Work Text:
Scrooge still hadn’t quite lost awareness of his pillowcase against the side of his face or the weight of his body against his mattress before the people he’d been thinking about began to play out a scene over which he had no control. His thoughts were just about to become a dream, and soon he wouldn’t be aware of his bed at all… only his money bin office, where his employees had begun inappropriately whining to him about the copier being out of toner and the bathrooms being out of seat covers, as though they couldn’t deal with those problems themselves and thought they were his responsibilities. He was nearly fully immersed in the dream when the whisper of a child chased it away.
“Unca Scrooge?”
His eyes flew open and he wondered for a split second when he had closed them in the first place before he heard the whisper again.
“Pssst! Unca Scrooge!”
What is she doing up? Scrooge turned toward his bedroom door, and in the light of the full moon pouring through the window, Della’s white hair and feathers and light pink pajamas stood out sharply against the dull shades of his walls. But she wasn’t alone. Donald was there, too. After blinking a few more times, Scrooge realized they were holding hands as though Della had led her brother to the room.
“What are ye doing out of bed?” he finally asked out loud. “Your bedtime was two hours ago!”
Donald flinched at the slight scolding, but Della bravely took a few steps forward and pulled him along with her.
“We were sleeping, I promise!” she said. “But Donald had a bad dream.”
Scrooge couldn’t quite tell if Donald was embarrassed, afraid of being punished for being out of bed, or if he felt bad about bothering his uncle. One thing Scrooge was certain of, though… Donald was very uncomfortable. He kept looking at the floor, or back over his shoulder, longing to exit.
Scrooge sighed and sat up, then reached for his lamp, which came on with a click. All three of them blinked in the sudden brightness, especially the twins, who were so short that the lampshade didn’t shield their eyes from the bulb as it should have. Della held her free hand to the side of her face for a moment before taking the liberty of climbing onto Scrooge’s bed to get high enough to escape the glare. She turned around and helped Donald up, as well. Scrooge picked his spectacles off the nightstand and placed them on his bill, and the twins came into sharper focus, sitting side-by-side at his feet, curled into the fetal position. Della’s arm was around Donald, who still wouldn’t look Scrooge in the eye.
“Lad, nightmares cannae hurt ye. Just like the nightmare I was starting to have before ye came in… I dreamt my employees were all…” he’d been about to say whining to me about every little thing when it occurred to him why he might have dreamt that. The last few weeks had been nothing but, “Unca Scrooge, I can’t find my hairbrush!” “Unca Scrooge, Donald can’t zip his jacket!” “Unca Scrooge, look at my drawing!” “Unca Scrooge, Duckworth uses bread with funny lumps in it!” Maybe complaining about people coming to him with every little thing wasn’t the wisest thing to say to a pair of five-year-olds. “…my employees were all… slacking off. So I… er… had to fire them.”
“You catched ‘em all on fire?!” Della’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head.
“Caught. And no, firing an employee means telling them they cannae work for you anymore. But enough about that. Donald, I told ye about my dream. Now tell me about yours.”
Donald only curled tighter into a ball. Scrooge thought he could’ve fit in an egg again, he looked so small… he and Della, both.
“It’s okay, you can tell him! Unca Scrooge is nice,” Della coaxed him.
“Er… thank you, Lass." Scrooge wasn't used to children thinking he was nice. "Come now, Lad. You’ll feel better if you talk about it. I feel much better about mine. What was this nightmare of yours about?” The sooner he got Donald to tell him, the sooner he could send them back to bed.
Donald raised his head and looked to his sister, who smiled and tilted her head in Scrooge’s direction. Her smile seemed to give him a bit of courage, because he glanced up at Scrooge for a split second before tapping his right thumb to his chin twice with his hand open.
Scrooge had seen this sign enough times over the past few weeks to recognize it. “About your mum?”
Rather than signing “yes,” Donald nodded and curled up tight again.
“But mum can’t get mad at us anymore, huh Unca Scrooge?” Della said. “She could only be mad at us now if she was a ghost, and ghosts are monsters, and you know how to beat all kinds of monsters and keep them away from us, huh?”
It was all so terribly wrong. Orphans weren’t supposed to be afraid of their parents coming back. They should want them to come back, and be sad they’re gone. Any nightmare Donald had about his mother should have been about her death, not about her still being alive. What on Earth did Hortense put these children through that in her death, her children would comfort each other by saying she couldn’t get to them anymore?
“Aye, kids… ye’re safe here.”
Donald must have been feeling a tiny bit braver, because he scooched away enough from his sister’s side to turn toward her and start signing full sentences.
“Um… Donald says… in his dream, mummy was mad that, um… that you heard him talking the first day we met. He dreamed she found out about it. And then she said she died because he was bad and she didn’t wanna be our mum anymore.”
The strangest feeling stirred in Scrooge’s chest… part anger, which was familiar enough, and part… something else. He suddenly wanted to scoop the duckling in his arms and hold him close, as a father should. But he wasn’t their father. He barely knew these kids. They barely knew him. He couldn’t just get sentimental on them, now… not when they needed structure and stability from a steady and unmovable…
Donald’s eyes were glossy. A single tear dripped over the edge of his bill and he wiped it away with his blue pajama sleeve.
Curse me kilts, I may just regret this...
Scrooge leaned forward and pulled Donald into his arms. Donald didn’t resist, but he didn’t snuggle up to Scrooge, either. He seemed to go rigid as though stunned. And… was he not breathing?
Della must have sensed her brother’s discomfort, because she crawled up to Scrooge’s side and tucked herself under his arm, then put her hand on her brother’s knee. “It’s okay,” she cooed at him. “Everything’s fine…”
Donald took a big breath and let it out, relaxing a bit in his uncle’s arms. Scrooge marveled at this tiny girl who had more maternal instincts at the tender age of five than her own mother.
“That’s right, Lad… remember the chat your sister and I had when ye first moved in?”
Donald didn’t nod or shake his head or try to sign anything. Scrooge supposed he was waiting for him to remind him. “She said she was bad at being a girl, because even though she likes babies, puppies, and kittens, she also likes digging in the dirt, and climbing trees… and sometimes she gets her dresses dirty, or she rips them on accident. And she has trouble sitting still.” Even as he spoke, little Della was stirring at his side as though to find a comfier position, or at least one in which she could wiggle her feet at the ankles.
“So I told her, of course little girls can get their dresses dirty! And they can run, and climb, and play, and be loud. That’s not just for little boys. It’s what kids do. Girls can still be good mummies to their dollies and have adventures. And Della felt much better when I told her, didn’t ye, Della?”
“Yup! I think mum was wrong. I was good at being a girl the whole time!”
“Aye, that’s the spirit, Lass! Ye see, Donald… not everything your mother told you was true. Even the version of her in your dream didn’t tell the truth. She didnae die because ye’re bad... and ye’re not bad at all. It wasnae bad of you to talk that day. It was bad of her to tell me you were mute. It was a lie, and lying is a very bad thing.” He felt a pang of guilt for lying to them about his nightmare only a minute before, but pushed it aside, telling himself it was for the greater good. “Did she make ye pretend to be mute everywhere ye went?”
Donald nodded his head against Scrooge’s chest and wiggled his pinned arm free so he could sign more things for Della to translate.
“Mum always said if he talked, people would laugh at him for his voice. That’s why she wanted him to keep his voice secret, because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t make friends.”
“And did people laugh at you when you talked?”
“Sometimes,” Della continued to translate his signs. “He says it was his fault, though. Mum warned him they would.”
“Laddie…” Scrooge gave him another squeeze around his shoulders. “Laddie, it’s not yer fault when someone is unkind to ye. It’s theirs. Ye did nothing wrong.”
Donald signed once more and Della translated. “He says, then why did mum always hit me when we got home if I talked?”
The question hit Scrooge like a great wave of ice water and he gasped. He’d suspected it, but he didn’t want to believe it.
But that day they met, when Hortense sent the twins out of the room to play “quietly” together while the grown-ups talked, and Scrooge went to get something from another room and passed by where they were playing marbles and chatting freely together… they were so frightened to have been caught. And Della begged Scrooge not to tell their mother he’d heard Donald speak, and Donald clamped his bill shut at the sides with both hands, pleading the same with his eyes which were wide with terror. Oh, Scrooge wanted to whirl around and question Hortense right then and there about her lie and her children’s fear of her, but then what might she do to the children once she got them home? So he promised the children he’d keep his mouth shut about Donald not keeping his mouth shut, but wondered all the while if he should have reported the incident… but tell the authorities what? He had no real proof of anything. And it wasn’t long before Hortense and Quackmore died and left the twins to him, so it seemed it didn’t matter he never reported it.
But it did still matter that Hortense hit her boy. It mattered a great deal. Donald began shaking in Scrooge’s arms, trying his hardest not to make a sound as he wept.
“Oh, Lad…” He held Donald close and swayed from side to side to rock him, surprising himself with such a paternal impulse. “Your mother shouldn’t have hit you… that wasn’t right. Why, if she were here now, I’d…!” in his anger, he wanted to say he’d give her a smack, but that wasn’t the lesson he wanted to teach Donald. “…I’d take you away from her and keep you safe.”
“See Donald? I told you!” Della smiled.
Would Scrooge have battled his sister for custody had he known? He did wonder. He certainly wouldn’t have wanted them to stay with her, but would he have chosen to have them in his home? Probably not… he would have wanted to ship them off to a boarding school, if boarding schools weren’t so expensive. But he knew now these kids needed him to untangle the lies his sister had spoken over them. No stranger could do that half as well as someone who had known Hortense for as long as he did. For the first time, he was glad his sister and brother-in-law left their twins to him in their wills and specified they wanted them to grow up with him.
“Donald, ye cannae let the lies your mother told you hold you back anymore.”
Donald signed again.
“He says mum was right, though… people did make fun of him when he talked.”
“And people make fun of me when I talk!” Scrooge said. “But I don’t let them stop me. It’s not true that if ye talk ye won’t make friends. If you talk, ye’ll learn exactly who your real friends are because they’ll like you for you… not for the mute you pretend to be. Ye understand?”
Donald wiped the top of his bill with his pajama sleeve again and sniffled.
“Please tell me you understand…” Scrooge pleaded.
Donald pointed upward with the back of his hand facing away from him.
“He says he understands.”
Scrooge sighed. He wasn’t going to get anywhere with Donald so late at night. “Alright then… come on, kids, let’s get you back to bed.”
But as Scrooge shifted, Donald suddenly wrapped his arms around Scrooge and gripped his pajama shirt in his fists.
“Boy, what…?”
“I don’t think Donald wants to go back,” Della explained.
Donald shook his head.
“What, d’ye want to sleep here?”
Donald nodded against Scrooge’s chest.
“Ooh can we?” Della asked. “Pleeeease???”
“Erm…” Of course he wanted to say “No.” He wanted a peaceful night’s sleep… not to be kicked by a pair of restless nestlings. But as he tried to pry Donald’s fingers off his pajama shirt and Donald immediately grabbed hold of him again, he realized that was all Donald wanted, too… a peaceful night’s sleep. The fear of encountering his mother in another nightmare was so intense he didn’t want to be away from Scrooge.
“Oh… alright… just for tonight.”
“Yaaaay!” Della cheered, jumping up and down on the bed.
“Alright, settle down, this is bedtime, not a slumber party!”
Della stopped jumping and landed on her bottom. Donald relaxed and loosened his grip on Scrooge’s shirt, and Scrooge gently nudged him out of his lap. As soon as the twins started climbing under the covers beside him, however, he recalled their age. “Neither of you wet the bed, do ye?”
Donald giggled silently and shook his head, and Scrooge was glad to see the lad smile again.
“Unca Scrooge, puh-leeze, we’re not, like, two,” Della said with an attitude like she was five going on fifteen, and he laughed.
“Of course not. How silly of me.”
Donald turned and signed to Della, and they switched places.
“What now?”
“We were on the wrong sides. I always sleep on this side, and he sleeps on that side,” she said as she nestled herself between them.
“Oh? Why’s that?”
“I dunno. It’s comfier.”
Well, whatever helps them fall asleep faster, he thought. He reached over to turn off his lamp and put his spectacles back on the nightstand.
“Alright, close yer eyes an’ try te go to sleep,” he yawned, followed by two little yawns beside him. “Goodnight, kids,” and he closed his eyes.
“Night night,” Della said.
“G’night, Unca Scrooge.”
Della let out a tiny gasp. Scrooge opened his eyes at the sound of his nephew’s scratchy little voice he’d only heard once before. “Donald? Come again? What was that?” He propped himself up on his elbows to look over Della at Donald, but Donald pulled the covers over his head. Della looked back and forth between her bashful brother and her uncle and beamed, just as excited as Scrooge was.
Scrooge didn’t care that Donald was being shy again. He spoke. He finally spoke in front of someone other than his mother, father, or sister. He wasn’t going to let his mother keep him quiet, and Scrooge knew this would be the first of many victories for the wee lad.