Disclaimer: I don't own Ducktales!

Title: Counting Cards

Summary: Goldie and Scrooge have known each other a long time now, and that's given them a special kind of closeness. Goldie can't say the same for the children he's dragging around with him now, but if she wants to continue the way they have she's going to have to learn. Too bad Goldie's never been good at being good.

...

Goldie woke herself with an ungainly snore. She was on the very edge of what was a quite large bed, one arm dangling off, and she was alone. She sat up and stretched, trying to decipher how Scrooge had gotten out of the room without stirring her. She shrugged it off and slipped into the spare sleep shirt she'd brought to the mansion with her, not really in the mood to bother with fancy clothes or makeup quite yet.

A note on the end table caught her eye. Goldie picked it up and read it aloud. "'Goldie, a last minute business emergency came up. Be back in a couple of days. Maybe it'd be best if we found you your own room. Scrooge'." She scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Oh, what a baby. I refuse one little proposal and he goes running off into the night."

Goldie slunk out of the bedroom and into the living room, flopping onto the couch cushion with a sigh of relief. It was far too early on a weekend for the children to be awake- at least, she thought it was, anyway- so she flipped the TV on herself. Exhaustion weighed heavily on her old bones; no matter how full of spunk she tried to be, there was no denying that a trip to the land of the dead takes a lot out of a woman.

It was hard on her pride to admit to dozing on the sofa, but Goldie found herself startled awake by a flashlight beam to the face. She sat up and looked around, wiping away the eye crust. The sun had risen decently high in the sky- around noon, she'd guess- and the channel had turned from some weird commercial broadcast to a cook-off.

"I'm hungry," she commented.

"I'm Webby," Webby returned, flicking the flashlight off. "Have you seen Lena? We're playing hide and seek."

"That sounds almost normal of you."

"Right now she's champion of the house because she can become a shadow, but this-" she waggled the flashlight around. Now that Goldie was paying attention, she could see the runes carved into the gold-tinted handle- "is totally gonna put me over the top. Revolution!"

"The normal has worn off," Goldie said. "By the way, Scrooge left me a note about an emergency business deal. So I guess I'm doing the babysitting thing for a few days?"

"No. Absolutely not." Beakley rounded the corner with her typical scowl and a platter of pancakes. "I wouldn't trust you around a marshmallow, let alone a clutch of impressionable hatchlings."

"Are those for me?"

"Mr. McDuck's orders." She roughly set it down on her lap. "I figured it'd be best to give you something to eat. One ghost haunting this place is enough."

"Aww, Bentina. I love you too."

Beakley ignored that jab, ruffling Webby's top feathers. "You go seize the day, dear. I'll call when dinner is done."

"I've got a checklist of rooms to search!" Huey chirped from somewhere behind the couch. Goldie stops pretending to be even slightly interested, cutting a triangle out of her brunch. Webbed feet pitter-patter away, leaving her to the quiet. Or so she hoped, anyway.

"Ooh, a baking show!" Dewey flipped onto the opposite end of the couch. "I love these! I think it's 'cause they're, like, full of stuff no one ever actually eats, so I can be completely confused by everything and no one laughs!"

Goldie blinked at him a second, unnerved by how flippantly he was talking to her. Didn't children find old people intimidating? She had, back in the day. Not to mention the list of crimes she'd committed since meeting them- not many, but Goldie knew that stealing a pencil was enough to send some ducks into hysterics. "Don't you want to play hide and seek?"

He scooched back a little, getting comfortable. "Not really. Playing against Lena and Webby is pretty scary, but pitting them against each other is even scarier. I'm not even sure they'll survive the day. Also, Huey found me already, so I'm out."

"Ah."

"You gonna share those?"

"Over your dead body."

"You know, that's fair."

Goldie scooped herself up some hashbrowns. "I must say, you seem pretty nonchalant around me."

Dewey raised an eyebrow. "I'm pretty what?"

"Relaxed. It took Scrooge seventy years to get up the gall to ask me for my middle name." She gestured to him with her fork. "You're watching TV with me."

"Oh. That." He shrugged. "It's kind of like hanging out with an older version of Louie. Only, you know. You're blonde. Is that natural, by the way?"

Goldie coughed into her fist, amused. "At one point, yes. I just liked the color too much to let go of it."

"Neat."

"Kid?"

"Dewey," he chipped in.

"Dewey."

"Yeah?"

"You officially have more guts than Scrooge McDuck."

Dewey blew a raspberry, rolling his eyes. "I coulda told you that."

Later on, when Webby and Huey returned, defeated, Goldie would discover that Lena had been hiding inside Dewey's shadow all along, and watched with a strange sort of pride as they split their cut from the betting pot.

Author's Note: Some individual bonding! Scrooge is really bad at announcing plans lol.

-Mandaree1