Chapter Text
He stared at the ceiling, bored out of his mind.
The Lil’ Bulb in the corner stared at him, never moving. If it’s bulb weren’t slightly lit, he would’ve thought it was turned off or broken.
He could feel the paperclip, his passage to an escape, hidden and pinned up in his hair, pressing against the back of his head as he lay on the bed. He was still deciding whether or not to leave.
Gyro had said they’d come to accept him, if he did what they wanted.
So far nothing had happened.
It’d been almost three days, and since being taken back down here in a disgrace when he refused to answer their questions, he hadn’t seen another living person. The Lil’ Bulb was the one who brought him his meals.
The truth was he had no idea what he wanted to do next. He hadn’t planned this far if his plan to kill the Ducks had failed. But he refused to admit that to all of them. Gyro knew he was scrambling for anything solid to catch on to, a plan that would work.
But the Ducks didn’t need to know that. Mads didn’t want to show it.
So now he was stuck back down here.
It was better than a real prison, he supposed. He wouldn’t get this level of comfort anywhere else. A real bed, a desk, so on… But somehow that made it worse. It seemed like a real home, but it wasn’t.
He wasn’t sure if there was anywhere he could even call a ‘real home’ anymore.
He burst out laughing. Where had that sad thought come from? Wow, when had he got this pitiable?
The Lil’ Bulb in the corner moved for the first time in hours, the filaments that posed as its eyes squinting at him.
“What?” He asked, raising his head to look at it. “You already think I’m insane, I can laugh whenever I want.”
The Lil’ Bulb didn’t respond, or move.
He let his head drop back with a sigh. There was a pounding on the ceiling above him, accompanied by muffled shouts and laughing. The kids were probably playing something.
You didn't get that in a real prison, either.
“What time is it?” He asked, without looking up again.
The shadows on the wall moved as the robot blinked. 6:01 a.m. , three days since he’d been taken in. Why were the kids up at six, anyway? Maybe they were planning to raid the room again. They wouldn’t find anything. All the things he needed he kept with him.
Bored, bored, bored. He couldn’t sleep, that was all he’d been doing. Besides, he was forced to go through the experience of being hurt and forgotten in his nightmares. He didn’t want to go back there.
That just left him and his thoughts.
But he didn’t like those much, either.
“I don’t suppose you have anything to talk about?” He asked, shifting to face the lightbulb in the corner.
It didn’t move.
“Figured.”
He sat up, leaning against the wall. It was cold down here in the basement, but he didn’t mind. He liked the cold. Better than being too hot, anyway.
The cold…
He squeezed his eyes shut against the sudden memory.
“...It was so cold in space…”
Della. Della’s voice. Her wide eyes as she looked up at him, telling him about what she’d done for ten years, in the void of the stars.
He’d get sudden flashes like this occasionally. Little triggered things, where a memory from his life as Gyro would spring forward suddenly, there for a second and gone. It wasn’t that he didn’t remember what it was like to be Gyro, he still had all of those memories, it was just that small ones would flick to the surface, suddenly very strong.
This one was Della.
Della, who he’d nearly killed.
Della, who he’d saved.
Della, who’d called him a coward.
He used to care about her so much. All of them, in fact.
But he’d made that decision when he’d found the news feed.
If they didn’t care about him enough to even remember to look for him, then he refused to care about them. He would hate them.
And he did.
He hated them all.
What was he doing here, anyway? In this house, among his enemies, when he knew how to escape. Why hadn’t he left when he first could? When he’d first stolen the paperclip, when they’d put the Lil’ Bulb in here?
The Lil’ Bulb.
Gyro.
That’s why he didn’t leave.
For Gyro.
It was all for Gyro.
It had always been for Gyro.
Surrendering, letting them yell at him, being locked up in here. He’d done it because Gyro asked him to.
But he didn’t know how much more he could take.
Since the night on the roof Mads had built up a strange attachment to his original, the thought of Gyro and his approval was what kept him going. In spite of everything Mads had done to him, Gyro had been the only one to express any sort of sympathy or caring towards the clone, to try and understand what Mads had been through.
Gyro cared.
It made Mads feel so much better, and at the same time, so much worse.
Suddenly the Lil’ Bulb blinked, brightening as a voice spoke over a small speaker installed in it’s back.
Scrooge’s voice. For his morning ‘check in’.
It was really just an excuse for Scrooge to insult him while trying to weed more information out of him.
Though Mads had learned that the fact that he’d been forgotten wasn’t the old trillionare’s fault, he’d built up such a hatred of Scrooge before that that even bringing up the old duck’s name was an automatic negative trigger in his brain. Besides, even if it wasn’t Scrooge’s fault, he had been one of the people to forget him, so Mads’ anger was justified.
“Ah, good, you’re still here.”
Mads sat up more, from where he’d slumped backwards. “It’s not like I have any way to get out,” he spat. Better play along, let them think he was helpless against them. Even sitting, he could feel the cold weight of the paperclip in his hair.
“Oh really?” Scrooge asked. “I thought ye were smarter than that. I thought you would’ve found a way out by now.”
“Your point?” He demanded, standing. “Or is the purpose of this just so you can be mean?”
“It might. But you deserve it. You nearly killed my whole family.” Scrooge’s tone turned icy.
He laughed. “That’s what I was trying to do. If Gyro hadn’t stepped in, I would have.”
Silence.
He could almost hear the duck thinking.
“Why do you care about Gyro so much, anyway?” Scrooge asked, in a light, off-hand voice. He was trying to seem uninterested, but Mads could see right through it.
Like he always did when they asked him questions that he didn’t have the energy to answer or didn't feel like he owed them an explanation, he just sat down, not answering, looking away from the Lil’ Bulb.
Scrooge groaned. “Please? I’m just curious.”
“If you’re ‘just curious’, then why do you seem to care so much?” He asked, looking back at the lightbulb with a smirk.
No response.
The light clicked off, meaning Scrooge had left.
But he might still be watching.
Mads stuck his tongue out at the lightbulb, then fell back on the bed, laughing at himself. He was sure he looked like a complete lunatic right now, but he didn’t care.
Well, maybe he was a complete lunatic.
That sounded like the kind of thought a complete lunatic would have.
And that thought only made him laugh harder.
But the laughter soon died away, replaced with annoyance.
“‘I thought ye were smarter than that. I thought you would’ve found a way out by now.’” Mads repeated in a purposely terrible mock impression of Scrooge. “Oh I’ll show that old miser.”
But that made him pause. Maybe Scrooge was taunting him on purpose, trying to get him to try and escape so he could use it as an excuse to do something. Trying to trap him into something.
Though what would Scrooge want to trap him into, exactly? If they really wanted to take him to prison, they would’ve already, and he could get out of any prison in less than three hours. He’d lasted longer in the mansion with its minimal security than he would in a real guarded cell.
Maybe Scrooge was trying to get him to escape to turn Gyro against him. Make it a sort of ‘ha, see? Despite the fact that you were the one person who was nice to him and asked him to do this one simple thing, he can’t even stay here for three days! What kind of terrible person would do that?’
With a groan, Mads covered his face with his hand and slid to the floor, looking up at the Lil’ Bulb through his fingers. “What do you think I should do?” he asked the robot.
As expected, it didn’t move.
He glared at it.
“You are the least helpful thing ever.”
It flashed red in response, and he laughed. He’d forgotten that BulbTech did that. It was a design flaw he’d never been able to work around. He hadn’t even installed red lights in the lightbulbs, but somehow they found a way to flash red whenever they were insulted.
Mads slumped forward again, resting his chin on his knuckles.
Or maybe Scrooge really had just been trying to be mean to him.
Well, if that was the case, then he would show them.
He’d show them all.
With a smile, he looked up at the Lil’ Bulb. “Oh, I’m sorry Lil’ Bulb. I’m sure you’re very helpful. In fact, I could find a way to make you even more so…”
One of the filaments quirked curiously.
It was another five hours or so until they noticed he was gone.
Five.
Hours.
Apparently he was a very forgettable person.
He was sitting on the roof of the mansion, the reprogrammed Lil’ Bulb at his side, watching the security feeds on the wPad he’d stolen from the kids’ room and also reprogrammed.
Gyro came tearing down the hall first, with the intern and Archie close behind him. Mads turned on the volume, wanting to hear what they said.
There were no cameras inside the room, but there was a conveniently placed one right outside of it.
“What?” Came Cabrera’s voice a little too loud. Mads adjusted the volume. “How did he get out?”
“It was quite simple, you dummy.” Mads said, amused. He knew Cabrera couldn’t hear him, but he said it anyway.
“Hold on, there’s a note.” Archie said, picking up his note from the desk. Their faces were turned away from the camera, Mads wished he could see the look on his darling’s face when he read the letter. Was he annoyed? Sad? Happy? Unsurprised?
“He’s completely insane,” Cabrera said when he’d finished reading.
Huh. Maybe Mads was right to think he was a complete lunatic. Clearly he wasn’t the only one.
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Gyro said, sitting on the bed. Mads zoomed the camera in on his face. He looked tired, mostly. Like he’d been expecting Mads to leave the whole time, but didn’t want to deal with the aftermath of his clone’s departure.
“Darling, I could think of several,” Mads smirked.
At the same time, Archimede spoke. “Gyro, I think that might be impossible.”
Mads laughed.
That’s when Mrs. Beakley, Della, and Scrooge came running down the hall, stopping outside the open room.
“What happened?” Scrooge asked.
“Oh, don’t play dumb, old man.” Mads spat at the screen. If only they could actually hear him. “You know fully well what happened. You’re the one who convinced me to do it.”
“He got out?!” Della exclaimed.
“No, Della, I didn’t.” Mads deadpanned.
Archimede passed them the note, and there was a moment of silence as they quickly read through it.
“Where did he even get the pen and paper from?” Mrs. Beakley asked. “And a paperclip…? What?”
“Ohhhh Bentina.” Mads said with a smile. “You may be one of S.H.U.S.H.’s greatest minds, but you’ll never compare to the person with the greatest mind of your time.”
He watched as Fenton explained the paperclip situation, then Gyro told them what it was for.
“I don’t like the idea of him creeping around in here,” Scrooge shivered.
The room went silent as that thought sunk in, and Mads laughed. In fact, he was only five stories up from them. It wouldn’t take long for him to get back down there.
“Well, now what do we do?” Della asked.
“We’ll continue building the cell as planned,” Scrooge said. “Right, Gyro?”
Mads watched anxiously as his darling stood, nodding. “Of course, sir.”
Wait, what? Gyro was still going through with it? Maybe he was angry Mads had left. The thought almost made him walk back down there and turn himself in.
But no. He’d made it this far. He’d have to deal with it.
“Aye. He did say he’ll come back, we’ll just catch him again when he does.” Scrooge turned, walking back out of the camera’s line of sight.
“Ha! That’s what you think!” Mads said to him.
Della and Mrs. Beakley followed. “Oooh, does this mean we get to add more traps to the mansion? Because I had a few ideas…”
Mads watched Cabrera look back at Gyro. “But the only reason we caught him last time was because you talked to him.”
“I do not want to do that again.” Gyro admitted. He still looked tired. Like he didn’t want to deal with all of this right now.
...What?
Gyro…
...Didn’t want to talk to him? What did that mean? Mads had thought he’d found the one person who still cared, who wanted to listen to him.
Was he wrong about Gyro?
No. He quickly forced that thought away. Impossible. No matter what, Gyro was still there. He always would be.
Mads had to believe that.
Because if he didn’t, his whole world would fall apart.
“What even happened?” Archie asked. “You still never told us.”
Mads watched in a sort of numb silence as Gyro explained what had happened on the roof of the Bin.
Great.
The fact that he was just a scared, lonely, expendable lunatic was out.
He felt a pain in his hand, and glanced down to see that he’d subconsciously curled it into a fist, his fingers digging painfully into his palm.
He zoomed in on Cabrera’s and Archie’s reactions.
They both looked shocked.
“That really happened?” Cabrera asked. “He just… broke?”
Mads let that sink in.
No, he didn’t ‘just break’. He’d already been broken. He’d just let Gyro see that he was.
And Gyro seemed okay with telling them all about it.
But… wait. Archie had had to ask Gyro to tell them that story. It’d been three days, and it was finally now, after Mads left, that Gyro was telling them.
Maybe he didn’t want them to know just as much as Mads did, and only was telling them because he was angry at Mads for leaving.
“I’m sorry, darling.” He whispered at the screen. So softly, even the Lil’ Bulb next to him didn’t hear. He wished he could go back down, explain it all to Gyro. Tell him the walls of the room had already been closing in in his nightmares, making him claustrophobic. Tell him he hated hearing the sounds of happy people all around him, when he’d been forced to sit in miserable solitude. Tell him he hadn’t left because of Gyro, but for Gyro.
But he couldn’t.
He was better off on his own.
Mads was brought back to reality as Archie got angry at him. It made him feel a little better, the smugness that came with the knowledge that he was the only one who could make the blonde bird angry. Besides, he couldn’t take Archie seriously when he was angry. It felt like he was being yelled at by a puffball.
“Oh, get over it.” He muttered, standing and turning the tablet off. He’d seen enough.
Mads offered his hand out to the Lil’ Bulb, who jumped into it. “C’mon, let’s go.”
Lil’ Bulb climbed up to his shoulder, and Mads walked to the edge of the roof, sliding down the storm pipe on the wall. He lost his grip though, and fell half a story to the ground, landing flat on his back.
He glared up at the sky, more annoyed and embarrassed than actually hurt. He’d looped all the security cameras, so no one would see him. The loop didn’t end for another hour or so, so though no one had seen him fall very ungracefully from the roof, his face was still burning.
And dang it, he'd landed on his tail. That would take forever to clean. Juuuuuust great.
He lay there for a moment, scowling with his arms crossed, before the Lil’ Bulb leaned over him, a filament quirked curiously.
“Yeah yeah, I’m getting up.” Mads sat up. “By the way that was not my fault, I’d like to see you slide down a drain pipe with only one hand.”
The Lil’ Bulb just shook its head, blinking something.
“Hey! That’s not my fault either! Traitor. I may have to reprogram you again…” He smiled.
The Lil’ Bulb’s filaments widened, and it backed away, hands out in supplication.
Mads laughed, and held out a hand, palm up. Lil’ Bulb jumped into his hand, then scuttled up to rest on his head.
With that, Mads strode off into the woods, headed back down the hill. He didn’t have many fond memories of this hill, and wanted to leave quickly.
He glanced back only once at the mansion.
“I’m coming,” he promised Gyro. “I’m coming back for you.”
A smile spread across his face as he thought of the rest of them.
“So watch your backs.”