He buys the house because he knows, in a distant, academic way, that little girls need houses; they need bedrooms they can be ordered to clean, and yards to play their games in. They need neighbors with children that they can befriend, and local schools to attend, and all the trappings and trimmings of a normal life. He owes a debt to Professor Waddlemeyer. If this small thing will let him repay it, then so be it. She isn't such a little girl. This mission won't take so very long to complete. She'll be grown and he'll be free before he knows it.
The name already exists, half-forgotten, wrapped in layers of unconcern and disdain. Drake Mallard. He remembers being Drake, if only dimly, the way that a grown duck may remember being an egg. He remembers choosing to put that life aside, to become the terror that flaps in the night, and he hasn't regretted it-not for a moment, not for an hour. He chose Darkwing Duck, scourge of the evildoer, over Drake Mallard, mild-mannered everyman, and he's never been sorry. Not once. None of the things he missed by setting Drake aside were worth it.
He isn't sorry now. But he's going back, all the same, because being a hero means you do whatever the job requires, however strange or dark or terrifying it may be.
What does it take to be a father?
Darkwing Duck is afraid that he's about to learn.
It's not that he's a bad guy, because he's not. She can tell that already. This is the kind of guy who's never had to be told to eat his vegetables, to brush his bill or wash his hands before sitting down to dinner. Automatically good. The sort of guy who never appreciates that some people didn't get the good gene, that instead, they got the gene for attracting mud like honey attracts flies, the gene for finding the most trouble, and the gene for getting into it before they quite understood what was happening.
Her uncle used to tell her that she looked just like her mother, and since she doesn't really remember her mother, she believed him. Her parents died too long ago to be anything more than ideas, but her uncle had known them as people, and what he'd said had always been enough for her. Who was going to tell her about her mother now? Who was going to understand that she wasn't trying to be bad when she tracked mud in the house, or broke the dishes she was supposed to be washing, or shouted, or ran too fast, or played in traffic? That she wasn't trying to be bad, that it was just the way she was made?
It's not that Darkwing's a bad guy, but is he ever going to understand her? Is he ever going to care about her the way that her uncle did, the way her uncle used to say her parents did, before they...before they had to go away?
Is he going to be afraid of her? All the adults that have ever gotten close to her have had to...to go away. Her mom and dad. Her uncle. All of them. What makes him think that being a superhero will protect him, when she's so obviously cursed?
Gosalyn Waddlemeyer huddles under the blankets covering her temporary air mattress of a bed, surrounded by the barren walls of her newly-purchased room, and waits for the curse to strike again.
Day one started out as an unqualified disaster.
Everything had been fine as long as they had been dealing with their separate ends of the equation. She had been packing her things and testifying to the adoptions board that Drake Mallard was who she wanted to live with, that he hadn't threatened her, bribed her, or touched her in any inappropriate ways. He had been reeling over the number of questions a single duck trying to adopt a child had to answer, buying a house, liquidating stocks, reestablishing a street-level identity. They had both of them been working toward living with the other, but neither of them actually had actually needed to do it. Family life the way it was meant to be: solo.
Only now, the house is bought, the papers are filled out and approved, and-barring unfavorable reports from the social workers that are going to be visiting at random intervals over the next six months, invading their privacy and threatening the fragile new way of life-they are officially a family. Drake and Gosalyn Mallard, the newest citizens of St. Canard.
Suddenly faced with the realities of the mission that he's just undertaken, Darkwing has no idea what to do.
Gosalyn is sleeping upstairs, passed out in the room that she'd selected for herself. They're supposed to go shopping for furniture after she woke up, to find things for the rest of the house, as well as for her room. Pink things, no doubt, with ruffles and lace. The sort of things a little girl would want. But before they can shop, she's going to want breakfast. Growing girls need their breakfasts.
The simple route would have been cereal, and there's plenty of the stuff: Darkwing is fairly sure that their bulging cupboards currently contain at least one box of every over-sugared corn or rice-based product on the market currently tucked into the bulging cupboards. Shopping for a nine year old girl is a new experience for him, and he may have gone a bit overboard, having no idea of what she actually likes. Still, he's also fairly sure that a little girl doesn't expect to start her first day in a new life with a tasty, nutritious bowl of Robin Rockets, the only cereal guaranteed to turn your milk and tongue the same shade of blue. She expects something...special.
Darkwing Duck has never backed down from a challenge.
And that's why Gosalyn, having been woken by the sounds of clanging and swearing coming from the kitchen, has just emerged from the hallway to stare, wide-eyed, at what looks very much like an explosion in a flour factory. Somehow, Darkwing has managed to get pancake batter on the counters, the floor, and yes, a cursory glance confirms, the ceiling.
She can't help the laughter. It bubbles out of her like a living thing, escaping the hands that try to shove it back into her bill, until finally it bursts free, and she says, "Wow, Darkwing, it's a good thing you were already a white duck!"
He glares at her from beneath his mask of flour and dripping goo, and says tightly, "It's Mr. Mallard in this house." Then he turns, spatula and frying pan still in his hands, and stalks out of the room.
Suddenly, the mess isn't that funny anymore.
Furniture shopping isn't much better than breakfast.
They ate at a diner downtown, where the pancakes were perfect, crisp, brown, and not stuck to the ceiling. Gosalyn had a bowl of cereal, and ate dolefully, never taking her eyes off the table. Drake ate his pancakes like they were some sort of penance, and every bite was perfect, and every bite tasted like ashes. Now they're standing in the IBEAKA, the furniture store that has everything, and it's becoming clearer by the second that they've never actually met one another in any of the ways that count.
"What do you think of this bed, Gosalyn?" he asks, in a sugar-coated tone that implies, plainly, that he expects her to love it.
The bed is pink, festooned by hanging drapes that look like some demented child's attempt to simulate intestines with gauze. She hates it. She would have nightmares every night for the rest of her life if she attempted to sleep inside its aura of cotton candy carnage. The sight of it is enough to make her feel physically ill.
What has she gotten herself into?
"What do you think of this chair, Mr. Mallard?" she asks, trying to distract him from the bed by indicating a leather recliner with all the manly comforts of home built into the arms. There's even a little cooler for chilling drinks, right there in the footrest.
Darkwing shudders. Looking at that chair reminds him far too clearly of his own father, and of the life that he became a superhero to avoid.
"We need to take care of you, first," he says, hurriedly. "Come over here, look, they have a dresser shaped like a unicorn-"
Before the afternoon is half-over, they're both so exhausted that they can barely stand the sight of one another. They drive home in silence, and Gosalyn runs upstairs, slamming the door behind herself, while Darkwing slouches into the kitchen to begin scraping flour off the ceiling.
They still have no furniture.
Maybe this is going to be harder than either of them thought.
No one knows where they live yet; that's why the knock on the back door is such a surprise. Darkwing climbs off the counter, scowling and tense, and approaches the door like a duck who expects a sneak attack at any moment. Instead, he gets...
Launchpad. Who brushes past him like it's the most natural thing in the world, saying, "Gosh, Darkwing, this is a really nice place you've got here. Totally on the quiet! Needs a couch, though. Did you know that you've got pancake batter on your ceiling?"
"No," Darkwing says blackly, "I didn't. You mind telling me what you're doing here?"
"I'm sidekicking!" Launchpad looks over his shoulder, and grins winningly, even as he starts to wipe down the nearest of the batter-clogged counters with a sponge he seems to have conjured out of thin air. "See, the sidekick rules of conduct say that I should present myself at the home of your secret identity as soon as possible, to assist in the establishment of reliable patterns that can be easily overlooked by your uninvolved neighbors and associates."
Darkwing raises his eyebrows. "Really."
"For sure!" Launchpad's enthusiasm is impossible to deny, as is his sincerity. The bulky pilot may be insane, or terribly slow, or both-Darkwing isn't ready to dismiss that possibility quite yet-but he means what he's saying. He always does. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
Leave. Never darken my doorstep again. Take Gosalyn with you, I wasn't ready for this. Teach me how to make pancakes. All these things flash through Darkwing's mind before he says, aloud, "Clean up in here. I'm going to go check on Gosalyn."
"Sure thing, Mister D!" says Launchpad, grinning like he's just been given the best Christmas present in the history of the world. He turns to scrubbing the counter with ruthless efficiency.
Darkwing sighs, and leaves the kitchen, heading for the stairs.
Gosalyn is sitting on her windowsill, chin resting on her knees. She doesn't look up when Darkwing comes into the room. "If this doesn't work, are you gonna send me back?" she asks.
"What?" That was the one thought that hadn't occurred to him: abandoning the mission entirely. And for a moment, yes, it's tempting, just because it's such an alien idea. Admit failure, walk away, and let the failure belong to Drake Mallard, who can be buried again, just as easily as he was exhumed, while Darkwing Duck remains unblemished...
But he made a promise. To more than just the Professor. "Gosalyn, I can't send you back. I adopted you. That means we're a family now."
"But...but you think I like pink beds, and I laughed at your pancakes, and we fought all day and what if you didn't mean to do this anyway? What if I'm just a big mistake?"
She's crying. What do you do with a little girl when she starts crying?
To his surprise, the next part comes fairly naturally, and he finds himself sitting next to her on the windowsill, with his arms around her like a barrier between her and the rest of the world. And he likes it there, he realizes; he likes it very much indeed. He's keeping her safe. He's protecting her. That's what superheroes do.
That's what fathers do, too.
"Gosalyn Waddlemeyer Mallard, if you're a mistake, you're the best one I've ever made. You're going to make me crazy. You're going to see me at my worst, and we're going to have the wrong ideas about each other more often than we have the right ones, and sometimes we're going to make each other scream. And I can't wait."
Gosalyn sniffled. "Really?"
"Really." Drake smiled. "That's what families are for."
Gosalyn didn't say a word. She just hugged him.
The first day started badly.
Everything got better from there.