Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Do you remember the day we first met?"

Candace was asking him this for a reason, Doof understood, as he sat down in his big comfy easy chair, hidden behind the paper, an item she still looked at as a replic from a generation that wasn't hers.

The problem was he wasn't sure what the answer was.

When had they met?

It was all kind of confusing, the least of which being because he was now involved with one of his daughter's best friends, now that she was 25 years old and a mother of three, the youngest being his own.

Maybe he was blocking it for the very reason that he had gotten involved with someone so much younger...

Or maybe he had simply forgotten in his old age.

He just sort of remembered this time when he had reached the middle of his life and yet he had felt like he had always known her.

But now he wondered if it was their anniversary today and he should probably figure out the answer now before he got in trouble for it later...

Let's see, he thought...

They had met when he had been moving into the Cave of the Old Sea Hag, and she had been on a placebo high from what she had mistakenly believed was psychedelic moss, making him mistake her in turn for the old Sea Hag herself...

Unh...no. Not the safe answer.

Sweethearts did not appreciate being told they were once mistaken for old hags.

Wait! He recalled her coming to his door once, dressed as a Fireside Girl and delivering him cupcakes...

No. That made him look somewhat questionable, which he wasn't, and also highlighted the difference in their ages.

Oh! Wait! He had met her when they had travelled to the 2nd dimension together and been strapped together and marching to face a Goozim, eventually dangling over it with her little brothers too,  all as Perry the Plat...

Uhm...that quickly went out of his mind because OWCA, the Organization Without a Cool Acronym had erased it.

Wait! He knew! It was when Candace and his daughter, Vanessa, had been taken to the planet Feebla-Oot and she had said something like she didn't know who he was and he had introduced himself as Heinz. And then later, he had fallen for her, like literally, right in front of her, and soon after helped her with the Chicken-Replace-inator, which eventually saved the day.

Bingo! Nailed it!

He went to answer that with confidence.

Only looking at her, so sweet and lovely, and also so quick to bust others she deemed as bustable, and a slave to justice, being a prosecutor and all, Heinz Doofenshmirtz couldn't tell Candace Flynn that that was the real first meeting with a clean conscience, knowing of all of the other encounters they had had, and aware he had forgotten every one of them might hold their anniversary today until she had mentioned it!

He decided to forego all the trouble and embarrassment and just fess up, depending on the mercy of the court.

"Ahh...liebling...To tell the truth, I think we met each other several times...and I don't know which one you are referencing, so, if this is our Anniversary...I forgot," he said, peeking around the back of the chair. "So...again...please forgive me, my little sweetheart...and don't try to bust me, ya?"

Candace studied him for a second, trying to seem stern but then just laughed. She walked over to where Heinz was sitting and ruffled the scientist's now grey hair, which had been brown on any of the days when they had first met, whichever it truly was. Kissing it then, she truthfully confessed with another laugh, "No...I was asking if you remembered when we first met, because I'm not quite sure when it was either!"

Chapter Text

"Does your brothers' platypus keep giving me the evil eye?" Heinz Doofenshmirtz asked Candace Flynn, the little platypus sitting between them. "Because I'm pretty sure that's what he's doing."

"Yeah...I kind of think he is," Candace answered, still upset that Phineas and Ferb had given her Perry to watch when she had a date with Vanessa's dad, as if she wasn't worried about that enough as it was. She had only gotten the scientist to agree to go out with her a few months ago, committing to looking past their large age difference, because both of their interests in each other was sincere and their fondness for each other was genuine...

But with Perry lying there, like a meat brick playing chaperone, it was rather difficult to even do something as sweet as hold hands while they watched the first Ducky MoMo film together.

Not that Heinz could ever do that when he seemed so nervous and shy.

"You know...if I put a little fedora on him, the date would be over real quick," Heinz Doofenshmirtz strangely observed, leading Candace to ask, "How come?"

"Because, after I gave him a long monologue about how badly I wanted this to work out between us, and I was hoping to win your heart and maybe...if I was lucky...you'd agree to have a second date with me, he'd start kicking my butt and thwarting my plans and then I'd be left alone to clean everything up...but instead of talking to him, like I usually do, I'd be talking to you inside of my mind instead, because I never wanted to take over the Tri-State area as much as I wanted to spend just one more day with you...even with a platypus sitting between us."

Candace stopped and stared at him.

As did her brothers' pet platypus.

"I don't know what you were just talking about," the young woman stated, "but, I don't think anybody has ever said anything so sweet to me in my whole life."

"They haven't?" Doofenshmirtz asked, truly shocked, which touched her all the more.

She shook her head. "And, infact, if we had to sit with a platypus between us for all of our dates, I'd willingly accept that."

"I'm glad," the man said, but still looked too shy to say much else, perhaps a little grateful the pet was lying there, so he had a way out from having to do anything else, afraid he would goof it up somehow, like always.

Neither the man nor the young woman noticed, however when Perry was no longer sitting between them, not, at least, until Doof cried out "Hey!" as something was pushed down forcibly on his head. It wasn't a fedora, however, but a helmet he had once labeled the De-Volitionator.

All of a sudden, he was inching towards Candace and taking hold of her hand, as the platypus plopped back down between them.

"I like that," Candace said, squeezing his hand.

"I can't stop, I got a platypus controlling me," he explained sheepishly.

"Well, you wanna know what?" Candace asked, looking into his face. "I don't have a platypus controlling me and I really want to do this." She gave Doof a quick kiss on his cheek and then cuddled closer towards him.

"Don't stop! Don't stop!" Doofenshmirtz reciprocated by snuggling closer towards her too, a big smile spreading across his face. "Thank you, Perry the Platypus, wherever you might be," he whispered underneath his breath, not noticing the control in the hands of Candace's brother's pet, or the way it chattered, almost like it was replying "You're welcome."

Chapter Text

Doofenshmirtz didn't fully understand the particular inator he had made today. It was an idea that had come to him the previous night, when, perhaps, he had had a little too much to drink and he had embarrassed himself in front of his daughter, Vanessa's, little friend named Candace.

She'd come over to help celebrate Vanessa's 21st birthday, which meant that Vanessa could legally drink now, but Candace, being a full year younger, couldn't.

After crashing his own daughter's birthday party - her having expressly forbidden him to enter - Doof had spent the whole evening in the corner with Vanessa's little friend, aware that, had his daughter been sober, and actually spotted him, she would have had him quickly kicked out.

Heinz had had a surprisingly good time, however, talking to the young woman named Candace about Ducky MoMo, annoying little brothers and unusually colored platypi that always seemed to get in the way of things.

Unfortunately, by the stage of the night when the party was over for the young woman, and she wanted to go home, Doofenshmirtz had also been a little tipsy after realizing his own baby girl was growing up and, well, not his baby girl any longer, and he wasn't quite sure what he was doing.

Showing Candace to the door of his penthouse - yes, his 21 year old daughter was still living at home - he had told her that he had enjoyed the evening, which had been appropriate enough...until he had added that during the last year or so he believed he had fallen in love with her and her wonderful orange hair.

Of course, he had told her goodnight, after that and then closed the door to go off to bed, himself, not sure what time Perry the Platypus would be showing up tomorrow to thwart him.

He had forgotten all about the incident, until realizing he had had no recollection of the previous night's events past a certain time, he had rushed to replay the security footage of his apartment door last night and saw the whole embarrassing thing playing out before his eyes.

Now, sitting before his new inator, he waited for Perry to finally show up and, trapping him inside of a giant wine bottle, showed him what it did, and how truly destructive it could be.

"Behold my In-Vino-Veritas-inator!" Heinz Doofenshmirtz announced without much enthusiasm, hitting the wine glass in his hand with its beam, just to get the whole ordeal over with.

Suddenly the liquid in the glass - the cheapest wine to be found in all of Danville because it was all he could afford on Charlene's alimony cheque - began to rise out of the glass, looking not so much diabolical but more or less passive aggressive. It looked Doofenshmirtz straight in the eye and complained, "You embarrassed yourself in front of the woman you love! You're hopeless!"

The trapped platypus blinked in confusion, not understanding the point.

"That's all it does, Perry the Platypus," Doof sighed. It makes wine tell you the truth...without needing to consume it. So, if you don't mind, I had a rough night, my baby girl is all grown up and the woman I love, her pretty-orange-haired friend is never going to want to see me again..."

Dejectedly, the scientist then walked over to his enemy, uncorked him and then went back to mope inside of his apartment.

About an hour later, a knock came to his door, and Heinz went and opened it. To his surprise, a strange platypus walked into his apartment with none other than Candace Flynn on his arm. Doof watched in shock as the platypus placed a glass of wine in the woman's hand - only meant to be held and not drunk - and then walked over to the In-Vino-Veritas-inator and zapped the young woman's glass with it.

The wine rose out of the glass and then complained, "You wanted to tell him that you're in love with him too, but you were too sober to find the courage. You hate being 20!"

Doofenshmirtz's jaw dropped open, a smile creeping across his face, as the platypus left them alone together. "Is that true?" he asked his daughter's little friend, feeling giddy even though he was not drunk.

Candace smiled shyly at him, a happy little twinkle in her eyes. "Well, you know what they say: in whine speaks truth."

Chapter Text

Candace Flynn sat waiting for someone to ask her to dance.

She was very well aware that her chances for marriage were slimming, at this stage, and felt the disappointment it would cause her family weighing heavily on her thin shoulders. Even though her family liked to reassure her that if a suitable husband did not come forward they would be allowed to keep her all to themselves, she was painfully aware of the stigma that such a social tragedy befalling the family could mean.

This was Georgian times, afterall, and a young woman of her age was expected to be married and bring forth into the family someone whom would increase their social standing and reputation, not drag it into the depths of obscurity.

Even Perry, the family's exotic pet platypus, was beginning to appear worried.

Long had Candace hoped that Jeremy Johnson, a neighbouring boy, would fulfill this purpose.

Equally long had she feared that Buford Van Stomm, another neighboring boy, but one a little more uncouth, would also ask for her hand in marriage, despite his being younger. Afterall, the boy held no respect for society mores.

However, to her dismay, Jeremy had decided to join the missionaries leaving for uncharted areas of the map, while, to her delight, Van Stomm had suddenly announced that he was joining the Royal Navy, on account of the free travel.

Her heart breaking on account of the former, Candace feared she had made a rather sullen debutante and other young ladies had attracted all of the desirable suitors, leaving her with very few prospects of her own.

Tonight, however, to her immense enjoyment, she was approached by the father of one of her dearest friends, causing a rare smile to dance upon her lips.

"Professor Doofenshmirtz," she greeted. "I had no idea you were back in town, following your engagement in London! Vanessa did not speak of it."

Taking the young lady's hands in his own gloved ones, the man - whom had always been the favorite of all of her friends fathers - greeted her warmly and with one of his boyish grins. "She could not speak of it because she did not know of it," he replied. "I returned unexpectedly after reading about this being the last ball of your debutante season."

Candace blushed, turning a reddening cheek to him. That he had taken pity on one of his daughter's friends, obviously thinking enough of her to, filled her with pleasure and she could barely hide her feelings from him, especially with his being a man of science and well acquainted with a blush and all that it entailed.

"I hope I am not too late to ask for your hand in a dance," he inquired, only to find the woman shaking her head in denial. "No!" she replied. "You would not be too late nor would you be a second too early! I have yet to dance a third time and the first and second were but formalities with Phineas, my youngest brother, and Ferb, my eldest."

Professor Heinz Doofenshmirtz grinned at her in his characteristic glee and then took her hands, effortlessly gliding her around the ballroom floor.

For a long time she had admired the man's dancing skills, having seen him dance with his daughter, Vanessa, during her own coming out ball. Not that the stunning brunette had remained out for long. One Monty Monogram, the son of a famous Major, had scooped her up instantly, and she had already added to the Monogram clan a small boy that both parents and grandfather doted upon.

Dancing with Vanessa's father was something of a secret joy for Candace, whom had long harboured romantic feelings for the man she knew she dared not entertain, his being a widower, his wife Charlene having drowned at sea. There were rumors, of course, that she had faked her own death to avoid divorce, having married Heinz Doofenshmirtz primarily to aggravate her own quite wealthy family, but such talk was merely idle gossip and not based on any fact that could be proven. However, this scandal had long prevented the Flynn-Fletcher family from looking at the man in a favorable light, in no way aided by the fact that the man had once been a suitor for Candace's own mother, whom loved to repeat the tales of how, during her own balls, the man had constantly stepped on her feet during the dances and once even tipped over the punch bowl, making everyone slide across the floor.

That must have been a very long time ago, Candace Flynn realized, for the man did not mangle a single of her toes once, but instead moved her around the floor with great skill.

"Candace," he asked, his voice screeching as it did sometimes and his Drusselsteinian accent becoming more pronounced. "Do I seem very old to you?"

She had thought of this often, and gave him an answer which was both truthful and heartfelt. "No...the day I first met you, while taking tea with your daughter, I thought you seemed quite young. And you have not aged a day since then inside of my mind or vision. You have always seemed young at heart and in spirit besides, although your intellect has always made me marvel and rather intimidated me as well. Those inventions you create...you mimic the Maker, Himself!"

Professor Doofenshmirtz seemed well pleased with the answer, dancing a while more as Candace wished it would never end. "And what are your plans for after the season, if no offers are accepted?" he then asked.

Candace suppressed a sigh she felt he could not help but feel, his arms about her as they were twirling around. "I highly suspect that I will become a governess...I am highly trained to supervise the young, having tended to my little brothers for so terribly long...and I mean terribly."

The man gave her words some consideration than answered. "I think I may know of a ward that would suit you."

"Please tell me of him," she answered, filled with curiosity and hope.

"He is a bit clumsy, I fear," Heinz Doofenshmirtz stated. "He is also very much devoted to learning. He is fond of singing and music and pretty girls with orange hair and patience as long as their swan like necks."

"He sounds precious," Candace smiled and laughed.

"You would need that patience, I'm afraid," Doofenshmirtz added softly. "He isn't as highly skilled in the art of social niceties, but can say the most childish things and act rather petty and selfish sometimes, especially when his feeling have been hurt or he has strong feelings for something or someone."

"Already I am halfway in love with the little dear!" the equally headstrong young woman exclaimed. "When can I meet him? For I am ready to begin his learning!"

"You already have," Heinz Doofenshmirtz stated. "It is I."

Candace and he immediately paused in their dance. "And you have already begun my education as well," he added both quickly and shyly, lest she be thinking poorly of him in her silence. "Before I met you, after the...err...departure of my wife, I feared I would never love again. When we met, however, in stages, you opened my heart and taught me otherwise. Now that you are a woman, and no more a child, I have learned of the depth of my feelings for you."

"You have?" she asked, a hand going to her heart.

He nodded. "Every day, whilst working on my latest invention and teaching my students, I have scanned the press, half out of my mind that an announcement would soon be made about your forthcoming engagement...but I feel that Providence has been on my side, for you have remained unclaimed until I have had the chance to speak with you and to also request a meeting with your father, if you will have it."

"You are asking for my hand in marriage?" Candace asked, the other hand now also going to her heart.

"Ja," he answered. "If you will also accept mine."

Candace Flynn's heart overflowed, all of her dreams coming true and it had only taken one dance to do it. "Please, God, yes! I will have you and be blessed to do it!"

Smiling at one another, in a deep affection most commonly referred to as love, Candace and Heinz began to dance afresh as a new piece of music suddenly filled the ballroom.

Her curiosity buzzing, Candace soon could not help but ask "Do you mind if I ask what the latest invention you have been working on is?"

"Of course not," Doofenshmirtz replied, one hand about her waist and the other on her arm. "Shall I say, I was working on a machine that would encourage young men to...let's also say...travel to distant lands and help spread the Word and the Law...while my other helps families change their minds about certain people they might be unfairly prejudiced against."

"My!" Candace exclaimed, impressed. "It sounds very noble!"

A twinkle appeared in the scientist's eyes, and a platypus chattered somewhere in the background, as Heinz Doofenshmirtz replied, more than a little ominously, "Perhaps."

Chapter Text

"So," Vanessa Doofenshmirtz said, noting that for the hundredth time, her dad was getting up early to take a morning walk. She was a late sleeper, her shifts at OWCA all requested for nighttime, and so was just heading to bed when she'd encountered her father just getting up and heading out on several occasions. He hadn't always been like that either, which had made her realize something was up. "What's the big motivation, dad? I thought you liked to stick to watching that stupid fitness program on TV, the one with the creepy looking blonde with the frozen expression, and getting your excercise there."

"What, a person can't change their mind?" her father Heinz said, slightly on the defensive, but also trying to keep a jovial air. "You know, you really need to keep an open mind about things, Vanessa. Don't resign yourself to a routine."

"This from the guy whom has his fights with his nemesis down to an exact science: trap, explain, get butt kicked."

"Yes, down to a science," Heinz said. "I'm a scientist. That's what I do. Exact things down to a science."

Vanessa laughed in exasperation. "Yeah, that's what I'm talking about! Why the sudden change in your routine then?"

His back turned to her, Doof thought he could finally frown at his daughter's relentless pestering of him. He loved her dearly, but she was rather annoying when she insisted on meddling in his personal business, but would shout and stomp her feet, claiming he was stifling her, when he so much as wanted to make sure she brought her umbrella when it said it was going to rain!

Thankfully, today was supposed to be sunny and lovely...making him itch to begin his early morning walk and skip over Vanessa's unnecessary interrogation.

"Okay, so it wasn't working," he finally gave up and sighed, giving her half of the truth. "I wasn't getting in shape and I had a hill of a little belly still. And some of that wasn't even the carbs, let me tell you. Stress can make you retain fat around the waist...and me. I have a lot of stress."

"Yeah, I know," Vanessa said. "But why don't you now? Morning walks wouldn't explain that."

"I'm happy," he said, throwing his arms up in the air. "I'm just happier okay?"

"Yeah, but what made you happier?"

He tried to look like he was giving it some thought, when he really could have just answered it right away. "Seeing the sunrise. That makes me happy."

Vanessa studied him for a second and then seemed to buy it, yawning and waving a hand at him that she was satisfied and he was now free to go. "Okay. Whatever. Go and watch your sunrise."

"Thank you. I love you, honey," he said and kissed her forehead, itching to head out to find his morning sun.

* * *

He'd first seen the sunrise several months ago when he had been having trouble sleeping. He'd gone to the window of his penthouse apartment and looking out, it had nearly blinded him as he had stared at it in complete awe, as if he had never truly seen it before.

Since then, it had beckoned Heinz Doofenshmirtz to greet his day with it always. Although it didn't wish to forever stick to one place. It seemed to bounce around the city, enjoying new routes, pulling him out of the old grooves he had created for himself, just to follow it.

One morning he had met his sunrise and it had even smiled at him, something warm which had set the entire mood for his day. When his inator had blown up on him later, it hadn't even hurt.

Then the sunrise had even invited him to join it, as it made its way throughout the city, and his heart had leapt, enjoying watching it where it spread its rays of sunlight, making the world seem better in the places it touched.

It had become their morning routine together now, and heading to Danville Park he soon met it there waiting.

He saw the top of it now, gloriously orange and peeking over the hills, shining so brightly, like fire and casting shades of orange everywhere, like a mad painter with a fondness for one solitary color alone.

"Hello Candace," he greeted the woman he liked to think of his sunrise, because she had brightened each of his days, and for the way the sun caught her orange hair and made it look like the sun had been walking on the street below his apartment, the very thing that had drawn him to her. He had seen her in a new light then, one of his daughter's old friends, now grown up and trying to relax in the beauty of the start of each fresh day before she had to go to work at the Courthouse and see a bit of its ugliness too.

"Hello," she greeted with a warm smile, the well worn word spoken by her particular lips now like hearing what a sunbeam might sound like. "Ready for our morning walk," she asked, stretching.

He didn't reply at first, but studied her shyly instead, thinking she looked far prettier and attractive than the blonde fitness instructor he used to watch, even though she had not a speck of make-up on and the fitness clothing she wore were never tight spandex but usually a baggy sweater and a pair of fading jogging pants.

Her smile was also not plastered on and false. It was something you needed to earn and then felt absolutely blessed when you had.

"Ja," he replied. "These walks of ours, they literally give me a reason to get out of bed each morning."

"Me too," she said, as she blessed him again, making him wonder if this was actually science or truly magic instead.

Giving a little run in place, which made him want to blush because the sweater couldn't fully hide everything, she then motioned him forward with a wave of her hand. "Come on! I have our whole walk planned out."

"Good!" Heinz Doofenshmirtz said, clapping his hands together in excitement and walking beside her, like a man half his age.

There came a moment on a Danville street corner, when they had stopped at the change of a light and the sun had been caught in her orange hair for a second time, taking Doof's breath away, but then she had turned and caught him staring and had looked at him a little sadly before turning away. "Heinz..." Candace asked. "If my hair turned white, would you like me quite as much?"

From the way she avoided looking at him when she asked it, and the way her voice faltered as if his answer was incredibly important to her, Doof reeled from the realization that she felt for him equally what he felt for her.

"Just as much and even more," he replied, taking her hand and squeezing it. "Because that means you had cared to stay with me during my sunset."

Chapter Text

For the first few years of her staying over at the D.E.I. Building overnight, Candace Flynn recalled how it had started out always being for one of Vanessa's parties or sleep overs. There had been quite a few of them, always with the younger girl being happy to be invited, but then also always with her feeling eventually left out: the square wheel that stopped the party cold whenever she opened her mouth. No, that wasn't even entirely accurate. Vanessa and her friends had been so unusual, Candace had always felt like the round wheel, instead, the uncool one because she was so normal in a way, while everyone was so proud to be different.

Even when it had just been Vanessa, Stacy and she, Candace had always felt eventually excluded, like the two girls had a secret they shared that she didn't. This created a loneliness inside of her, one that almost always made her unable to sleep, which was the whole point in a way of a slumber party. That was when she had started to explore Vanessa's dad's penthouse, on her own, and had come across the man, himself, a few times, also unable to sleep.

They went through several stages when this happened, always dependent on what the scientist seemed to be doing or feeling at the time. If he was working on some large machine, of some sort, she inevitably got a squawky "Who gave you permission to roam about my house freely, missy?" or if he was strapped for time, "What are you doing here?" and if she just found him in the kitchen, sitting at the table with a nice cup of cocoa, tea or coffee, he would greet her with a far more friendly, "Oh, hi Vanessa's little friend! So I see you can't sleep either.

Candace always enjoyed the latter of these encounters best because Vanessa's dad would always invite her to sit with him and they always fell into some late night conversation about something that seemed terribly important in the wee hours of the morning, be it whatever was bothering them to make sleep elusive - his work and her school - or which character on Acquaintances was there favorite.

During these unplanned meetings, they usually bid each other a good night, or jokingly a good morning, and both would return to their respective beds - or sleeping bag in Candace's case - and find the Sandman a little more agreeable, more willing to spare his bag of magical sand on them and send them off to sleep, for no matter how short a time that was left.

As Candace Flynn had become older, and Vanessa less likely to have sleepovers at her father's, unless if was a guy she fancied, Candace found herself sorely missing her after midnight talks with the father of her friend, seeing no way to continue them.

That was, at least, until she met him one night in a restaurant, following her divorce, when they were both sitting there at separate tables, lonely and in need of some company.

They were both adults now too, whom didn't have to just sit and talk at Heinz Doofenshmirtz's kitchen table but could lie together chatting in his bed, whenever they eventually wound up back at the familiar D.E.I. building.

Although, strangely, that was all they ever did.

Talk.

Because both of them were shy and both of them were wounded and neither of them were quite ready to risk their hearts or wind up lonely again.

Both on their backs, staring at the ceiling, they fell back easily into their long ago discussions, now their being even more serious matters to share and make brave confessions over, but just as silly and trivial ones too, because what was life if you couldn't laugh at yourself or about how absolutely absurd it was sometimes?

At one point, the subject of their divorces came up, and Candace described painfully what it had felt like when both Jeremy and she had decided that it wasn't working anymore and they were both different people from those whom had promised "I do."

"It just happened," she confessed. "I can't even pinpoint when...I just looked at him one day and I knew it wasn't the same and he looked at me and he knew it too. We don't hate each other either..."

"Kind of like Charlene and me. Well...the not hating each other part," Heinz confessed and Candace had longed to ask what had caused their divorce, his words obviously implying there had been a specific reason behind it.

That night she had stayed quiet though, not wanting to be kicked out of Heinz Doofenshmirtz's bed, even though all they ever did was talk in it.

That would be painful enough.

Especially now that she realized she was in love with him.

One night she found the strength, when after catching him moving his feet around, a betrayal of his comfort and happiness with her, he had also made the confession. "Charlene and I, we never really talked like this. Not even when we were first going out or when she was pregnant with Vanessa, and she had a LOT to say to me then about all of the discomfort she was going through...the morning sickness and stretch marks and the whole fear-of-giving-birth thing. I don't think we were ever friends or understood each other enough to be different from each other too."

Candace liked that. When you just talked with someone, you risked showing them things they might not like about you. But when you could talk about things both important or unimportant, you trusted the other person not to judge you...or to still like you even if you disagreed over something.

Encouraged now, she replied, "I don't think that Jeremy and I ever talked like this either. I don't think I felt comfortable offering him the real me in a lot of ways. Maybe that's really why we fell out of love with each other."

Heinz waited to speak and then said in hope, "You've offered me the real you, Candace?"

"Yes," she replied. "Ever since Vanessa's slumber parties. It's weird...I don't think I was even that honest with her. I was too busy worrying what she would think of me. But with you. I always felt comfortable."

"Thank you," he said after about half a minute of more completely comfortable silence.

"Heinz?"

"Ja?"

"So why did you and Charlene break up anyway?" she was finally brave enough to ask.

Giving a large sigh, as if he had always dreaded this moment but knew it would happen one night, Heinz raised his right hand revealing a rather sick looking tomato puppet. "She said she didn't like Mr. Tomato."

"Hello Candace," the thing spoke to her then, in a very reserved tone, one she couldn't quite tell if it was high class American or British, like her brother Ferb's.

What she could tell, though, was that the man whom was controlling the puppet, and perhaps hiding behind it too, had probably believed a long time ago that he required it to speak to a wealthy wife he felt was way out of his league...

And that he had risked everything by being honest about that now and trusting her with his vulnerability, all wrapped up in the guise of a piece of cloth pretending to be a fruit.

She could also pull a painful memory from her own past, when her brothers had made her into the villian in their cartoon, and now put it to much better use.

Remembering the times the audience had pelted her with those same produce...

Rising on an elbow, to look down into Heinz's vulnerable and frightened face, Candace took it gently in her hands.

"You know what...love feels a lot like tomatoes," she whispered before leaning slowly downward to kiss him.

Chapter Text

On the day that Candace agreed to move in with him, Heinz Doofenshmirtz was incredibly happy, for he loved the younger woman very much, and had longed wished that she would come to the large D.E.I building - most commonly noted as being weird looking - to stay with him.

However, as Norm had helped Candace bring in her boxes, primarily filled with Ducky Momo memorabilia, he had noticed a sadness on the face of the woman he loved, whereas he had hoped the day would bring her the very same joy he felt coursing throughout his heart and whole being.

Not wishing to unpack a single box until the problem was solved, just incase she repented her decision, he swiftly sat Candace Flynn down on the couch in his (and what he had hoped would be their) living room and asked her, "Candace, sweetie, I know that I was happy you were coming to live with me, but now...you know...you don't seem very happy to be here. Do you want to be here still? You still love me, don't you?"

Candace looked regretful that she hadn't hidden her sorrow from him well enough, and quickly took his hands in hers. "I love you, Heinz with all of my heart and soul. That hasn't and will never change. There's not a single other person in the world I'd let see the full, humiliating extreme of my love for Ducky Momo...Believe me, that once got me mocked by a convention of nerds - I don't care what they liked, Inky Stinky Fartblat or Waste Adventure - they were still nerds, to me. It's just..."

"You think I'm so old that I'm going to die the moment you move in and you'll have to move right out again, and you don't feel like packing and unpacking again, is that it?" Doof guessed, trying to think of another embarrassing fear she might be hesitant to voice.

"No!" Candace snapped in horror. "That's not it either! And, by the way, I'm making sure you go for that Physical on Wednesday."

"And you'll give me a sucker afterwards?" he smiled.

"Yes, I'm still getting that for you too."

"Oh good."

"It's just..." Candace said, finally summoning her courage to confess the truth. "I kind of miss my old bedroom...I could see right into the backyard from it and it was the perfect viewpoint to try to bust my little brothers from. They're still young now, you see, and perfectly bustable. I hate to miss out on these years before they turn 18 and they are off limits."

Heinz face lit up in understanding. "I completely understand!" he exclaimed. "I love my place right here in downtown Danville, because it is the perfect place to try to ruin my brother, Roger, from! City Hall is wonderfully closeby. I also totally understand the whole turning 18 thing, only it was the opposite with you."

"You do understand!" Candace exclaimed, throwing her arms around her sweetheart's neck.

They kissed, something Doofenshmirtz enjoyed, even though the wheels inside of his mind were turning at the same time.

"It's just going to take a while to get used to, I guess," Candace said, both lovers still feeling each other's lips against their own. "Now, I've gotta go unpack, just to prove to you how much I want to be here, Heinz. I also don't want Norm breaking anything."

Candace Flynn then took a box and went into the bedroom with it, using the shelves and drawers that Doof had made just for her to keep and display her belongings.

Meanwhile, Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz ran into his laboratory, quickly making something else and hoping his nemesis didn't show up to spoil the surprise before he had gotten the chance to show Candace.

Still putting her stuff safely away now, in her new and precious home, Candace barely noticed the two zaps that quickly rang out throughout the building.

However, when she finished and went to find Heinz, she located him on the balcony and she gasped right out loud from the other sight that awaited her.

"Heinz! That's my house, isn't it?" she cried out. "I can see the Oak tree and Phineas and Ferb sitting right under it perfectly! Hey wait! Are we actually back on my street?!?"

"SURPRISE! Yes we are, schatzi," he said, taking hold of her around the waist and looking into her eyes with complete love. "I just made a Move-the-Building-inator! I had some property on this street anyway, one I couldn't flip, even with the breakfast nook - and by the way, still, curse you, Phil the neighbour! - and so I thought...since it was moving day, why not move my home too!"

Candace started to cry, touched by his gesture. "I'm crazy for you, Heinz Doofenshmirtz," she said, spinning them around.

"And I'm crazy for you too, Candace Flynn," Doofenshmirtz declared, spinning them around even more maniacally. "I mean, I have to be crazy too...I just willingly moved my whole apartment complex right next to what amounts to my in-laws. That has to be crazy."

"And you were willing to give up spying on your brother, just so I could spy on the two of mine," Candace softly said, pressing her forehead next to Heinz's.

"Well...not exactly," Doof smiled sheepishly.

"Hey!" from down below on Maple Drive, Baljeet Tjinder cried out in outrage. "Who put City Hall on my house!"

This was soon followed by Mayor Roger Doofenshmirtz saying, "Melanie, it looks like we're going to have to amend some zoning by-laws or something. I don't think we're technically still downtown anymore."

Candace raised an eyebrow at her lover.

"Neighbours they are so hard to please," Doofenshmirtz tutted, shaking his head.

"Good thing I'm not," Candace Flynn said, pulling Doofenshmirtz in for a kiss.

Chapter Text

"Curse you, Perry the Platypus!"

How many times had he said that, Heinz Doofenshmirtz began to wonder one day? A lot. OWCA could probably tally it up for him. It wouldn't be two nickels, it would be way more, he was certain of that.

Then Heinz Doofenshmirtz wondered too, for all of that cursing, if it was truly worth it, because Perry, well, he never actually got cursed, did he? No, it always came back and cursed him instead.

So.

One day he just stopped cursing Perry the Platypus.

* * *

"You are so busted!"

How many times had she said that, Candace Flynn began to wonder one day? A lot. Her mother could probably tally it up for her. It wouldn't be two nickels, it would be way more, she was certain of that.

Then Candace Flynn wondered too, for all of that busting, if it was truly worth it, because Phineas and Ferb, well they never actually got busted, did they? No, it always came back and busted her instead.

So.

One day she just stopped trying to bust Phineas and Ferb.

* * *

When Vanessa asked Candace if she would mind representing her dad for a tiny little mishap involving a sports car he was taking out for a test drive, the fledgling young lawyer had said yes. She had always kind of liked Vanessa's dad, afterall, because he was nice and she'd always found lab coats and scientists - or pharmacists, she wasn't sure which he was - kind of cute in that eccentric genius kind of way.

She'd even still kind of liked him when he had looked at her and said, "Wait, you're the friend Vanessa wants to represent me? But aren't you the one she also said was kind of a loser?"

Despite her still lingering, and possibly inexplicable,  affection, the only thing Candace had done in retaliation, was to look at him, wholly unimpressed, and shoot right back, "Yeah, and you're the father she used to say the same thing about."

Heinz had then studied Candace with the same level of being unimpressed.

Only.

As they had started to spend time together, going over his case, they had also discovered that they enjoyed spending time together. Soon they weren't just going over his case, but going over movies together and going over to the park together and going over which episodes of Ducky Momo they did or didn't like.

Together they really felt like winners and it didn't matter what others thought of them.

Even the fact that they were both divorced seemed like an asset now more than a liability...

Otherwise, they would have felt guilty about how they had started to feel for each other.

When Heinz Doofenshmirtz was cleared of all charges, except for a small fee of two nickels, the two adults, of vastly differing ages, had gone out to celebrate.

Which had left both feeling like winners again because once again, they both seemed to fit together so perfectly.

Like sides of the same coin.

* * *

When Candace had gotten pregnant, Heinz had proposed to her and they had agreed to get married.

Unfortunately, as the wedding day swiftly approached, they both began to feel horribly overwhelmed, both of their families coming, and both suddenly feeling like they were doomed, both actually sneaking out from the wedding before it happened and bumping into one another, Heinz in his tux and Candace in her wedding dress, on the platform of the nearest train station, which both had been surprised to still find in existence, both under the assumption it had been detailed as much as their marriage ceremony would be without them being there.

In a diner, close to the station, both had looked at each other with resentment, aware they had been planning to leave the other standing at the altar.

"It's bad luck for you to see me before the wedding," Candace had complained.

"I think it might be a little too late for that," Heinz exhaled in irritation. "You didn't want me to see you at all!"

They had both sat there silently sulking, until Candace Flynn, whom still very much wanted to be Candace Doofenshmirtz explained, "I thought I was doing you a favor...For years I tried to bust my little brothers, but it never worked out. Everyone just thought I was nuts. When I saw my family all sitting there, and I knew how crazy they all make me, I just felt cursed! I didn't want to force that on you."

Heinz face now lit up in understanding. "You felt cursed? Throughout my whole childhood by family made me feel unwanted and unloved. Then, when I was an adult, I spent years being thwarted by a platypus! A platypus, I tell you! I thought they didn't even do much! So, when I saw my family, plus my nemesis, sitting there, and I knew how bad they all made me feel, I just felt cursed too...and I didn't want to force that on you either. Even though Balloony was to be my best man and I didn't want to burst his bubble...literally."

"Oh Heinz," Candace said, taking hold of his hand on the table. "We didn't want to ditch each other because we didn't love each other..."

"We wanted to ditch each other because we really do love each other!" Doof finished.

They then leaned across the table and shared a long, loving kiss.

Which was a little difficult considering how very pregnant Candace was.

"Maybe we should go back and get married," Candace suggested.

"No, are you nuts?" Heinz said not so tactfully perhaps, "We should just elope instead. Families are great and all but, sheesh, they really can leave you feeling cursed. Just let me go back for Balloony, or put on my sock suit and build up some static electricity."

Forgiving his word choice, Candace squeezed her older lover's hand. "I love you Heinz Doofenshmirtz."

"And I love you right back, Candace Doofenshmirtz," he said, squeezing her hand too.

By the end of the day, the same hand he was squeezing was wearing a ring and in a few weeks time, a baby boy was born to them, one they called Fred, because it meant "peaceful ruler," and with both of their families and histories they both just wanted a little peace to rule their lives.

The funny thing was, that from this union of two cursed individuals (and losers you might say), they finally managed to find a bit of luck lying there in between them.

For in a few years, at the tender age of twenty, Fred Doofenshmirtz grew up take over the entire Tri-State Area and quickly put the OWCA organization out of commission, when he reported them to PETA, and busted his uncles with the Internal Revenue Service when they found out that they hadn't been paying taxes on any of their neat inventions.

Meanwhile, his parents lived happily ever after knowing that true love, just like the fairy tales always claimed, was enough to break any old curse.

Even theirs.

Chapter Text

The Checkers game now over, and with his being officially thwarted from cheating, the elderly Heinz Doofenshmirtz quickly decided that his work for the day was finished and now it was time to go home.

Peeling off the false set of teeth from his eyeball, he handed them back to their owner, whom had stopped his motor scooter by jamming his tiny walker in it. "Look, Perry," Heinz explained, out of breath, "I'm getting kind of tired now, it's been a busy day, what with me trying to cheat and all, and I think I really need a nap now. You had your own little beddy-bye time, while we were playing Checkers, remember? But I didn't have mine, so if you don't mind, I'd really like to have it before supper."

Perry looked at him in suspicion, suspecting he was up to something, but then, on account of a senior moment, quickly forgot all about it, as he had thankfully done every day for round about the last 5 years.

It used to be harder for Heinz Doofenshmirtz to hide his little secret.

Now, thank God, it was easier, mostly due to a decline in memory.

The platypus put the teeth back inside of his mouth, pulled the walker out from beneath the scooter's wheel and then left the building.

Doofenshmirtz allowed the Secret Agent about an hour start for that sort of thing.

Once he was certain the platypus had gone, Heinz quickly took off his lab coat, far quicker than he had let on he could to his nemesis, and then changed into his home clothes, which included a business suit, the type that Darrin Stephens used to wear on Bewitched, and a briefcase that he prayed would never be opened because all it contained was a bunch of love letters he had written to his wife and a confession that he had made to her there too, but had never found the strength to actually give to the woman of his dreams...

That years ago, he had fallen in love with her, but on account of his age, and the fact that she was one of his daughter's best friends, he couldn't bring himself to tell her that. And so he had found another way to do it.

Doof then quickly started up the Inator-Blocker-inator and used it on the very inator he intended to use, hoping it would keep those nosy OWCA agents out of his business, afterall this was none of their business, but rather his personal life, his home time, which they shouldn't really bother with, it not effecting the world.

Afterall, Perry the Platypus most likely had a double life, a separation between work and home...

Why couldn't he?

Walking towards the inator he had made so very long ago, to enter a Youth Film Festival of all things, Heinz Doofenshmirtz stepped in front of it, feeling the process of aging reversing, his hair growing back, and then turning brown, the age spots fading and the aches suddenly dissipating as everything became rejuvenated.

Ah...

He was back to being about forty years old in the blink of an eye. Still feeling the phantom bite around one of those eyes from Perry's false teeth, Heinz knew that it was a wonderful thing to be young again.

But not as wonderful as coming home.

* * *

Candace Flynn heard the doorbell ringing and ran to answer it.

"I'm home!" her wonderful husband declared and she threw her arms around his neck, their lips meeting as he spun her around with the energy of a teenager and not the forty year old man that he was.

"I'm so happy you're back," the 35 year old woman said, when her lips were finally not pressed against his. "I missed you so much!"

"I missed you too," he said and they walked into the living room with their arms around each other.

"Hi Daddy," Amanda greeted her stepfather, on the way back to her room. "Xavier and Fred didn't do anything again today."

"Did they? That's nice to hear," Candace's second husband said, seeing the two perpetrators of nothingness soon entering the house, in through the back yard, presumably on their way to their own room, supper not until another hour or so.

Candace watched the man, how he greeted both boys equally as his sons, even though Fred was his only biological one. "Hi boys! I hope you enjoyed your day today. No traumatic backstories formed or anything like that."

"Daddy, we had a cool visit with these kids that looked like uncle Phineas and Ferb..." the blond boy exclaimed.

"Only they looked younger...is that possible?" the dark haired boy then asked.

A bead of sweat popped up on their father's forehead  but slipped down so quickly it went unnoticed by either them or their mother. "I don't think so...but you never know."

"Oh, it's possible with Phineas and Ferb," Candace said, rolling her eyes. "Trust me."

Her husband very much trusted it was possible with other clever inventors too.

When all the children were safely in their rooms, the man plopped down in a circle chair in the living room and let out a laugh filled with pleasure as Candace soon plopped down on his lap in return. They cuddled for a bit, and kissed too, Candace's fingers messing up her husband's immaculately slicked back hair, so it looked wild and messy instead.

"I had the weirdest day," Candace eventually said, her cheek pressed against his tie, where she could hear her husband's heart beating.

"You did?"

"Yeah...Phineas and Ferb did show up...from 20 years ago! And then I went and helped bust them in the past...only...supposedly that made this Doofenshmirtz guy ruler of the Tri-State area and he was like this despot whom outlawed children or something...now where have I heard the name Doofenshmirtz before...it sounds so familiar...I've never been good with names."

Candace noted how it strangely sounded like her husband's heart stopped for a second.

"Anyway, I don't know anything about that really, other than what I was told; the other me was the one who went there and saw the old newsreels too and she dissapeared when she stopped it from happening, so she took the memory of it with her."

"I'm glad that she did," her husband said, squeezing her tightly. "Some things are much better than ruling Tri-State areas."

"Like what?" Candace asked, her hand slipping underneath his tie.

"Oh...Like coming home to you every day!" he replied, and just like the name Doofenshmirtz, he looked so familiar...

Actually, he looked a lot like Vanessa's dad, whom she had always had a crush on. Luckily, following her divorce, she'd been able to find a man just like him. Although she did miss the lab coat from time to time.

Wait...wasn't Vanessa's last name Doof...

Suddenly her husband was kissing her and Candace didn't care what her friend and her father's last name was.

"I'm grateful I was able to come home too," Candace confessed after the kiss was over.

"You know what else I'm grateful for, honey?" he asked, nuzzling her cute, pert nose against his long, sharp one.

"What?" she asked.

With vigor, he picked her up, and Candace let out a squeal of delight. "That it's time for my beddy-bye now before supper!" her husband happily declared before carrying her off to their bedroom in a hurry, as if afraid of growing old before he got there.

Chapter Text

Doof sat at the booth, waiting for his dinner date. When Rodney and Dr. Diminuitive had said they were setting him up with the perfect date, he had balked at first, suspecting something cruel and nefarious, but then he had eventually caved in when they had seemed so sincere.

No.

He'd caved in when he had been lonely and desperate.

That was when he had finally surrendered, Heinz Doofenshmirtz realized. No point in kidding himself.

Now sitting at the restaurant, the two men had chosen, a Slushy Dawg of all places, he was beginning to trust his initial doubt.

Especially when he saw whom walked through the door and sat down at his booth.

"Vanessa's dad?" his date said, and he instantly recognized her, although she was older than when they had first met, and must have finished college by now.

"Vanessa's little friend?" he said, genuinely shocked at the true level of evil that his supposed friends - okay, not really friends but colleagues, no not that either, people in the same line of work - had revealed to set him up with someone so much younger and whom was best friends with his own precious daughter. Had they no shame? Had they no decency? What was he thinking?!? Of course they didn't! They were evil scientists just like him.

If he listened hard enough he could even hear them laughing in maniacal glee. No wait, he didn't have to try too hard, they were sitting, killing themselves laughing at the very next table.

"You're my date?" she asked, seeming genuinely confused, but not altogether horrified, which Heinz was grateful for. "Did you fill out one of those questionnaires too?"

"What questionnaire?" he asked.

"The questionnaire online at the dating site app? The one called LOVEMUFFIN."

"No...no," he answered, shaking his head and knowing now that the two men had gone against his wishes and used the organization for that dating scam they'd been planning  afterall. How low and cheap of them. "I have friends...well, really more of acquaintances, whom run it," he explained. "They must have thought we were well suited for each other."

He threw his friends a dirty look, seeing the two men, one tall, thin and bald the other short, balding with white haired and stout giggling maliciously at him from behind their hands.

"I thought LOVEMUFFIN just sounded cute," the young woman commented.

"You did?" Heinz asked, his face lighting up because he'd always rather liked the name too, although everyone else snickered at it.

"And it seemed like a good idea...after my divorce, I find it hard getting back into the dating scene, what with my work and all. It's always so embarrassing and disheartening too. Especially when they find out I have two small children."

Heinz Doofenshmirtz was intrigued against his own wishes. He placed his large hands beneath his jaw, his chin resting on his knuckles, his elbows on the top of Slushy Dawg booth. "So you are divorced too." He hadn't known that about her. Being divorced, himself, he could understand just what she was feeling. And she had kids? Why had Vanessa never told him that? Having gotten divorced from Charlene when Vanessa was young, he also understood how some people were reluctant to date a single parent. "And you have two small children."

She nodded, taking a moment to order a soft drink, while Heinz felt the intrusion of the waitress rather annoying. He was fascinated by the young woman before him. "Yes," Vanessa's little friend said. "Shortly after my second child was born. The first is a girl, Amanda, the boy's called Xavier."

"Interesting names," he commented, going on autopilot and telling the waitress he would have a Slushy Dawg because, by the third bite, you were committed.

His date smiled and then commented. "My ex used to work here, actually. I wish he had been so committed to our marriage, but we were young when it happened so...Actually, I was surprised that the dating site suggested this for our first date."

"What can I say," Heinz stated, glowering at the other table where his "friends" were sitting. "They have a truly wicked sense of humor."

Why now he could even see them waiting for something else in demented anticipation, another gayle of mirth just waiting to be unleashed, and most likely at his expense, because Vanessa's friend was actually quite lovely.

"I like being back here though...and with you. It's nice." She brought the glass that had just been delivered to the booth closer to her mouth, and as she looked at him so mischievously, and started sucking on the straw, he knew there really had to be a punchline coming, and a diabolical one at that, because this was all rather fun.

It was the most enjoyable date he had been on in forever.

"And it beats spending all day at the Courthouse..."

Ha! There it was: She was a petty criminal, in and out of the justice system.

"What with my being a fledgling prosecutor," she finished.

Ohhhh! The humanity! It was even worse than he had thought! She was a lawyer!

There was the punchline, at last!

And Rodney and Diminuitive were enjoying their little joke to no end! They knew that it would be a laugh riot to set him, Heinz Doofenshmirtz, up with, not only the much younger friend of his daughter, but a goody-two shoe lawyer of all things as well! Just like his goody-two shoes brother, the same one he couldn't stand!

Then she had to go and make it even worse by saying, "I've always been a slave to justice."

The slushy dawg was placed before him, but committment or not, he had lost his appetite.

"That's why I really like this date," she then inexplicably stated, leaving Heinz Doofenshmirtz to ask in complete confoundment "Why?"

"Because I've always had this huge crush on you and now...well, thanks to that silly dating site, and your friends, we can both act on it free of guilt...I'd say that's my reward for being such a good little girl: now that I'm older, tonight, I can make all of those fantasies a reality."

Heinz Doofenshmirtz not only felt his jaw hitting the booth's table, he heard the two other LOVEMUFFIN member's own hitting the table beside them as well.

"Me? You had a crush and fantasies about me?" Doof asked, pointing to himself and feeling suddenly drunk.

The young woman nodded, her beautiful orange hair bouncing prettily. "You always looked so cute in that lab coat and turtle neck. And you were always so smart and scientific. I always had a thing for mad scientists."

"Evil scientist...I'm not angry, I'm an evil scientist," he corrected.

"Well that's even more interesting," she said, her hand slinking forward on the table and taking hold of his. "Because now, not only do I get to bust you, I get to help in punishing, reforming and rehabilitating you too."

Doof gulped loudly, her finger stroking his hand in a way that he liked very much, even if she was a goody-two shoes. She wasn't like Roger. She wasn't like Roger at all infact. He could stand her perfectly okay. Infact, he was already rising for her.

"Now how about you grab that Slushy Dawg of yours and we head back to your place? Then we can have our desert, one where we can start on that whole judicial system behind closed doors and in privacy."

Doofenshmirtz started to nod his head enthusiastically. "Ja, ja," he said. "I throw myself on the mercy of the court."

Vanessa's little friend leaned forward then and kissed the tip of his nose. "You'll find me very merciful," she promised. The young lawyer then stood and pulled him up out of his own seat.

Passing by Aloyse Everheart Elizabeth Otto Wolfgang Hypatia Gunther Galen Gary Cooper von Roddenstein and Dr. Diminuitive, and bestowing upon them a gloating stare, Heinz Doofenshmirtz realized that his date had a point about that whole justice thing: just deserts were delicious.

Chapter Text

If she hadn't voiced her desire for more of the limited edition potato chips that she was just about to open while playing Poker with her lover, Heinz Doofenshmirtz, Candace later realized that maybe the problem would have never have started. It was an innocent mistake, however, with her just saying the bag she had opened was the last one in all of Danville, and Heinz, being as eager to please her as he always was, swiftly suggested, "I can solve that problem for you, sweetie," hiding behind the hand of cards in his hands.

"How?" Candace inquired, hiding her own hand from him.

"I have this inator, I call it the Double-inator," he proclaimed, saying the inators name in an ominous tone, the one he liked to use to sound menacing, like when he didn't want to take out the trash. "It's simple, I zap the bag of chips and, voila, you have two bags of limited edition potato chips, not one, all thanks to me, your devoted lover, Heinz Doofenshmirtz."

"Uhmm," Candace said, biting her bottom lip and afraid to remind him of his past mistakes, because she loved him so very much. "I thought we had a rule between us, I wouldn't touch your inators, but neither would you, because it's bad luck when either of us do it."

"Please!" Heinz begged. "It's just for a bag of potato chips! All Dressed. You know they sell those up in Canada all year long."

"Well, maybe it would just be safer to just move there than use the inator," she cringed, "You know we almost ruined the universe when we used that Do-Over one."

"No. Please. It will be perfectly safe," he promised.

"No," Candace said firmly. She was well aware of the old adage that a person couldn't have just one potato chip. They were addictive. Well Heinz Doofenshmirtz couldn't have more than one inator. And he always had to build and try out another. That was his addiction. The only problem was his inators were a hit or miss deal.

Meaning they oftentimes literally missed.

She tried to explain that to him then.

"Doof, honey, it's just it's a double or nothing kind of deal."

"Double or nothing?" he asked in confusion.

"See, I have one bag of chips now. If I let you use that inator thing on it, sure, I might be lucky and get two...or, I might wind up with nothing. Double or nothing," she elaborated.

"Oh, I see," Heinz said. "Like in Gimmelshtump, when my father tried to wager with the repo man in order to keep our lawn gnome and he lost the family's pink vulture too."

"Yes, it's exactly like that," Candace said, grateful the D.E.I. building she moved into when she turned twenty didn't have a lawn.

"I know," Heinz said. "Since we're playing cards, how about whoever has the winning hand gets their wish! If you win, I will not use my inator on your chips. But, if I win, I get to bring my little, swan, two bags of chips for her eating pleasure!"

Candace thought it over, but was more convinced by how joyful he looked than by her gut feeling which was screaming no. "Okay."

"Good. Royal Flush!" Heinz said, slapping his cards down on the table.

"Oh crap," Candace said.

"No, that's another game, my sweet little giraffe," Heinz Doofenshmirtz said, "But it is what a flush is technically for."

He then rushed off to get the Double-inator, which he was soon rolling their way.

"I'm still not sure this is a good idea," the young law student said.

"Of course, it is!" Heinz said. "I wouldn't have just cheated at cards if I had thought otherwise."

"You what?" Candace cried out, but it was too late. Doof had aimed the ray at the chips on the table. Unfortunately, he really needed to start wearing his glasses full-time, because he wound up hitting a mirror and it blasted him instead.

Soon there were two Heinz Doofenshmirtzes standing where once there had only been one.

"Uhmm...I think something might have gone wrong," both said in harmony.

"I'd say! Now there are two of you! Quick do something and fix it!" Candace cried out.

"I can't!" the original Heinz said. "I remodeled this with a fail safe. There is no self destruct and there is no timer!"

"What does that mean?" Candace asked.

"That I'm here to stay, baby!" the other Heinz said, going to kiss the shocked Candace on the cheek.

"Hey, that's my girlfriend!" Original Doof said, coming and kissing Candace's other cheek. "Get your own girlfriend. Wait don't! You're technically me and I wouldn't think about being unfaithful."

"Me neither," the 2nd Doof said.

"What does this mean now?" Candace asked, sandwiched between them.

"That it's double or nothing," both Doof's announced, holding her and nuzzling a cheek each.

And Candace Flynn, whom didn't want to think of any Heinz Doofenshmirtz out there without her, had to concede.

* * *

What followed soon led Candace Flynn to the edge of all she could take.

She had two Heinz Doofenshmirtzes itching to build and use inators. Two Heinz Doofenshmirtzes claiming to regularly fight a platypus in a fedora, and both routinely getting their butts kicked, and also two Heinz Doofenshmirtzes whom constantly left the toilet seat up, even though he had built an inator for that sort of thing too.

She also found herself sandwiched lovingly between two Heinz Doofenshmirtzes every night in bed.

Okay...

To be honest, that was interesting.

But Doof was such an enthusiastic lover and eager to please that she was exhausted. She was literally getting worn out and was missing classes for reasons that was making her Professors blush and suggesting she major in something else instead.

Finally, she'd had enough of it. "STOP!" Candace cried, as one Doof was kissing her neck from behind, and the other was working his way down her neck at the front, his fingers working on removing her blouse. "I think I have an idea!"

"You do?" both Doofenshmirtzes once again spoke in unison.

"Yes," she nodded. "Double or nothing?"

The two Heinz Doofenshmirtzes looked at each other and then looked at Candace, aware that it was dangerous, but afraid that they'd wear her out any other way, what with their insatiable lust for her.

"Double or nothing," they agreed shaking hands on it.

"Good," Candace sighed, collapsing to the floor inbetween them.

* * *

Luckily, when it came to her safety, Heinz Doofenshmirtz, the original and the copy, wasn't about to take any chances. He aimed it perfectly at the love of his life and soon there were two Candace Flynns standing in his laboratory. The original Heinz ran to the original Candace as the doubles embraced each other too.

"Now what do we do?" Candace asked.

"Yes," Heinz said. "The Tri-State area is not big enough for the both of us, Heinz Doofenshmirtz the inferior!"

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that," the second Candace said with a flip of her wrist. "We're moving to Canada, where they have all dressed chips year round, so this won't ever happen again."

"Yes!" second Heinz said gleefully. "And I, I will become ruler of the whole Martime area! You know...because it's really the Tri-Province area!"

The copies of the couple smiled at each other and then at their originals. "Thank you...now we really must go. Afterall, we have a whole new, original life to get going on our own," the second Candace said.

"And we know the pin numbers to your accounts to do it with. See ya," second Heinz said, winking at original Candace and then carrying her duplicate out of the penthouse door.

"Well, that was interesting," Heinz Doofenshmirtz remarked. He turned and looked at his lover. "So how about another game of Poker?"

Candace grabbed him by the collar of his black turtleneck in response. "Only, as in poke-her, the type that won't get us replicated," she said dragging him off to the bedroom. "Right now I'm thinking of the word undressed not all dressed."

"I hear you," Heinz agreed. "The last thing we need is another Doofenshmirtz or Flynn running around here. We have our hands full enough with each other!"

Nine months later they welcomed a brand new baby into the family.

Chapter Text

Candace Flynn could say that she had never seen anything like it before, but living with Phineas and Ferb kind of made such a claim nonsense. She had seen far stranger things living with them then a perfectly lovely Autumn Day degenerate into a full out blizzard in front of her eyes.

She would have blamed them, but they weren't in town, having gone away with Mom and Dad for a weekend antique excursion. It was, infact, the first one she had been able to opt out of in a while, seeing as though she was 18 now, a grown woman in the eyes of the law that she was diligently studying.

The blizzard made her rethink her choice, however, for she was dressed in only a sweater and a long skirt and the sudden barrage of snowflakes assaulting her made her feel exceedingly cold.

Fortunately, she looked around and discovered that she was by that weird building downtown where Vanessa's dad lived. She quickly darted inside, rushing to his penthouse and knocking on the door.

"Oh, hi Vanessa's little friend! Sorry if I took a bit answering the door, I was working!" Heinz - she thought his name was Heinz - greeted. "If you wanted to see Nessa, she's out."

"No...I actually wanted to know if I could stay here for a while until the blizzard passes over," Candace said, noticing how remarkably fast the man had dressed for the sudden change in the weather. "Or maybe borrow some of your daughter's clothes to help face it?"

"Sure! No problem," he said showing her inside. "But it won't last that long, trust me."

"Uh, what are you guys doing?" the young woman asked, finding him and his giant robot sitting in front of the fire.

"We're roasting chestnuts over an open fire, care to have some?" Heinz asked.

"Well, while I'm here," Candace said and sat cross legged in front of the fire with the man and the robot.

Heinz eventually divvied up the chestnuts once finished, only, as he handed the robot his own, a squirrel popped out of his chest and began eating them.

"What's that?" Candace asked in shock.

"That's Norm's heart," Vanessa's dad said apparently unaffected by it all. "I run him on squirrel power. It saves on batteries. NOW BACK INSIDE!"

The squirrel quickly ran back into the robot's chest. "What happened?" Norm asked. "I had another one of my blackouts. Hey! Where are my chestnuts?"

"You couldn't eat them anyway, Norm," his creator rolled his eyes.

They sat together as the snowflakes fell outside and Candace began to think how cozy it all was, but also a little uncomfortable because Vanessa's dad had always fascinated her and now she was basically alone with him, that was if you didn't count Norm and his blackouts.

She didn't exactly trust herself, now that she was older.

"I really should borrow those clothes and get home," she announced, suddenly getting to her feet.

Heinz looked disappointed, but said, "Okay, but I'm telling you, by the time you get downstairs, you won't need them!"

He led her to the coat closet and she quickly picked out a coat, a hat, some ear muffs, a scarf, gloves and a nice pair of boots.

"Great," Candace said, all dressed warmly now. "Tell Vanessa that I'll return them by the end of the week."

"If I need to tell her that, I will," her father said. "See you soon!" he said with a little wave before closing the door.

Well, that was strange, Candace thought. But, then again, Vanessa's father had always been the eccentric genius type. That was what made him so attractive to her, although telling her best friend that was embarrassing. Best to not share every little thing with the older girl.

And it wasn't like she'd ever act on it.

Candace Flynn trudged down the stairs, the elevator busted, like it usually was, and finally exited the building.

Only to find that it was hot.

Like really hot.

Like only a little better than what the chestnuts had experienced roasting over the open fire. And way too hot for her current winter clothing.

Panting, she turned around and went back to her friend's father's penthouse, feeling like she was about to have a heat stroke, by the time he answered his door. Now he was in his swin trunks and sipping a Pina Colada, seemingly unfazed.

"Oh, hi again Vanessa's little friend. See I told you I'd be seeing you again soon."

"Must...get...out...of...clothing," she barely managed to say, ripping off her outer clothes.

"Come in," he stepped aside. "Vanessa has some nice swimwear, if you're interested."

A few minutes later, she found Heinz and Norm sunbathing on the balcony. She tried not to notice the way that Vanessa's father's eyes bugged out when he saw her in the bikini and equally tried to ignore how happy it had made her feel.

"Can I join you?" she asked.

"Yeah...scram Norm!"

"Jeez," the giant robot said getting up out of the sun chair. "A pretty girl comes along and suddenly I am scrap metal."

"I don't hate to break it to you, Norm, but you were always scrap metal. Charlene doesn't pay me enough alimony for the good stuff."

"Oh darn," the robot said, sulking away.

Candace crawled into the chair, which was still warm, although why wouldn't it be in a heatwave?

"Thanks," she said then apologized. "I'm sorry. He seemed pretty upset.

"Don't be. He's metal. If he stayed a second longer in that chair, I was afraid it was gonna ignite."

As they lay there together, Candace was worried that still might happen. She was still very much attracted to the older man, as she felt he was to her too.

"I...I better go," she said, standing up and turning red, but not because of any sunburn. "I'll just borrow a Tee and a pair of shorts from Vanessa and then return them later."

"Suit yourself," her friend's father said, but repeated his stance from earlier, "But I'm telling you, by the time you get downstairs, you won't need them!"

Rushing off of the balcony, Candace quickly went to get dressed, and found Vanessa's father waiting at the door for her once she had, back to being dressed in his usual choice of clothing which was a lab coat, black turtleneck and pants.

She wondered what he would look like out of them and then tried to pretend she hadn't thought it.

"See you soon, Vanessa's little friend," he said with a little wave for the second time too.

Candace shook her head in confusion for her entire trip down the flight of stairs, wondering what was going on! First a blizzard? Than a heatwave? She was expecting that same overpowering warmth to hit her when she opened the entrance doors, but found it back to being the lovely temperature it had been when she'd first left the house that day.

Stomping right up the stairs, Candace knocked on her father's friend's door again and then found him standing there in his underwear. "See, I told you," he greeted.

She blushed, but stepped inside, regardless. She was a grown woman now, afterall, and she did trust the man. He had to have a good reason for his lack of clothing. He had predicted the weather all of the other times.

"Uhm, you were right again," Candace said with an embarrassed smile. "So I guess, I'll just get changed back into my original clothing."

"Okay," Heinz said and let her go into his daughter's room to change back.

In the meantime, he went to the laboratory to finish putting away the days work, with the help of Norm, whom had stopped pouting by now.

"So the Blizzard-inator and the Heatwave-inator are working fine then, Sir?" the robot asked.

"Yup," Heinz said, rolling one inator into storage as Norm tackled the other. "OWCA wanted me to test them, incase they need them for certain Agents. You know: for the cold ones sent to hot climates and the hot ones sent to cold."

Back in the living room, the robot voiced both his approval and his other question.

"That was very nice of you, Sir, but there is one thing I don't understand...you dressed in a sweater in anticipation for the blizzard and in your swim trunks, in anticipation of the heatwave...So, why are you now dressed in your underwear?"

Candace soon walked into the room, in only her underwear too, standing by the front door and leaning with her back against it. "I'm afraid of what the weather will be like next and, frankly, I'm tired of switching clothes. I may not know what season it is outside, but I think it's time for us to stop putting off the inevitable and have this May enjoy your December." she stated.

The sound of the door locking emphasized her statement.

Heinz smiled at her, while he answered Norm's question at the same time. "Oh, let's just say, I expected a change in the weather."

Chapter Text

"And you really think they will come?" Heinz Doofenshmirtz, in severe agitation, was asking his wife, Candace, for what had to be the hundredth time since they had awakened that Thanksgiving morning. "The cat didn't get their tongue and they just didn't want to tell us they weren't?"

"I'm certain that they will, they don't have too far to travel, as opposed to if you were still in Gimmelshtump," she reassured him, kissing the tip of his nose and straightening the bow tie of his tuxedo. "How about mine though? Do you think they'll bail out at the last minute? They're used to monkeying around like that and they've got a lot farther to come to us."

"Of course, they'll be here," Heinz said, grabbing Candace and twirling her around, making her dress of deep red spin around her, so she resembled the bud of a rose suddenly opening its petals into a bloom. "How could they resist seeing their favorite daughter and the fine woman they helped groom her into becoming?"

"And you, they'll be happy you managed to change your spots, afterall," she teased.

The doorbell rang and both Heinz and Candace nervously looked around the ballroom of the castle that Heinz had inherited from his Great Aunt Henrietta Hawkenschpit. It had been relocated to a new area of Danville, one where the couple wouldn't need to pay taxes on it anymore, which had been killing Doof's bank account. Candace, a lawyer, had been able to find the loophole for him, and now they enjoyed both his D.E.I. building, at the center of town, and this more remote location, for when they wanted to get away from things, like their respective families whom drove them both nuts sometimes.

They had other families, however, and this particular event, an observance of Canadian Thanksgiving, was to honor them both before November rolled around and brought chaos for their regular family get together.

Now, making sure everything was okay, from the banquet, to the tables and chairs, they gave each other a smile and went to see whose side of the family had arrived first.

"Mom! Dad!" Heinz said greeting them. "Oh and my brother, and sister, and...to be honest, I never knew what that one was, because I was too embarrassed to check, and my cousin, Sheila, too! I am so glad you all could make it! This is my wife, Candace!"

"Very glad to meet you," Candace greeted.

Several majestic ocelots stalked into the room, looking around it with interest, and with the mother letting out a big roar.

"Hey! She's giving her approval," Heinz said, linking his arm through Candace's. "Bet you my human mother would never do that! No. She would be telling me how Aunt Henrietta made a mistake by not giving this place to Roger instead. Now, come this way everyone! There's a buffet and after we eat, we can all play with rodents, just like we used to when we were small! I keep them in the house just incase. Go after the ones wearing fedoras first, okay?"

Candace and Heinz showed them in, and they were all settled, and getting fur everywhere, by the time the doorbell rang for a second time.

"Could it be?" Candace squealed in excitement. "Is this them?" And, sure enough, when they answered the door next, a troop of monkeys swung in through the door, even though there were no trees outside to actually swing from.

"I'm so glad you all could make it!" she said in welcome to the curious group of primates, some of which were hanging from the chandelier. "I want you to meet, Heinz Doofenshmirtz, my husband. Heinz, these are the monkeys I lived with when I was in Africa."

"Hello monkeys," he greeted with a wave. "I hope you all will be happy to know that I have taken it upon myself and have been grooming Candace for years now."

"Quit it," Candace teased, mockingly hitting him in the stomach with her elbow. "Now, if you would all come this way too..."

She pointed to the ballroom doorway and they rushed in ahead of her, not willing to wait.

"You know I did an eight month stint as an organ grinder monkey, myself," Heinz said, draping an arm across his lover's shoulders.

"How did that go?" Candace inquired, taking his hand in her own.

"What do you think accentuated my slouch?" he asked.

They entered the ballroom, but immediately didn't like how quiet the room seemed...

Or the way that each of their sides of the family were looking at the other, the ocelots growling and getting into pounce positions and the monkeys all shrieking in fear.

"Uh...Heinz," Candace said, her hand on the scientist's chest. "Did anybody check the food chain before we thought of this?"

"Ah, what do you mean?" Doof asked, cringing at something he knew would inevitably go bad very soon.

"I mean, do ocelots eat monkeys?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. Yes, they do," Heinz answered.

"Oh brother," Candace said, slapping her forehead.

"Yours or mine?" Heinz inquired.

But it didn't matter.

For soon Heinz's half of the family was chasing Candace's all over the ballroom, making a mess of the banquet and everything else besides!

"Quick!" Candace cried. "Get out that inator we keep on standby!"

"Which one?" Heinz squawked as fur went flying past him.

"The one for when our regular families drops by!" she clarified.

"Got it!" he nodded and rushed off to get the machine, soon rolling in the most handy of his inators since they had gotten married.

Soon, Heinz Doofenshmirtz was shooting off his Go-Home-inator (the same one which had sent Perry to Africa, where the monkeys came from), and all of the ocelots and the monkeys were quickly back at their own homes before anybody had been eaten or harmed.

Together, Candace and Heinz now walked to the center of the empty, but terribly messy, ballroom and shared a sigh of relief.

"Well, I'm thankful that everyone got out safe," Candace mused.

"And I'm thankful that we didn't invite them to the wedding afterall," Heinz said. "Imagine, if my family ate yours. That might have put a dampner on things."

Candace wiped her forehead. "Woo! I'm thankful for that one too."

"Although...I'm not so sure," Doofenshmirtz said, turning to look at her, a strange gleam starting in his eyes.

"Not so sure of what?" she asked, somewhat concerned.

"I think my ocelot side is starting to come to the forefront," Heinz said, looking her over and licking his lips at her hungrily. "Because suddenly...you are looking mighty tasty."

Candace feigned fear. "Oh no!"

"Yes," Heinz said, loosening his tie. "I might have to eat you tonight, Mrs. Doofenshmirtz."

"Mmm," Candace said, pulling him in for a taste. "Yet another thing to be thankful for then!"

Chapter Text

Heinz Doofenshmirtz and Candace Flynn sat together in the scientists van-truck on their way to attend Vanessa Doofenshmirtz's birthday celebration in Seattle. Vanessa had invited both her father and her friend, aware that her dad could get terribly lonely and miss her sometimes and that Candace was similarly going through a tough time, after her time-out with Jeremy Johnson.

Candace's car had been broken, however, and Vanessa had suggested that her father and Candace go together, Heinz sharing the use of his van-truck.

"You want me to bring your little friend?" he had asked aghast. "What will we talk about, honey? That's a horrible idea, I mean a really horrible idea."

"Dad, come on. It's not such a long trip and Candace isn't really that bad. She doesn't talk too much since she and her boyfriend split. She stays in her head most of the time."

Heinz had considered that a blessing, at least, if he was thinking about the same girl that Vanessa was mentioning, she was the one who kept on blabbing, he thought. He hated people like that. People who went on and on and weren't comfortable with silence. You know, the type who needed to fill in the empty spaces and rambled, who had to give you every little gory detail about their traumatic history, whether you wanted to hear it or not, and virtually trapped you into having to listen to their schemes, hopes and oodles of explanations, descriptions and theories.

That sort of person.

And this Candace person seemed that type.

Infact, when they had almost ruined existence together, she'd also been rambling on beforehand about having a single unrealized focus in her life. How was he supposed to even relate to that? Besides, she had interrupted him from defeating Perry and replacing his brother Roger in power, something he'd repeatedly failed in doing.

But to please Vanessa, and because he was excited about her 20th birthday (more excited about it than the girl even sounded), he was willing to take her little friend with him.

It had gone better than he had thought. She had been pretty mopey. As in she was extremely pretty, even more pretty than he had remembered, and she had moped during most of the drive to Seattle: so pretty mopey.

He had needed to fill in the empty spaces himself, because they had made him feel so uncomfortable and so he had told her about his childhood and own teenage years back in Gimmelshtump and about how now he was secretly helping out this old organization he used to butt heads with and how, in a few years time, he hoped to create an invention that wouldn't blow up on him and could be of some use to somebody, helping to make the world a better place.

To her credit, despite her general silence, she had appeared to be listening and had even smiled a few times, which made her even prettier. Girls with orange hair should never look so gloomy, Heinz Doofenshmirtz had secretly mused to himself. They should be happy and cheerful.

They should never have their hearts broken either.

After driving for a while, the girl whom had been keeping mostly to herself, said the first significant thing that she had during the whole trip thus far.

"Are you sure this is Seattle?" this Candace girl asked.

"Of course it's Seattle," he moodily snapped. "I've only been here a million times, cheating on my nemesis."

She didn't need to ask what that was all about, having heard a little about it already.

"No...I'm pretty sure this isn't Seattle," she still declared. "I'm not even sure that it's Washington."

Doof craned his neck outside of the window seeing what she meant now. He couldn't remember it being this dry and devoid of life.

Oh crap.

He had been so focused on the girl and talking to her that he'd gotten them both lost.

How could he fix it?

By not admitting it, he decided. "No. We're not in Seattle yet. But we're getting there," he defended.

However, hours later, he was even more lost than before and the vehicle was out of gas besides, parked by the remains of an ancient Volkswagen, which had apparently met a similar demise. They were now not only lost, but stuck in the middle of who knew where now too.

And having not brought Norm, his personal GPS system, well...it didn't look good.

"I'm sorry about this," Doof apologized with a grimace.

"It's okay," Candace said. "I've felt lost for a while now. Might as well make it literal." The older man looked at her sadly, but was soon genuinely touched when she said, "I feel bad about you missing your daughter's birthday party though."

He flipped it away. "I'm not even sure she really wanted me there. She just thinks that I'm still her lonely, divorced, embarrassing father, whom needs looking after."

"The blowing yourself up part probably doesn't help," the young woman commented.

"No. No it probably doesn't," Doof agreed.

Candace looked around at their surroundings, which she had speculated previously might possibly be Nevada. "I'm kind of the same. Vanessa likes me, but I think she just invited me out of pity, since she heard that Jeremy and I called a time-out. The funny thing is that she thinks he's breaking up with me. It's really the other way around."

"You were the one?" Doofenshmirtz asked in shock.

Candace nodded. "I thought that, deep down, it was different than before...and not in a good way either. I wanted to think things over before we both dug ourselves into a hole. I felt like we were just going around and around in circles."

"Hey!" Doofenshmirtz exclaimed. "That reminds me...can I show you Vanessa's present before I give it to her? She's always saying I give her the worst gifts."

"Sure," his daughter's friend said. She followed him to the back of the truck, where he revealed a machine after ripping the wrapping paper off. "Behold: the Carousel-inator!"

"What does it do?" Candace asked and in shock watched as he used it to turn the Volkswagon into a full sized carousel.

The young woman giggled, walking around it in delight.

"It turns anything into a carousel," he unnecessaryily announced now. "It's fully functional too. Wanna see?"

Candace nodded.

With her approval, Doof happily jumped over to the center of the carousel, past the horses, and turned the control. "Hop on!" he invited.

Giggling, yet again, Candace did, climbing on to one of the horses, which were now beginning to move, and soon watching as Vanessa's father climbed on to the horse beside hers. Together they laughed as the carousel played a sweet, old fashioned type of tune. Around and around they went, forgetting how lost and lonely they both were sometimes, for now they felt both found and blessed with company. When both the music and the ride was over, they were both still laughing.

"Now that's the type of going around in circles I don't mind," Vanessa's little friend said merrily.

"You like it?" Doof asked happily.

"I love it!"

"It's yours then," the scientist said.

"But Vanessa...your gift."

Heinz gave a shrug of his shoulders. "I think we both know that this isn't her type of gift...it's too innocent, too sweet...too orange. It's more like you."

Candace blushed, looking down.

"Besides," Doof said happily, holding up a pair of black fuzzy dice. "I found these in the Volkswagen before I changed it. I think Nessa asked me for a pair of these when she was like ten. Goal achieved!"

Candace smiled, thinking how wonderful Vanessa's dad was and how she wished he wasn't the father of her friend and so much older. If he wasn't, then maybe...

Suddenly a small plane landed and out from it popped a small panda wearing a fedora.

"Peter the Panda?" Heinz Doofenshmirtz said in shock. "What are you doing here? Oh, a report was made about me using an inator? What lousy rat reported me?"

Candace, Doof and Peter noticed a small rodent suddenly scurrying off from behind a large rock, a fedora on his head too.

"Well, it's just my daughter's birthday present - it was anyway until I decided to give it to Candace - so no need to worry. But why didn't my regular nemesis come to thwart me? Why were you sent, my thwarty call, instead?"

Peter spared a glance to Doofenshmirtz's female companion, but then informed the former evil scientist that it was simply because of location.

"Well, great. Now that you're here, could you fly Candace and I to Seattle for Vanessa's party? Then can you have my van-truck taken there too?"

Peter nodded.

Heinz helped Candace off from the carousel horse, like a gentleman, and then motioned her forward with an "After you," all as the young woman blushed.

A few minutes later they were all in Seattle at the tail end of Vanessa's party, right when the janitor was cleaning it up. That might have been the best present they each could have given to her, the birthday girl thought, but didn't say.

"Sorry you two couldn't be here," Vanessa lied, the pair of black fuzzy dice in her hands. "I hope you weren't too bored, though, being lost and stuck out in the middle of nowhere."

Heinz and Candace shared a sweet, knowing look, one which left them both with red cheeks.

"Oh, we made a merry-go-round of it," Heinz Doofenshmirtz wistfully confessed.

Chapter Text

"Oh look, honey!" Heinz Doofenshmirtz said, as he and his wife Candace were passing by the shady warehouse where L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N had scheduled it's annual Disservice Awards.

"This looks fun," he exclaimed, although he wasn't really evil anymore, but could still look back on those times fondly.

"Not the word I would use, but okay," his wife Candace, now a famous Danville prosecutor, said.

"Could we maybe just drop in for a few seconds, say hello to all my old friends? Well, maybe not so much friends, that's a bit of an exaggeration," he admitted, seeing her eyebrow raising, "but acquaintances...sometimes amusing acquaintances. I'd really like to see them again."

"I guess," Candace said and they both went in together.

After a few minutes of mingling, Heinz introducing the organization's members to his new wife, and eating a bit of the food too, Doofenshmirtz placed the tray he was holding of stale finger sandwiches back on the table. "You know, I don't think I'm cut out for this anymore. It's not as much fun as I remember."

"It isn't?" Candace asked, glad to hear him say that because she wasn't enjoying herself too much either. Everyone kept scowling at her, and by the hundredth time of someone asking Heinz if she was his hostage or maybe his sidekick in training, all on account of her being so much younger, she was really ready to get out of there.

"No," he said. "Everyone's idea of evil is getting so extravagant, just to keep up with the times, and all I can think of is how childish it all seems. Besides...seeing this many lab coats in one place. I've been away for so long, it really is starting to look like a pharmacist convention, just like your dad once thought it was. Let's get out of here before I need to overhaul my wardrobe!"

A few seconds later, walking past the Knights of Danville Hall, which was in the very building beside the warehouse, Candace saw that the Law School that she had similarly attended was having it's own event, this one a reunion.

"This looks fun," Candace exclaimed, whilst her loving husband looked less sure. "Not the word I would use, but okay," he replied.

"Can we go in and I can say hello to everyone?" Candace asked. "I haven't seen them in so long. I'm sure they must have just forgotten to invite me."

Although he really didn't want to, Heinz surrendered with a mild groan,  marking his consent."Okay, my little schwanenjungfrau," he said, "As long as you don't think they'll charge an exorbitant rate." Once being evil, he had suffered the hefty price of many a lawyer in his day. He'd also gone through a divorce, which had not improved his feelings towards them.

However, he very much liked the kiss on the cheek his wife gave him and they were soon entering the Hall so she could see her old classmates.

Time passed, not too much of it either, and Candace too was soon suggesting that they get out of the very place she had mistaken to be fun as well. "Heinz, darling, if you wouldn't mind, could we just sneak out?"

"What for?" Heinz asked, grateful to be leaving, although he liked the food here far better than he had at the L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. affair. He highly suspected whomever had catered that event had embezzled the Food and Beverage Budget. Of course, with them being evil, what did anyone expect?

"I don't know," she said, looking around. "None of these people are interested in justice at all! They aren't interested in putting the bad guys away, they just want to win all of their cases, drive fancy cars and charge their clients exorbitant prices. It wasn't that they forgot to invite me...they just didn't want to. They said I was too goody goody. Come on...let's go."

Walking away from the Knights of Danville Hall, Doof noticed that Candace looked far more despondent and depressed then he had been. It only made sense, though: having once been a villain, he wasn't too depressed to see people he hadn't really even liked still being right where he had left them. Candace, however, whom always clung righteously to justice, was badly shaken for having finally seen her associates for what many of them were and that had disappointed her terribly.

If only he could make her happy again.

A light bulb went off inside of his head.

Quite possibly the one that had become stuck there when Perry the Platypus was thwarting his LED-to-LIED-light-bulb-inator scheme.

"Wait, I have one little phone call to make," Heinz said raising a finger and then walking off to make it in private.

"What was that about?" Candace asked.

"You'll see in a few minutes!" he said and then dragged her back to the hill on the other side of the street from both the warehouse and the Knights of Danville Hall. Sitting on the park bench at the top of that hill, they had the perfect vantage point to see the police cars rolling in.

"What's happening?" Candace asked in confusion.

"Oh, while we were paying it a visit, I just happened to see the latest scheme L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. had cooked up as what they are calling these days as their 'collective whole'. I made a quick call to the Danville police and so now they are all going to be arrested."

They watched together as the police brought out the evil scientists one by one, most of them crying out, "I want to speak to an attorney!"

Their cries soon carried over to the Knights of Danville Hall, and just as Heinz had calculated, soon Candace's former classmates all filed out, falling all over each other in a mad dash to reach the arrested men and women, hoping to be hired to represent them.

Candace and Heinz watched it all unfolding before their very eyes and Doofenshmirtz went on to explain, "And, if I know L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. none of them stand a chance. They are all guilty as hölle and that means not one of those lawyers has a chance of winning this time around. And you know what the best part is?"

Candace looked at him and shook her head, her eyes large and misty.

Heinz took her head in his large hands and rubbed his long, sharp nose against her small, pert one. "The best part is that you, you Candace Flynn-Doofenshmirtz, as Danville's finest prosecutor, will be the one to hand out justice to both my old acquaintances and yours."

Candace then took Doof's head in her own hands also. "Now that really does sound like fun!" she exclaimed. "But not as much fun as when we both help celebrate after I win all of those cases!"

"Yes, that's exactly the word I would use for it too!" Heinz Doofenshmirtz declared, kissing her in full agreement.

Chapter Text

"I wish life didn't always have to be so hard!"

That was the last thing that Heinz Doofenshmirtz heard his girlfriend, Candace Flynn, say before she headed off to bed on Friday night. She was struggling with her studies and also having a hard time getting her family to understand her relationship with him, Heinz understood. That latter she would never actually confess to him, however, aware of his deep bed of insecurities, so she had bundled it all up, blaming it on only her law classes instead, so then she could vent without hurting him.

She wished to soften his own suffering, which was rather very sweet of her. He would have done the same for her, but he had so very few family members he was actually close with, most of them looking down on him. Vanessa, his daughter, whom had at first been shocked by the relationship between her father and her friend, had gradually just accepted it as yet another embarrassing thing her dad had done to humiliate her. According to her, there had been so many of them, she could easily accept it and move on.

And so everything was okay with the one family member both Candace and he cared about on his side.

Today, for Candace, though, was just one of those times when everything seemed so very hard that her nerves were jagged and every corner sharp and threatening.

They had talked for a little bit, while he worked on an inator, and then she had gone to bed. Tomorrow was Saturday, a day when she could sleep in and not worry about her studies, which was now a code word for the amalgamation of problems and difficulties she was facing, which now felt as subtle and gentle as a sledgehammer.

They both were students of the school of hard knocks. Only Candace was a freshman while he was a perpetual senior.

Doof had wished her a good night, told her he would join her shortly and then watched her go off to bed, before turning back to his latest invention. People mistakenly thought that his relationship with Candace was all about the physical. They didn't realize that sometimes, on certain nights, that didn't even come into play. Sometimes they just held each other and snuggled. Both of their lives had been so hard, they just enjoyed the comfort they brought to each other, like a nice cozy security blanket.

And it was that very notion that had led Heinz Doofenshmirtz to his latest inator...

One for Candace Flynn to enjoy a life that wouldn't be so hard.

* * *

Candace woke up and instantly felt for the side of the bed beside her. Heinz Doofenshmirtz's warm body was lying there, waiting, fast asleep and wonderfully soft. She snuggled up next to him for a few seconds, then kissed his cheek, aware that she needed to get up. Swinging her legs over the bed, she expected to feel the cold hard floor meeting her bare feet, but instead felt something wonderfully fluffy.

Looking down, she saw that what she had mistaken to be the carpet was now really a blanket! No. Not just one blanket...It was a pile of blankets! The floor was no longer a floor, but a huge pile of wonderfully soft blankets, all feeling like they had gone through the washing machine with the finest fabric softener ever, the type her mother vainly searched for during her shopping trips to the Super Food Stuff Mart.

Lost in amazement, the young woman spun around, only to find that the bed she had been sleeping on was nothing but a gigantic pillow too, one with several more pillows at the top of it!

"Heinz! Heinz!" Candace exclaimed, crawling back into bed with her lover, both wearing their matching set of purple night clothes. "What's going on?"

The older gentleman, opened his eyes groggily and then smiled at her. "Oh, I see you've noticed the handiwork of my latest inator. I call it the Pillows-Plushies-and-Piles-of-Blankets-inator! Or the Softie-inator for short. It's designed specifically to make life not feel so uncomfortably hard."

Candace giggled, somewhat losing her balance on the giant pillow and needing to reposition herself. "You did this for me?"

"Ja," Doof replied.

"I love you so much!" she said, allowing herself to fall now, right on top of him, which felt just as wonderful as the blankets and pillows under her feet. "And I love you too, Schwanenjungfrau," he said holding her to him, his hand rubbing her back.

* * *

To her delight, Candace discovered that most of the penthouse had been turned into nothing but blankets and pillows, except for some things that were necessary, like the toilet and sinks, the stoves and the fridge.

But, overall, the floors were seemingly endless piles of blankets and the furniture was nothing but pillows of various sizes.

When she went around examining things, she even found a large plushie of Norm the Robot too! And then she found a plushie of a platypus that looked like Perry, only it was wearing a hat, its box made to resemble a trap. How cute!

Then, whenever the doorbell rang, she would soon discover new plushies lying around, ones that looked like her parents and Phineas and Ferb and one of Gary Frank, the delivery man, turned up after Doof ordered pizza, too frightened to use the stove with all of the fabric lying around. Their tags did warn to keep them away from intense heat, afterall, because they were flammable.

Why, at some point, after another knock at the door, when Heinz came back with a log of cupcakes, he also brought with him an armful of what looked like Fireside Girl plushies.

Candace squealed and rushed over to grab the Isabella one. "Are they selling these now? They are so adorable. I gotta give this one to Phineas, you know, then he can have his very own Isabella plushie to cuddle with since he's so clueless he hasn't even realized she loves him back yet."

"Ahhh...better have him wait for the real thing," Doof stated, sheepishly. "That plushie...uhm...it's kind of a limited edition sort of deal. Like confined to this day. It's gotta go back tomorrow. Infact, all of the plushies do."

Candace shrugged and placed Isabella next to the Phineas plushie. At least their dolls could be together for the day.

Candace enjoyed her soft day, hugging the dolls of her parents, whom were wonderfully plush and did not harm her with their sharp words and disapproval about the man she loved and the choices she had made to be with him.

She also pretended to bust her brothers a few times, but always ended up hugging them too, because she loved them and missed seeing them since she wasn't always welcomed back home these days.

As the day wore on, though, Candace realized that she was sort of missing objects that were not soft, and how those could also be nice. You kind of needed them, she now understood, to fully appreciate their opposite, or else things became all the same and you missed its counterpoint.

Above all else, she realized that Heinz Doofenshmirtz was the true softener she needed to make her constantly crashing up against a hard life more gentle. He made her bruise less and the corners seem less sharp. In general, he made her life more rounded. He was her pillow, plushie and blanket rolled up into a sweet and kind man, even though he liked to pretend he was evil.

In their pillow bed, they cuddled that night and snuggled a bit, and she also enjoyed the hardness of Heinz Doofenshmirtz all the more too. "Thank you," she whispered as she fell asleep against him.

"No, thank you," he said, holding her tight.

* * *

In the morning, Candace awoke and the previous day might as well all been a dream. The floor was hard and cold, as she climbed out of bed, and things were back to normal all throughout the penthouse.

Even the plushies had all disappeared, there only being a cage where the platypus' box had been.

Yet it all seemed perfectly wonderful to Candace.

When Heinz walked through the door, fully dressed in his scientist garb, she ran and kissed him, thanking him again for the lovely day and the inator. "What happened to it anyway?" she asked.

"Oh, it self destructed," he said with a shrug. "You know me and my inators. I also built it with a timer. I knew that you'd be missing things how they were."

"How did you know that?" she asked, throwing her arms around his shoulders, her hands clasping behind his neck.

"Because I too am a graduate of the school of hard knocks, just like you, but I also realize, if it led us to each other, that those knocks serve a purpose."

"I agree," Candace said. "You know what hard knocks help to do, afterall, when two sufferers of them meet."

"What is that, Candace Flynn?" he inquired.

"Create tender feelings between them," she said and kissed him, believing his lips and heart to be even softer than all of the pillow, plushies and blankets in the world.

Chapter Text

When October rolled around, Heinz Doofenshmirtz had reassured his wife, Candace Flynn, that he was more than capable of choosing the Halloween costumes for each of them, especially since it was his favorite holiday and he considered the day both his delight and well in the area of his expertise.

Still, when he was standing her in front of one of his machines, and had stripped her bare to do it, she suddenly had her doubts. "I don't know about this," the scientist's much younger wife professed, thinking that winning an award for Best Couples Costumes at her brother-in-law's party wasn't exactly high on her list. She would much rather have been staying at home with Heinz and handing out candy to the Trick or Treaters instead of enabling her husband's obsessive desire to best his little brother.

But suffering from the same problem for years, she was no one to talk and perhaps a little more submissive than she should have been.

"No, there will be no problem!" Heinz reassured her, equally naked now. "We simply stand in front of the Halloween-Costume-Maker-inator and it chooses the perfect costumes for us! I even put it on "Couples" to make ours matching so that then we can beat that goody-two shoes, Roger."

"But why are we naked?" Candace asked.

"That's because part of the costume is also taken as our underwear! We have to be naked for it to work. Trust me. If we were just in our underwear, it would become confused and think we were already dressed as Calvin Klein models."

"Okay," Candace said.

"Good," Heinz Doofenshmirtz said and then stood beside his wife. "Now say cheese!"

"Why, does it take a photo too?"

"No, but I spent Halloween as a cow once and so it's tradition."

"That's funny," Candace said. "I went out dressed as Heidi once when a Were-Cow was on the loose and people thought I was a milk maid. I even was carrying a milk bucket."

"Small world," Doof said, hitting the inator's button via his remote.

A blast coming out of its tip, the beam hit them and soon they were clothed and ready for the party.

Heinz grabbed his wife's hand and dragged them over to the mirror, where they finally saw what the inator had deemed the perfect couple costumes for them.

"Oh this is perfect!" Heinz squealed, basking in the sight of them. "Let's see Roger try to best this one!"

Candace was less impressed. "Uhmm...who are we supposed to be exactly?" she asked.

"Me, I am the evil Der Kinderlumper, the one that my mother used to torment me with; while you, you are the good Kinderlumper, the highly sanitized version that my mother used to delight my brother, Roger with."

Candace saw her own confusion reflected back at her. "But isn't that a little obscure to appeal to the judges?"

"Are you kidding?" Heinz exclained in excitement. "Everyone loves Roger and Roger's loves Der Kinderlumper. We are a shoe in! Now let me go and grab our coats."

While he was gone, Candace sighed and looked at her reflection in the mirror. She looked like Dobby from Harry Potter, but only more pathetic. Maybe the Calvin Klein models weren't so bad now.

"C'mon," Heinz soon joyfully reappeared with their coats. "I want to get a good parking spot. I can't wait to see Roger's face when we win."

Candace sighed. She just couldn't wait to get out of her costume.

A wish that would come back to bite her, as if she were an apple and it was a snake...

* * *

When Perry finally arrived at his B.F.F.'s (Best Foe Forever) place, the D.E.I. penthouse was empty, but he still managed to find the inator. He would have been there sooner to bust Heinz, but since the man had married Candace, finding the perfect moment was rare. Besides, Phineas and Ferb were going out as Love Handel this Halloween and they needed the extra member to complete the trio.

They had just reached the D.E.I. building's block when he had finally managed to slip away, and right about now, Phineas would probably be asking "Hey! Where's Bobby?"

Now staring at the inator, the little platypus remembered what Monogram had told him.

"Agent P, we have it on good information that Heinz Doofenshmirtz is planning on using underhanded methods to beat his brother Roger at the Mayor's Halloween Ball. Your mission is to destroy whatever inator he has rigged up to do it with, thus preventing our old friend Doof from cheating."

It all sounded simple enough.

And Heinz had been kind enough to leave the stupid thing sitting out in the open PLUS with his regular, and always inexplicable, self destruct button too.

Perry marched up and hit it, aware that now he had enough time to sneak back and finish off the rest of the night making Love Handel feel complete. And making his boys happy too.

He just hoped that hitting that button hadn't had any unexpected and adverse and embarrassing side effects for their sister, Candace.

However, living with Heinz Doofenshmirtz for this long, she had probably come to expect them anyway.

The little platypus, walked out the door, putting his Bobby wig back over his head.

* * *

"That was the most embarrassing night of my life!" Candace Flynn exclaimed, walking through the door and holding her coat tightly to her, way after midnight.

"Really? That's funny," Heinz Doofenshmirtz said, walking in behind her, his own coat misbuttoned, on account of his rushing to do it so fast, "because I've had far worse."

"But why did that happen all of a sudden when we were standing up on stage?" Candace whined for the hundredth time since it had happened.

Doof scratched his head. "I don't know. It's almost like someone pushed the self destruct button on my inator...oh look! Someone did press the self destruct button on my inator! I bet it was my nemesis!"

Candace shook her head. For all of the months she'd been married to Heinz, she had heard him mention this nemesis several million times, but she had yet to see the Special Agent. Either her husband was making it all up as an excuse whenever things went wrong, or it was a case of early day Mr. Snuffleupagus.

But thinking of Mr. Snuffleupagus she was only reminded of their humiliation from earlier in the evening. She looked at Heinz remembering the state she had found him in after she had heard the gasps from the audience. "This never would have happened if we just bought our costumes," she said.

"Yeah, but are you kidding!" Doof said happily. "If we hadn't of, we would never have won, especially since Roge and his secretary both went as Der Kinderplumpers!"

"Yeah...but...Adam and Eve?" Candace said, throwing open her coat to reveal the absense of the costume she had been wearing. Infact, to reveal the absense of anything but a big First Prize ribbon over her crotch.

"Yeah, it was wonderful!" Heinz Doofenshmirtz beamed, flashing open his own coat to show off his own matching prize ribbon similarly placed on his completely naked body. "We won!"

"I think they only did it to give us something to cover ourselves with," Candace moaned, putting her head in her hands.

"Believe me, that's a victory," Heinz said moving towards her. "What's an even bigger victory, though, is having someone whom didn't run off the stage and leave me the moment that it happened," he added, taking her into his arms.

Candace held him back, her cheek soon pressed against his. "I couldn't leave you hanging there on your own!" she proclaimed passionately.

"You know what the best thing about these costumes is," he asked, not feeling like he was quite in that hanging state anymore, not when she was so near and so lovely.

"No, what?" Candace asked.

"They save time for our own trick or treating!" Heinz Doofenshmirtz answered, falling to the floor with her in their own personal little Eden.

Chapter Text

Candace Flynn was becoming increasingly tired of people mocking her for her love of Ducky Momo. She didn't find it particularly fair that they judged her for loving the character in a children's program, when they went around liking things equally foolish, but managed to squeak by because they featured adults. Like a certain space program, where almost all of the aliens had human bodies, giving away the fact that they were grown ups in costume, playing make believe! Or actors having prosthetics to make their ears pointed so they could look like elves or other magical creatures that didn't exist. Or even that show called "Acquaintances" where everyone of the acquaintances looked gorgeous. Like whoever heard of that? If you got six of your acquaintances together, you could bet that most of them would be fairly average looking, but just because it was a TV show, and they had a casting agent involved, they all looked like models.

Hello!

Juvenile notions of beauty!

So what did it matter if she liked to watch a giant yellow duck that went around quacking? It was cute. It also wasn't pretentious like the other shows, so Candace often enjoyed going to the theaters playing old Ducky Momo films and surrounding herself with the children, whom hadn't developed that dreadful sense of self-importance yet.

They were all so innocent and mostly all sweet.

It was rare to find an adult whom willingly wanted to sit in the front rows, though. At least, to find an adult whom didn't have any kids there.

That was why, when an adult voice asked her one Saturday afternoon, "Is this seat taken?" her first reply was, "That depends...you aren't some kind of a weirdo are you?"

"Well, that depends too," the voice answered truthfully. "Mainly it depends on who you ask, but I don't think I'm the type of weirdo you mean, thank goodness."

Candace looked up to find her friend Vanessa's dad looking down at her and she instantly knew both what he meant and that it was completely safe to let him sit beside her. The scientist was considered eccentric by many, but he wasn't the type of person whom liked to hang out at kids films for all the wrong reasons.

He genuinely liked Ducky Momo.

She'd snuck a peak at his collection a few times to know that.

"Vanessa's dad!" Candace said. "No, you can take this seat! I'd appreciate it actually. I hate that nobody I know wants to come with me. Even Vanessa stopped, saying she kept having nightmares of Ducky Momo after them. Strange huh?"

"First, call me Heinz. Secondly, what's even stranger is once you've seen her dreams," the man said, sitting down in the seat next to hers. "They're big musical numbers as well."

"How do you know that?" Candace asked.

"Unh...she told me about them," he said, and from all of the bright yellow on the screen, she could see he was blushing, even though the theater was so dark. "Well...to tell the truth, I made this machine once that showed one to me. Kind of like this here, right now. Only a lot more gory."

Well, at least, he was being honest.

"SHHHHH!" an angry 5 year old hissed and both adults suddenly tensed up, not wanting to be kicked out of the theater.

After the show, they had plenty of time to talk, where they both learned how much the Momo meant to them and how being forbidden to go to one of his showings was the stuff of their own worst nightmares.

"I don't know," Heinz said at the Slushy Dawg they had dropped into. "There's just something comforting about a big blob of yellow who's expression never changes and only quacks. After a long week of fighting my nemesis and blowing myself up, I need that sort of thing."

"I know, right?" Candace said excitedly, glad to have someone to finally talk about this all with, someone whom would understand and not judge. "After a hard week at law school, I need to see Ducky Momo!"

She looked at Vanessa's dad, reminded now of how she had always found him hot in that scientist/brainiac sort of way, even if he'd never wind up on Acquaintances. Neither would she. "Soooo," Candace began. "You wanna go next week too?"

"Sure! I'd love that," the man screeched, obviously excited. "It would be nice not to be looked at so strangely." He studied Candace and realized how much younger she was from him. "Well, a little less strange, at least," he corrected.

* * *

For the next few weeks, Candace and Heinz met each other at the theater and saw a Ducky Momo film (or films of it was a marathon) together, until they'd seen them a few times each. Then afterwards, they always went out for a burger, meatloaf or coffee.

Suddenly, one day, they realized that they weren't going so much for Ducky Momo anymore, but because they wanted to see each other. No longer was it the yellow duck bringing them joy, but the companionship and understanding they offered.

Although, this too was something each of them feared would not be understood, just like their love for the star of the Japanese children's program.

Finally, one day, while they were both sitting with each other, and looking for an excuse to hold hands or cuddle, seeing as though it wasn't all that scary a show nor romantic, when an usher asked to speak to them in the aisle.

"I'm sorry," the usher said. "But management says that nobody over 18 can come here anymore, at least, not unless they have a child of their own."

"What kind of ridiculous law is that?" Heinz squawked. "I'll sue! This is discrimination!"

"And I'll help him," Candace said, standing up straight and trying to look confident. "I'm a lawyer. Well, I will be some day."

"Look, sorry," the usher apologized. "But with the amount of weirdos we get in here, sometimes, the theater owners thought it was best to keep the children safe. Either that or to stop showing Ducky Momo"

Ouch!

They had gotten Candace and Heinz right where it hurt.

They looked at the sea of joyful children in the audience, then saw the familiar yellow duck offering his certain, special kind of comfort and joy, and knew they wouldn't risk the children's safety for the world.

Or their love of Ducky Momo.

Sadly the two adults walked out of the theater.

Standing under the marquee, in the bright afternoon sun, Heinz shyly looked at the much younger, but very pretty flaming-haired girl by his side. "Unh...I have all of the Ducky Momo films back at my penthouse. Want to come over and watch them there?" he nervously invited.

Candace smiled at him and then took his hand. "I thought you'd never ask!"

Beaming at one another, the man and young woman began walking to his penthouse.

Okay.

It was more like they were skipping.

They skipped to his penthouse, like a couple of children.

* * *

About three years later, the same usher approached two familiar looking people, back in their favorite row.

"Hey, I'm sorry you two, but didn't I tell you..."

The man stopped. For as he got closer, and the two turned around, he saw that they had a little child with them, fast asleep in the chair between.

"Oops sorry," the usher apologized.

"It's all right," the man said softly, in his European accent.

The woman with the orange hair, on the other hand, just smiled at him, a finger going to her lips in the universal sign to be quiet or else she would be forced to bust him.

The usher tiptoed up the aisle, as Heinz Doofenshmirtz turned to his wife, Candace, their son still sleeping peacefully and undisturbed. Looking at the boy they'd named Fred, Doof wondered if he could get away with moving closer to the woman he loved.

"Excuse me," he asked, pointing to the chair separating them, "but is this seat taken?"

"That depends," Candace said. "Do you think we could move him without his waking up?"

Heinz smiled gleefully, then sucessfully scooped up the boy and placed him on his lap, as both the men in Candace Flynn-Doofenshmirtz's life now shared the same seat. Kissing her husband, Candace then placed her head on his shoulder, knowing that that seat would be taken now for the rest of their lives.