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It was a dawn chorus that awakened her, though it was a different sort of sound to what she was adjusted to. The metropolitan birds she had become accustomed to hearing in the early hours of the morning had a distinctly different twang to their chirps than these more exotic sunny-side singers, though the effect was still the same. A wash of peace fell over her as she curled onto her side, completely nude with the blanket bunched up and having fallen down in her sleepy movements to only cover the lower half of her legs, though the ambient warmth of the room rendered it uneeded regardless.
What an incredible day. She couldn't help the incredulous little smile that spread across her beak as she recounted it, reaching out to play with Scrooge's chest fluff. Coming all that way upon hearing about what he was after just to get one up on him and find it first, becoming young again, younger than she could hardly recall being in so long! Seeing his cute emo bangs, running away together in an adrenalin-motivated whim to start anew together, the fight...
The kiss.
It certainly hadn't been the first time they'd kissed, obviously, nor even the hundredth - and they'd had many special ones throughout the years tied to different places or feelings that had been unforgettable. But this one had been ever so particular in how it had exploded a cacophony of butterflies in her chest, face warming up with a thrill darting through her that made her fullbody shudder. And by his own reaction, he'd felt the same.
They hadn't gotten the fresh start they'd went for, but perhaps they'd managed to mend a little of what kept them apart. And that was good enough for now, at least for her.
She noted that even if they'd both been restored to about their normal ages after taking a dip into the pool there was a slight spring in their steps that hadn't been there before. Even if not de-aged, they felt rejuvenated. Lighter.
Her hand trailed over a particularly fluffy part of his chest, eyes locked on his peaceful sleeping face. God, he had absolutely no damn right to be so cute. I forgot how almost attractive you used to be indeed.
Through the gaps in the blinds the tropical summer sun beamed casting warm rays throughout the room, one particular beam having fallen right below his eyes and making the rim of his beak glow a little. It was only a matter of time before the sun moved enough to cast that beam directly over his eyes to wake him up. There was some chatter outside from early riser residents, but it was mostly quiet.
Usually she would leave before he woke up. This was the perfect opportunity to do such a thing.
And yet.
She considered that she didn't want to, not entirely surprised by the revelation. The need to flee was just... not in her. It wasn't guilt that anchored her, nor some feeling of obligation.
She just... wanted to stay. Finally.
The feeling wouldn't last, she knew enough about herself after all of this time to know that, but she allowed herself to relax in it for the time being. Unbidden she recalled another significant time she hadn't wanted to separate from him - a time when they were far far stupider, and smiled warmly, quietly humming a tune from the dancehall.
He'd never read her letter, it seemed. The sting of that knowledge didn't hurt her quite so much these days but it still saddened her just a smidge as she rose a hand to his cheek to gently stroke his face with her thumb, playing a little with his soft whiskers.
Might he wake up if she kissed him again? There was certainly a... more interesting way to wake him up (her eyes trailed mischievously down to the part of him concealed by the blanket) but she wasn't quite in the mood yet. Leaning over him, she gently pressed their mouths together before pulling back after only moments.
He didn't even stir. How disappointing.
Smiling lightly she continued to hum as she trailed her hand back down his chest, over the defined muscle he still had. He'd still managed to maintain a strong core in his old age, and whilst he wasn't nearly as defined as he'd been in his prime he was in better shape than anyone she'd ever met even close to his age aside from herself. She made an effort to keep her physical fitness up even on the long stretches of time where she wasn't needed to go anywhere that took effort or work to arrive at, or when it wasn't convenient to just pack up and go for a hike or expedition. As a result she had firm muscle, and even if she didn't have any sort of sixpack she was glad she could still confidently do most of the physical activity she could in her youth.
As her hand moved to his shoulders and trailed down to reach for his hand, her brow raised at a strange feeling at his arm. The feathers rested oddly, like they were all relatively new - perhaps only a few years old. Of course she wasn't a stranger to such a thing; she'd achieved many severe injures throughout her time, and the process of the scar fading and her feathers growing back over to obscure it was always a little uncomfortable.
She knew of most of his scars (he enjoyed giving grandiose recountings of how he recieved them) but didn't know this one, though in all fairness to herself she hadn't seen him in almost an entire decade prior to the return of his grandnephews and their re-meeting at Glomgold's gala. He was bound to have accrued plenty of scars since, though she had been almost certain that the news she occasionally made sure to read insisted he hadn't so much as set up a tent during that 10 years. Apparently he'd become much of a depressive recluse, which matched up with her last memory of him then.
She'd been stupid enough to call him only weeks after the news of his niece's dissapearance broke, and even stupider to take the bait when he became argumentative and cruel, hanging up after a few hurtful remarks had been shouted from both sides. At first she had refused to contact him again from spite, and then it melted into... what would she even say? What possible comfort could she even offer? Certainly she could attest to knowing the pain of a parent losing their child, but that wasn't a story she was ready to admit to him. Not yet.
Swallowing slightly at the unhappy memories she traced her fingers over that spot, pondering what it could be, almost ready to push aside the feathers and see for herself before he suddenly grumbled, eyelashes fluttering. Eyes darting up in surprise, she realized the sunlight had indeed slowly shifted to shine across his closed eyes as she'd suspected it would, and now he was finally beginning to stir.
Sitting up and leaning over him, she smirked as he groaned, bringing a hand up over his face to block the light as his teal eyes blinked open, more vibrant in hue than ever in the bright early light, his pupils dilating when he saw her. "Good morning dear. Still here?" There was a lighthearted and free sort of humour to his voice, as though an invisible weight that had been holding him down for a long while had finally released him and let him breathe properly again.
It sometimes stunned her how much of an effect she had on him, even after all this time.
"No" she chuckled back, letting him reach up and run his fingers through her hair with a contented sigh. "This is a hallucination, i left hours ago, your alzheimers has finally caught up to you old man."
His face was eased into a euphoric sort of hapless serenity as he sat up a little, leaning against the headpost. She straddled his hips, enjoying the little catch in his breath and the way he stirred ever so slightly down there beneath her, the feeling rather familiar. Perhaps the pool hadn't relieved them of all of those teen hormones after all, hm? "So yer staying, finally?" He asked her gently, flushing when she glanced down between them to where he was straining a little.
"I can't come back with you to the manor-" she couldn't help but feel just a little bit bad at the way his face immediately fell, even as he tried to mask it with expectant understanding "-but I'll stay for this morning. Just this once. And, well, i may at some times find myself dropping by your window more often from now on. We'll have to see, it may be up to what's convenient" she couldn't help the half-promise in her voice. It was more than she'd ever even hinted at guaranteeing in that regard before.
He lit up like the rays of light outside and cupped her face with both of his hands to slowly kiss her, her allowing herself to relax entirely against him, pushing forward to deepen the contact just a smidge to enjoy his small squeak of surprise before he happily fell into her rhythm.
He was certainly awake down south now, pressing notably against her bare rear, and she had half a mind to relieve them both again the same way they'd just eased each other to sleep that previous night. All of the built up thrill from their little stint adventure had translated into rather eager and emotional sex that had lasted longer than Scrooge apparently even knew he could go anymore.
Still, as she ran her hands over him with a more seductive lean than she had done whilst he was asleep, she couldn't help but immediately become yet again curious by the newer feathers on his arm, her motion stilling just above them. Actually, now she could feel the slight raised texture of a scar, spanning almost the full length vertically from the base of his wrist to his elbow. Ouch, brutal. That must've been a pain to fix up. What the hell could have done THAT?
He must have noticed the way that her excitement faded a little and the odd way she lingered, no longer applying the same pressure, because he pulled back and asked her if there was some sort of problem, voice thick with concern. She was slightly embarassed that the sympathy-pangs apon noting the kind of scar he had had quelled the burning between her legs substantially and leant back from him with a reassuring smile.
"I'm fine, Moneybags. Though i have been meaning to ask you something since i woke up."
He tilted his head to the side in that infuriatingly cute way, brow raising. "Oh?"
"This." she ran her finger down where she could feel the scar, not quite registering the cold panic that shot across his face before he masked it. "You've never told me about this one before, I didn't even notice it. It must be fairly recent, but i can't think of where you would have gotten it."
"Ah." There was an audible click as his jaw set, adam's apple bobbing in his throat as he stared at her, apparently speechless. That was more worrying than anything, especially accompanied by the fact that she could tell she had rather immediately ruined his own arousal. Oops. There was a strange cold clamminess to his hand as he gently removed her own from his arm, settling it back down by her side. "That, err-"
He hemmed and hawed for a few awkward moments, mouth opening and closing like he was about to begin speaking several times before thinking better of it, wincing, tucking his arm in more against himself where she couldn't see it.
Now, Goldie O'Gilt was many debatably terrible things, but she was not an idiot. She could be too stubborn, or brash, or a cruel conniving manipulator. She could be emotionally constipated in the worst ways, and sometimes her big attitude ran ahead of her normally silver tongue and got her in a spot of trouble. But she did have an eye for tact, even as oft ignored as that sense of hers was, and she could tell she had unintentionally stepped on some incredibly touchy ground here.
So, slipping off of him, she sighed and busied herself with settling down next to him instead. The sort of paralyzed expression on his face hadn't shifted much even as he was very obviously trying to poker his way out of it. "Scroogey." his eyes widened with a start, as if she'd suddenly snapped him back into focus after zoning out. "You don't have to tell me. I was just curious, but it isn't important for me to know. I didn't mean to ruin the mood - we can get back to what we were doing."
He stared at her blankly for a few moments more before suddenly untensing drastically, raised hackles falling slack as he looked away from her, pulling his legs upward and holding his arm to his chest. His legs were still half entangled in the blankets. He looked incredibly... resigned. "Nae, i... i think it may do me some good to tell someone about this. Though this is certainly the biggest mood-killer of all, I'm afraid."
Patiently she sat back on her heels and nodded. It was genuinely alright, as much as she loved their ruts there were certain things more important than sex, as much as it pained her to admit it.
"Well." Scrooge clicked his tongue against the inside of his mouth, sweating a little. "Ye... ye know what happened with my- with Della. And ye know how i was afterward. The sort of person i became."
"I do." She painfully did. The phone argument rang in her head again, his screaming, her shouting. His total self isolation, hiding from everyone and everything - the media, his family, adventure...
If she'd thought she'd ever known Scrooge McDuck at his lowest before then, well.
He seemed stuck now, the words in his mouth but unable to be spoken, some terror clamping his beak shut. And what sort of injury then, to render the great McDuck speechless. The last time she'd seen him this stunned was their first kiss, her distraction back in the cabin, just long enough to allow a blow to the back of his head.
Ah, memories.
"After Della vanished" he exhaled steadyingly, resting back against the headboard "I fell into the worst rut I'd ever been in in my life. Worse even than when my sister..." he hesitated, pained. It still hurt him like hell to say it aloud. "Passed away. It felt like an abyss, more terrifying than the most perilous adventures I'd ever been on. No one was left. My parents were obscured by the mists, my niece was... gone, my nephew had fled with the triplets after telling me that he'd rather me dead instead" a melancholic, pained smile tugged at his mouth. "I had Duckworth for that short while before he too left me, and Beakley and her bairn's kin, but it wasnae enough. It felt as though i was suffocating in my pain, I couldn't see a way out. Nothing helped, all i could do was throw myself into searching for her the while i could, nearly driving myself into bankrupcy in the process"
She scooted a little closer to him, reaching out to gently stroke his face again. He melted in her grasp, still clearly quite rigid but appreciative of her touch. All of a sudden she felt oh so astronomically worse for leaving him be from spite for those years.
"After my board of directors forced me to stop, there was suddenly not even a reason to wake up in the morning" his voice deadened, and her heart rate spiked. "I spent most of the night awake and pacing, and most of the day unable to rise from my bed. I saw no reason to eat, or work, or talk to anyone. Nothing felt like it mattered. Beakley had me see a modern psychologist type she called to the manor, and that man insisted the same day he saw me that I go on some cockamemie medicament he thought would fix me. They saw me as depressed."
Depressed. the word was somehow foreign to her in this context, attached to this person, to this man before her specifically. Logically she knew it was right, he had been so, painfully so, but to be pescribed medication didn't imply reasonable grief, the sort she herself often struggled with. It implied a mental disorder. It implied something serious, and heavy, and she had no idea how to even think about that.
"The moment I took those pills, my head was clear" and suddenly his voice was filled with dread, the sort that opened up a pit in her own stomach, morbidly anticipatory. A part of her knew already what he was getting at, even as denial pushed that voice down. "I could get up in the morning, I could think as clearly as I used to, I could rationalize my thoughts. I could plan. So i did the first thing I'd been thinking of for all of that time, that I'd not had the energy to act on prior, when it first came to me."
His hand fell to his wrist, and the pieces slotted together in her head.
She was completely speechless.
Her silence was loud enough to make him fluster with clear embarassmnet, unused to making a past weakness so clear, feathers ruffling a little as he turned from her.
For a moment her tongue was frozen in her mouth, jaw slack, attempting to rationalize through the shock.
He'd tried to kill himself. Scrooge McDuck, the man that had lived for nearly double the normal lifespan through a mixture of sheer determination and luck in finding dimensions and elixers alike to slow his aging, the man that could worm himself out of any situation no matter how dire, the man that had taken an explosion to the face, falling rubble to the back, a dragon's flame, a sorcerer's spells, all manner of evils that he'd always managed to survive-
And he'd tried to kill himself.
She hadn't known. She'd had no way to know about this
Because she... hadn't been there. As always.
"...Dear?" He tried weakly, clearly discouraged slightly from her stunlocked face. There was a tinge of self-consciousness still remaining there too, and godamn this stupid idiot for being embarassed at her dumb reaction to something so heavy and important.
She buried her face in his chest, wishing she could somehow be even closer than she was and unsatisfied with how little physical reality truly allowed her.
"Goldie? Was that too much?"
"I wasn't there" she grit out against him, hating herself more than she ever had before, even more than when she'd been curled up in a hotel room with a newly hatched baby and no courage to call up the father of her child. "One fight, and i never even tried to check in again once. Even when i saw the news about you never leaving home in all of years."
"What could ye have possibly done?" He sighed, running his hand through her hair gently as if trying to soothe her. "I wouldnae have let ye help, I'd have just pushed ye away. I did, in fact. It'd have been worse if ye'd tried again."
"All i ever do is run. I'm always running. Even when people need me - especially when they do."
"I know. It scares ye when people care about ye."
"It'd be easier if they didn't." She hated the lump growing in her throat. Damnit. Don't cry. This wasn't supposed to be about her.
"I doubt that" he gently pulled her head up, eyes sad. "I wouldnae be here if ye didn't care about me. Nor ye for me. How many times have we saved each other in perilous situations, when we could have easily saved ourselves instead?"
She sniffed harshly, frowning. "I've left you to die plenty, sourdough."
"Ye knew I'd escape"
"That doesn't make it alright."
"No" he sighed, resting their foreheads together. "Maybe not. But i love ye regardless. And the times ye saved me matter much more to me."
"You-" she hesitated, throat going dry, eyes downcast to see his arm again. This time he didn't withdraw, sadly letting her stare at where she knew the scar to be. "How did you survive? Something that deep... even you couldn't have survived that sort of blood loss."
"Beakley." His smile grew a little, even though the sadness didn't wane from it. "She knows rather extensive medical aid from her time with S.H.U.S.H, and i wouldnae let her drag me to a hospital - I wouldnae have lasted long enough to have gotten to one anyways. So she cleaned and sew me up."
"And you never tried again? You never will?" Her voice grew more urgent, brows drawing together. "You haven't felt like that since, yes?"
"I haven't felt like that since" he confirmed, pulling her closer. "There have been times where it's been hard, but I'd never dream of leaving my family behind. Or ye."
It was getting louder outside as more people woke up and went to chill by the empty pool. Most had headed off home the moment their youth was restored but some other visitors, like themselves, had opted to baggsy a room for the night for free now that the owner was dust, get some fun in while the sun was down, and then head off in the morning. She could hear one of the children in the hallway outside their door, Dewey or Huey or whatever - not Louie - calling in to ask if Scrooge would be coming down to raid the food supply. Scrooge called back an affirmative, voice warming a little as he turned back to her. The triplet's footsteps retreated once he had his answer.
"Well" Goldie huffed, wiping her eyes to remove any evidence of... well, she'd never admit to it. "I really did fuck up our chance to get round 2 in, then. The mood is long dead."
Scrooge smirked slightly at that, seeming to regain his original energy a little as his hands moved to her waist, and before she could comment she shrieked in surprise as he suddenly flipped them so that he was on top. "Not if we're very quick."
"Really?" She snorted, still just a tad wobbly. "Right after that conversation?"
"Well, what other way to lift our spirits back up? And how else have we resolved our emotional troubles in the past?"
"We're idiots" she shook her head, but a smile was creeping back onto her face. "I love you, you old coot."
"I love ye too, dear. And thank ye."
"I didn't do anything" her brow furrowed, and he shook his head, kissing her soundly for a moment until all of her sorrow was temporarily shelved.
"Ye stayed"