The scene was familiar, but the setting was different. He was sitting in one of McDuck's lavish guest bedrooms, wearing one of the rich duck's purple nightrobes and sleepwear, while April was changed into a new diaper and a light blue onesie. April rested in his arms, close to his partially unrobed chest, her head softly rising and falling on his dark gray chest feathers as she fed through her bottle, her eyes ever looking at his. Bradford looked down at her stoically, but his shimmering, loving gaze told otherwise.
It was near 5 in the morning, and Bradford felt like he hadn't slept for years, even though it's only been near 12 hours since he last woke up. He silently wished he could do the day over, but he knew that was impossible.
As April silently fed, his thoughts started racing again within the silence of the dimly lit master bedroom.
He was never like this. He was always the logical one, the one who found the flaws in any plan or situation. He knew how to observe and pick out the obvious problems and contradictions to anything: from money calculations to cutting loses, from pointing out logical fallacies to seeing overused tropes and patterns in real life and using them to his own advantage. He could predict how people would always react at any given moment, whether in the future or in the present. In his own plans, he knew how'd he react and how others would react, and he always knew how to control for variables.
People could be so one-dimensional. So predictable. It was only too easy to know what a person would do next. People are like the stock and shares he would buy on the market. One needs to only watch from the outside, know the secrets of each stock, then manipulate the variables to your own benefit. All they would need was a push to get them to do what he wanted, what he would gain from them.
It was a quality about himself that he learned as a child in school when learning basic arithmetic. The simple manipulation of numbers, the loss and gain of digits, and the chaos that would erupt once any outside influence could come and disrupt the system.
So what had come over him? Why did he act so rashly, so impulsively to give her away, to become so emotional over the lies he was spewing? What ever did he think of giving April, a child who brought more happiness to him than anything or any person he's ever encountered before, over to the man he hated most in the world?
Because she would've been safe from you, a goading voice in him said. You knew Heron was right, you knew it all along. You were bringing her too close to the fire and now, instead of pulling her out of it, you are now both burning.
Heron's voice came back to him easily: "If you think raising her like a pig for slaughter is a kindness to her, something a 'loving' father would do…then you really are a villain."
A villain…a villain who just saved the life of a child. A villain who tried to give away the one thing he ever loved in the world to the man he most loathed. Indeed, it was the original plan, this was supposed to have happened if Bradford wanted to ensure him getting the papyrus. But that was before he cared.
Cared? the voice said. If you actually cared for her, you would've ignored her cries and left her with him, her true father. You knew Scrooge would've taken care of her. But you couldn't drive yourself away from her.
It was true, he couldn't. He couldn't stand himself being away from her. She was his, his. And no one else's. He got too close and now…he couldn't tear away. And neither could she.
He wanted to keep her safe from the world, just as he wished to be protected as a child. But he couldn't keep her safe…not from himself. It was ironic in a way.
And in the coming years, when his Master Plan goes into fruition, who knows what will be? If she must be kept in the dark to his plans, of who she really was, why she was made, and the truth comes out there…he couldn't even think of it. It would be too painful for them both to bear.
Pain…something he could not be rid of for so long. His lost parents, his grandmother, and now…his daughter. He couldn't deny it anymore, she truly was his daughter, even when they resided within her true father's home, the old duck roaming these very halls as they sat in silence together.
Why couldn't he leave his plans, his pain, not even for her? The children in his mind, the one he promised to long ago and the one he had now, seemed to battle for space in his mind, to occupy his thoughts. He could not let go of either. He held both too close to his old, fragile heart. He could not keep both the promises he had made. But…he could not break them either…
As these last strings of thought left him, April had already fallen asleep in his arms and on his chest. He felt unwilling to move her, content in this position. He watched her breathe slowly, and an unconscious hand went to her head and stroked her small strands of hair. His mind wandered once again.