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zestyquetzalcoatl · 3 years

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No Letting Go

Donald has been retired for eleven years.

It’s almost impressive, heroes don’t retire after all. In this job, you leave when you die.

Being a hero is not and never will be for the sane or easily swayed. It is no quick way to power, or simple path to fame and glory, and those few fools who try to use who try to use it as such are quickly crushed by the nature of the fight. No matter if you save the world a hundred times with cameras watching, most of your stories will go down untold in back alleys and abandon warehouses.

Fight after fight will take place and by the end of each one you’re so exhausted that it’s all you can do to drag yourself back home, the only proof it happened at all the scrapes and bruises on your body. The stakes rise and fall and you spend most of your time stressed, injured, and often high from adrenaline and panic, because no matter how many times you’ve been victorious, that’s never a guarantee that you’ll survive the next time.

(And those few who don’t die, well, as the saying goes; you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.)

There are few who try for that life and fewer still who can withstand it, but for those few who can, being a hero sinks it’s teeth in and never lets go. When you try to step away you can’t, because every scream, every cry for help calls you back. Every danger, every disaster, becomes just one more and the stakes are always too high because you can always help and if you don’t then there is that chilling probability, reality, that people get hurt.

It takes something truly extreme to make a hero retire. To yank them out of the air (not the sky, not the clouds, but the free-fall inbetween jumps in parkour, the plummet from a building before the grappling hook catches,) and ground them back on the earth.

Donald lived through the loss of Gyro (the only other retirement he’s ever seen. The chicken had to whip his memory of PK completely to escape the call back, and even still he’s returned to helping heroes time and time again.), the death of Xadhoom, the destruction of whole timelines, the loss of Odin, Lyla, and Raider, the disappearance of Cloverleaf(who he still doesn’t know what happened to), and even the death of Uno (his tinker, his oracle, his partner,) as PK. Pushed past even more death and loss, and much more bitingly; betrayal, as Double-0-Duck.

But it’s the loss of his sister, the becoming a father that yanks him back to the ground, chains his feet to the earth and pulls him so sharply out of the air that the call back to action is gone.

Retire, uncommon.

Become a villain, common.

Die, extremely common.

Exceptions to this are rare, but Donald has seen enough losses, has seen enough, that at least one encounter with the rare is something to be expected. Something he can bank on with that precious bit of hope that has survived everything the universe had thrown at him.

Legends never die.

When the Evronians mark their return from whatever grimy hole in the backwater end of the universe he’d succeeded in knocking them into by kidnapping Storkules, Paperinik launches himself back into the air without a second’s waste.

———————————————O0—0—0O————————————————

It’s really no surprise considering his history, but Evronian ships always fill Donald’s gut with a particular kind of sick twisting that nothing else can ever quite match, but this time it’s so much worse.

There is a stone in his stomach as he races through the corridors of the ship, not as heavy as the burden of heroism —a weight that has already returned to his shoulders, familiar even after a decade without it— but much more insidious, filled with a cold that seeps throughout his body. It’s a weight he’s used to feeling on adventures, where his family puts themselves in the way of dangers they know next to nothing about, it’s not one he’s used to feeling behind the mask.

He’s had friends and frenemies and lesser-evil enemies kidnapped before or held prisoner before, of course. But all of them have been professional. People who knew what both he and his enemies could do, who were at least informed if not consenting to their inclusion in this slice of reality. This is the first time they’ve taken someone he’s close to in his civilian life.

A loud bang echoes across the ship, and Donald freezes in place, tensing automatically as he tries to divine the location and origin of the sound. More, less deafening bangs echo from somewhere to his left, and he takes off in that direction. It sounds like a fight, and already there’s a desperate hope filling him that maybe Storkules has broken free. Maybe he’ll round the next corner and his friend will be there, fine and uninjured, and they can team up and blast their way out of here and this whole thing will be easy.

Donald rounds the next corner and unfortunately does not get his wish. Instead he encounters Gizmoduck and Darkwing Duck, —Duckburg’s newest superheroes, both of them still alarmingly green to be suddenly dragged into alien bullshit— struggling to fend off about a half dozen Evronians and looking mildly worse for wear.

He pushes down the disappointment curling in his gut that it’s not Storkules because any backup is still good backup, and launches himself into action. He attacks the Evronians from behind with an unholy combination of devastating brute force and hard-won knowledge of the intricacies of their weak spots. It’s a fighting style he perfected while fighting them years ago, and his skill has not dulled the slightest in the decade since. It’s over within seconds, and he’s left in a corridor with Darkwing and Gizmoduck staring at him.

Distantly, part of him wonders what on earth they think of this whole thing. Angus had driven his reputation in Duckburg through the mud and down into the bedrock. Premier amongst the many claims the kiwi had made, was that the Evronians were nothing more than fakes. Just people in costumes that PK had hired to make himself look good. Judging by the blaster marks that decorated Gizmoduck’s armor, and the singed edges of Darkwing’s cape, at least that particular misconception wouldn’t be holding any water for them anymore.

“Yeesh, you really hate them,” Darkwing says, nudging one of the downed Evronians before eyeing Donald with an... understandable level of apprehension, considering his ruthless display against the Evronians just moments ago. “What did they do? Kick your puppy?”

Donald meets the younger hero’s eyes with a glare that lets all of the anger and none of the panic that he’s feeling seep through.

“They kidnapped my boyfriend,” he snarls.

The term "boyfriend" is not, technically speaking, actually accurate, but it does succeed in getting the other two heroes to take a step back and get the hell out of his way as the next set of Evronians show up.

Gizmoduck and Darkwing stay behind him as he carves a path through the ship. He’s not sure if they’re actually following his lead, or just smart enough not to get between his fists and the Evronians. Either way they’re watching his back, and they’re good at it. They shadow his movements and cover his weak points as they traverse the corridors of the ship, Darkwing with a little more ease then Gizmoduck, but overall very well for two people who have never worked with him before.

He’s not quite sure how to voice how grateful he is —and this is not the time for that anyway— but having that simple reassurance is grounding, heartening in a way he’s desperately missed since before he even hung up he mask. It makes it so much easier to breathe past the weight in his chest as they fight their way deeper into the ship.

He knows it’s only been a few minutes by the time they find where Storkules is being held, but it feels like it’s been hours. The demigod is unconscious in the middle of the room, lying on a large oddly-shaped table that has lights around the edges and a great number of large colourful cables hooked up to it. The entire thing is surrounded by a barrier of some kind of energy, which is connected to a nearby machine by a steady beam of power. There are also three Evronian scientists in the room, and they don’t take very kindly to the heroes’ intrusion.

Donald only just barely manges to give a damn about that last. He’s too burst trying to stop his heart from dancing a tango with his stomach because beams of energy onboard an Evronian ship are never good. He needs to get Storkules out of that now.

He’s not actually sure he can hear through the blood pounding in his ears, but he still feels himself snarl at the Evronian who makes the poor decision to rush him. He’s fighting the icy grip of fear with pure adrenaline at this point, and he shows no mercy as he grabs the oncoming Evronian by his ankles, and smashes the alien into the machine that’s generating the energy bean with all of his strength. The energy field disappears. Donald slams the Evronian into a few more of the nearby machines for good measure and the lights on the table go out too. He discards his impromptu hammer by flinging them at the opposite wall, and darts toward the table.

It’s only the deeply ingrained instincts of heroism that have him sparing a second to glance and make sure that Darkwing and Gizmoduck are succeeding against their own Evronians, but neither of them appear to be having any difficulty, so Donald directs all his attention to the unconscious demigod in front of him.

Storkules is already waking up actually, groaning and shifting on the table before him, and the horrible fear that’s been trying to choke Donald since this whole thing began finally begins to reced. After another moment Storkules blinks his eyes open, and pulls his hand up to his head. He sends a confused look Donald’s way.

“What— ?”

A couple more Evronians pick that moment to come rampaging in, and they immediately launch themselves towards the pair at the center of the room. They encounter a problem with this attach strategy when the first one of them is caught by Storkules, and hurled straight back at his companion so hard they both go flying into more of the random machines scattered around the room.

In that moment Donald genuinely wants to laugh. They’re stuck in space on an enemy spaceship and there are bound to be more Evronians arriving to fight them at any minute, but still.

Storkules looks perfectly fine, he has no glaring injuries that Donald can see, the ethereal golden glow that comes from under is skin is strong and untainted, and there’s not a lick of blue-white flame to be seen around his head, or anywhere else on his body. There are few sights in the world that have ever come close to being so relieving, and it feels like an entire mountain has been lifted from Donald’s shoulders.

Right. Now, to get out of here.

END

Happy Holidays, Blessed Yule, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year! Here’s my Secret Santa gift for @mew04444! (@mew0444? There were only three 4s in the name I was given, but only the four 4 version links to something... if I have made some sort of mistake with your username please tell me!) I really hope you like it!

I shot for angst and I kinda feel like I missed it and landed on action instead, (something I’m a little surprised by, most of the time I have difficulty hitting anything but angst,) but oh well. I’m still fairly confident I managed to tick every box on the request, and considering I was trying to balance a character/relationship I’ve never written or really even thought about before with a setting they don’t normally fit into, I think I did pretty well.

P.s.: This is going to have a part 2!!! The origin draft followed them all the way off the ship and back down to Duckburg, but as I was writing it out it started getting out of hand, and I felt like I hit the tone I was aiming for better if I cut it off when Storkules woke up. So, here’s your secret Santa gift, and you’ll get a bonus in a couple days once my brain starts doing words again and I can polish it up!

#ducktales secret santa #ducktales 2017 #paperinik #storkules #dorkules #donald duck #fanfic #donald x Storkules #darkwing duck #gizmoduck #Evronians #its spelled Evronians #i have to remember that #i spelled it wrong evey time i wrote it #then had to go back and fix it #i wrote this instead of sleeping #dear god let me sleep pls #i’ll fix any mistakes in the morning

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