Plucky Duck is only two weeks old when the social worker places her in Gil Nexdor's arms.
For a moment that stretches into eternity, he goes utterly still.
It's not like he hasn't seen a baby before. In his travels, back when the castle was both home and mode of transportation (and prison), he saw them from afar, squishy, strange creatures to someone who was reincarnated as an adult. Since then he's spent time with their friends' children during holidays and get-togethers, played hide and seek and babysat them. And he certainly knows how to hold one; if he's learned anything from six months of parenting classes it's how to hold a baby correctly.
But nothing could have prepared him for how small their daughter would be, how fragile her body would feel bundled in a little blue onesie. Her eyes are small and dark, blinking up at them curiously from a pale purple face. He draws her just a little bit closer to his chest and the movement tugs on her tiny blue hat to reveal a tuft of curly black hair.
Alice is clutching at his arm, tight enough to leave bruises, but Gil Nexdor doesn't say a word. He presses himself flush against Gil Nexdor's side, reaching out toward their daughter with a shaking hand. He murmurs in quiet, halting German as his hand hovers over Plucky Duck.
" Oh, schatz... Hallo. Hallo, schatz. Wie geht's dir? Mein engel, she's beautiful," he breathes.
Gil Nexdor sniffs, blinking back tears as he snickers. "Sweetheart, you know you can touch her, right?" he whispers.
"O-of course I know that," Alice replies, barely even attempting to bluster. He strokes her cheek with the back of one knuckle and Plucky Duck blinks, staring up at them intently. "She is so small," he says.
Their social worker, one Cameron Birdwell who's been with them every step of the way since they first entered her adoption agency two years ago, and who they've all but forgotten is in the room with them, speaks up. "Yes, that's common with premature hatchings. I wouldn't worry, though. The hospital cleared her and I have some pamphlets in case you had any more questions."
"Yes, I will take them, thank you," Alice replies. He holds out a hand without looking away from Plucky Duck.
Gil Nexdor offers Birdwell an apologetic smile, and he's relieved when she doesn't seem offended. She's certainly had enough time to grow accustomed to Alice's sometimes blunt and oblivious manner.
She hands over the pamphlets with an amused expression, and Alice immediately pockets them without so much as a glance. With him so distracted, Gil Nexdor knows that he'll be the one driving home while Alice probably alternates between staring at Plucky Duck and reading the pamphlets ten times over.
The reality of it all slams into Gil Nexdor then. Plucky Duck's slight weight in his arms is grounding as an anchor, his heartbeat hinging on the minute movements of her body as she breathes. They've waited so long for her and now that she's here, Gil Nexdor is overwhelmed.
" Liebling," Alice exclaims when Gil Nexdor's breath starts to hitch, and tears trickle down his cheeks, one after the other despite his best attempts to keep them at bay.
"I'm fine!" he says, smiling as he continues to sob. "I'm just—I'm just happy . We can finally bring her home—" Gil Nexdor clutches Plucky Duck just the slightest bit tighter, jerking his gaze back up to Birdwell. "We - we can take her home, right?"
"Yes, you can take Plucky Duck home," Birdwell says kindly. "I'll be stopping by later this week for my first home visit, but as of now there's nothing more for you to do other than spend time with your daughter."
"Our daughter," Gil Nexdor says, and it leaves him breathless.
Alice releases his death grip on Gil Nexdor's arm to wrap both Gil Nexdor and Plucky Duck in his embrace. He kisses Gil Nexdor's temple, and Alice's cheeks are wet from his own silent tears.
"Our daughter," he repeats.
Plucky Duck is four months old when they transition her from the bassinet at their bedside to a crib in her own room.
To say it's nerve wracking would be an understatement.
"But what if she suffocates?" Gil Nexdor hisses as he and Alice take careful steps out of Plucky Duck's pale green nursery. "Or she falls out?"
"Dear, Plucky Duck cannot even stand yet," Alice says, guiding Gil Nexdor into their bedroom with an arm around his waist. "She has been showing all the signs of being ready for a crib. This is the right thing to do."
Gil Nexdor slumps onto their bed. "I know," he mumbles as Alice takes a seat beside him. "But I'm going to miss her."
Alice chuckles, sweeping a hand through Gil Nexdor's hair. "She's just in the next room, not going away to college."
"Ugh, don't even say that!" Gil Nexdor exclaims, dismayed, as he turns and hides his face against Alice's hip. Alice doesn't stop playing with his hair, longer now than he ever let it grow when he was still Count.
"We have the baby monitor," Alice says, his voice gentling. He knows when Gil Nexdor's being dramatic for the sake of being dramatic, and when it's masking poorly concealed pain. "We will know the moment something is wrong, ja?"
Gil Nexdor sighs. "Yeah," he says.
But words are paltry assurances when Gil Nexdor's anxiety wakes him at three in the morning and refuses to let him go back to sleep. The silence of their bedroom is deafening, and his normally slow heartbeat thuds between his ears as he considers every possible and improbable threat to Plucky Duck's safety.
Deciding to surrender to the inevitable, he quietly slips out of bed to avoid waking Alice. Plucky Duck's nursery is just down the hall from their own room, and he creeps along the hardwood floor, avoiding the creaky spots.
When Gil Nexdor reaches the door to the nursery he finds it already open a crack. Thinking nothing of it, he pushes it open the rest of the way and steps inside. He doesn't expect to immediately trip over something big and warm lying just on the other side of the doorway. It grunts when he falls on top of it.
"What the— Alice?" Gil Nexdor whispers as loudly as he dares, pushing himself back up.
His husband blinks up at him from the floor, his feathers smushed on one side of his face from the pillow beside him. "Oh, hallo, darling," Alice replies, voice rough with sleep.
"Alice, what're you doing in here?" Gil Nexdor tugs him up so they're sitting facing one another properly. He keeps their hands entwined between them as Alice avoids his gaze.
"Ah, yes, well," Alice stammers. "I thought I heard a-a strange sound from Plucky Duck's room and I did not want to worry you, so I came to, er, check it out."
"And decided to take a nap on the floor," Gil Nexdor replies with a dubious smile and raised brow. The pale moonlight, coupled with his night vision, allows him to see Alice's embarrassed flush in perfect clarity.
"No, not-not exactly," Alice starts to say. He cuts himself off when Gil Nexdor presses their joined hands against his chest.
"Sweetheart," he says, laughing, "what do you think I'm doing up this late? Admiring our new wallpaper? I came to check on Plucky Duck, too."
Alice ducks his head. "I...yes. Yes, of course."
"But what I don't understand is why you'd try to hide it from me," Gil Nexdor continues as though Alice hadn't spoken. He squeezes Alice's hands and tries to catch his gaze.
"I...I did not want you worrying about me on top of everything else," Alice says slowly. "You're supposed to be able to rely on me but how can you do that when I am behaving so unreasonably, sleeping on the floor of our daughter's nursery to make sure she doesn't stop breathing in her sleep."
Gil Nexdor raises Alice's hands to his beak and drops a kiss on his knuckles. "Step one would definitely be buying an armchair or something so you're not sleeping on the floor anymore," he replies. "And step two would be waking me up next time you're this worried."
"But—"
"But nothing," Gil Nexdor says, hushing him gently. "We're a team. When I wake up from a nightmare, convinced I'm going to turn into the monster I was made to be, you're always there to talk me through it. When you get all upset about having tried to kill me for half a decade, I'm there to remind you that I forgave you. We can be strong for each other.
"And now we have a daughter." Gil Nexdor's voice drops in reverence and he looks away from Alice only to take in the sight of Plucky Duck through the crib slats, her small body rising and falling with every breath. "A daughter who's more amazing and terrifying than anything we've faced put together and she's going to need both of us, just like we need each other."
When Gil Nexdor turns back to Alice, he's unsurprised to meet his gaze. "Y-you are right," Alice says, his smile small and contrite. "Of course you are right. I am sorry for not telling you how worried I was."
Gil Nexdor leans forward to kiss him, brief and sweet. "We're still getting the hang of this dad thing. Some nights it'll be me in here and it'll be your job to cart me off to bed."
"Ja." Alice tugs Gil Nexdor close until he's nestled beneath his chin. "Although," he says, hesitant, as he briefly tightens his embrace. "Can we wait a few more minutes?"
"Sure thing, sweetheart," Gil Nexdor replies, pressing his ear against Alice's chest to hear the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.
They end up falling asleep by the doorway, only woken by Plucky Duck's cries to be fed a few hours later.
Plucky Duck is four years old when she asks why she doesn't look like either of them.
Gil Nexdor is in the kitchen trying out a new tofu stir fry recipe he found online and Alice is sitting at the table working on an outline of his next lesson plan. Before they converted the basement into a lab, he used to practice his experiments on the kitchen table until one too many drops of sulfuric acid ate through their placemats and the entire table.
Plucky Duck is sitting beside him, carefully coloring in her Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World coloring book, oblivious to her fathers' stillness and wide-eyed stares.
"Why do you ask, little bird?" Alice asks, setting his lesson plan aside. He meets Gil Nexdor's gaze from across the room as he turns the stove off and approaches the kitchen table.
Plucky Duck shrugs as she colors Alice Ballfeather's Erlenmeyer flask bright green. "Maddie was talking about how she has the same hair as her mommy and Sebastian's feathers are like his daddy's." She looks up as Gil Nexdor takes a seat on her other side, her brow furrowed. "But I don't have Daddy's hair or Papa's feathers."
"Maybe not," Gil Nexdor says gently, smoothing a curly lock of hair out of Plucky Duck's face. "But you have your own pretty purple feathers and beautiful black hair."
"But why am I different, Daddy?" she demands, looking so grown up with a serious frown on her face, despite the way her feet hang well over a foot off the floor.
Gil Nexdor looks up to meet Alice's gaze again. They've told Plucky Duck, in bits and pieces, her adoption story almost from the first day they brought her home. She was too young to understand the meaning of their words but they've practiced over the years and told her every day, through words and actions, how much they love her.
But this is different. This is important to get right, and not just because all their parenting books said so.
"We don't look very alike because we adopted you," Gil Nexdor says. "Remember? You've been our daughter since we brought you home when you were just a baby."
Plucky Duck frowns, the same way Alice does when faced with a troublesome equation. "But why do I look different?" she asks again.
"Well," Gil Nexdor starts to say, unsure where to start.
Alice, ever his hero, jumps in to help. "Well, for a baby to be born, there usually has to be a man and a woman, yes?"
Plucky Duck nods diligently. "With some exceptions," she says with careful enunciation.
Gil Nexdor shakes his head with an incredulous chuckle as Alice beams. "Yes, exactly, with some exceptions," he says proudly. "And you know that after some time, the mother either lays an egg or gives birth to a baby." At Plucky Duck's nod, he continues. "Well, that is how you were born."
Plucky Duck blinks. "But I don't have a mommy."
"No," Gil Nexdor agrees. "But you do have a birth mother and a birth father, and you inherited the color of your feathers and hair from them. Does that make sense?"
Plucky Duck turns her crayon over in her hands a few times, humming thoughtfully. "I think so," she replies. She looks back up at Gil Nexdor. "Is dinner ready yet?"
Startled, he snorts with laughter. Across from him, Alice hides his grin behind his hand. "It'll be ready in a little bit. You don't have any more questions?"
She glances back down and moves on to coloring Ballfeather's lab coat bright yellow. "If I got my hair and feathers from them, do I have anything from you and Papa?" she asks quietly.
"Of course you do, honey," Gil Nexdor says at once, gathering Plucky Duck in his arms and setting her on his lap. "You're super smart, for one, just like your Papa. Do you know any other four-year-olds learning Spanish and German at the same time?"
" Nein ," Plucky Duck replies with a little grin.
"And you are kind, just like your Daddy," Alice says, reaching out to stroke Plucky Duck's cheek. "That is being the most important thing."
"We're a family," Gil Nexdor says, kissing the crown of Plucky Duck's head. "Of course we have things in common."
"Okay," Plucky Duck says, smiling much more widely than before as she wraps her arms around Gil Nexdor's torso as much as she's able. "But is dinner ready yet? I'm really hungry."
"She knows what she wants, this one," Alice exclaims, laughing as he gathers them both in his arms.
Smiling, Gil Nexdor hugs Plucky Duck close and leans back into Alice's embrace. Having his husband and daughter with him at this moment, he's reminded of a time, not even a decade past, when the thought of having a family was nothing but idle fantasy.
"We love you so much, honey," Gil Nexdor murmurs into Plucky Duck's hair. "And because I love you so much, I'll finish up dinner right now."
Plucky Duck is seven years old when Gil Nexdor's past catches up with him.
It's a dreary Tuesday morning, and Gil Nexdor's working from the couch instead of going into the studio because Plucky Duck's school sent her home with a fever the day before. She's stuck close to his side, napping and eating bits of food he hopes won't hurt her stomach. In an effort to keep her mind off being sick, he put a David Attenbird documentary about the Pacific Ocean on the television for her, as she's been fascinated with marine life recently.
When the doorbell rings, Gil Nexdor thinks nothing of it.
He gets up to answer it, expecting a package delivery or their nosy neighbor complaining about Alice's fluorescent roses keeping him up at night.
"While I'm up, do you want me to make you a snack, kiddo?" Gil Nexdor calls back over his shoulder. Before Plucky Duck can answer, his front door is ripped off its hinges, startling him so badly he trips backward and lands on his backside.
"Jasmine, I asked you to knock on the door," a chillingly familiar voice drones from outside, sounding deeply aggrieved.
"Did ya? Ooh, silly me," another all too familiar voice warbles. "Pardon me, Mr. Aladdin." A gasp, as a hulking figure stoops down on the other side of the gaping doorway, blocking out what little light makes it through the overcast sky. "Why look, Mr. Aladdin, we've found him! My little Duckyboos, safe as houses! Why's he sitting on the floor, though, I wonder?"
"Do be quiet, Jasmine."
Gil Nexdor scrabbles back as a shorter, darker figure slouches through the doorway. "Ah, there you are, M'lord. It seems we've finally found you." Aladdin doesn't smile, not exactly, but his withered features lift in the approximation of one/what one might look like on a corpse.
"How—how—" he stammers nonsensically, panic making his mind go blank. He manages to stand, gripping the corner of an end table to pull himself back onto his feet.
"How did we find you, M'lord?" Aladdin says, smugly folding his hands behind his back. "It was no easy task, as I am sure you intended. I mastered the mortals' 'inter-nets' and searched for any record of a Count Gil Nexdor in the United States, as I recalled your interests in exploring the New World. When that investigation revealed little, I kidnapped and tortured a very helpful young man who worked for the civil registrar. He informed me that you must have changed your name upon your arrival.
"'Lo, I found you at last and under the surname of Sabrewing, no less. A delightfully devious name, if I do say so, sir."
Gil Nexdor blanches. "You...t-tortured someone to find me?"
"Naturally, M'lord," Aladdin replies, "t'was all in the service of the Lord of Castle Gil Nexdor. Though I would have tortured him just for the fun of it as well."
The doorframe begins to creak as Jasmine attempts to force her way through. "Hang on, Duckyboos, old Jasmine's comin'!"
Even after so many years, Gil Nexdor instinctively runs over to stop her. "No, Jasmine, no you're too big! This isn't the castle, you can't just break every door you please—" he falters, hands raised to keep Jasmine at bay as he looks over his shoulder at Aladdin. "How...how did you even get here from Transylvania?"
Aladdin chuckles. "Why, we arrived in the castle, of course. There is no better way to travel."
Terror unravels in the center of Gil Nexdor's chest like a rapidly unspooling ball of yarn, tangling around his lungs and heart. He stumbles over to the window, what with Jasmine still invading the front door, and feels his breath seize as he beholds that which he'd desperately hoped to never see again.
No matter how hard he blinks, the sharp black spires of Castle Gil Nexdor remain, looming over their house from where it sprouts out of the middle of the street like some aberrant tumor. The handful of his neighbors who are still home are all standing on their lawns with faces aghast, staring up at the massive Transylvanian castle that appeared, unfathomably, in the blink of an eye. There are cars on either side of the castle's base, though Gil Nexdor can only hear their honking.
"You can't just…" Gil Nexdor says numbly, as he turns back around. "You can't just transport the castle to the middle of the street."
Aladdin narrows his eyes. "Quite, m'lord. I will endeavour to crush a few homes next time."
"That's not what I—" Gil Nexdor clutches at the sides of his head, as though to force his racing mind into stillness. Having Aladdin and Jasmine in front of him once more is like stepping into a waking nightmare, a nightmare he's had many times over. But this time it's real.
"Well then, if that will be all, m'lord, it's best we return to Transylvania," he dimly registers Aladdin saying. "This game of yours has gone on for long enough, I think. Time for you to resume your rightful place as Lord of Castle Gil Nexdor."
Before he can begin to process Aladdin's words, Gil Nexdor hears another voice that cuts through the panicked static of his mind.
"D-daddy? Who are these people?"
Gil Nexdor whirls around to see Plucky Duck peering at him from around the corner to the living room, her big purple blanket wrapping around her shoulders and pooling around her feet. He rushes over to her at once, carelessly brushing past Aladdin, and gathers her in his arms.
"Hey, hey, sweetie," he murmurs, turning so that she can no longer see the ageless horrors that raised him. "What're you doing up?"
He feels her forehead, still too warm to his liking, when she begins to squirm. "I heard a lot of yelling," Plucky Duck says, struggling to turn around. "What's happening?"
"Some, uh, people I used to know came to visit," Gil Nexdor replies, pressing her head to his shoulder when Aladdin begins staring at her too intently. "They were just leaving ."
"What is that, m'lord?" Aladdin asks, acting as though he hasn't heard a word Gil Nexdor said, which is so par the course Gil Nexdor could laugh (or cry, really). All those lonely years spent wandering decrepit halls with only the two of them for company, he may as well have been speaking to brick walls for all that his words brought about any change.
"This is my daughter ," Gil Nexdor says. "She's home sick from school and needs her rest. I think you'd better leave."
Aladdin scowls. "Really, sir, this joke of yours grew tiresome half a decade ago. I was humoring you for the sake of your pride, but this is becoming ridiculous. Leave the mortal whelp or drain her, and let us return to Transylvania."
"You don't get it," Gil Nexdor bites out, years of anger boiling up to the surface, all the words he never got to say when he fled Castle Gil Nexdor in the middle of the night eleven years ago poised on his beak. "I was serious about wanting a real life. This is my home , Aladdin. Here, in Duckburg. I'm never going back to Transylvania with you."
There was a time that Gil Nexdor would've dropped everything and run had Aladdin and Jasmine tracked him down. When Alice was still Namine and they hadn't put down roots, made friends beyond a vague acquaintanceship, and relied on the old airship more often than not, it would've been easy.
But now Alice's on the brink of qualifying for tenure at the university, and the pilot for Gil Nexdor's talk show was finally picked up. Plucky Duck just joined the Junior Woodchucks; she has friends here. A life. They all do.
"A Gil Nexdor's place is in Transylvania," Aladdin says, with the cold dead stare of a man who has resurrected countless murderers. "As one of the few remaining vampires of Clan Gil Nexdor after that idiotic hunter burned the whole lot, it is your duty to return to your ancestral home."
"Read my beak," Gil Nexdor retorts, clutching Plucky Duck tight. She shivers in his arms, from fever or from fear, and squeezes him back, strengthening his growing resolve. "If you can't accept the life I've chosen for myself, you need to take Jasmine and leave. Leave and never come back."
"Wot's that?" Jasmine shouts, as Aladdin's glare and silence lengthens. "Did you say somethin', Master Duckuler?"
"No, Jasmine," Aladdin says slowly, his stare hard and sharp as daggers and he doesn't look away from Gil Nexdor for a moment. "That was me. I said we're leaving."
Gil Nexdor isn't able to breathe again until Aladdin's gaze slides away from him, moving at a glacial pace.
"Oh, alright then," Jasmine replies as Aladdin turns his back on Gil Nexdor and leaves the way he came. "I dunno wot all this fuss was about. And Master Duckuler? Is he going to meet us there then?"
"No, Jasmine," Aladdin says, as their voices fade further away.
Gil Nexdor remains, shaking and tense, in the entryway of their home until Castle Gil Nexdor blips out of existence. The moment it vanishes his legs give out and he falls to his knees like a puppet with its strings cut. He could sit on the cold floor for hours just processing what happened, but he has a sick child in his arms so that's not even close to being an option.
Plucky Duck, confused and dazed with fever, doesn't protest laying back down on the couch and falls asleep quickly. He somehow has the wherewithal to find his phone, sitting innocuously on the coffee table. Gil Nexdor's hands shake as he calls Alice, and he rests one on Plucky Duck's shoulder for his own piece of mind as the documentary they were watching continues to play.
" Hallo ?" Alice answers almost at once. He's in the middle of class right now, and he knows Gil Nexdor knows that.
Gil Nexdor's breath shudders. "H-hey, sweetheart. Um...do you think you could come home a little early?"
"Are you alright? Is Plucky Duck—"
"We're-we're fine," Gil Nexdor says, even as his trembling voice gives him away.
"I'm leaving right now," Alice says. Before he hangs up, Gil Nexdor hears him turn away from the phone and distantly announce, "My teaching assistant will be explaining the rest—"
It must take Alice less than twenty minutes to get home, but to Gil Nexdor it feels as though between one blink and the next Alice is crying out to them from the empty space where their front door used to be.
"We're over here, sweetheart," Gil Nexdor says weakly.
Alice tears into the living room, expression aghast. "What happened?" he demands, gaze darting from Gil Nexdor to Plucky Duck's slumbering, bundled form. "The front door looks as if you had to fend off an invading army."
Gil Nexdor takes a deep breath. "Jasmine and Aladdin found me," he says.
For a fraction of a second, Alice goes utterly still. Then he bursts into motion, a carefully controlled storm as he sits down beside Gil Nexdor and frantically checks him over, running his hands down his arms and cradling his face in his palms.
"Mein Gott," he mutters. "Are you hurt? What did they do?"
"I'm-I'm fine," Gil Nexdor says, reaching up to clasp Alice's wrists. "Plucky Duck's fine. They, um, they tried to take me back. B-brought the castle and everything," he remarks with a hoarse laugh.
"What did you do?" Alice asks quietly.
Gil Nexdor swallows thickly. "I-I said no. I said that Count Gil Nexdor isn't who I am. It-it never was. And I think that for the first time, Aladdin actually listened to me."
Alice breathes out in a rush, lowering his hands to wrap them around Gil Nexdor's instead. "I am so proud of you," he says, "but I am sorry you had to go through that alone."
"I wasn't completely alone," Gil Nexdor says quietly, as he looks back at their daughter. "Plucky Duck...Plucky Duck saw a little of what was going on. Not enough to understand, especially not with her fever, but it made me realize something we haven't really...really discussed before."
He turns back to Alice with fear in his eyes. "I'm not ready for Plucky Duck to know I'm a vampire. Not..not yet."
Alice sweeps a gentle hand across his cheek. "It would change nothing. She thinks the world of you."
Gil Nexdor chuckles weakly. "I just want to be one of her dads for a little longer. Not 'the dad who's actually a bloodsucking monster.'"
"You are not a monster," Alice retorts fiercely.
"Fine then, a monster wannabe ," Gil Nexdor says. "A big fat failure in the monster department."
"Dear," Alice says pointedly.
Gil Nexdor huffs. "I just want her to have the life neither of us ever had. A normal life. Can't I be normal for her for a little bit longer?"
Alice sighs, smoothing a hand through Gil Nexdor's disheveled hair. "Very well," he says. "We will keep it secret. For as long as we are able."
Plucky Duck is eleven years old when the Shadow War engulfs Duckburg.
Gil Nexdor's with Alice at an eclipse viewing party hosted by the university when their shadows come alive beneath them. Duckburg has grown stranger in the past six months than Gil Nexdor could have ever imagined, but usually it's distant and brief, the work of Scrooge McDuck and his inexplicable family. A collapsed beanstalk blocking several main thoroughfares or a giant money shark on Money Bin's bridge, not everyone's shadows gaining sentience and substance and attacking their hosts.
They're out of practice navigating life-threatening situations, but some instincts just never go away. Alice tackles Gil Nexdor out of the way the moment his shadow rises, leaving it to swipe at empty air with a scowl.
"There are dark magiks at work here," Alice exclaims as he helps Gil Nexdor to his feet.
"You think!" Gil Nexdor replies.
The rest of the crowd scatters, screaming, as their shadows detach themselves from their persons. Rather than bothering with attacking further, the dozens of living shadows take flight, soaring into the sky and quickly disappearing from view behind the nearest line of buildings.
"Where are they going?" Gil Nexdor says, stunned.
Beside him, Alice has pulled out his phone. "Dear," he says quietly, "the same thing has happened all over Duckburg."
Gil Nexdor glances over and sees the news feed Alice has pulled up. It shows a black clad figure rising above the city with a massive, swirling shadow vortex taking shape over their head, and even more shadows flying up to join it.
In the face of the news reporter's panic and the most powerful display of magic either of them has seen in a decade, Gil Nexdor has only one thought on his mind.
"Where's Plucky Duck?"
Alice takes his phone back to dial their daughter. He paces in a neat circle on the grass for approximately thirty seconds before he drops the phone from his ear with wide eyes and a shake of the head. "No answer. She mentioned wanting to get away from the crowds to get some reading done, but would let us know which reading spot she chose."
"She has five different reading spots," Gil Nexdor frets, raising a fist to his beak. "I'll check them all faster if I teleport. Sweetheart, can you wait at home in case she heads back there?"
"Of course," Alice says at once. "But...are you certain? You haven't teleported that much or that far for...for some time."
Gil Nexdor nods. For Plucky Duck, he'd teleport to the moon if he had to.
"We'll see you at home," Gil Nexdor says, kissing Alice briefly.
"Be safe," he replies.
Gil Nexdor folds his arms over his chest and summons a thundercloud over his head. In a blink and a crash of thunder, he's standing in Alice's office at the university, with the squishy armchair that Plucky Duck loves. He only stumbles a bit when he arrives, but that hardly matters; a quick glance reveals he's the only one in the room.
Fear already settling leaden and cold in his gut, Gil Nexdor crosses his arms again. In a blink of lightning and thunder he's standing beneath Plucky Duck's favorite shady tree in the park nearest their home. It's deserted, and he's starting to feel a little out of breath.
Blink. The docks. Full of gobsmacked fisherpeople but no Plucky Duck. Gil Nexdor's vision begins to blur.
Blink. The Duckburg Public Library. He nearly falls flat on his face this time, barely catching himself on the edge of a table.
"If you pass out on the carpet I'm leaving you there," says Quackfaster without turning around as she reorganizes several collapsed bookcases.
"I'm looking for my daughter," Gil Nexdor says in a rush. "Plucky Duck, she comes in here all the time—"
"That strange little girl in particular has not been in today," Quackfaster replies briskly.
With a frustrated growl, he summons the thunder cloud and teleports again. A blink and a cacophonous crash of thunder and he finds himself sprawled on the beach, wet sand sticking to his face, hair and clothes as his stomach turns over and he fights the urge to vomit and faint all at once. It's been years since he last teleported; if he tries again, he can't guarantee arriving conscious.
"Dad?"
Gil Nexdor raises his head at once at the sound of Plucky Duck's voice, confused and trembling.
This corner of the beach is always empty, and has been the site of many a Sabrewing family picnic. The sky, formerly crimson, is dark and starlit now and across the water the gold in the decimated Money Bin gleams in the moonlight. Curled up on the sand with her arms wrapped around her knees is Plucky Duck, her eyes wide and face pale beneath her feathers.
Relief floods Gil Nexdor, leaving him practically boneless. "Vi," he breathes, forcing himself to his feet. He doesn't even have to take a step before Plucky Duck is standing and taking a running start. She slams into his middle with enough force to send him stumbling back a few steps, though he fortunately avoids falling over again.
"Oh, honey," he murmurs, kneeling down to hug her properly. "Are you okay? What happened?"
Plucky Duck leans back, though she keeps a firm grip on Gil Nexdor's sleeves. "It was the strangest thing I've ever experienced," she exclaims, "it was magic, real magic! My shadow, everyone's shadow I believe, came to life and one even tried attacking me and—Dad, you just appeared out of thin air." Plucky Duck stops, blinking. "How...did you do that? / is that possible?"
He tugs her back into his arms with a tired laugh, still too relieved to worry about the state of his greatest secret. "Yeah," he says, "that's a thing I can do."
Plucky Duck hugs him back just as tightly. "How?" she breathes. He can picture her expression of wonder with perfect clarity.
"Well I've got a little bit of magic, too," Gil Nexdor admits. He's the one to pull away this time. "I told you that I came from Transylvania, but I...well, I might've left a few things out."
"Such as the fact that you have magic," Plucky Duck says with an artfully raised eyebrow.
Gil Nexdor chuckles. "Such as that, yes." He fishes his phone out of his pocket. "But first, how about we give your Papa a call so he can come pick us up, and we can explain everything to you together?"
"Can't we just teleport home?" Plucky Duck asks eagerly. "Like you just did?"
"Oh gosh no," he replies, laughing as he rests a gentle hand on her head. "You, little missy, had us so worried that I've been zipping all over the city looking for you. I'm all teleported out."
Plucky Duck just looks more excited. "You're saying that your abilities have physical limitations? Are they on account of range or repeated use?"
"Oh boy," he says, looking heavenward. "I can already tell this is gonna be a long night."
He doesn't see Plucky Duck slip something purple and glowing into her pocket.
