy?"

"For you, dying is easier than living." Said Red2. "It won't hurt as much."

"How do you know? You don't know me!"

"I am you!"

Red regarded herself for a long moment and then said:

"Okay, if you're so smart, give me one good reason why I deserve to live."

Red2 sat and looked at her hands and noticed that they were covered in blood. Red looked down and saw it as well and then looked sadly at Red2 and said:

"You're my conscience and even you know I have their blood on my hands. You know I'm right."

Red2 could feel tears welling up and streaming down her face. She was right, the blood was there, it had always been there and no amount of scrubbing would wash it off. Not even her tears had managed to fade the crimson stains. She looked into the eyes of Red and could see the despair that she herself felt. Silently, they reached out and grasped hands and Red2 faded and merged with Red until there was only one young woman on the sofa, staring at her bloodied hands.

Red jerked awake and lifted her hands. They were clean, unstained.

"Only on the outside." She said out loud.

She uncurled off of the sofa and went to the small kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee. She looked at the clock and saw that it was nearly eight. She sat at the dining table and unbandaged her hands, determined to have a shower before Willy got up. She succeeded too.

Later that day, after making a call to Grin's cell to avoid eves-dropping press, the team came to the Rusty Nail. Willy was busy in the kitchen, making lunch while they were sitting around one of the bigger tables, talking quietly. Red was sitting cross legged on the bar, watching. Duke took a hard look at her and saw that she was pale and had dark smudges under her eyes. He came over to her and asked:

"Rough night?"

"Yeah. I didn't sleep much."

"You don't have to do this now y'know."

"Yeah," she said wryly. "I do."

Looking at the rest of the team and Phil, she called out loudly:

"Gather round boys and girls, it's story time."