Chapter Text
The first time Duck Newton saves something, he is 10 years old. He finds an injured duckling in his backyard, and he brings it into the house in his cupped hands, sobbing the whole way.
What his mama cares more about is the fact that he’s gotten gross bird germs and filthy mud all over the nice, pretty skirt she’s bought him. Usually she comforts him when he cries, but today she only looks mad. She is pretty dresses and smooth skin that Duck resents with every fiber of his being.
He doesn’t like the skirt at all. But he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t know how to quite yet.
His papa, on the other hand, cups Duck’s small hands in his. He is calloused hands and gentle eyes that Duck will grow into with time.
The two nurse the baby duckling back to health, and Duck feels a wave of happiness, as if something right clicks into place as he watches the bird fly off. Duck’s mama is glad to see the thing finally gone, but she says she’s proud.
His papa starts calling him Duck, and it’s much better than Lucille , so the name sticks. His mama hates it.
When he is 12, Duck’s papa takes him to the store and they buy him proper pants and shorts, because Duck has expressed his discomfort with skirts and dresses and his papa wants him to be happy. They get home and Duck has never felt happier. He gives all his frilly clothing to Jane, only 1 at the time. She’ll grow into them.
That’s the first day he hears his parents fight. He’s heard them argue plenty of times. This is different. His mother is harsh words and fierce yells. His papa is stern tone and bit back venom.
Things get a little different after that.
After that mama yells more often. After that the papers get signed. After that papa moves to California when Duck is 14 and Duck doesn’t see his kind face until 20 years later, looking down at it in a wooden casket.
The dresses come back. Duck steals his mother’s lighter in the middle of the night and burns them out in the front lawn. He wants everyone to see this in the morning.
When Duck starts 9th grade he steals his mother’s pack of cigarettes and gets a job at the Deli down the street and works hard in school because he wants to figure out what he’s doing with his life and get away from her as fast as possible.
When he is 18, Minerva shows up for the first time. At first, he is more excited than he’s been in a long time. Minerva calls him Duck and a chosen one and for once since his papa left he feels important.
It gets to be too much.
There’s too many expectations riding on him now. His mother refuses to speak to him most nights, calling him the wrong name with cyanide laced in every word. Minerva shows up daily, always at 6:14, and Duck is usually trying to do homework or he is working a shift at the Deli, and he can see how underwhelmed Minerva looks each time.
He starts skipping his gym period to go smoke with Jimmy Pearsons, who dies in a drunk driving incident a year after graduation and Duck is grateful that in his Senior year he discovered his love of the forest that kept him from going that far.
He is 18 and he is with Tabitha and her friends and he is having a miserable time. Nevermind that he’s never really loved her, nevermind that she treats him like a charm to dangle around on her keychain and she talks about how special her boyfriend is. How he’s not a normal guy.
The French onion soup opens his eyes and it’s the same day he turns down Minerva for the first time and dumps Tabitha on her sorry ass. He decides life’s too short for him to just go around suffering.
Duck moves out of the house to go to college. Starts renting his own apartment in his 3rd year. Kisses a guy for the first time and for the first time it clicks that he just ain’t one for women. Duck is invited over to his mother’s house for Christmas after prompting from Jane. He brings his boyfriend of the time, Matt, and after dinner she asks who Duck’s friend is. Matt shoots Duck a thumbs up and Duck explains it all. She screams at him to get out of her house and never come back.
He never does.
And when she dies when he’s 42, he doesn’t attend her funeral. He’s glad he didn’t when Jane tells him the program only had photos of him as a child with his long hair, and called him by his deadname.
When he’s 22, he’s graduates with his bachelors in environmental science and his mother starts talking about moving to Georgia. Jane, just 11, complains enough to get her to reconsider. Duck moved out 4 years ago, and really has no say on the matter. Only heard about it from Jane’s phone calls. Jane says she’d rather move in with him than go away to Georgia. He says he’d value her company.
When he’s 26, Minerva shows up at Duck’s apartment, not out of the ordinary, but she has something. She is holding a coiled, chainlike thing and it is the first time she has ever held something he could see. She holds it out, and he takes it. He actually touches it. It uncoils quickly, elongating into a sword with a mouth by the cross guard.
Duck is slightly appalled.
It begins to talk, and Minerva disappears, and Duck gets about 5 minutes of this thing called Beacon and then decides that he needs to get rid of it. He is no stranger to the Cryptonomica. The ranger station has gotten plenty of calls from people asking when they last saw Jackalopes, thanks very much to Ned’s help. Duck is no stranger to Ned Chicane. He is 20 years older than Duck but he’s nice to have a drink with after an exhausting day.
He gives Beacon to Ned. He’s drunk, and tired, and says he doesn’t care how , just get rid of it .
When he hits 46 Minerva has stopped showing up for 20 good long years. He has nearly convinced himself that those 8 years of his life were riddled with trauma-prompted dreams. He has the night shift tonight and he’s been called down to a lot on account of noise and a large bonfire.
Minerva comes back. He fights off a monster, he discovers another world, he sees Ned again for the first time in years, and he meets the Lady Flame. He meets Mama and he meets Barclay. They make a plan. He gets Beacon back. He fights the monster again.
Minerva isn’t silent anymore. She keeps showing up. Duck is terrified. Like he kicked open a door that he’d only had cracked open for 8 years, and then locked shut for 20. It scares him. But it feels right. Like his instinct was made for this.
So he throws himself into it. He’s 46, damn it all, and he’s going to fight hard. Jane is 35 and doing missionary work in Honduras and saving lives. There has never been a moment that Duck doesn’t think Jane deserves to be a chosen one more than him. But if he has to save the world, then damn it all, he will.
They fight water. He saves a life. He saves lives. They fight fate. He meets a kindred soul (but he won’t focus too much on that for a little while). He saves even more lives. And saving lives feels right , like a part of his soul sings when he plays the role he was destined for.
He tells off Minerva and they have a heart to heart. He feels better. He can be a chosen one on his own terms, and it makes him confident. Minnie is a friend now, he knows. Not a spectral ghost, not a mystical form; a friend. An alien from a planet affectionately called Five. But really, his life is full of aliens now. Even if he doesn’t really know where or what they’ve come from, he cares.
He sews up that goat man’s shoulder. They can rest easy. Aubrey casts a spell so that they can speak. They say Duck’s name, and it reminds him of the liberating, joyous feeling of saving that baby duckling all those years ago.
The name “Duck” finally feels right again.