Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“What’s with these little guys?” 

While the lab was always cluttered, it was normally cluttered with scientific equipment and charts that Steelbeak didn’t know the names of and couldn’t parse heads or tails of anyway. In the last two months, Fethry’s addition to the lab brought more of the same, but at least his charts were colorful. A large jar full of water and tiny swimming creatures was incongruous, to say the least. 

“Oh, that’s my team!”

He glanced past the jar at Fethry, who beamed at him from the other side of the table. “Your team?” he repeated, confused. 

Fethry nodded eagerly. “I found them back when I worked in the McDuck Sublab. They’ve been my stalwart companions going on...oh, about five years now.” 

  “What are they, shrimp?” Steelbeak asked. 

“Euphausia superba,” he replied, “more commonly known as the Antarctic krill! They were invaluable in my unofficial research, and I figured they could help me out here now that I‘ve got a real lab coat and a new underwater lab!” Fethry tugged on his lapels with a grin, one of his sleeves stained with ink from a particularly irritable squid, only to thoughtfully add, “Well, underwater and underground lab, technically. All of the ‘unders’.”

Steelbeak blinked. “So they’re like super krill or something?”

“Exactly!” Fethry enthused. “I’ve been training them since they hatched, and they’ve learned to follow simple commands and swim in formation. I’d be lost without them.” He came around the table to stand beside Steelbeak and began pointing out individual krill. After a moment of hesitation, Steelbeak leaned down with him so their faces were level. 

“Let’s see, we have the ever feisty Hans, Dr. Krill—he’s currently arguing his dissertation—Benji, Alastair, Nicholas, little Beverly, Virgil, Simone, Fish Breath, Philippe’s right there, Cameron, Sylvia, and Charles! Oh, and Mitzy, but she’s no longer with us.”

Steelbeak turned to Fethry, his brow furrowing. “What happened to Mitzy?”

“Hm?” Fethry said distractedly. “Oh! Oh, no, she’s fine! She’s just too big to fit in the same jar as the rest of the team. You know the giant krill in the bay? That’s Mitzy!”

“Huh,” Steelbeak said, leaning back. 

Fethry bounced a little on his heels, clasping his hands together. “Oh, and that isn’t even the best part!” He hurried back to the other side of the lab, where the light switch was. “My whole team was mutated by the chemicals in the hydrothermal vents near where I found them. Mitzy’s mutation was the most obvious, but Mother Nature is a tricky customer and she gave the rest of my team a little something, too.

“Behold!” he announced, flipping the light switch and plunging the lab into darkness. Although, not completely. The jar of krill glowed brilliant blue like a lantern, almost otherworldly in its intensity. Steelbeak gasped in spite of himself. 

“My team’s natural bioluminescence was increased a thousandfold,” Fethry explained, his voice hushed as he stepped up to the other side of the table. “They’ve helped light my way through some dark times, let me tell you.” 

Once more, Steelbeak looked past the jar and to Fethry on the other side. He found himself arrested by the play of light across Fethry’s features, the jar’s pale blue glow highlighting the delicate curves of his face and throat, so unlike the sharp panes of his own. A clever quip caught in his chest, along with his next breath. 

“They’re really something,” Steelbeak found himself saying, stupidly. 

“Aren’t they?” Fethry’s voice was awed. 

A series of crashes in the darkness had them startling apart, to Steelbeak’s overwhelming relief. His chest was still feeling tight and though he could tell himself otherwise,  the racing of his heart had nothing to do with the potential of an intruder. Mechanically, he prepared for an attack and moved to shield Fethry from view. If memory served, there were a handful of syringes in the drawer to his right and a heavy microscope on the table next to him that he could use to bludgeon someone's head in if need be. He was only a little disappointed when he recognized the affronted voice coming from the general direction of the doorway. 

“What in the—what the devil happened to the lights?”

Fethry winced. “Sorry about that, Dr. Heron.” 

With all active agents gathered around the conference table or calling in from various clandestine locations, their biweekly mission debriefings could almost be mistaken for the corporate drudgery of a regular office job. That is, if those meetings also entailed kill orders against foreign dignitaries and instructions for which sleeper agent they were to be replaced with. Hell, maybe that was what happened. It wasn’t as though Steelbeak had ever held anyone’s idea of a regular job. 

It was their first debriefing in the new base beneath Funzo’s and he listened with only half an ear, still sore about the loss of the satellighthouse. Blot was being given a break from sentry duty to do something sinister in Rongway, Dee was to work on new surveillance equipment, so on and so forth. He didn’t start paying too much attention until Bradford said his name. 

“Heron, you and Steelbeak will be stationed here for the foreseeable future. We’ll be acquiring a new asset tomorrow who must be kept in the dark regarding the true intentions of our operation.” 

“You’re bringing a civilian here?” Heron demanded. “What on earth for?”

“Because he makes a convenient hostage,” Bradford replied shortly. With the press of a button, the massive screen behind him flickered and an image of a duck wearing a red beanie, jacket, and yellow sweater appeared, smiling blithely at the camera. 

“This is Fethry Duck, nephew of Scrooge McDuck. He’s a marine biologist who’s been looking for a research lab willing to hire a scientist without a degree or qualifications of any kind.” He smiled, a small, sharp thing that lasted little more than a second on his dour face. “We told him that F.L.O.W., the Federation of Leading Ocean Wayfarers, would be happy to have him.”

Steelbeak snorted. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.” 

While sitting down Bradford was even shorter than most people in the room, he still managed to peer down at Steelbeak like he was a particularly ugly bug he’d found under his shoe. Steelbeak tried not to feel too special; Bradford looked at everyone like that. “Excuse me?” he said icily

“F.L.O.W? A little on the nose, ain’t it?” Steelbeak said, gesturing flippantly at the image of the duck smiling benignly on the screen. “Like what idiot’s gonna buy that?”

“Fethry Duck is cut from a different cloth than the rest of clan McDuck,” Bradford said, letting his glare linger on Steelbeak. “To put it simply, he is an idiot. Either he turns out to be a valuable hostage or we dispose of him like the rest of them. Your job is to keep him in the lab, happy and oblivious. I’m sure even you can manage that.”

“You have nothing to worry about, Bradford,” Heron replied, shooting Steelbeak a quelling look. 

He raised his hands defensively, leaning back in his seat. As the conversation continued around him, he considered the asset’s still image. 

Fethry Duck, huh? 

He supposed a babysitting job wouldn’t be too bad. Plus, he’d be able to place bets with the Eggheads to see how long Heron would let an outsider mess with her lab equipment before she snapped and just blasted the poor sap. 

With few options for entertainment on base, and even less outside of it as a former convict, Steelbeak tended to frequent the lab in between missions. The week following their last debriefing found him doing just that. 

He was messing with the big boxy device that spun around on the inside on Heron’s Touch-This-And-I’ll-Use-You-As-My-Next-Test-Subject table when he heard voices out in the hall. 

“What a setup! If I’d realized this place was so top secret I would’ve—well I wouldn’t have turned you guys down, far from it, I’m very grateful! How far down are we, by the way? The elevator was quick but I know when I’m traveling below sea level. Are we underwater now? There don’t seem to be any windows so I’m guessing we’re even further down. Underground then? Am I talking too much? I’m sorry about that.” 

Heron stomped through the doorway of the lab with a pinched expression of such utter fury on her face that Steelbeak had to disguise his snort of laughter as a cough, raising a fist to his beak to sell the charade. Her resulting glare was venomous, but he didn’t have long to be amused by it before the source of her ire followed her. 

Fethry Duck looked much like he did in his photo, only more cheerful. He entered the lab with his head on a swivel, taking in Heron’s dour setup with undisguised awe.  His clothes were baggy, and he didn’t resemble what Steelbeak had come to expect scientists to look like. 

Heron stormed past Steelbeak and grabbed a handful of the explosive ammunition she used in her prosthesis from her Touch-This-And-You-Won’t-Live-To-See-Retirement table. “You two idiots entertain yourselves,” she muttered, for Steelbeak’s ears only. “I’m going to the firing range.”

He bristled at the insult, but he told himself not to take it to heart. His partner was notorious for not tolerating fools lightly, and if what Bradford said was true, this Fethry Duck was the biggest fool of all. 

“Thank you for showing me the way to the lab, Dr. Heron,” Fethry said, beaming, as she walked back in his direction. “I’m looking forward to working with—” Heron marched past him without so much as a sideways glance and he trailed off, watching her go. “Oh. I guess I was talking too much.”

Steelbeak was debating how much bodily harm he was risking in following Heron when their oblivious hostage wasted no time in approaching him, arm extended for a handshake. 

“Hello there!” he said, seemingly unbothered by Steelbeak’s refusal to uncross his arms. “I’m Fethry Duck. Are you a scientist too?” 

He instinctively saw red, his hands curling into fists. Asset or not, Steelbeak didn’t take kindly to being mocked, much less twice in the span of a minute and much much less by one of the Ducks. But his brain caught up to the rest of his body when he processed the way Fethry continued to hold his gaze, expression sincere and unflinching. He was actually serious. 

Feeling as though he’d missed a step on a set of stairs and trying not to show it, Steelbeak scoffed. “As if I’d be into this nerd stuff. No I’m, uh, I’m lab security. So you’ll be seeing a lot of me.” He said the last part as a challenge. 

Fethry lowered his hand but not his smile. He began examining the materials on Heron’s Touch-This-And-I’ll-Replace-Your-Beak-With-One-Made-Out-Of-Styrofoam-Steelbeak table. “Well then, it’ll be nice to see a friendly face! I haven’t met anyone but you and Dr. Heron, Mr…?” 

“Steelbeak,” he replied. 

Fethry laughed, delighted. “It certainly is,” he said, wandering back and peering up at Steelbeak with a lack of fear he hadn’t experienced in years. “I’m no engineer, but even I can tell that your beak’s expertly made. Kind of like Dr. Heron’s arm. Oh, did she make it for you?” 

Steelbeak took a step back without meaning to, unnerved by Fethry’s earnestness. He hadn’t known what to expect from a new scientist, official credited or not; maybe someone haughty and cruel like Heron or timid like the base’s other scientists. His instincts told him that the all-smiles routine was just that, an act, and it put him on the defensive when he was supposed to be putting their hostage at ease. 

Fethry blinked, exuberance faltering for the first time. “I’m sorry, I got a little carried away, didn’t I?” he said, his smile shrinking. He took a step back, clasping his hands together. “I’m just excited to start working with you all. This’ll be my first official research job, y’know! Not just something I do to while away the hours as I stare into the unending abyss.”

“Huh?” Steelbeak said 

“Do you know if I’ve been assigned to a specific part of the lab?” Fethry asked, his cheer startlingly buoyant. “Or is it more of a first come first served kind of thing?” 

Steelbeak glanced around for just a moment before pointing at Heron’s Touch-This-And-I’ll-Use-You-As-My-Next-Test-Subject table. “Nobody’s using that one. Go right ahead.”

A month after meeting Fethry’s team, the scientist in question nervously sidled up to him in the lab one morning. 

It was just the two of them, as had increasingly become the case since Heron started conducting more live animal experimentation in her personal lab. Fethry had a row of fish tanks against his side of the lab, filled with everything from colorful algae to a perpetually angry octopus. Weeks ago, he started offering to let Steelbeak feed the piranhas while he documented their behavior, an offer Steelbeak always took him up on. 

That morning, he was distracted from watching the piranhas tear apart a handful of thawed bait fish when Fethry hardly said a word for the duration of his notetaking. Normally, silence was rare in the lab when Fethry was in residence, as he could talk at length about any and every species, the body of water of their origin, and the personalities of the ones he’d had the pleasure of meeting.

However, while Fethry might’ve been silent, he certainly wasn’t motionless. He twirled his pen around his fingers like a magician might a playing card, and every few minutes moved to stand a little bit closer. Not only that, but he was chewing on a corner of his beak in a display of nervousness that Steelbeak had never seen from him. It immediately put him on the defensive as he became more and more certain that he was doing something wrong. 

“What is it?” he snapped, burning hotly with embarrassment beneath the collar of his bespoke suit. Heron never had any problem listing his many faults; maybe Fethry just needed prompting. 

Fethry jumped, dropping his pen. “Oh, sorry,” he said, grinning sheepishly. He bent down to retrieve it. “Nervous habit, I guess.” Pen in hand, he tapped the edge of his clipboard a few times, looking down at the ground. “After feeding our sharped-toothed friends here I was planning on getting some fresh air. The tide pools by the abandoned amphitheater supposedly have, uh, albino hermit crabs so I was gonna check that out. If...if you wanted to-to join me.”

Steelbeak’s instinctive response was to suspect a trap. Back when he was in deep with the St. Canard underground fighting circuit, there was a particular spot down by the docks with no police and less witnesses where the more prestigious gangs liked to dump bodies. The amphitheater was the ideal setting for such an ambush; secluded, empty, and hard to reach. 

With some difficulty, he stamped down the worst of his paranoia. This was Fethry he was talking about. For all intents and purposes the least dangerous member of Clan McDuck until the day he decided to take Mitzy for a walk downtown. Besides, in the unlikely event Fethry did try anything, it wasn’t as if Steelbeak couldn’t take him in a fight. 

He tried not to think about how the thought of laying a hand on Fethry in any fashion made him sick to his stomach. 

The speed with which Fethry tapped his pen against his clipboard reached new heights in the wake of Steelbeak’s prolonged silence. “I understand if you’re busy,” he said in a rush, “it’s not very interesting, I know—”

“Sure, why not,” Steelbeak replied, trying to remain aloof as he moved for the first time in almost a minute, dropping a few more pieces of bait fish in the piranha tank. 

“What—really?” 

Steelbeak made the mistake of glancing down at Fethry and was floored by the brilliant, disbelieving smile on his face. Heat prickled under his collar again, this time from a different sort of embarrassment. “Uh, yeah,” he said. He sniffed and quickly glanced away. “Nothing better to do in here anyway. Might as well get some air.”

“Oh, o-of course,” Fethry replied. When Steelbeak risked another glimpse, he saw Fethry failing to hide a smile as he busied himself with note taking. 

After a quick check-in at the actual security room, Steelbeak returned to the lab so he and Fethry could set out for the passageway that opened up into the amphitheater. The base had dozens of tunnels just like it, sprawling out to various strategic points all over town, but Fethry obviously knew of only a scant few of them, if that. 

Before they left, he was a little surprised when Fethry pulled off his baggy lab coat—at two sizes too big he always rolled the sleeves up—to reveal a close-fitting gray turtleneck that, aside from fitting Fethry properly, also looked brand new. In all the time Steelbeak had known him, he always wore well-worn, oversized clothes: an old Duckburg U sweatshirt, for example, or his trademark yellow sweater. 

Steelbeak dressed in the most expensive suits he could get his hands on, wanting to make his rise in status obvious to anyone who looked at him. He wasn’t the same punk who cops dragged kicking and screaming out of the ring, beak warped and face beaten bloody. He was an agent of F.O.W.L., not a henchman or a mobster’s pawn. But Fethry had never shown such concern for his appearance, and Steelbeak eyed him discreetly, wondering what had changed. 

Obviously he wasn’t discreet enough, as Fethry’s natural smile became a bit abashed as he hid his turtleneck under a red coat that also seemed to be new. “Oh, uh, Della, my cousin, took me on a bit of a shopping spree when she heard about my new job. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell her anything about any of this,” he added quickly, and Steelbeak was a little embarrassed to admit that the risk of a potential security breach hadn’t even crossed his mind. “She said that after being on the moon so long she needed a new wardrobe and that I couldn’t keep wearing ‘grandpa clothes’.”

Steelbeak stuffed his hands in his pockets as they started walking down the hall. “Well, uh, you look good,” he said stiffly. “But you looked fine before, too.” 

Fethry stopped in his tracks. Steelbeak almost turned around to check on him before he hurried to catch up. “Thanks,” he said, and Steelbeak could hear the smile in his voice (and he wondered when that became something he recognized). “You always look very nice, you know! Very snazzy.”

Steelbeak laughed as he stopped to enter the code in the control panel to open the passageway. A strange, warm feeling settled over him, fluttering under his rib cage, and it took him several seconds to recognize this particular thrill. Flattery. He was flattered . “What, this old thing?” he said, tugging smugly at his lapel as the entrance slid open.

At first, the passage on the other side of the door stretched out into darkness; standing at the entrance, it was akin to peering down a predator’s gullet. After a few seconds the fluorescent lights kicked on, spaced out every five feet on the metal ceiling. The tunnel was wide enough for Steelbeak and Fethry to walk side by side and once they entered, the doorway sealed shut behind them. 

The crisp breeze blowing off the bay came as a bit of a shock, and Steelbeak wondered if he’d been shut up in the base for too long. 

Wind whistled hauntingly through the crumbling walls of the amphitheater and above them the sky was pale blue, peppered with clouds. Sitting on one of the collapsed pillars decorating the weathered wooden stage, Steelbeak watched Fethry wander through the tide pools surrounding the base of the flooded amphitheater. The sheer breadth of the space was almost disconcerting. In front of him the bay stretched out endlessly and the air was tinged by salt and smoke and a million others things, bracing in a way the stale, recycled kind in the base never could be. 

F.O.W.L. might have freed him from prison but sometimes it felt as though he’d just been placed in another box, this one with gilded wrapping. Or perhaps steel, he amended as the  pale sunlight glinted dully off his beak. 

Fortunately, Fethry chose that moment to interrupt the bleak turn his thoughts had taken. 

“So….Steelbeak,” he said, standing in knee deep water. “Is there a first name to go with that?”

He smirked. “How do you know Steelbeak isn’t my first name?” 

Fethry started, then shook his head with a laugh. “You got me there.”

“Speaking of names,” Steelbeak said. He hesitated, knowing he was getting into dangerous territory. As usual, he plowed ahead blindly. “You’re related to McDuck, right?”

He didn’t expect the smile to slip off Fethry’s face. “Not really,” he replied, with a meager attempt at his usual cheer. “I’m just his...sister’s husband’s nephew,” he said, counting off on his fingers. 

“Still,” Steelbeak countered, “that’s more than most idiots can say. Richest duck in the world’s gotta need fancy science guys too. Why not hit him up for a job? You worked for him before, right?”

These were the sort of questions he wasn’t supposed to ask. He hadn’t exactly been handed How to Be A Spy For Dummies but even he knew that introducing doubt to a hostage who came to them willingly was a capital ‘b’ Bad idea. Time was, he wouldn’t have cared enough to ask; what were the McDucks if not a means to an end? But this was Fethry . He wanted to know what could possibly drive someone to F.O.W.L. when for him it was a choice between espionage and prison. 

 Fethry chuckled without humor, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well uh, isn’t that a whale of a tale.” 

Steelbeak’s brow furrowed in confusion. Ambiguity was hardly Fethry’s M.O., quite the opposite in fact. He was able to relax around Fethry because he didn’t feel like he was lagging six steps behind when they had a conversation.  

Fethry resumed his perusal of the tide pools, notably lacking in his earlier exuberance. “The last time I worked for Uncle Scrooge it ended a little abruptly,” he said, his voice carefully even. 

“You were fired?” 

“In a manner of speaking,” Fethry said, crouching to inspect something beneath the surface of the water. “The lab was old. Coupled with the hydrothermal vents, it was only a matter of time before it fell apart. I still haven’t told Donald or Uncle Scrooge. And Della thinks we were all one big happy family while she was gone, so...” He shook his head with a chagrined smile.

“I don’t get it,” Steelbeak said, the words slipping out before he could stop them. What might have once garnered mocking laughter or one of Heron’s eye-rolls only made Fethry straighten with a sigh. 

“I’m not doing a very good job of explaining this,” he admitted, shooting Steelbeak a small, apologetic smile as he scratched his forehead. “Okay,” he said at last, nodding decisively. “For four years, I took care of Uncle Scrooge’s lab. I wasn’t a scientist or anything, I just...kept it running. It was just me and the wonders of the deep, out in the middle of the ocean and most of the time it was amazing! Everything I’d ever dreamed of, y’know? But it was just me. And I was worried that if I went back to Uncle Scrooge he’d just stick me in some other dark, empty place and forget all about me.”

The image of Fethry’s bright light smothered by an oppressive darkness didn’t sit right with Steelbeak. Entirely the opposite, really, as the notion curdled in Steelbeak’s gut like spoiled milk. 

“What about F.O.—F.L.O.W.? Isn’t this just the same thing?” he asked, and realized as soon as the words were out of his mouth that he was dreading the answer. 

Fethry blinked. “Of course not. You’re here.”

Steelbeak’s train of thought screeched to a halt, the cars crashed together and the coal cart caught fire. 

“What?” he said.

“I’m doing this all wrong aren’t I?” Fethry muttered, raising a hand to his face. 

Steelbeak stiffened, a familiar paranoia rising to choke him. He was on the brink of searching for signs of an ambush when Fethry exclaimed, “I don’t know if there are albino hermit crabs in these tide pools!” He threw his hands out at his sides. “They’re not why I’m out here. Or why I asked you to come with me. I just...I wanted to spend time with you outside of the lab.” Fethry looked up at him, expression imploring and a little bit hopeful, as the water lapped gently around his knees. Steelbeak felt heat rise up his neck, flooding his face. The silence became overwhelming and he couldn’t think of a single pithy comment. 

“I went to prison,” he blurted. 

Fethry’s eyes widened sharply in surprise.  

“Nine months,” Steelbeak went on, his beak moving independent of his mind furiously demanding that he shut. The hell. Up. “It was supposed to be longer but F-F.L.O.W. got me out early.”

“Steelbeak,” Fethry said, his dark brow furrowing in concern as he started making his way to the stage. “You don’t have you—”

“I’m on parole,” he said, wincing through the lie. “That’s why I’m here. Before you get any ideas about making us friendship bracelets.”

Fethry stopped at the edge of the wooden stage, which reached him just below his waist. He didn’t look angry or scared like Steelbeak had intended. “Thank you for telling me,” he said, smiling that infuriatingly gentle smile. “You didn’t have to do that, and I want you to know that it doesn’t change my opinion of you.” 

“What? Why not?” Steelbeak demanded, throwing himself to his feet. 

Fethry clambered onto the stage with a grunt of exertion. “Well—” 

His foot slipped. 

Before Steelbeak was conscious of moving, he lunged forward the moment Fethry started tipping backward. He grabbed Fethry by one flailing wrist and dragged him forward to safety. That just so happened put him on a collision course with Steelbeak’s chest. 

For one breathless moment, their bodies were pressed flush against one another. Steelbeak burned all over and couldn’t draw breath, much less look away from Fethry’s upturned face, his beak parted in an expression of perfect shock. He felt the rise and fall of Fethry’s smaller chest against his own, and he choked on his own exhale. His grip remained ironclad around Fethry’s wrist, locked still like a statue, and in spite of that he felt Fethry’s hands settle against his waist, pressing gently.

It was too much. 

“I should be getting back,” Steelbeak stuttered, tearing himself away. He didn’t look at Fethry as he stumbled, stopped and finally turned around, making a beeline for the tunnel that would return him to base. 

He left Fethry alone on the stage without looking back. 

Black Heron greeted him almost the instant he crossed the threshold. 

“Did you leave the premises with the asset?” she hissed at him in the hallway, enraged in a way that went far beyond her typical ire. 

“Yeah, so what?” he retorted, still shaken by what transpired in the amphitheater. “He wanted to do some science thing by the water.” 

He would later blame her augmented prosthesis for the way he didn’t even realize she’d moved until she'd already grabbed his beak. She used her enhanced strength and his surprise to yank him down to her eye level. Her unyielding talons screeched against the steel, sealing it shut.“You idiot! Don't you realize you could’ve exposed us? What if one of his insipid family members had seen you?” 

Startled and enraged at being brought to heel so easily, he jerked his beak out of her grasp. “I checked the security monitors, Heron,” he snapped. “McDuck and them are in Egypt and the green cousin won tickets to some resort in Birdbados. I’m not stupid .”

Heron sneered. “Not this time.” She shoved past him, starting down the hall with her beak in the air. When she stopped only a handful of feet away, he knew to be on the defensive. Instead, what she said chilled him. “Oh, and next time you decide to mix business with pleasure, try to be a little more discreet,” she threw over her shoulder, making no effort to hide her smirk. “After all, Fethry Duck won’t be here for long.” 

Chapter Text

Steelbeak was awoken by nightmares more often than not. 

He had visions of being thrown down a deep dark hole with no end in sight as bars descended over the opening. He felt the pain of his beak fracturing over and over again, and relived his drugged, panicked awakening on Heron’s operating table, his wrists bound and his face aflame, weighed down by some gleaming, foreign entity. 

Not to say he didn’t have normal dreams about being a celebrity guest on his favorite cooking show he’d never admit to watching, trading blows in the ring with a cheering crowd at his back, or showing up to his own court hearing in nothing but a pair of boxers. He tended to go a few weeks before the nightmare resurfaced, the same every time. This was his norm in the year since he joined F.O.W.L.  

Then one night, the nightmare changed. 

An unseen force shoved him into a deep hole, but as he fell red began to seep through the walls around him, as though he’d been plunged into a darkroom. He landed at Heron’s feet, his feathers and his suit and his beak positively weeping red. She grabbed him by the beak, as she was increasingly wont to do, and yanked him to his feet. 

“He won’t be here for long,” she said. 

Steelbeak saw Fethry, standing behind his lab table in an empty red, red room. As he did every morning, Fethry looked up at him with a smile already on his face, soft and a little surprised to see him, as though he expected Steelbeak to have decided to leave between one day and the next.

 He held out his hand and Fethry didn’t hesitate before reaching for him, slipping his smaller hand into Steelbeak’s crimson grip. Like an infection, he watched the red bleed up into Fethry’s white feathers from that single point of contact. 

He couldn’t let go of Fethry’s hand and his beak refused to open, refused to warn him, as the red spread along Fethry’s arms and down his chest until finally it started creeping viselike up his throat. But Fethry wouldn’t stop smiling that stupid fond smile that made Steelbeak’s chest feel as though it was catching fire and caving in at the same time, and he wouldn’t let go of Steelbeak’s hand.

He was helpless to do anything but watch as the red crept up Fethry’s face and into his kind eyes, swallowing him whole. 

Steelbeak awoke, sweat-drenched and gasping, amid tangled, thousand thread-count sheets in a hotel room more lavish than anything he could have imagined before F.O.W.L. He looked out the window to where Algiers glittered under a black starless sky. He and Heron had been dispatched to meet with some arms dealer in the morning. 

He slumped back against his pillows with a heavy sigh, running a hand down his face. “Just a dream,” he muttered. “Good thing those never mean anything.” 

Fethry Duck was...weird. 

And not because he sang to his krill, complimented every specimen he brought into the lab, and kept a two hundred foot tall sea monster as a pet. He was weird because he was kind , probably kinder than anyone Steelbeak had ever met. Although even he knew that wasn’t saying much when his social circles tended to include underground fighting rings, prison inmates, and now literal spies.   

From a young age, it had been drilled into him the kindness was weakness and weakness got you killed. The starving kid who stole food for their friend was the one who got caught. The fighter who let up on their opponent because they’d just shattered half his face was the whose neck was broken getting thrown out of the ring. The inmate sitting in a cell with a cheap plastic prosthesis and ten years left on his sentence would end up right back where he started if he refused the offer of a mysterious woman in a red dress and wicked robot arm to remake him, as long as he didn’t mind getting his hands dirty. 

Fethry wasn’t here for money, though F.O.W.L. certainly could’ve forked it over in spades. He wasn’t here for acclaim or revenge or a chance at a new life. He was here to chart the effects of tidal lock on the nearby reef, to coo over a deadly lionfish, and take samples of Mitzy’s DNA to isolate what chemical made her grow to such kaiju-like proportions. F.O.W.L. was giving him the opportunity to do what he loved, as he would often profess. 

In theory, all of that just made Fethry out to be a normal guy. Not a S.H.U.S.H. turncoat from the 1960s, a punk rock scientist that could shoot lightning out of her hands, or an Old West billionaire frozen in ice, to name a few. However, even as distanced from normal as Steelbeak was, he knew that wasn’t the case with Fethry. 

For starters, a normal guy would be afraid of Steelbeak. He knew for a fact that he cut an intimidating figure even before the beak. Yet from the moment of their meeting Fethry had been anything but scared of him. Inviting Steelbeak into his lab space with open arms, clamoring to show him his findings and explain them at great length without Steelbeak having to ask and most strangely, without making him feel like a colossal waste of space when he didn’t understand.

 At first, it made guard duty not just bearable but almost enjoyable. Until...well. Until he started to enjoy Fethry’s company too much, taking risks he shouldn’t have taken; that sojourn to the amphitheater, first and foremost. 

Fethry’s smile made him forget who he was and more importantly, who he worked for. Steelbeak was a fighter in a den of spies and if he wanted them to respect him, he had to prove himself one of them. That meant doing his job without distraction, not risking the secrecy of their organization, and not getting attached to their assets. 

Fethry Duck could be dead in a week, and he just had to accept that. 

Steelbeak and Heron were assigned on a slew of missions abroad not long after the amphitheater fiasco, securing contacts and weapons caches and all sorts of other spy stuff. Fethry was moved into quarters on base so that F.O.W.L. could keep an eye on him while Steelbeak was gone. 

He knew he should be grateful for the change in scenery. Before F.O.W.L., he’d never so much as left St. Canard to buy a pack of smokes. No reason to, not when it held the highest ranking fight rings in Calisota. Now he found himself flying all over the world in a private jet, visited the glistening casinos of Macaw, dingy back rooms in Copenhenan, and the snow white beaches of Monte Crow. He wore suits more expensive than anything he’d ever owned and stared down fat cats the likes of which would have owned him scarcely more than a year go. 

As fortunate as Steelbeak knew he was, he found it increasingly difficult to stay focused on the repetitive back and forth their spy work entailed. He’d be putting the screws to a mole in the back of a bar in Little Tokyolk and would find himself thinking about the curve of Fethry’s smile as he rhapsodized about the longevity of lobsters. Pummeling some would-be mob boss’ henchmen, he’d be reminded of the arc of Fethry’s hands through the air as he gestured while speaking. Fethry’s smooth, gentle singing voice was more of an earworm than any vapid pop song on the radio. 

It didn’t help matters that Heron, his partner, refused to let him take point on any of their assignments. He was relegated to the position of bodyguard, her silent shadow, in practically all of their exchanges with F.O.W.L. contacts or weapons dealers looking to make a quick buck. 

They were in Atloonta when she cut him off in the middle of a handshake with some local crime lord. Steelbeak rounded on her the instant they were the only ones in the room. 

“I mean it, Heron! Stop trying to undermine me.” He got in her space, used his bulk against her and jabbed a finger in her face. Men larger than him had quailed under the same treatment. 

Heron hardly looked up from the open file in her hands. She laughed, snorted really, as she maneuvered around him to her desk in their latest impromptu office, where they met with various buyers and sellers in anonymity. “Undermine you?” she repeated, propping her feet up on her desk. “Have you forgotten who was put in charge of this assignment? In case you needed a reminder, it wasn’t you.” 

Steelbeak growled, following Heron so that he could loom over her from her desk. “Yeah, but I can do more, y’know! I can be in charge of meetings with the moneybags, take point on an assignment, all that spy stuff. I don’t just have to be the muscle.”

Heron finally tore her eyes off the file in her hands, putting it facedown before she pushed away from her desk. She stood without a trace of hesitance and patted his cheek with a simpering smile. “Why would I do that when you play the part of idiotic stooge so well?”

Fury came as easily to Steelbeak as breathing, and he summoned a burning lungful from his ample reserve. Heron was always doing this, using the big words in her insults that his limited schooling failed to teach him, and a lifetime of blows to the head would’ve knocked clean out of his ears anyway. Despite the exact definition being lost on him, he gathered what she meant. 

“Are you calling me stupid?” It was quiet, measured for him, and he didn’t even knock anything off her desk. While cutthroat, this wasn’t the world he’d left behind. Heron was his partner; he’d give her the benefit of the doubt. 

Heron walked around him again, now in the direction of the briefcase stuffed with cash their latest customer had left with them. “No, I believe you just did,” she replied with a hum. 

“C’mon, Heron!” he snapped, throwing his hands in the air. “You didn’t spring me from solitary confinement, give me these new threads and fix my face if all you wanted me to do was stand around looking scary! You know that I could be doing more! In fact, I think—” 

Lightning-quick, Heron’s prosthetic claw launched across the room and wrapped around his beak, clamping it shut in a punishing grip. Once its hold was secure her wrist retracted, sending Steelbeak tripping over his feet as it yanked him ten feet forward to look Heron straight in the eye. “Shut. Up.” She spoke with painful slowness, as one did to a particularly dimwitted child. Heron didn’t release his beak and he knew better than to attempt freeing himself if he wanted to keep it attached to his face. Silent and simmering, he glared down at her. “Do your job, and I’ll do mine. Or were you under the impression that F.O.W.L. rewards agents who complain about their assignments?”

Her grip loosened a fraction, enough for Steelbeak to yank himself away. He fought the urge to rub his beak, feeling like a wounded animal when he did so. It wasn’t like he could feel much of anything beyond the seam where the metal met flesh and feathers. It tended to ache under the weight of his prosthesis, and significantly more so when it was wretched around. His face burned now, though more from embarrassment than pain. 

“Yeah, whatever,” he muttered, feeling pathetic as he backed down. Not that Heron was wrong, as much as he hated to admit it. He didn’t fully understand F.O.W.L.’s command structure yet, with less than a year to find his footing. Back when he was fighting there were no rules. There was no such thing as teams, friendships were a joke, and one's loyalty lied solely with their owner, everyone else being fair game. Steelbeak poisoned, betrayed, and beat his rivals into submission to become the best and most sought after fighter. That was how he survived. 

But now, however grudgingly, Steelbeak had a partner. And he needed to learn the rules in order to survive here, too. 

He watched Heron unlock the hidden safe in their wall, placing the briefcase with their latest spoils inside. They’d be needing it in a few hours to bribe some Coopan official in exchange for unfettered access to their airspace. 

“How long is command making us stay out in the boonies anyway?” Steelbeak said, crossing his arms as he leaned back against Heron’s desk. 

She glanced over her shoulder, smirking. “Why? Are you looking forward to seeing your little friend again?”  

Within his folded arms, Steelbeak’s hands tightened into white-knuckled fists. It did nothing to prevent a pang of longing hit him square in the gut. “Don’t be stupid,” he growled, turning his head to glower at nothing and tried not to think of the red of Fethry’s coat. “I’m tired of all this moving around. I’d like to sleep in my own bed if it’s all the same to you.”

Heron rolled her eyes as she shut the safe. “You sound like a child.” 

“And you sound like my grandma,” Steelbeak shot back. “At least before the jewelry store heist. Hard to say much of anything from federal—”

“Get out!” Heron snapped, pointing sharply at the door. “You want something to do? Stand guard in an empty hallway. It’s the perfect use of your skills.”

“Fine,” Steelbeak hissed, chafing under his lackluster comeback. He pushed off the edge of the desk with a huff. “I was gonna go crazy staring at these dumb walls for another second anyway.” 

“Out!”

“I’m going!” he shouted, edging around her, wary as her prosthesis began to hum. She’d already grabbed his beak; he didn’t fancy becoming target practice too. 

He slammed the door behind him with far more force than necessary, drowning out whatever vitriol Heron threw at his back. The hallway was quiet, empty like Heron had said. So was the entire building—a F.O.W.L. safehouse, and a cheap one at that, located in a rougher part of town. Garbage littered the corners and the wallpaper might have been light blue once but was now badly stained and peeling. A window at the end of the hall had a cracked pane and was too filthy to see through. 

Steelbeak fished around in his pockets until he unearthed a crumbled pack of cigarettes and his lighter. He didn’t smoke often, since he wasn’t a complete moron even before his flashy new gig. But it gave him something to do and the burn of the nicotine helped clear his mind. 

Or at least it usually did, until he found himself thinking that Fethry probably wouldn’t like it that he smoked. 

He’d be respectful about it, no question. Express his concerns for Steelbeak’s health because he was concerned. He would probably go out of his way to make an entire slideshow presentation on the dangers of smoking and be utterly sincere and helpful about it in a way Steelbeak didn’t deserve, knowingly wrecking his lungs as he was. Knowingly pushing Fethry away as he was. 

“Stupid,” he muttered, digging the heel of his palm into his forehead, mindful of dropping ash in his feathers. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

He’d made his decision. F.O.W.L. was his last hope at a life outside bars, and between Fethry and his job there was no contest. Steelbeak couldn’t let himself get distracted. 

Deciding he was going to patrol the perimeter because that sounded official and like something he should be doing, he marched down the hallway. With his first step, he put out his cigarette by crushing most of it still unlit under his designer soles. 

It was late when they landed back in Duckburg. Late enough that the sky was already beginning to lighten with pre-dawn, and the ocean was still and gray. 

The base remained quiet and sparse save a skeleton security crew. After jetting back and forth across the globe for a month, Steelbeak had jet lag on top of his jet lag, and felt so wired he didn’t know if he wanted to go three rounds with the gym’s punching bags or pass out on the nearest horizontal surface. 

It was also late enough that the labs should have been dark and deserted, but his luck had never been of the reliable sort. 

He found the door to the marine laboratory wide open, brilliant white light spilling out across the concrete floor and walls of the darkened hallway. His quarters were in the next sector of the base, beyond the science division. All he had to do was walk past. 

Hiking his garment bag over his shoulder with a scowl, Steelbeak ducked his head and set a brisk pace forward. 

Just because a light was on this late didn’t mean it was...who he thought it might be. In all likelihood, one of the many pale, bug eyed scientists under their payroll could’ve found a faster way to refine uranium or weaponize the common cold and was burning the midnight oil in order to perfect it. 

Without hesitation, he walked through the splay of light, staring straight ahead, and still it partially blinded him. Steelbeak crossed back into the relative darkness of the dimly lit hallway, no worse for wear. One step away from the lab, then two, then three, and still it remained quiet. Four steps, five steps. Nothing happened, and the buzzing of his frayed nerves began to abate. He must’ve been right about the pencil pusher in the lab. 

A tremendous crash at his back had Steelbeak whirling around, dropping his garment bag and raising his fists, more than in the mood to channel his agitation into pummeling some hapless intruder. The hallway before him remained empty, though the crash had escalated into a cacophony of sound. With a jolt of alarm, he realized that it was coming from inside the open laboratory. 

The clamor came to an end as a figure stumbled out of the doorway, backlit by the lab’s harsher lights. Short and lean under a baggy coat, the figure glanced down the opposite hallway before lifting their head to lock eyes with Steelbeak. 

Fethry beamed, the light spilling out of the laboratory splitting his face into equal halves of gold and black shadow. 

“Steelbeak,” he said, out of breath, “you’re back!”

“Uh, yeah,” Steelbeak replied, feeling as though an elephant had trodden on his chest. “You, uh, knocking off a marching band in there?”

He felt like an idiot as the words tripped off his tongue. Fethry wasn’t supposed to be here , not yet. Steelbeak wasn’t supposed to have this conversation until he felt in control of himself, had a good night’s sleep, slipped into a crisp, wrinkle-free suit, actually prepared himself to see Fethry again, all bright and wide-eyed and close enough to touch. The thought of looking so unkempt while he did this, threw Fethry’s friendship back in his face, made him want to run away. 

Fethry blinked, utterly unaware of Steelbeak’s inner dilemma. “Huh? Oh, oh the noise! No, no—well, not exactly. I wanted to see if other forms of marine life responded to music the same way my team does, so I went out and rented a dozen musical instruments. So far, I’ve determined that a c sharp on the clarinet makes a sea urchin’s spines move clockwise, while an f flat on the trumpet makes them move counterclockwise!”

The more Fethry talked, the more the comfort of familiarity ached and the more pathetic he felt. An entire month and he was still pining after someone he had no future with.  

Steelbeak bent over to pick up his garment bag as Fethry continued to speak. 

“Where were you anyway? Nobody around here seemed to be able to give me a straight answer.” Fethry tilted his head to the side, expression curious, guileless, or at least outwardly so. There was an unfamiliar tension in his shoulders, tightness in his face. He’d been worried and was trying to hide it. 

“Y’know, here and there,” Steelbeak replied. “Heron had to meet with a bunch of science bigwigs and I tagged along for security. Didn’t really get the chance to go sightseeing.”

Fethry brightened. “Well, now that you’re back maybe we can do a little sightseeing here? I know Duckburg isn’t very exciting, but a lot can change in five years!”

Steelbeak clenched his jaw, pretending if he did it hard enough he would feel pain. “Can’t,” he said shortly. He even shrugged. “I need to focus on my job. You should too. F.L.O.W. isn’t paying us to screw around on their dime.” 

Not Steelbeak at least. Fethry’s very job title was a farce.  

“O-oh.” Fethry faltered, his smile flickering and fading. “Yes, of course. You’re right.” He took a step back, rubbing his arm. Despite his height, Steelbeak had never thought of Fethry as small before. Now, it was the only word that came to mind. 

He was on the brink of making a run for it, his canned excuse already spewed past his beak, when Fethry spoke again. What he said froze Steelbeak to the spot. “If this is about what happened at the amphitheater, I’m sorry if I was out of line. The last thing I would ever want to do is-is offend you or make you feel uncomfortable. I...I’d like to go back to being friends? If that’s okay?”

 Fethry smiled, nervous and utterly sincere, and Steelbeak felt numb at the thought of never seeing that smile again. And he wouldn’t, not if he wanted to keep the opportunities F.O.W.L. had given him. Money, power, prestige. Fethry’s smile couldn’t be worth that. 

“I should hit the sack,” Steelbeak drawled, cracking his neck so he didn’t have to see the disappointment on Fethry’s face. “Learned about this little thing called jet lag, and it’s a killer.” 

“Yeah,” Fethry said quietly, as Steelbeak very carefully didn’t look in his direction. “Yeah. I should turn in, too.”

Steelbeak made to turn away when belated realization slithered into the cavern of his ribs, sickening certainty wrapping ice cold around his lungs. Before he could stop himself, he ruined his neat exit with a question he was afraid he already knew the answer to. 

“You were waiting up for me?” 

He looked back at Fethry—he couldn’t help himself. It made a frightening amount of sense, even for someone like Steelbeak. The light on in the lab despite the lateness of the hour. Fethry’s worried, sleepless face. He wouldn’t have any idea when Steelbeak would be back. Fethry had been waiting for him. Fethry had been worried for him . 

Like Steelbeak, Fethry wore his heart on his sleeve. But unlike Steelbeak, who was all vindictiveness and bald attempts at saving face, Fethry was honest in everything he did. Even now as he blinked in surprise, Steelbeak knew he wouldn’t deny it. 

“Y-yes,” Fethry answered and though Steelbeak had expected it, still it came as a blow. He began to smile, sleepy-eyed and soft, and for Steelbeak that was the final straw. 

He would be the first to admit that he was no actor; why wield subterfuge when a fist would do just as well? But the thought of raising a hand to Fethry in violence terrified Steelbeak to a core he didn’t think he still had, and made him want to run far, far away. 

Still, the problem persisted. Fethry’s gaze weighed heavily on him, damning him, so he let his voice grow cold and aloof, allowing an old familiar cruelty to harden his gaze as he crushed the hope in Fethry’s. 

“Don’t make it a habit. F.L.O.W. doesn’t need you falling asleep with your head in a fishtank.” 

So as to not be misconstrued, Steelbeak didn’t hesitate before turning his back on Fethry. Though he intended the order to be given with finality, he only made it a few steps before Fethry’s voice rose up behind him, thick with uncertainty but growing stronger. 

“Steelbeak, I’m grateful for this opportunity, you know that. I-I would never fall behind on my work. But you’re right, the body needs seven to nine hours of sleep to function at its best, and on good nights I’ve barely been getting half of that! I won’t wait for you anymore either, if that’s what you’d prefer. I just wanted to be sure you were alright—”

Steelbeak rounded on him, tasting bile in his throat. “Stop talking!” He watched Fethry’s beak close with a clack and forced himself to press on. “Jeez, I don’t care what you do. I’m not your babysitter anymore! Sleep, don’t sleep, whatever. Stop wasting my time.”

He wrenched himself away scarcely after uttering the last word, heart pounding painfully against his sternum. His speed did nothing to spare him the full brunt of Fethry’s gutted expression. 

Steelbeak didn’t let it stop him, hiking his garment bag higher over his shoulder as he marched resolutely toward his quarters. His footfalls were the only sound in the hallway. If Fethry had spoken again, it would have been impossible to miss. 

The hallway remained silent at his back, oppressively so. 

Mission accomplished, Steelbeak thought, fighting the urge to put his fist through a wall.

Chapter Text

Steelbeak once spent twenty-three days in solitary confinement. 

Assault and disorderly conduct were the offenses. The brother of some unfortunate schmuck he once faced in some smoky backroom posing as a boxing ring, who left with more broken bones than he came in with, ran up to him in the prison cafeteria wielding a shiv carved out of a toothbrush handle. Talking things out was never his strong suit even before the damage to his beak that landed him in a hospital bed for two months, so Steelbeak slammed the guy’s head into a couple of tables in lieu of conversation. 

He spent twenty-three days staring at four identical gray walls, reigning in his mind as it wandered, stretching his sanity thin. He could’ve asked for books, but reading wasn’t his thing. Letters, entire words even, tended to rearrange themselves before his eyes, flowing incomprehensibly like a river so deep he had no hope of ever reaching the bottom. Instead he slept, unsuccessfully played tic-tac-to, and bounced a rubber ball back and forth against the wall. 

It was mind-numbing, even terrifying to be so utterly alone and powerless for the first time in his life. Steelbeak still wasn’t positive he hadn’t cracked in there. After a certain point he lost count of the days. 

He only knew it had been twenty-three because Heron told him so. 

It was night when she appeared, or at least Steelbeak thought it was. Time had long since gone screwy for him, and he slept a lot more toward the end. Even so, when he was awoken by the prolonged creak and thud of his cell door opening, he knew that not enough time had passed since the guards slid him his latest tray of mystery meat and soggy carrot sticks. 

Steelbeak sat up sharply, immediately on edge. 

The prison guards didn’t bother him much—unlike the idiots trapped in here with him, they’d read his file and knew perfectly well what he was capable of. Steelbeak was one of the few inmates who wasn’t worth messing with; he cut an intimidating figure even before the scars that twisted his beak into a permanent scowl, and pain didn’t slow him down like it might other birds. The last time a guard tried to jab Steelbeak with a taser, the schmuck found himself pinned to the wall with it. 

It was always possible that some newly hired high school flunkie wanted to prove his mettle and didn’t believe the stories about the rooster with the messed up face fresh from a bloody, underground fight club. In which case Steelbeak was more than happy to teach him a lesson. 

But when he turned toward the door, there wasn’t a guard standing there at all. Framed by the harsh yellow light of the hallway was a woman, her features thrown almost completely into shadow. Wearing a form-fitting dress and knee-high white boots, she was as out of place in his cell as sunshine at a funeral. 

“What abysmal security,” she muttered in a precise, delicate accent he didn’t recognize. It sounded posh, though. “A child could break out of this place.” 

“Who the hell are you?” he said, too confused to remember to stand from his cot. 

She fixed him with a deep, dark stare, the white of her eyes catching in the yellow light. “You may call me Black Heron.” She extended her right hand to him but it looked all wrong even in his cell’s poor lighting. The movements of her arm were too smooth and the silhouette had lines and ridges that an arm shouldn’t. 

Still, Steelbeak supposed she hadn’t given him a reason to be rude so he rose to his feet and accepted the handshake. Her palm was so cold against his that it stung and the pointed tips of her fingers dug into his skin. A metal prosthesis, the kind people paid good money for, went up to her shoulder. 

“Uh, sure,” he said. “Nice to meetcha.”

Up close, Heron was older than he’d first thought, with deep crow’s feet and a throat lined with age. She quirked a long dark brow at him. “And I presume you’re Mr. M—”

“Ah ah,” he said, raising a hand before she could finish. “The name’s Steelbeak.” 

What had started out as a nickname in the ring had become ubiquitous with his identity—even the guards knew it. It stung a little now, what with his beak warped and chipped and an overall eyesore, but he had no desire to go back to a name picked out for him by people he never knew. 

Heron tilted her head, looking amused. “You certainly have the face for it.”

 “Uh huh.” Steelbeak smiled with all his teeth, which usually made people shudder. When that didn’t get him so much as a blink, he backed down and folded his arms over his chest. “What do you want?”

Her brows rose slightly, the barest indication of surprise. “Quick to the point aren’t we?” 

“I know the look of someone who wants to make a deal,” he said, trying not to sound too smug about it. Phineas Sharp was a gnat of a man, but he’d managed to own Steelbeak longer than any other boss until the police raid. With him, Steelbeak practically had front row seats to the performance of every kind of sleazeball under the sun, from the truly pathetic to the cleverest of connivers. He knew enough to know that Black Heron was making little to no effort to disguise her intentions here. 

Her smile returned, just this side of sly. “Very well. How would you like a second chance at life? Outside of this cell? This prison?”

Steelbeak leaned back against the wall. “I’m listening.” 

His answer was as redundant as her question was rhetorical. Before she opened her beak again, he knew he would agree to whatever she asked, whatever her terms. He was no fool; he’d pay any price for freedom. 

Heron’s eyes gleamed like she’d read his mind, not that it mattered. Even if she knew his answer, she still had a role to play, lines she’d rehearsed. Two-thirds of making a deal was just scripted theater, and as its actors they were responsible for reaching the finale. 

“Walls have ears,” Heron said. “And my employers were listening. I work for a powerful, covert organization that could use a man of your skills.” 

Steelbeak grinned. With the damage to his beak, it more closely resembled a sneer. “And if I take the job, what then? Are we talking reduced sentence? Time off for good behavior?” 

Heron swept her prosthetic arm behind her, motioning toward the sickly, promising glow of the hallway light bleeding into his cell from the open doorway. “If you accept, we walk out of that door right now.” 

Now that got his attention. 

Steelbeak dropped his arms, practically falling out of his purposely casual lean. “Seriously?” he demanded, with none of his practiced restraint. “What’s the catch, lady?”

“No catch,” Heron replied. “We just couldn’t help but notice that you’re serving a fairly sizable sentence. The man I work with is patient, but not that patient.” 

He crossed his arms over his chest. This was….well. It was the stuff of dreams. The sort of dreams only the very pathetic or the very insane ever had. Abruptly paranoid, he pinched himself above the crease of his elbow, the movement hidden by the bulk of his arms. The pain told him he was awake. But his mind said it was too good to be true.

“You’re not seriously considering turning us down?” Heron said, incredulity winning out over her snake-oil delivery. “You’ll die in this cell. You’ve no allies in this place, and the guards either despise you or are too terrified to go near you. But with us...well.”

He knew the game she was playing. Still, Steelbeak raised his gaze to hers. “Yeah? With you what?”

She’d caught him. A hunter sauntering up to its prey, she made no effort to hide the satisfaction in her smile. “With us, you would be an agent of F.O.W.L: the Fiendish Organization for World Larceny.”

Steelbeak allowed himself to imagine the picture she was painting. He found he rather liked the end result. “Agent, huh?” 

.

He had never raised a hand against Black Heron before. 

Steelbeak stayed on his guard in the early days. Everything was unknown, from the hoards of faceless Eggheads to the lighthouse base pulled straight from a James Pond film. Heron had been a constant that, while not reassuring in of herself, was his one source of familiarity in an increasingly alien world. So he forcibly tamped down the instinct to deck her when she grabbed his beak without warning on his second day, examining his scarred face with her clinical, dark eyes. 

 “Steelbeak, was it?” she said. “We’ll see about that.” 

He agreed with her that his beak was beyond saving. Agreed to the twenty hours of surgery to replace it with a maw of sharp edges and steel because it would increase his worth in the eyes of High Command. Agreed, not knowing that the anesthesia would keep wearing off, making him awake in an inferno of pain so intense he’d black out before she could put him back under. 

The end result was a weapon and shield in one; blows to his face broke bone, and his bite truly became worse than his bark. He ignored the weight of the metal, how it was sometimes difficult to raise his head in the mornings. He ignored the phantom pains of his original beak being shattered, the sensation of it being removed. Once the initial tests were complete and there was no risk of infection, Heron continued to grab his beak, now to silence him and steer him and he allowed her to because violence was the language he understood, knowing that words were useless without force behind them. 

Words were cheap until Steelbeak was the one wielding them. He couldn’t lay a hand on Fethry but that didn’t matter when his words cut deeper than any knife, bloodless but just as lethal. Words were cheap until Heron was spitting his respect back in his face, holding a gun he didn’t understand as she prodded him in the chest with a talon so sharp it pierced him through his suit and drew little pinpricks of blood. 

“Partner?” she repeated, as if he’d uttered the world’s most pathetic joke. “You are a stooge. A low-level flunky, you bird-brained, idiotic, stupid—”

He’d never considered how small Heron was compared to him. Steelbeak had seen her spar before, seen her take down Eggheads practically five times her size. To him, it was second nature to respect strength, to respect power. It made her look bigger to his mind. Stature had no bearing on skill, but where Heron was deft, Steelbeak was blunt in his ruthlessness. It was a small matter to wrestle the Intelli-ray out of her hands and knock her to the floor with a solid jab to the ribs. 

Steelbeak pointed the gun at her face and relished in her utter bafflement in the second before he pulled the trigger. In that split second it didn’t matter that he only had the skeleton of a plan, that his last ally in this place had been prepared to stab him in the back (metaphorically and maybe literally). 

In that split second he was returning to what he knew, what he was best at: threats of violence and the will to act on them. 

“Not so smart now, are ya?”

.

Steelbeak woke up when an Egghead dropped him on the floor. 

He lashed out before he was even fully conscious, delivering a blow to the solar plexus that had the burly henchman doubling over with a wheeze. Before Steelbeak could bring his linked fists down on his head, a dry, familiar voice barked, “Enough.” 

With his hands still raised in midair, Steelbeak turned to acknowledge Bradford Buzzard. The old vulture’s bushy brows were furrowed in a thick, straight line above an uglier-than-usual scowl. 

Steelbeak lowered his arms as another Egghead delivered Black Heron, who was still babbling inanely. He didn’t say a word, all too aware of Buzzard less than ten feet away, but he couldn’t resist a smile. Steelbeak, the stooge, the idiot, reduced the high and mighty Black Heron to this without even trying. His slipshod plan might’ve failed, but failure didn’t sting as badly as it otherwise might’ve. 

Still, no good thing could last forever. 

He scowled when another Egghead appeared with the Intelli-ray, handing it to Buzzard. He fiddled with the settings for a moment before firing at Heron, who was examining the fingers of her prosthetic hand with rapt fascination. Steelbeak idly hoped that she would poke her own eye out. But the blast from the gun immediately knocked her out and Buzzard gave it back to the Egghead with his beak curled in distaste. 

“Dispose of that, please,” he ordered. 

The Egghead nodded before slipping out of the conference room as soundlessly as they had appeared. 

He and Buzzard were silent as they waited for Heron to regain consciousness, which was just fine with Steelbeak. He wasn’t in any hurry to get chewed out, and the burns from his out of nowhere electrocution ( by Heron’s lab rats? ) were starting to twinge. The pain was worse around his beak, the burns at the seam where metal met flesh sharply stinging. 

Heron began to move, groaning under her breath while Steelbeak looked on in cross-armed distaste. Buzzard approached her, gait slow and sure, and leaned down so that his sharp beak and acid yellow eyes would be the first thing she saw. 

And they were—Heron opened her eyes blearily at first, before the shock of Buzzard’s proximity could register. That lasted for about a second before he snapped, “Wake up.” 

Steelbeak leaned back with a smile as Heron startled, and Buzzard wasted no time in tearing into her. The gun she had been so proud of was sitting in an incinerator somewhere while her oh so genius plan was flatly ridiculed. And Steelbeak, who had never learned to quit while he was ahead, was unable to resist one last pointed jab at Heron, dropped on the ground just like him, elite spies turned into a pair of chastised children. 

“Ha! Who’s stupid now—”

He nearly bit his tongue in half when his beak seized, clamping shut of its own volition like a bear trap being triggered. 

Steelbeak reacted instinctively, violently, and punched the side of his beak to force it open. It remained sealed and his heartbeat pounded loud in his ears, ratcheting up into his throat, fit to choke him. He punched his beak again, and again, and again, his furious scream trapped behind its serrated edges. His knuckles began to ache and bit by bit they began to bleed.

Distantly, he was aware of Buzzard setting some sort of remote on his desk as he walked away from them. He continued to speak over Steelbeak’s garbled rage as he rained blow after blow upon his beak.  

As Steelbeak beat his own face, Heron was dismissed. 

She rose slowly, face averted, her pride stunted beneath Buzzard’s ire. But she was free to leave because her own body hadn’t been turned against her and for a split second, a single, swift, solitary instant of time, Steelbeak was almost desperate enough to reach out to her. Almost . He kept that shred of dignity intact, even as he resorted to clasping his hands around the top and bottom of his beak in an attempt to pry it open by force. 

The door closed behind Heron before Buzzard acknowledged him again. 

“Ah,” he said dryly, yellow eyes flicking over him with little reaction. “I almost forgot about you.” 

With the press of a button, he granted Steelbeak his freedom. 

He couldn’t help the deep, gulping breath he took as his aching jaw dropped open, relief nearly making him lightheaded. But that relief swiftly gave way to rage, pure and unbridled, that made his breath and every inch of his body quake. His hands curled into fists so tight the cuts on his knuckles began to weep. 

Buzzard turned his back on Steelbeak like he was nothing. Like he was less than nothing. 

It would be a matter of seconds to get up, cross the room and wring Buzzard’s neck. To raise his fist and exact retribution for this latest humiliation. But stupid as Steelbeak might be, he wasn’t that stupid. Nobody as frail-looking as the Buzzards controlled a global spy ring without powerful countermeasures against mutiny. 

That didn’t stop Steelbeak from snarling, low in his throat, as he pushed himself to his feet. 

Buzzard glanced over his shoulder, a rare smirk stretching across his narrow beak. “Good. You’re learning.” As quickly as the amusement appeared, it dropped from his face, tucked behind an emotionless scowl as easily as shuffling papers. “Now, I trust we won’t be seeing anymore of your half-cocked schemes?” 

“Half-cocked?” Steelbeak bit out. “I took out one of your top agents without even trying! If you gave me some actual resources, or my own missions, instead of foisting me on Heron all the time, maybe I could actually get something done around here!”

He took a step forward without thinking.

Buzzard scarcely had to move to press the same button on the remote, to lock his beak shut with another damning clang . Steelbeak immediately wrapped his hands around his beak, fighting the instinctive, panicked urge to try and open it by force again. 

“I wouldn’t if I were you.” Buzzard sounded bored . “You don’t want to know what the rest of these buttons do. I’ve been assured the results aren’t pleasant.” 

He stepped out from behind the conference table, folding his hands behind his back. “It’s become increasingly clear to me that you’ve misconstrued the reason behind your recruitment. You are an agent, yes, but only in name. You are our muscle, cannon fodder, a blunt instrument to be wielded at the will of your superiors.” Buzzard stopped less than two feet away from Steelbeak, unconcerned by the way the rooster loomed over him, trembling with rage down to his stupid, fancy designer shoes.  

“You, Steelbeak, are here to follow orders, not issue them. And if you can’t do that then I’ll just drop you back in the hole where we found you. Is that clear?” 

Buzzard lifted the remote. Before he could stop himself, the small, weak part of Steelbeak that feared pain, the part he thought he’d killed years ago, took a step back. His flinch did not go unnoticed.

 The slow smile that spread across the old vulture’s weathered face made Steelbeak’s stomach turn like someone stuck a shiv into his guts and twisted. But despite his posturing, all Buzzard did was deactivate the lock on his beak.

“Now, I believe you have a job to get back to.” 

.

Some nights, Fethry dreamt of the ocean. 

He would remember lapping waves on a cold, gray shore, the cling and give of wet sand beneath his feet. The only source of warmth were his parents’ hands wrapped around his own, his mother on one side and his father on the other, giants to his mind. They led him forward, swinging his arms between them, but whenever he tried to crane his head back to see their faces, all he saw was gray sky. 

He dreamt of an unending horizon, a world of undulating blue no matter which way he turned. He felt a refreshing, salty breeze ruffle his feathers, tempering the heat of a midday sun, his legs swinging over the balcony of the lab pod as he spoke to the crudely drawn face of Arturo in the golden sunshine. 

 He dreamt of sinking into a void, alone and utterly blind save for the ribbon-like phosphorescence of the creatures he studied and named. But they were all of them silent and his own voice stunted, his throat filling with water whenever he tried to open his mouth. 

Fethry sometimes woke up from these dreams unable to rise from the tangled sheets of his bed, weighed down by every ounce, every mile and grain of salt he had lived under those four years. 

When he did manage to sit up, flexing his cold fingers to try and regain feeling, he would look out the window to ground himself. He always slept with the curtains wide open for this reason—to see the sky and the flash of passing cars and the individual beacons of streetlights in the dark. To remind himself that he wasn’t in the lab anymore, miles of ocean poised over his head to crush him. 

Returning to Duckburg was a challenge.  

Seeing his family again was part of that, even if having Della back was the best surprise he didn’t know he could ask for. 

Having all his cousins in one place, at least until an errant breeze swept Gladstone away to his next all-expenses-paid vacation or a new adventure caught Della’s eye or Donald got too annoyed with him, reminded him of the summers they spent together at Grandma Duck’s farm, balmy days in the orchard and cozy nights around the fireplace. He hadn’t been to the farmhouse in almost ten years, not since Grandma passed. Cousin Gus was running it now. Visiting always seemed moot if he was doing it alone. 

And anyway, he was eager to reconnect with Huey and Dewey, to see Louie again for the first time since he was a toddler and meet Webby (he still wasn’t sure where she’d come from but he was more than happy to have a new niece). 

But the world was bigger and louder than he remembered, and after the chaos of the Moonvasion it was difficult to leave his dingy Hookbill Harbor motel for anything other than visiting Mitzy, who had made a home for herself in Duckburg Bay. The sound of waves knocking against the wooden pilings of the docks, that ageless rhythm, salt air and seabirds calling, were more familiar to him than honking cars or what felt like a hundred different voices speaking at once everywhere he went. 

But Fethry was in no hurry to become a recluse (again), accidentally or otherwise, so he allowed Huey to cajole him into visiting Uncle Scrooge’s laboratory under the Money Bin. The lab hadn’t changed much since the last time he stopped by, almost five years ago now, the first and last time he’d asked Mr. McDuck (not Uncle Scrooge) for a job. 

The McDuck Sublab of the Future had already been a few decades old by then, but it was well-maintained, with crews rotating out every six months. Fethry had asked if there were any openings left, anything at all, he’d even be a janitor if that’s what it took to see the ocean in a way he never had before. Mr. McDuck, hardly glancing up from the tower of expense reports on his desk, summoned a secretary who led Fethry down to Gearloose Labs, where Dr. Gearloose pointed him toward a stack of waivers to sign and informed him of the 4 a.m. departure that following morning. 

Fethry thought he’d be gone for six months. 

It was going to be an educational getaway, a tantalizing excuse to indulge in what’s been his special interest for as long as he could remember. Since he was ten and first watched a humpback whale breach in a spray of water and rainbow fractals, pet the silky back of a netted stingray, and picked at barnacles latched to the side of the boat during the few fishing trips Abner took him on before their parents died and he lost any incentive to be a big brother or socialize with people at all. 

But six months turned into a year. The old crew, real scientists, explorers, and engineers, left but no one came to replace them. Budget cuts, said the pilot who continued to deliver food and supplies every 3 months but never stayed long enough to share a cup of tea or a game of checkers. “Old McMoneybags is downsizing, they say.”

And so one year became two. 

But Fethry couldn’t leave; he wouldn’t abandon his team, not like they’d abandoned him (so what if his new team was made up of krill!). If he left, who would keep the sublab running? The giant sea worms in the Tully Observatory would starve, not to mention all the carefully caught specimens in the lab rooms. Besides, Uncle Scrooge would check in sooner or later. Fethry would let him know that the McDuck Sublab of the Future was in dire straits and he would send someone to help Fethry keep it all afloat. 

But two years became three. 

Then four. 

In the present, Dr. Gearloose looked up from his tablet at the sound of the elevator doors opening, and before Huey could launch into what surely would’ve been a lovely pre-prepared speech, he blanched and pointed at Fethry with all the vitriol a prosecutor would give the accused. 

“ You. What are you doing here again?”

Fethry couldn’t help laughing, just a little. It had to have been almost five years since he saw the guy, and Dr. Gearloose was acting like it was just yesterday that Fethry last stepped through these doors, tripped, and knocked over a glass canister of metal-eating mites that ate through the wire frame of Dr. Gearloose’s glasses while they were sitting on his face. 

“Good to see you again, Dr. Gearloose.” Fethry shook the hand that the scientist was still pointing at him with. 

“You know Dr. Gearloose?” Luckily, Huey seemed more surprised than disappointed by the interruption. And maybe a little uneasy. Dr. Gearloose’s temper was infamous, after all, and Fethry didn’t exactly come across as a pillar of strength to most people. 

“Oh, we go way back, Hue.”

Seeing that his glare was having no effect on Fethry, Dr. Gearloose pinned it on Huey instead. “Intern! What is the meaning of this? You know only scientists are allowed in the lab during business hours.”

“But-but Boyd’s here!”

“Boyd’s a creation of science, he doesn’t count. Duh.”

Huey’s little friend waved from the ceiling, where he was sitting among the support beams—just hanging out, it looked like. “Hi, Huey! Hi, Mr. Fethry!”

Fethry waved back. “Hey there, kiddo. Am I gonna see you at the troop meeting this Saturday?”

Huey got excited enough to withstand the force of Dr. Gearloose’s glare too. “Boyd you have to go! Uncle Fethry told me there’ll be a new knot-tying lesson.”

One of the ways Fethry decided to reenter society was by rejoining the Junior Woodchucks. While his study of the JWG hadn’t lapsed, his tenure as a troop leader certainly had. With Launchpad’s help he was able to renew his membership and get back into nature. 

Four years living under the sea had turned the smell of dirt and the play of sunlight through the trees into alien things, and he was an eager explorer all over again, rediscovering a land he thought he’d forgotten. He barely slept a wink the first night he went camping, kept awake by the sound of the wind through the trees, nocturnal friends rustling in the undergrowth, other campers turning in their tents. 

He hadn’t been alone in the sublab, not in the technical sense, but the ocean was silent for someone who wasn’t born to hear its songs. On the surface everything spoke, everything called up to the top of the sky in a voice all their own, “I’m here!” 

It was a language Fethry had all but forgotten, but he was relearning it now. 

When he joined Launchpad as a troop leader, that put him in charge of Huey’s troop. After initially fearing that Huey would request a transfer to a different troop altogether (he was used to family members being embarrassed by him, not that it hurt any less), it turned into the best thing that could’ve happened for them. They’d gotten off to a bit of a rocky start back at the sublab, and it was nice to have a common interest to build off of as they got to know each other better. Fethry stopped thinking of the kids as Little Donalds and they started calling him ‘Uncle.’ 

It was a relief to find out that Huey had a friend (a best friend) who operated on a similar wavelength as him. Fethry knew what it was to be alone among peers—even the Junior Woodchucks weren’t perfect—and Boyd was just what Huey needed to get out of his shell. 

Fethry didn’t stop his nephew from running to join Boyd, the little robot boy jetting down to pick up Huey and carry him up to the rafters so they could continue their conversation. He and Fethry could pick up their tour once he was done. 

When Dr. Gearloose got tired of yelling and nobody listening, he stalked away. As little as he might want Fethry there, he probably (just barely) stopped himself from having him bodily tossed out because of his connection to Scrooge, tenuous as it was. It was a courtesy he doubtlessly wouldn’t have extended to anyone else.

Fethry wondered if he should feel grateful or not. Being associated with Scrooge McDuck wasn’t always a good thing. 

“Doctor-Intern,” Dr. Gearloose barked as he climbed a set of steps and disappeared further into the lab. “Deal with this idiotic interloper.”

The scientist that scrambled out from a bathroom-turned-office was much more Fethry’s speed. Messy-haired, short, and harried, the brown-feathered duck shot him a smile that was only a little tight at the edges. 

“Hey! Hi! Sorry about Dr. Gearloose. How can I help you, Mr…?”

Fethry took the offered hand much more happily than Dr. Gearloose’s accusatory one. “Oh, I’m no mister! Just Fethry. Fethry Duck. And you must be Mr. Crackshell-Cabrera, Huey’s mentor! He talks about you all the time.”

Often in the same breath as Gizmoduck but Fethry felt that wasn’t his secret to share.

Some of the tension left Mr. Crackshell-Cabrera’s face as he chuckled, taking his hand back to sweep it boyishly through his hair, only messing it up more. “Oh, well um, I’m honored! Huey’s a great kid. And it’s just Fenton, Mr…Duck…”

A familiar prickling sort of dread settled coldly over Fethry as he watched realization dawn on Fenton, his expression shuttering like smoke rising to block out the sun. 

Fenton glanced over at Huey and then back to Fethry, maybe taking in their similar red hats, or the fact that they arrived together. Maybe he heard Fethry being called ‘uncle,’ a blessing that was sometimes curse now. Getting recognized hadn’t been a problem in years past, when he lived outside of Duckburg. There were a thousand Ducks in Calisota after all, nevermind the world. But with one of the triplets in tow, it was too big of a coincidence for anyone to miss here. 

“You’re one of Mr. McDuck’s nephews?” Fenton blinked, looking him up and down. He probably wasn’t doing it to be mean. When someone heard the name ‘McDuck’ in association with you, they usually expected someone glamorous like Gladstone or and tough and no-nonsense like Donald. 

By contrast, Fethry knew he was a little more hardscrabble and goofy, and that was a nice way of putting it. Not exactly “nephew of the richest duck in the world” material. 

But Fethry still smiled and gave his now-typical answer, because Fenton was cute and he’d been nice so far. “Only through marriage, but yes!” He’d never claim to be something he wasn’t, and Donald had ownership of the McDuck name in a way Fethry never would. 

“Huh. I hadn’t heard of you.” Fenton seemed to remember himself, rubbing the back of his neck with a nervous little smile. “Not to be rude or anything! I’m still not sure how this family works.”

Behind him, Fethry saw Boyd fly Huey back down to solid ground. Ah. He must be ready to continue the tour.

“You and me both!” Fethry nudged Fenton with a wink, moving around him to meet Huey halfway. 

Fenton followed, surprising him. “So, what do you do, F-Fethry?”

“He’s a marine biologist!” Huey had joined them, grinning proudly and his tone, while upbeat, brooked no argument. 

Fethry’s heart skipped a beat, touched by the support of a family member who’d once had so little faith in him. He wouldn’t soon forget Huey’s horror just a few months ago when he learned Fethry wasn’t a “real” scientist. The turnaround was almost overwhelming. Still, he decided to be honest. 

“ Amateur marine biologist.” 

Huey sent him a look, like he knew what Fethry was trying to do. “He’s taking care of the kaiju-sized krill in the bay,” he bragged, not one to be outdone. 

Fenton’s thick eyebrows almost flew off his face. “What—that sea monster?”

Fethry gave in with a laugh. “That’s Mitzy!” He tugged Huey into a little sideways hug as both an apology and thank you. He wasn’t used to anyone defending him, much less family. 

“In that case, what’re you doing here?” Fenton tugged nervously on his tie. “You’re not, ah, you’re not here looking for a job, are you?”

The thought of walking up to Dr. Gearloose and asking for a job was hilarious. But the thought of going to Uncle Scrooge again and asking for a job was more nerve-wracking than anything his new employers at F.L.O.W might have in store for him. 

Fethry reassured Fenton with a grin and a wave of his hand. “Oh, no thanks. I already have a job with a research lab nearby. Now, I believe Huey was going to treat me to a tour! Would you care to join us?”

.

 The McDuck Sublab of the Future had been a relic of the past. Years of only his inexpert maintenance kept everything running: solar panels, life support, the aquavator. The electricity was buggy, there were hull breaches, and the hydrothermal vents grew in intensity every year, undoing what few repairs he was able to make. 

But the sublab did its best to warn him of hidden dangers, creaking and groaning its displeasure in the darkness. He learned the difference between the sounds of the hull settling and an imminent hull breach and had the timing of the vent eruptions down to a science, at least until they mutated past his understanding and demolished the sublab in the end. 

Working for F.L.O.W was like learning a new language. He wasn’t familiar with the rules or the dangers at first, couched as they were in social interaction and plain obfustication, which he’d had little practice with in his last four isolated years. 

He wasn’t a spy like Mrs. Beakley. He wasn’t rich, or lucky, or a pilot. He wasn’t even an adventurer, really, just someone who got caught up in the periphery of them. He made up songs for his krill for Pete’s sake! 

But he was patient. He listened. He watched. He learned. Especially when nobody expected him to. 

F.L.O.W wasn’t what they seemed. Fethry wasn’t sure what they were but the Federation of Leading Ocean Wayfarers they were not. 

His recruiter, a bubbly red headed duck named Pepper, disappeared after his first day and no one would tell him where she went. He was the only scientist on staff half the time, or so it seemed until Dr. Heron apparently got tired of him cluttering up the corner of her lab and had him moved to his own space, where he worked alone all hours of the day (and sometimes night). So much of F.L.O.W headquarters was off limits to him, and what he did have access to already looked like a monotone cross between the hallways of a Star Destroyer straight out of Galaxy Wars  and an office from the ‘60s. 

Fethry wondered what would happen if he tried to leave. He hadn’t made plans or anything—hadn’t thought much about it, really—but there was an air of menace permeating this underground facility that he couldn’t ignore. 

It was more than the clicking claws of Dr. Heron’s prosthesis, or the way she eyed him like a stain on the bottom of her platform boots. More than the faceless security guards that patrolled the drab hallways (Eggheads, he heard whispered around corners that were empty when he rounded them). 

More than anything, it was the way Steelbeak, handsome and proud and utterly incongruous, wouldn’t look Fethry in the eye when he lied. That, more than anything, warned him against trusting F.L.O.W. After all, the only thing blind trust ever got him was four years at the bottom of the ocean. 

And maybe it went against his better judgment, but he did trust Steelbeak. 

Though it had been a few weeks now since Fethry last saw his friend (ex-friend?). Two weeks, six days, and fifteen hours to be exact, but then he was used to counting his lonely days, used to people abandoning him.

Fethry’d never had much of a mind for romance. The back-and-forth dance of flirting eluded him and kissing and…other stuff hadn’t held much appeal. He knew he talked too much about things most people probably didn’t care about, he was spacey, and boring. No one had ever shown an interest in him and he’d never shown an interest in anyone, so he figured that was that. He had his team and he had Mitzy (and now Huey and the Woodchucks), and that would have to be enough. 

But then Steelbeak, with his sharp face and sharp voice and sharp suit, listened to him ramble and didn’t leave (not at first). 

Steelbeak, with his nice shoulders and his tallness, which Fethry hadn’t thought he cared about until now, who laughed at Fethry’s fish puns once he explained the joke, and what an incredible laugh it was—nasal and ridiculous and genuine, it flustered Fethry every time he heard it. It was almost a foreign concept, laughing with someone instead of being laughed at .  

In the amphitheater, over a month ago now, Steelbeak had saved him from a painful fall. Fethry still thought about that moment, dreamt about it even—a handful of seconds stretching into eternity. Steelbeak’s grip around his wrist, his hand so big it swallowed his wrist entirely. Their bodies flush, sharing breath, sharing warmth. Steelbeak’s expression, made fearsome by the gunmetal gleam of his beak, softened in his surprise. 

Fethry wasn’t completely clueless, despite all evidence to the contrary. Studying creatures of the deep was his life's work. And that included the deadly ones. So Fethry knew what a predator looked like. He knew how predators hunted, how they moved through their environment. Some were subtle and unassuming, like the man-of-war. Others were obvious in their intent; the barracuda was sharp and sleek, all streamlined silver, with a grimace of jagged teeth ready to snap a fish in half. 

Even though he’d grown up on the periphery of great adventures, Fethry still learned a thing or two from them. He learned about spies and assassins and pirates and what have you, nevermind that he rarely encountered them. He learned about the dangers of the world that went beyond the everyday.

He knew, for all intents and purposes, that Steelbeak was the barracuda. 

He’d been to prison. His prosthetic beak was more intimidating than practical. He carried himself with the casual, loping grace of a trained fighter and his hands bore the calluses and scars of years of broken and poorly healed skin. 

Maybe all of that meant Fethry was supposed to be afraid of him. Donald would certainly think so, and before the sublab there was a time that Fethry would’ve done anything to get his favorite cousin’s approval. But Fethry had seen worse than a big bruiser with a bad attitude. Silence was scary. Darkness was scary. 

Steelbeak, who stuttered when Fethry complimented him, was not. 

Steelbeak, who stalked through F.L.O.W like there was a target on his back, like he’d been given a stay of execution but he didn’t know for how long, was not who Fethry should be scared of. Even when he yelled and sneered, threw Fethry’s friendship back in his face like a rotting fish. He wasn’t afraid. Just worried. And sad. 

Then something happened one day that had never happened before. 

A strange alarm went off while he was in the middle of listening to the three heartbeats of Octavio, his giant Pacific octopus. A pair of Eggheads ran into his lab, told him there was an emergency and that he had to stay inside. That was the last thing they said before stationing themselves by the door, motionless as statues and just as blank faced. They ignored everything he said, whether it was a joke to cut the tension or a question about what was going on.

Fethry wasn’t sure if they were meant to keep danger out or keep him in. He decided not to find out.

The lockdown only lasted about an hour. 

The Eggheads didn’t say anything to let him know it had been lifted—they must’ve had radios built into those helmets of theirs because, without warning, they turned in unison and marched out the door. 

“Is everything okay?” Fethry called as they closed the door behind them, not expecting an answer. 

He also didn’t expect to hear an almighty crash outside his lab, and the thud of a body hitting the ground. 

He rushed to the door but only opened it a crack. What if the emergency was still going on and that’s why the Eggheads had left so quickly? There could be something dangerous on the other side.

The first thing Fethry saw was one of the Eggheads on the floor, groaning but alive. The other Egghead, a brawny seagull, was pinned to the wall with an arm across his throat by a furious Steelbeak. 

His chest heaved with every breath, and he looked angrier than Fethry had ever seen him. He looked apoplectic. He looked hurt . 

His feathers and carefully pressed suit were singed and blackened at the edges, and his knuckles were red from small, bleeding wounds. The front of his suit was smeared with blood, like he’d tried to wipe his hands off on it. The contrast was jarring against his black and white ensemble. 

“Steelbeak!” Fethry threw the door open the rest of the way before darting out into the hall. “What’re you doing? What’s wrong?”

For a painfully long moment, Steelbeak wouldn’t look at him. He stared straight at the Egghead, his wide eyes seeing nothing, and his heavy breathing veering worryingly close to hyperventilating. He pressed harder against the Egghead’s throat and the seagull choked. 

“Steelbeak.” Fethry reached out, wrapping his hand around the wrist hanging tense and tight-fisted at his side. 

Steelbeak recoiled. He dropped the Egghead, who fell to the floor with a wheeze, and ripped his arm out of Fethry’s grasp. But at least he was looking at him now, eyes bloodshot and arms shaking with tension. 

Fethry took a step back, raising his hands in front of him. 

“Hey, hey, it’s just me.” He spoke softly, but calm, not wanting Steelbeak to feel patronized. Blood rushed through his ears but he ignored it. “Are you–are you okay? Your face—y-your hands. I have a first-aid kit in my lab—”

“What’re you doing,” Steelbeak bit out. 

Fethry’s mind blanked. “Uh…I don’t…I just wanted to—”

“What.” Steelbeak took a step forward. “Do you think.” Then another. “You’re doing?” He loomed over Fethry, crossing well into his personal space. At his sides, his fists shook and this close the burns and bruises on his face were thrown into sharp relief. Their beaks were only a few inches apart, and Fethry found he’d never wanted to kiss someone more than he did in that moment. 

Steelbeak wasn’t the barracuda right now; he was the tarpon, the fighting fish, swimming straight at its prey and daring it to move out of the way first. But Fethry wasn’t afraid, even if maybe he should be. There was something in Steelbeak’s eyes, some emotion he couldn’t place, that seemed on the verge of shattering. 

Fethry leaned back to look him in the eye. “Nothing,” he replied honestly. “I just want to know if you’re okay.”

Steelbeak flinched as though Fethry had struck him. He backed away so fast he almost tripped on the Egghead he’d dropped, and his fearsome face was knit with confusion and pain. 

“If I’m–why do you even care? After what I–”

Steelbeak slammed his beak shut tighter than an oyster, looking a little horrified with himself. He whirled to face the two Eggheads he’d choked and thrown respectively, and growled, “You didn’t see or hear nothin,’ am I clear?”

They nodded furiously. “Yes, sir. I-I mean no, sir.”

When Steelbeak turned back around he didn’t look at Fethry, gaze stubbornly fixed on some distant point down the hallway. 

Fethry tried to reach for him as he passed, but Steelbeak gave him a wide berth, shoulders hunched and a hunted look in his eyes. 

He dropped his hand, watching Steelbeak’s back until he disappeared around the next corner. The Eggheads rushed off too, ignoring Fethry again as he called after them, desperate for answers. Within seconds he was left alone in the hall, gray walls like prison bars around him and silence ringing in their wake. 

Fethry let out a very Donald-like huff. “Enough is enough,” he said determinedly to no one but himself. 

He refused to let himself be trapped again.

Chapter Text

It had been a long couple weeks since Steelbeak was allowed back at their Duckburg headquarters. 

After all his screw-ups, the job of monitoring Fethry had been left to the Eggheads. Their masked cannon fodder might not be the brightest (like Steelbeak was one to talk), but what they lacked in brains they made up for in numbers. Fethry hadn’t made any escape attempts, was barely in contact with the McDucks, and generally just did what he was told. High Command wasn’t worried about him interfering with Project: Alexandria. 

 Heron kept Steelbeak busy on missions or at the Library of Alexandria, where the massive stone halls were gradually filling with cube-shaped cells smaller than anything even he’d been thrown into. 

The ticking clock that had been at the back of his mind for so long, distant and easy to ignore most times, was blaring like Big Ben now. Buzzard’s not-evil evil plan was on speedrun, coming together with a new and alarming sense of finality. They were counting down by the day now, not weeks or months or even years, and they blurred by so quickly Steelbeak could barely keep his head on straight. 

One night he was beating down a masked weirdo in a purple cape to get some sort of high-tech dimensional key thing Buzzard needed to get rid of McDuck. Another day he’d be jetted off to Istanbird to fight Fethry’s family for the pieces of a magical sword that didn’t really matter in the long run because Heron was just after one of the girls’ feathers to make clones out of, which… weird. 

He got pitted against the kid in red, with a red hat that reminded him of Fethry. It had almost been a month since Steelbeak last saw him, reaching out with kind eyes that he didn’t deserve and just made him angrier. Maybe he was going soft and maybe it was a little pathetic, but against his better judgment he went easier on the kid than he would’ve any of the others. Didn’t leave worse than a couple bruises. 

Of course, then the kid went totally ballistic on him, wailing on him like a rabid fighter locked in a cage match, and he stopped seeing any resemblance to Fethry. Not like anything could compare to the original, anyway. 

Going back in their underground lair beneath Funzo’s was almost as much of a shock as any of his other missions. He’d been gone so long that everything struck a weird chord between familiar and alien. After having the burnished gold of the Alexandria desert seared into the back of his eyelids and being dazzled by the smells of an Istanbird marketplace, the uniform gray drabness of the base hallways made his senses feel like they’d been muted. Had the walls always felt like prison bars? Or maybe he’d just learned to appreciate fresh air. 

He followed Heron, sulking the same way he always did when she dragged him somewhere new. Buzzard had them practically joined at the hip since the whole intelli-ray fiasco, which was its own torture, but the old broad also felt the need to order him around every minute of every goddamn day. What he’d give to be alone, watching a wrestling match maybe, with a beer in his hand. Even a lukewarm one would do. 

Or standing in an empty amphitheater, the breeze on his feathers, and Fethry’s upturned face so close to his. 

But no. Instead he was here, half-listening to Heron loudly complaining about…something. He was trying hard not to pay attention. At least she’d left the creepy clone twins back in Alexandria to train with the Blot. 

This was what his life had turned into. Magic clones and magic-hating robe-wearing psychos. It almost made him miss his fighting days, when things were simple and survival was all he had to worry about. 

The halls around them, while pretty uniform, started to get more familiar. It took Steelbeak a second to recognize where he was, but when he did the dread that landed in his gut was a sick and twisting thing, a shiv snuck in beneath his ribs. Heron was leading them toward her science labs, which put them unnervingly close to where Fethry was stationed. After that, he couldn’t help but tune back into whatever Heron was ranting about. He almost wished he hadn’t. 

“An insult is what it is! Cluttering what little lab space I have with a simpleton’s excuse for experiments. I doubt he’s even heard of the scientific method! He brings in tanks full of-of mutated barnacles just to look at them, like a child . The fool won’t even dissect the things.”

She was talking about Fethry. And she wasn’t exactly being complimentary. Even Steelbeak wasn’t too stupid to figure that out. 

He let his rage live under his skin, sizzling like oil on a griddle, desperate to light. His capacity for violence was a deep well that hadn’t run dry since he was a teen, all feathers and bone, scraping out a living with other desperate, sallow-faced boys. Giving into his anger was second nature, until he started shacking up with evil people smarter than he was strong. 

If he didn’t want Heron to snitch on him and get him demoted to Antarctoucan, or possibly hell (knowing the toys Buzzard had in his collection, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility), he’d keep his mouth shut when she badmouthed the one person he cared about. 

The one person who didn’t hold their intelligence over Steelbeak’s head like one held a treat over a simpering pet. Who loved to share, knowledge and stories and smiles, and teased the same out of Steelbeak without guile or ulterior motives. In F.O.W.L, every interaction was transactional, pros and cons weighed, every conversation hiding a secret deal, and Steelbeak was usually the patsy. When Fethry handed him a hermit crab with an intricately detailed shell and pointed out every whorl and groove, he felt like an equal. 

And Heron was still complaining. 

“—be a miracle if I get any work done. If only Bradford would let me throw that idiot in a cell now and be done with it. I doubt Scrooge or his ilk would even notice he was missing.”

And, well. That was the last straw wasn’t it. 

“Don’t call him that,” he muttered. It just slipped out, but he didn’t regret it. Not even when Heron pinned him with a look over a shoulder, like a bug under glass. 

“Call who, what?” she asked, perfectly neutral. To the untrained ear, she might’ve sounded curious. But Steelbeak recognized the steel underlying her words and the predatory glint in her eye. If she smelled blood in the water, she would pounce, like a shark. 

Though Fethry had explained to him that the shark thing was just a myth. 

Steelbeak scowled, playing it off. You could respect your enemy, right? Not that he’d ever thought his old rivals were anything but low-grade chumps. 

“The duck. He’s not an idiot. Don’t call him one.”

“Oh? And why shouldn’t I?” Playful and taunting, Heron was the real child around here. An old wrinkly one. 

And for that matter, why was he even following her around when there was an Egghead rec room he could be hanging out in? It wasn’t like Heron actually wanted him in her lab, where everything interesting to look at was off limits anyway. 

Steelbeak rolled his eyes and stomped past her. He made sure to shoulder check her on his way. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” Heron snapped at his back, all traces of humor gone from her voice. She was shrill, obviously embarrassed to have been brushed off so easily. “Look at me when I’m speaking to you!”

“I’m done talkin,’” he growled.

“Hm. You certainly are.”  

He took another step before his beak clamped shut against his will, locking under magnetic force. And he knew it wouldn’t open again, no matter how much he screamed. 

Blood rushed through his ears as his mind went numb with panic. It had to be Buzzard. Buzzard was the one with the remote, but—how could Buzzard be here? They’d left him back in Alexandria, pacing in his office. 

And Steelbeak hadn’t done anything wrong! 

Scrabbling at the sides of his beak, his head swiveled back and forth in search of Buzzard’s acid yellow eyes, his deceptive monotone. All he saw was Heron, gray walls, endless hallways. 

Heron’s laughter brought his scrambled focus back to her. 

She was holding Bradford’s remote in her flesh and blood hand, watching him expectantly, deadly sharp beak curved in amusement. She had the remote . And she was waving it at him. 

“Looking for this?”

Steelbeak lunged. 

Heron easily sidestepped him, panic making him sloppy. She shook her head and tsked. “Now, now, Steelbeak, is that any way to treat your superior?

“Bradford gave me the remote a few days ago. After all, you’re practically a rabid dog. We needed some way to control you, to avoid another debacle like what you caused at the Satellitehouse.” 

Steelbeak swore at her behind the prison of his beak, or tried to at least. When that didn’t work, he squared his shoulders, felt the strength of his fists and the inferno of his rage. He wasn’t a pet on a leash. 

Heron cackled at the display. “Keep up with that sort of behavior and I’ll have no choice but to issue punishment myself. Though I could be persuaded to release you if you were to apologize.”

His next insult was just garbled, but the bird he flipped her made up for it. So would the beating he’d give her before he took the remote. He’d beaten her once before, after all. He could do it again. 

“Have it your way.” Heron pressed another button on the remote 

He’d been set on fire once before. 

It was his own fault, really. He got a half gallon bottle of vodka smashed on his shoulder during a bar fight, soaking through his clothes. He’d forgotten all about it a half-hour later when he stepped out for a smoke. The second he flicked on his lighter, he went up in flames. It was funny in hindsight. The best fighter in three cities, with the five guys he’d knocked out still slumped in corners of the bar, rolling around in the dirt trying to wrestle off his shirt and pants that were lit up like the Fourth of July. But in the moment, he only felt the flames, licking at his face, his chest, his arms. Searing, white-hot with a pain he’d never known. 

Until then. Until now. 

White hot fire exploded across his face, making it impossible for him to think, much less move, much less breathe. Electricity arced outward from his beak, radiating across his face and down his neck, making his eyes burn. His skin felt like it was on fire. Again. 

Steelbeak had borne the fracture of his original beak with a few manly tears, the pain eased by the fact that he’d still won the fight that cost him his stunning good looks. 

Here, now, the pain was so overwhelming that his legs gave out. He fell to his knees, barely catching himself from smashing his face on the dumb office tiles with his palms flat against the floor, his arms trembling from the effort of holding himself up. 

Just as his brain started to feel like it was boiling inside his head, the pain stopped. As if it had never been there. 

He was sent reeling, but unable to open his beak and suck in lungfuls of air, he inhaled and exhaled harshly through his nose. It was like trying to breathe through a straw. His lungs burned and the nerve endings of his face still sung with pain. 

His vision swimming, a gray blur that he gradually recognized as Heron’s taloned prosthesis appeared in front of him, wrapping around his beak and dragging his head up to meet Heron’s eyes. 

“That was just a reminder,” she said coldly. “A reminder that you are our property. Cross me again and you’ll be getting much better acquainted with all the little surprises I installed in your beak.”

That day in his prison cell, when Heron appeared and talked about a golden opportunity, he thought they’d be partners. He’d be an agent of F.O.W.L, in charge of his own life for once, and more seductive words had never been uttered. 

When she called him stupid, a stooge, he accepted that she was his boss (reluctantly. after he shot her and his own evil plan went to pot). But that was fine too because Steelbeak was used to being an attack dog and violence was his first language. 

But this? This was worse than jail. Worse than the fighting rings. This was the start to a life of fear. Forget his designer suits—he had less freedom now than when he was dressed in prison orange. 

Heron kept talking, but movement in the hallway behind her drew Steelbeak’s eye instead. There was a flash of color at odds with the gray walls, and he willed his bleary vision to focus. 

He locked eyes with Fethry, who stared back in abject horror. 

What Fethry was doing in this part of the base, he didn’t know. Maybe he got lost, like Steelbeak still sometimes tended to. Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter because if Heron saw him she would kill him. Forget Buzzard’s orders and delicate plans. She’d kill him and make Steelbeak watch. 

Fethry was clinging to the wall, looking like his legs might fold beneath him. He didn’t break eye contact with Steelbeak for an instant, big eyes that were meant to marvel at glowing shrimp instead widening in fear as months of lies were laid bare in front of him.  

He was under no illusion about whether or not Fethry had seen everything. 

Heron was still talking, not seeming to notice or care that Steelbeak’s attention was miles away. She tugged sharply on his beak again to prove whatever point she was making, and Steelbeak took that opportunity to shake his head, just once, at Fethry. 

Get out of here, he tried to beg with his eyes. Run . 

He knew Fethry understood when a shadow descended over his face and his eyes flooded with tears that Steelbeak didn’t deserve. But instead of turning tail and running for the nearest exit like any sane person, Steelbeak watched Fethry gather himself, tucking his despair beneath a determined mask with frown and furrowed brows. He straightened, pushing off from the wall and drawing himself up to his full, unimpressive height. 

Steelbeak didn’t understand what Fethry was doing until he bolted down the hallway and threw himself at Heron, tackling her to the floor with a battle cry. 

Steelbeak had to act fast. The only reason Heron budged at all was because Fethry had taken her by surprise. 

Heaving himself to his feet, Steelbeak caught Heron first with a kick to the underside of her chin. He followed it up with a punch to the face that he put all of his considerable weight behind, which nearly sent him toppling back to the floor on unsteady feet. But it was done.

Within three seconds Heron was knocked out cold and Fethry looked on, all wide eyed, from where he’d landed beside her. 

In the ensuing silence, Steelbeak dipped to one knee, trying to get his breathing back under control. 

Fethry wasn’t startled by the display of violence for long. He stood clumsily and rushed over to Steelbeak’s side. His hands fluttered over him, not quite touching. 

Steelbeak didn’t understand what Fethry was still doing here.

“Are you okay?” he said, speaking quickly. He was clearly still buzzing with adrenaline. “Steelbeak, Dr. Heron was—she was hurting you, but I don’t understand—”

Steelbeak’s jaw was still locked shut. That put a bit of a damper on this Q & A. 

He grabbed Fethry’s shoulder to get his attention, and mimed pressing a button with his other hand. When Fethry only watched him, brow knit in confusion, Steelbeak heaved a sigh and pointed at his beak, shaking his head. 

Fethry’s gaze flickered from Steelbeak’s eyes down to his beak and back again. He raised a small, tentative hand between them. 

“Steelbeak. Can you not…you can’t speak?”

He caught Fethry’s hand before he could stop himself. Gently, he reminded himself. Gently. While smaller than his own, it wasn’t soft or unblemished, the hands of somebody who’d never worked hard for anything. There were calluses along Fethry’s fingers, his palm, and some old scars so deep they were visible beneath the feathers. 

He squeezed Fethry’s hand once before turning to scan the floor around where Heron had fallen. It would be just his luck if the remote got smashed and his beak never opened again, leaving him to slowly starve to death. 

But no. There it was in the corner, all in one piece. 

“That’s what Heron was using to hurt you,” Fethry murmured as Steelbeak picked up the remote. There were a couple buttons on it, all of them labeled, thankfully. 

Magnetize, electro-shock, and detonate. 

He tried hard not to think about that last one and pushed the magnetize button. He heard something in his beak shift, click like a key turning in a lock, and his beak fell open with his sigh of relief. 

“They locked your beak shut too?” Fethry whispered furiously, grabbing Steelbeak’s arm with his small hand as he moved around to stand in front of him. Steelbeak had the presence of mind to drop the remote in his pocket before Fethry could look at it too closely. 

He leaned back when Fethry reached both hands up to his face. Anyone else, and he might’ve broken bone. 

“What’re you doing?” he grunted, throat raw from his muffled screaming.

Fethry let out a cute little huff, gesturing for Steelbeak to get closer. “Would you let me see? I wanna make sure you’re okay.”

When Steelbeak hesitated again, Fethry let him. He waited, eyes big and patient, and his thumb rubbing gently against Steelbeak’s sleeve. 

He felt a blush threatening at being under such undivided attention, and Steelbeak desperately reminded himself that he beat up people for a living. Still, he was only one guy and let himself be tempted by Fethry’s sweetly grasping hands. 

Steelbeak knew he was too tall for Fethry to reach without straining himself so he knelt again, folding one leg behind him. And though he tried to hide it, a part deep inside him (deep, deep, deep down) was still shaken by the presence of the remote in Heron’s hands. How many were there? Who else had the power to turn him into a silent shell of a man using the tool they’d given him?

Fethry kneeled down too, which kind of defeated the purpose, but he moved so slowly and kept his hands where Steelbeak could see them with such intent that it made him think that Fethry maybe wanted to avoid looming over him like Heron had been doing. Not that he understood what he’d done to deserve that kind of thoughtfulness. 

He watched Fethry’s face as he got close and tentatively placed small, gentle hands against Steelbeak’s cheeks. He searched Fethry’s expression for any sign of fear or resentment, but all he found was concerned determination as he carefully tilted Steelbeak’s head this way and that, prodding near his beak with his thumbs without ever touching the prosthesis. Fethry’s attention was centered entirely on what his hands were doing, leaving Steelbeak free to stare his fill. 

They hadn’t been this close to each other since that day in the amphitheater, and Steelbeak had forgotten how much he enjoyed the view. The laugh lines at the corners of Fethry’s beak, the bags under his eyes, usually so bright and guileless now narrowed with focused intent—focused on helping him . Steelbeak’s gaze drifted further, to the long line of Fethry’s neck, and he fought the temptation to run his knuckles down the side of it to learn if his feathers were as soft as they looked. 

Steelbeak really did blush now, which Fethry obviously noticed, even while in the zone. He palmed the side of Steelbeak’s cheek, meeting his eyes with a worried little divot in his brow. “Are you okay? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

Steelbeak swallowed thickly. “N-nah, just stings a little.” 

Not a total lie. His face was mostly numb now, with the nerves occasionally tightening and radiating leftover pain. But Fethry didn’t need to worry about that. 

“Okay, good.” Fethry smiled, a small thing lacking his typical exuberance but no less genuine for it, more like a secret shared between them. His hand was still on Steelbeak’s cheek, his thumb gently rubbing back and forth beneath his eye. “You look tired, buddy,” he murmured. 

Steelbeak shrugged, glancing away. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. Part of him wanted to wrap them around Fethry’s waist but he nixed that mother-of-all-bad ideas real fast. “So do you,” he blurted, for lack of anything else to say. Stupid . 

Fethry laughed, full-throated and beautiful, and it made Steelbeak smile involuntarily. “Well, I’ve been losing sleep worrying about this friend of mine. You might know him: tall, handsome, a pretty great junior oceanographer.” 

Steelbeak felt his smile freeze. There was no way…

“You really mean that?”

Fethry blinked. “What, that you’d make a good oceanographer? I mean, I’m no expert but you’re a great listener and that’s the first—”

“What? No, no.” Steelbeak leaned back and wrapped his hand around Fethry’s, pulling it down from his face. Gently, gently. “Did you mean—we’re-we’re friends? Still? After I treated you like crap?”

“Of course!” Fethry’s smile melted into a more hesitant expression, and he chewed on a corner of his bill. “I assumed—you didn’t want to? Say all those things? That it had something to do with all this.” He waved one hand in a big circle, like he was trying to encapsulate all the recent craziness, from the monochromatic hallways to Heron’s crumpled body on the floor and all the secrets F.O.W.L was still keeping from him. “And I may not completely understand what’s happening here yet, but I know that Dr. Heron and-and F.L.O.W aren’t good people. They-they could’ve killed you.”

“Nah, they wouldn’t kill me, they still need me.” Steelbeak scoffed, all false, familiar bravado, because he’d seen that last button on the remote. The whole time he thought he was free, he’d actually had a loaded gun held to his head. “But they knew I…liked you. Heron knew. And if they thought you might ruin their plans, they would’ve killed you. I know they would’ve. But I thought if they saw we weren’t friends anymore, you’d be safe. And you were. Till now.”

Fethry straightened, looking aghast. “I couldn’t stand by while they were hurting you!” He clapped his other hand around Steelbeak’s, so now it was Steelbeak’s hand in the middle and Steelbeak being comforted. “And we’ll make sure they never have a chance to hurt you again. We’ll go to my Uncle Scrooge and explain what’s happening—I assume they hired me so they could use me against him later?” 

“Uh, yeah—”

“Then with your help, we’ll be able to stop them!” Fethry was grinning, and it should’ve been a relief to see him so happy but a weird ringing had started up in Steelbeak’s ears. “You were on the bad guys’ team, no offense, so you can tell us everything we need to know about how to stop them. I helped stop the Moonlander invasion you know! Well, technically Mitzy did most of the work.”

There was no way. Leave F.O.W.L? Sprouting wings and flying to the moon on a rainbow sounded more plausible. Steelbeak would go down with F.O.W.L and he’d long since made peace with that. A guy like him only got so many second and third chances at life. Now it turned out that day might be sooner rather than later. 

“Fethry.” Was it the first time he’d ever said his name out loud? It sounded too close, too personal coming out of his mouth. “I can’t help you. I’m staying with F.O.W.L.”

Fethry gaped at him, and Steelbeak tried to (ha ha) steel himself against the weight of his betrayed expression. But again, Fethry wasn’t speechless for long. Living on a derelict underwater station must’ve given him quick reaction time. 

“Stay here? Are you crazy? Steelbeak, look at what they’re doing to you! If you stay–if you stay who knows what’ll happen to you. What if they hurt you even more? What if-what if they kill you?”

“I know,” Steelbeak growled. His resolve was buckling and pushed himself to his feet to get away from the intensity of Fethry’s stare, his voice that deepened with his frustration. It was attractive too, but that was neither here nor there. 

“Do you?” Fethry demanded, sounding angrier than Steelbeak had ever heard him. He didn’t let Steelbeak avoid eye contact, standing up too and moving in front of him.

“Course I do,” Steelbeak muttered, but it sounded weak even to him. 

Nobody had ever fought for him like this. Fought him sure, but never this. People didn’t care if he lived or died but Fethry did, not that Steelbeak understood why. And Steelbeak wasn’t built to care about anyone but damnit he did, and it scared him. This duck who twisted him up inside with his smiles and his niceness and his trust could make or break him with a word and that made him so weak . 

He wanted to grab Fethry and never let go. Like a wild animal caught in a trap, he wanted to gnaw off his own limb and run rather than let anyone help him. 

But Fethry kept challenging him, impassioned like Steelbeak had never seen him. “Then why are you still here?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Then explain it to me!” Fethry insisted, getting right in Steelbeak’s face. He raised himself on his toes even, like that would make a difference. “Let me help you! Don’t you realize how important you are to me? You don’t have to do this on your own—”

Burning with frustration and shame and want, Steelbeak grabbed Fethry by his narrow shoulders and pinned him against the wall, ducking his head to kiss him hard on the mouth (not too hard. his beak could chip granite and he didn’t want to imagine what it might do to Fethry’s face if he was careless). Nervousness made him a little rough at first, his grip too tight, as fear of rejection swirled noxiously inside him. 

Fethry made a sound of surprise, and Steelbeak was seconds from wrenching away, throwing himself out the nearest emergency hatch and letting the ocean have him. 

But then Fethry sighed against his beak, impossibly kissing him back , and his hands rose, settling softly against Steelbeak’s wrists. From there they moved, achingly gentle, up his arms and neck, rising to cradle Steelbeak’s jaw in his palms. 

Any Egghead could walk in on them. Heron might wake up. But none of that registered with Steelbeak as he gasped against Fethry’s mouth, trembling all over. 

He pulled away first, his chest heaving and heart thundering in his ears, to hang his head between them. “Sorry,” he said hoarsely, like an idiot. Stupid . “Sorry. I shouldn't've—”

Fethry’s hand was warm on his cheek, but not warmer than the kiss he pressed to the corner of his beak. It startled Steelbeak enough to make him look up, and he was floored by the tears in Fethry’s eyes. 

“Buddy,” he said, smiling. “Do you even know how long I’ve wanted to do that?”

“Huh?”

Fethry shook his head, but he looked like he was trying not to laugh. “I care about you,” he said plainly but no less heartfelt, in a way that made Steelbeak feel like he’d been hit with the stupid setting on the intelli-ray. “A lot. You’ve been a friend to me these last few months, my best friend, when you didn’t need to be. And I don’t want to leave you here with these…these people.”

Steelbeak grabbed the hand Fethry had on his cheek, sick with the fear that Fethry would remove it. He still might. “I’m not much better than them. I told you before, Feathers, I’m not…good.”

Fethry blinked hard against a wave of fresh tears. Man, Steelbeak wished he could stop making him cry. 

“You’re good to me ,” he said firmly. And Steelbeak didn’t really have a comeback for that. He’d try, for Fethry. 

“Come with me. Let me help,” he said softly, not trying to move out of Steelbeak’s surely too-tight grip, caressing his cheek with the pad of his thumb. “You don’t have to be in this alone anymore.” 

Steelbeak could already feel himself folding like wet cardboard. Nobody had ever looked at him like that before. Touched him like he was a breakable thing.

“I can’t do this if I don’t know you’re safe, and at this point I can’t even keep me safe.”

Fethry smiled wryly. “Haven’t you heard of safety in numbers? My family’s all about stopping bad guys.”

“Your family?” he repeated skeptically. “The ones who left you alone for ages?” Steelbeak had been put in solitary for a measly 23 days. He couldn’t imagine years of it, not in his worst nightmares. 

Fethry shrugged, but for once Steelbeak wasn’t fooled. “They still don’t know about that part.”

“Well they should.” He scowled, wrapping his free hand around Fethry’s thin shoulder. Fethry straightened at his more serious tone. “I don’t care about the McDucks. But I do care about you.”

Steelbeak wouldn’t be surprised if the stars had disappeared out of the sky, cause there they were in Fethry’s eye. “So you’ll come with me?”

“You couldn’t keep me away.”

Steelbeak started to lean forward, but hesitated. He’d been careless before, almost forcing himself on Fethry, and he wouldn’t do that again. 

But Fethry smiled, hooking his fingers in Steelbeak’s bow tie. Startled, Steelbeak didn’t resist as he was tugged down, and Fethry slotted their beaks together in another kiss. And Steelbeak had kissed men and women before, for missions and for fun. Emotion rarely factored into it. 

Fethry kissed him like he cared about him. Steelbeak hoped he was kissing him back the same way. 

When they pulled apart, their breath mingling, Fethry’s hands remain pressed against his chest, warm even through the fabric of his shirt. Steelbeak’s hands hovering over Fethry’s ribs, not quite touching. 

“We should probably get out of here before Dr. Heron wakes up,” Fethry whispered. 

“Good idea.” 

Steelbeak grabbed his hand, and together they ran to a new kind of freedom.