Chapter Text
Of course.
OF course.
Of COURSE.
‘Go ahead, Donald.’ They said, ‘Touch the clock.’
‘Just move the hands however you want.’ They said, ‘Nothing bad will happen.’
Donald slams his head on the metal table in front of him, making the officer across from him jump. He doesn’t want to deal with this Time Police crap. It had been so freaking typical of him to land in the one place that not only knew about time travel but monitored it as well.
To make matters worse, the ‘I got teleported here by a creepy clock’ schtick wasn’t doing it for them. The officer kept getting up and whispering to people just outside the door every time Donald insisted on standing by his clock story.
Donald moves his face so his chin rests on the table instead of his forehead when the officer clears his throat.
A new officer walks into the interrogation room and stands at attention in front of the door. The officer that’s been with him since the beginning declares, “I’m going to ask you one more time.”
Donald sighs. He’s only fifteen, but he already feels like he’s too old for this bullshit. He’s been here forever and he’s exhausted.
“How did you get here?”
“My family hates me.”
The officer glances at the one by the door and at her nod, he says, “Continue.”
Donald narrows his eyes at the suspicious new behavior.
“We went to England…” He hesitates and the officer gestures for him to keep going, “Uncle Scrooge wanted to take us to a real haunted house for Halloween…”
Another nod. Another gesture.
“And we found this creepy clock, which legend says can send you through time…and I was told to touch it…so I did.” The officer nods and to Donald’s bewilderment, looks like he might actually believe him.
“Who told you to touch it?”
“Uncle Scrooge.”
“Why?”
“He said it was harmless…” Donald trails off, past memories of his adventures with Scrooge rear their heads. He sits up in his seat and leans back, “…he might have lied.”
“Where did you find the clock?”
“England.”
“Where in England?”
“Some haunted house in…Stonehouse, I think.” Donald crosses his arms and looks at the ceiling in thought.
“What year are you from?”
Imperceptibly, the officer at the door shifts. Donald has a sharp eye, however, and he catches it, but doesn’t say anything. It could mean nothing.
“1999.”
The officer pinches the bridge of his nose and mutter to himself.
“…So where are the aliens?” Donald mentally kicks himself, he always starts rambling when he’s nervous. There had to have been something better for him to have said. “Or Androids? That’d be cool. I’d like to meet an android.” He’d strangle himself if he could.
The woman at the door smiles a little. The guy in front of him gives him a baffled look.
“What? I saw Star Trek, I can be curious.” He defends himself.
“How do you know you’re in the future?” The guy challenges.
“You think the dinosaurs invented time travel?”
The guy sputters and Donald scowls. Typical. Judge a guy by his voice why don’t you? He may have failed calculus, but at least he’s not dumb enough to miss what the name ‘Time Police’ suggests. Besides, “This table says it was made in 2246.”
The lady is clearly fighting off laughter when the officer ducks his head under the table to check. He signs at her, ‘Is he stupid?’
He’s pleasantly surprised when she signs back, ‘He’s a little full of himself.’
The officer comes back up, grumbling.
“We’ll have to try to find the clock if we want to send you home. Unfortunately, we have our hands full.” He says, not sounds at all apologetic about it, “There’s really only one man that has the time and resources to help you. If he decides to help you.”
Donald shrugs just to watch the guy lose his smug aura.
“If you’ll come with me Mr. Duck.” The lady opens the door and he follows her out.
The Time Police station is very…futuristic. He’s not sure how else to describe it. It looks like the inside of a space ship and all the hallways look the same. If he hadn’t found himself whisked into the interrogation room the second he showed up, he would have known he was in the future from the interior design long before hearing the term Time Police.
“Wow, this place you got here is very, uh, very shiny.” He tries and relaxes a little when the lady grins, “Yes, it is.”
Other officers pass them, and he can’t help but think they all look like robots. Some have large guns on their hips and the sight of them makes him a little anxious. His chest hurts.
“Where are we going?” He coughs.
“I’m taking you to Mr. Eidolon, he’s the one who will help us send you back to your time.” The officer elaborates.
“If he’ll help me.” Donald sighs and gives the floor sad look, remembering the other officer’s words.
“He’ll definitely help you.” The lady sounds so sure, he lifts his head to look at her. They’ve made it to the entrance and a small part of him wonders at how empty the place is. This place is huge, surely there were other people around, maybe it’s a slow day?
“How do you know?”
“Intuition.” She grins.
She leads him to a funny looking car and he climbs in the passenger side. Glass pops into existence around them and he marvels at the world outside when the car takes to the sky. Even so high up, they’re surrounded by buildings. It seems like everything is a skyscraper in the future.
Cars pass them as they enter what he’s going to call a ‘skyway’ and they all look like bugs with their little wings and round bodies. The cars are mostly glass, the windshield stretching over the passenger’s heads and wrapping around the side of the cars.
“Whoa.” He presses his face against the window, “Where are we?”
“You know it as England. Today, it’s the Republic of United Nations.”
“Cool.” He enthuses, and remembers, “Oh! I never asked your name.”
“Lyla Lay.” She looks a little sad when she says it.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes, I’m fine! Just…” She glances at him, “memories.”
“Oh, alright.” He shrugs, it’s none of his business anyway. He goes back to looking out the window and a natural silence falls on the car.
He takes in the spots of greenery he can see, the flora offering a softer sight compared to the glaring metallic buildings. Small parks dot the ground and multiple buildings have gardens on their large balconies. Bubble like structures of various sizes cling to the side of some, and he can see multiple different trees inside them.
“Donald how old are you?” Lyla asks, cutting through his wonderment.
“Fifteen.” He answers, turning back to her, “Why?”
“The chief never asked you.”
“That guy was the chief?” Donald’s eyes widen in surprise, then his brows furrow, “How come he didn’t ask me my age?”
“He probably didn’t think it was important.” Lyla shrugs.
“So then, why did you ask?”
“Just curious.” Lyla grins, “I work as a reporter, I can’t help it.”
“You’re a policewoman and a reporter?” Donald looks at her in awe.
She grins and says, “We’re here.”
“Already?” The car lands in front of an enormous building that, he’s delighted to see, is mostly pink.
But…he kind of doesn’t want to leave the car. The building in front of them is much larger than the others he’s seen so far, and he sincerely hopes he’s not about to meet a trillionaire, because if he has to deal with a Scrooge he isn’t related to or a 23rd century version of Glomgold, he might just implode.
Lyla must notice how nervous and uncertain he is about meeting this Eidolon guy, because she starts to assure him, “Mr. Eidolon is a nice guy, you don’t need to be nervous.”
He coughs and followers her up to the front door. She pushes a button on the side of the door, “Mr. Eidolon, it’s Lyla Lay class 5y.”
“Lyla!” A voice comes from the door and Donald jumps at the immediate response, “Come in, Gamma will show you the way.”
The door opens, and a bulky robot stands on the other side of the threshold, holding a tray.
“Uh, hi?” Donald tries. The machine doesn’t respond, instead it turns and leads them into the building, “Was it something I said?”
They follow the robot into an elevator and he’s the only one who nearly falls over when it rapidly starts to ascend. They go up over a hundred floors and Donald’s ears pop at the change in height. When the doors open it’s to a very nice circular office. There are flowers sitting on every table and artwork hanging on every wall.
There’s a curved desk with a wall of glass windows behind it and two green chairs in front of it. Sitting at the desk is a duck with ridiculously long green hair and an atrocious green and black suit. The duck glances up when they step out of the elevator.
“Hello Miss Lay, how can I help you?” He greets her, cheerfully. His expression abruptly changes when he sees Donald. His eyebrows hit the ceiling, his eyes widen, and his mouth forms a thin line, “How is this possible?” He says to Lyla.
This was a bad idea. In Donald’s experience it’s never good when a person you’ve never met before reacts like they know you – especially if they’re a trillionaire. He ducks behind Lyla and laughs, a little freaked out, “Welp, that’s a great question and I don’t think I need to bother you with the details. Good talk, thank you for your time, goodbye!”
Lyla snags the back of his shirt before he can dive back into the elevator and he coughs, “No really Miss, I’ll just go find the clock myself. It’s probably in Scrooge’s mansion somewhere.”
“He’s fifteen.” Lyla states to Eidolon, ignoring Donald, “And he says he got here by moving the hands of a clock.”
“A clock?”
“Excuse you, that was a magic clock.” Donald growls, irritated and scared. He emphasizes the word ‘magic’ as he says it.
“How many other people know about this?”
Donald resigns himself to being ignored and sulks in Lyla’s grasp.
“Counting you two, only four.”
“We need to keep it that way.”
“Why?” Donald asks, leaning his head back to look at Eidolon. He’s afraid the answer will be somewhere along the lines of ‘So no one knows you’re missing when we murder you.’
“No one has been able to time travel for three years now.” Eidolon crosses his arms and closes his eyes in thought. Donald sags in relief, “Uh, whatever technobabble you’re about to spit at me to explain what’s up I feel it necessary to remind you that the clock was magic.”
Eidolon makes a humming noise, “It does make sense. Magic doesn’t use Tachyons, so it wouldn’t be affected by the Microcontraction…we need to find that clock.”
“So, you’ll help?” Donald clarifies, most of Eidolon’s sentence flew straight over his head, but he definitely understood the last part.
“Of course!” Eidolon exclaims like he was always going to help Donald no matter what the situation was, “I’ll have some of my scientists start tracking the clock down.”
“Perfect!” Lyla cheers, “Then, would you mind letting Donald stay with you until you find it?”
“What?” Eidolon and Donald question at the same time, both of them turning to Lyla in surprise as well as, in Donald’s case, alarm. Odin glances at him, concerned.
“The Time Police don’t have a place for him to stay.” Lyla explains.
“My house is open to him, if he wishes to stay with me.” They turn to Donald, leaving the final decision up to him alone.
“I-Well-“ This is a trap, it has to be. Eidolon recognized Donald at a glance and the last time that happened Glomgold nearly slit his throat. He’s scared of what will happen if he ends up spending more than a couple minutes alone with the tall duck in front of him. He plays with the bottom of his shirt, nervously. His chest hurts.
“Donald?” He flinches when Eidolon says his name and both of the other ducks in the room are looking at him with concern.
“Is something wrong?” Lyla asks, and she lets go of his shirt.
“I-I-” He glances around for an exit he can use to escape. He desperately wants to leave the situation he’s put himself in. He can’t tell Lyla about his worries in front of Eidolon and his gut is screaming at him that he’s not safe. A chill runs down his spine.
He coughs hard and when he stops, the world spins. He stumbles back and the robot, Gamma, catches him. Lyla says something he can’t focus on over another intense coughing fit. He stubbornly keeps his bill shut, he’s been coughing up mucus for a week now and he hates it when it lands on his hand feathers when he politely covers his mouth.
“Donald.” Eidolon is suddenly in front of him, “How long have you had Walking Pneumonia?”
“I don’t have pneumonia.” He croaks. It’s just a cold, Uncle Scrooge told him to walk it off. Eidolon and Lyla share a look.
“Why are you so scared of me?” Eidolon looks perplexed and a little hurt.
Donald sighs and before he can change his mind, he blurts out, “I never told you my name and you recognized me when I walked in.”
He feels like crap, his chest hurts, he’s exhausted, and he’s sick. If Eidolon does turn out to be Scrooge’s nemesis from the 23rd century, at the very least he’ll take him back to Scrooge to brag about his capture. Then, if Donald makes it out alive, he can go to sleep in his own bed for the rest of the day.
Eidolon is taken aback by his confession, “Ah, I’ll explain about that later. We need to get you a medical unit.”
“It’s just a cold.” Donald argues, but his words go unheeded for the umpteenth time today. Eidolon picks him up and carries him back to the elevator with Lyla and Gamma following. He spends most of the short trip trying not to breathe too deeply lest his chest pain gets worse.
“I thought it was just the stress of being sent into our time. I didn’t realize he was so sick.” Lyla says
“What do your scans say?”
“All symptoms of Walking Pneumonia, but further scans suggest he’s had it for at least a week.”
“He’s been like this for a week and he thinks it’s a cold?”
“You know how he is.”
He feels Eidolon sigh, “Yes, I do.”
His back touches something soft and he opens his eyes (when had he closed them?) to see he’s being placed on a large bed. He doesn’t spare the energy to look around, the day’s events hitting him like a boulder.
“Go to sleep Donald. It’s alright.” Eidolon’s words are all the permission he needs to pass out.