Chapter Text
Louie didn’t have strong feelings about being a triplet.
That, in itself, had always felt a little strange. Huey had feelings about it—lots of them, usually neat and well-organized, tucked into categories he could probably label and color-code if given the chance. Dewey had feelings too, loud ones, dramatic ones, the kind that flared up bright and hot whenever he felt overshadowed or boxed in or compared too closely to his brothers.
Louie?
Louie just… didn’t care. Or at least that was what he told himself.
He loved Huey. He loved Dewey too, even when Dewey was being obnoxious and loud and impossible to ignore, even when Huey hovered too much and acted like being born a few minutes earlier made him some kind of elected official in charge of everyone else’s well-being. Louie loved them both. He always would. They were his brothers before they were anything else—before fellow adventurers, before roommates, before co-conspirators, before annoyances.
And yeah, sometimes he would’ve liked to be seen as his own person. Sometimes he would’ve liked people to look at him and just see Louie.
Not the green triplet. Not “one of Donald’s boys.” Not the laid-back one, the sneaky one, the lazy one, the schemer, the youngest. Just Louie.
But wanting that felt small. Petty, maybe. Like the kind of thing you swallowed before anyone noticed it was there. So he swallowed it. Again and again and again, until it stopped feeling sharp and just settled somewhere inside him like a stone worn smooth at the bottom of a river.
It didn’t matter in the long run, he told himself.
So what if people grouped them together? So what if every birthday candle got blown out by three beaks instead of one? So what if gifts came in matching sets half the time, even now, and half their memories were tangled so tightly together that sometimes Louie couldn’t separate which one belonged to him and which one belonged to one of his brothers?
It wasn’t a big deal.
It wasn’t.
Their thirteenth birthday had been exactly the kind of celebration everybody else would’ve called wonderful.
There had been a cake, of course. There was always a cake. Uncle Donald still made every single one of their birthday cakes himself, even now that they didn’t live with him full-time anymore, even now that Scrooge’s mansion had become the center of everything and Donald’s little houseboat wasn’t where they came home to every night. Donald still showed up with flour on his shirt and frosting smudged somewhere on his sleeve, grumbling under his breath and pretending it wasn’t a huge effort when everyone knew it was.
Louie had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Huey and Dewey in front of it, the three of them lit gold by candlelight, faces flickering in the warm glow.
Everybody had been there. Or at least it felt like everybody. Scrooge booming out some dramatic toast. Della shining too brightly, talking too loudly, trying too hard. Webby practically vibrating with excitement. Mrs. Beakley smiling that soft, fond smile she only seemed to get around the kids. Launchpad, enormous and cheerful. Maybe even a few others drifting in and out of the room in that way people did at the manor, where no celebration was ever really small.
Huey and Dewey had looked happy. Huey in that pleased, slightly embarrassed way of his when too many people sang to him. Dewey in the way Dewey looked during any event remotely centered around him—like the world was a stage and he was delighted to be on it.
Louie had smiled when he was supposed to. Leaned in when they blew out the candles. Taken his slice when it was handed to him. Let people ruffle his feathers, clap his shoulder, tell him happy birthday, kid.
He didn’t mind that some of the attention in the room felt like it was directed past him more than at him. He didn’t mind that Huey and Dewey seemed to have collected people over the years—friends, mentors, adults who understood them in special ways. Huey had Fenton and Gyro and anyone else interested in one of his projects. Dewey had Launchpad and Drake and a way of making every room feel like it belonged to him if he was charismatic enough. Even Webby fit with them in these obvious, brightly burning ways, throwing herself headfirst into whatever made them them.
Louie had Donald.
Not only Donald, not really. It wasn’t like nobody else cared about him. But Donald was the one who had always felt most solid. Old, familiar, unmoving in the way the tide always came back no matter how far it went out.
And maybe that was enough.
Or maybe it wasn’t, and Louie just didn’t know what to do with that.
When he was younger, it used to bother him more.
Not the being-a-triplet part, exactly. Just the sameness of it all.
The way the three of them would get identical toys, identical shirts, identical weird little knickknacks Donald had found while working some odd job and brought home because he thought they’d like them. The way people would hand one thing to Huey, one to Dewey, one to Louie, all equal and all fair and all exactly the same, as if fairness and sameness were interchangeable.
Back then it had made something hot and childish and mean twist in his chest.
He hadn’t wanted the same thing.
He’d wanted his own.
But that feeling, like so many others, had eventually been packed away and buried under easier things. Jokes. Shrugs. Clever remarks. That practiced little smirk of his that said none of this could ever really get to him.
So he ate his cake, set the plate aside, and slipped away before anyone could stop him.
Nobody noticed at first.
Or maybe they did and assumed he’d be back.
Either way, Louie made it upstairs without being called after.
The room he shared with his brothers was quiet compared to the noise downstairs, though even quiet in the manor never meant silence. The walls seemed to hum with distant footsteps and voices and plumbing and the restless, sprawling life of the mansion itself. Moonlight spilled through the window, pale and watery, striping the floor in silver-blue bands. Their shared desk sat beneath it, cluttered as always with Huey’s neatly arranged notes, Dewey’s mess of abandoned junk, and the few scattered items Louie had never bothered to claim as distinctly his.
He dropped into the chair with a sigh, slouching low enough that his head nearly tipped back.
Another thing they shared.
Not that it mattered.
He stared at nothing for a while. The room around him blurred at the edges. Downstairs, someone laughed—big and bright and bursting. He thought it might’ve been Launchpad. Or Scrooge. Or maybe Webby. It all blended together.
A knock sounded at the door.
Louie didn’t bother straightening. “Come in,” he called.
The door opened a moment later, and there was Donald, one hand still on the knob, his face already wearing that familiar pinched expression that meant he was worried before he’d even said a word.
Louie tried for a smile. “Hey, Uncle D.”
Donald stepped inside and shut the door behind him gently, as if he were afraid too much noise might shatter something already fragile. Even after all these years, there was something about Donald’s worry that could make Louie feel six years old again in an instant. It lived in the lines around his eyes, in the way his feathers ruffled when he was stressed, in how he always seemed to lean toward the boys like some part of him was still physically bracing to catch them if they fell.
“Is everything okay?” Donald asked, voice rough and soft at once as he moved closer.
Louie glanced away. “Everything’s fine.”
Donald’s expression did not change.
He came to stand beside the desk, close enough that Louie could smell the faint sweetness of cake frosting still clinging to him, along with soap and the night air and something unmistakably Donald. Home, maybe. If a person could smell like home.
“You left the party,” Donald said.
Louie shrugged.
“You didn’t stay to open your gifts.”
Another shrug. “I’ll do it later.”
Donald waited.
Louie hated when he did that—when he didn’t rush in to fill the silence, didn’t let Louie skate over it with a joke or a lazy deflection. Donald had never been the best with words, not really, but he’d gotten devastatingly good at waiting people out.
Louie let out a slow breath through his beak. “It’s probably just a bunch of dumb expensive stuff from Mom and Scrooge anyway. You know. Trying too hard.”
“Louie,” Donald murmured, and there was no scolding in it, just that worn, aching kind of gentleness that somehow felt worse. “I know things between you and your mom have been… complicated.”
Complicated. That was one word for it.
Louie stared down at his hands.
He had grown to love Della. That was the truth, messy as it was. He had. She was his mom, and she had stayed. She came back and then, instead of disappearing again, she kept showing up—on adventures, at breakfast, in the halls, with wild ideas and louder apologies and a determination that sometimes looked a lot like trying to outrun her own guilt.
Louie knew she cared.
He did.
But knowing someone cared and feeling cared for were not always the same thing.
There were moments with her—so many moments—where he felt like he was standing just a little outside the circle. Like Huey and Dewey fit naturally into some orbit with her and Louie had to force himself not to drift too far out. Sometimes when the three of them were all with her at once, it was easier to just say less. To pull back. To make himself scarce.
He could go hours avoiding her in a house as big as this.
Sometimes days, if he really wanted to.
And when that feeling got too big, too ugly, too hard to shrug off, he’d disappear to the houseboat.
Even now, even after Donald and Daisy had adopted May and June, even after the houseboat had gotten fuller and busier and changed from the version of home Louie remembered best, Donald always made room for him. Always acted like Louie showing up wasn’t an inconvenience or an interruption or proof that something had gone wrong.
He just made space.
Donald reached out and gently ran a hand over the top of Louie’s head, smoothing down feathers that weren’t actually messy.
Louie looked up.
Donald looked anxious. More than anxious, really. He looked like he was trying very hard not to let that anxiety become panic.
“Can I give you your present from me now?” Donald asked after a moment. “It’s small. Daisy got you something too, but… this one’s just from me.”
Louie blinked, surprised despite himself. “Uh. Sure.”
He stood, and Donald bent to pick up the paper gift bag he’d apparently been carrying the whole time. From inside it, he pulled a tiny wrapped package—not fancy, just carefully done, the corners a little uneven. There was a tag tied to it in Donald’s handwriting.
For Louie.
Not for the boys. Not for the triplets. Not a stack of matching gifts portioned out equally.
For Louie.
Something in his chest pulled tight.
Donald handed it over.
“I found it while cleaning out the girls’ room,” he said.
Louie frowned and carefully peeled the paper back.
Underneath was an old teddy bear.
Small enough to tuck under one arm. Soft from years of use, though the fur was a little worn thin in places. One ear was slightly bent. There was a tiny fray near the stitched smile where Louie used to pick at it with nervous fingers.
His breath caught.
He knew this bear.
Of course he knew it.
Donald had given it to him when he was little—really little, back when separation anxiety used to hit him so hard it felt like drowning. On nights when Donald had to leave the room, on mornings when school drop-off felt like a personal betrayal, on strange days when the world just felt too big and too fast and too loud, that bear had been in Louie’s hands.
He’d slept with it for years.
At some point he’d lost track of it. Or maybe it had gotten packed away during one move or another, swallowed by the endless shuffle of bedrooms and houses and adventures and all the rest.
But here it was.
Donald had kept it.
Louie swallowed hard. “You kept this?”
Donald’s expression softened. “Course I did.”
Louie ran a thumb over the bear’s worn little paw. A thousand tiny memories flickered through him all at once—Donald kneeling to tie his shoes, Donald carrying all three boys when they were too tired to walk, Donald’s voice from the next room saying he’d be right back, right back, I promise, and Louie clutching this bear until he was.
“Thank you,” Louie said quietly.
Donald smiled, but it was a sad kind of smile. Tender. Careful.
“I love you,” he said.
The words landed between them with startling softness.
Louie opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
It wasn’t that he didn’t feel it. He did. He loved Donald so fiercely it sometimes scared him, because Donald had been there through everything, because Donald had been the first safe thing Louie ever knew, because Donald loving him had always felt less like a question and more like gravity.
But saying it back felt difficult in that moment. Thick. Trapped behind something unnamed.
Donald’s face fell, just slightly. Not enough for anyone else to notice, maybe. But Louie noticed. He always noticed with Donald.
Still, Donald only nodded once, like he understood even if it hurt, and stepped back toward the door.
“Get some sleep, okay?” he murmured.
Then he left.
The room felt emptier after he was gone.
Louie sat on his bed with the teddy bear in his lap and stared at it for a long time.
Later, when the house had quieted and the lights beneath their door no longer shifted with passing feet, Huey and Dewey finally came in.
Dewey entered first, talking before he was even fully through the doorway, his energy dimmed but not extinguished. Huey followed behind him, already looking half-tired and half-distracted, as if he were still mentally cataloging the events of the day.
Louie didn’t feel like talking.
By then he’d curled up on the bottom bunk with the teddy bear tucked against his chest, facing the wall. He made sure his breathing looked even before they could get a good look at him.
The mattress above him creaked as someone climbed in—probably Dewey. Huey’s bed rustled a second later across the room.
For a while there was only the usual bedtime noise. Blankets being pulled into place. A pillow punched a few times. Dewey muttering to himself. Huey adjusting something that likely did not need adjusting.
Then, into the dark, Huey asked, “What do you guys think we’re doing tomorrow?”
Louie shut his eyes tighter and stayed still.
Dewey answered immediately, voice bright with sleepy enthusiasm. “I hope we get another adventure. A good one this time. Like treasure maps or secret passages or cursed relics. Or at least ice cream.” He paused. “Though I do have plans with Drake and Launchpad.”
“Of course you do,” Huey muttered, though there was no real bite in it.
Dewey ignored him. “We might workshop some stunt stuff. Or talk plot arcs. Or maybe just hang out. The vibe is flexible.”
Huey huffed softly. “I’m meeting with Fenton tomorrow. He, Fethry, BOYD, and I are going to keep testing a few prototypes while Gyro’s away. Assuming Fethry doesn’t accidentally destroy the lab.”
“Optimistic of you,” Dewey said.
Louie listened to them and said nothing.
After a beat, Huey’s voice softened. “What about you, Louie?”
Silence.
Then Dewey, quieter now: “Louie?”
Louie didn’t move. Didn’t breathe too obviously. Didn’t give himself away.
Above him, the mattress shifted. Dewey was probably leaning over the edge, trying to see if his eyes were open.
A second later Dewey whispered, “Guess he’s asleep.”
There was a pause.
Then Huey, with a tired little fondness in his voice Louie almost couldn’t stand, said, “Well. Happy birthday, Dewford.”
Dewey laughed softly. “Happy birthday, Hubert.”
Another pause.
“And Louie,” Huey added.
Something in Louie’s throat tightened.
Their voices trailed off after that. Bit by bit, the room settled. Dewey’s breathing evened out first, then deepened. Huey took longer, shifting once, twice, three times. But eventually even he went quiet.
Louie waited. Counted slowly in his head. Listened to the night.
When he was reasonably sure they were asleep, he rolled over carefully and sat up. The room was washed in moonlight again, dim and blue and soft around the edges. He set the teddy bear down in the hollow he’d left in the blankets, like a stand-in body, ridiculous and childish and comforting all at once.
Then he swung his legs over the side of the bed and padded toward the door.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Louie froze.
He shut his eyes for half a second. Of course. Of course it had to be Huey.
He turned around slowly.
Huey was sitting up in bed, hair feathers sticking out at odd angles, his silhouette outlined by the window. He looked rumpled and sleepy and deeply unimpressed.
“Getting water,” Louie lied automatically.
Huey stared at him.
Then, with the exhausted patience of someone who had been dealing with Louie’s nonsense his whole life, he said, “No, you’re not.”
Louie leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms. “Wow. Rude. Distrustful. Hurtful, honestly.”
Huey climbed down from bed.
The moonlight caught his face as he approached, turning one side silver. He raised one eyebrow. “You’re bad at lying when you’re upset.”
Louie gave him a grin, flimsy as tissue paper. “And how would you know that?”
Huey’s expression didn’t change. They both knew the answer.
Huey had always known when Louie was bluffing. Even when they were little. Dewey could be talked into almost anything if Louie put enough charm behind it, but Huey? Huey watched too closely. Not in a creepy way—well, maybe a little in a creepy way—but mostly because that was just who he was. Observant. Careful. Always somehow two steps ahead.
Louie had admired that once.
He still did, actually, though he’d die before saying it out loud.
Huey stopped in front of him. “So where are you actually going?”
Louie pressed his fingers together, looking past Huey instead of at him. His voice came out quieter than he intended.
“Uncle Donald’s.”
Huey’s entire face softened.
“Louie,” he said.
It wasn’t judgmental. That somehow made it worse.
Louie shrugged, small and helpless. “I just want to go there.”
Huey glanced toward the window, toward the dark outside beyond it. “You know you don’t have to go all the way to Donald’s every time you need comfort, right? Dewey and I are here too.”
Louie said nothing.
Huey exhaled and rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean… I get it. Kind of.” His voice dipped lower. “I miss the houseboat too.”
That cracked something open.
Because yeah. There it was.
Not just Donald himself, though Donald was most of it. Not just missing being hugged or fussed over or given a mug of tea he probably wouldn’t drink.
He missed the houseboat. The cramped coziness of it. The way everything had creaked with the water. The smell of salt and old wood and Donald’s cooking. The certainty of it. The way home used to be smaller and simpler and theirs.
Louie looked down fast as tears burned suddenly at the backs of his eyes.
“Please just let me go,” he whispered. “I know it’s dumb. I know it’s dark. I know it’s far.” His voice wobbled and he hated that. “But I’ll come back in the morning. I promise.”
Huey stepped forward immediately and wrapped him in a hug before Louie could protest.
Louie made a small, miserable sound and clutched the back of Huey’s pajama shirt.
“Louie, it’s not safe,” Huey murmured into his feathers. “I’m not saying no to be mean. I just can’t let you go wandering out there alone in the middle of the night.”
Louie started crying for real then.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just those awful, helpless tears that made his chest hitch and his face burn. He hated crying. Hated it. Hated how childish it made him feel, how honest.
Huey held on without squeezing too tight.
If Dewey had been awake, he probably would’ve disagreed immediately. Probably would’ve made some big speech about how living at the manor was awesome, actually, or how things changing didn’t mean they were worse, or how Donald wasn’t that far away and they could visit tomorrow.
And maybe Dewey would’ve meant all of it.
But Louie knew—deep down, under all Dewey’s noise and brightness and relentless forward motion—that Dewey missed it too. Missed when it had just been the four of them. Missed when Donald had been the center of their world instead of one beloved orbit among many.
Huey pulled back just enough to look at him. “How about this,” he said carefully. “I wake Dewey up, and the three of us go together.”
Louie blinked, still sniffling. “You think Dewey would want to?”
Huey actually smiled a little. “It’s dark, we’d be sneaking out, and there’s a chance of danger. Of course he’d want to.”
Louie gave a watery laugh in spite of himself.
Huey squeezed his shoulder. “Go put on shoes. I’ll get Dewey.”
Perfect.
Because the second Huey turned toward the bunk, the panic came back full force.
Not just sadness now. Not just longing.
Something wilder. More desperate.
If Huey and Dewey came too, then this wouldn’t be his. The ache wouldn’t be his. The reaching for Donald wouldn’t be his. It would become another triplet event, another shared need, another thing spread evenly across the three of them until Louie couldn’t tell where his own hurt ended and theirs began.
He didn’t want safe.
He wanted Donald.
Just Donald.
“I’m gonna go get ready,” Louie said quickly.
Huey nodded without looking back. “Don’t leave yet.”
Louie slipped out the door.
And ran.
He didn’t think. Didn’t plan. Didn’t even really decide. One second he was in the hallway, the next he was sprinting.
His socks skidded on polished floorboards as he tore down the hall and toward the staircase. His heart slammed so hard against his ribs it hurt. Somewhere behind him a voice shouted—maybe Huey’s, maybe someone else’s—but Louie didn’t stop to check.
Down the stairs.
Across the foyer.
Past the darkened portraits and gleaming railings and all the ridiculous grandeur of the mansion that had never quite stopped feeling borrowed.
Then out the door and into the night.
Cold air hit him like a slap.
The manor grounds stretched huge and shadowed around him, the hill dropping steeply down from the gates, the city beyond smeared in distant lights. Donald had moved the houseboat back to the marina recently. Louie knew the way. Knew it in his bones.
He ran anyway, even though he was terrible at running.
His lungs burned almost immediately. His hoodie slapped against his sides. His legs felt too short, his breathing too loud. By the time he hit the slope beyond the gate, he was already slowing, every inhale scraping at his throat.
But he kept going.
Donald would let him in.
Even if his old room had changed—because of course it had, because May and June needed space and Louie wasn’t there all the time anymore—Donald would still make room. The couch. The hammock. A pile of blankets on the floor if necessary. Something.
At least there, even if it wasn’t exactly what it had been, it still felt like home.
Louie made it halfway down the hill before he doubled over, gasping.
He braced his hands on his knees, sucked in one ragged breath after another, and forced himself onward.
Then something yanked hard on the back of his hoodie.
Louie barely had time to gasp before he was jerked bodily off the ground.
For one horrible second his mind simply emptied.
Then panic flooded in all at once.
He screamed.
Kicked wildly.
Twisted hard enough that his captor’s grip shifted, but not enough to break free. Someone—someone big, strong, face obscured—had him by the back of his hoodie like he weighed nothing. Louie lashed out in every direction, heart jackhammering, the night spinning around him in blurred streaks of shadow.
“Let go of me!” he shrieked. “Let me go!”
No answer.
He caught the shape of a vehicle nearby—a dark van, parked where it shouldn’t have been, half-hidden by the road. The door was already open.
Oh, no.
No no no—
He thrashed harder, but it did nothing. He was hauled the rest of the way there and thrown unceremoniously into the back. The impact knocked the air from his chest. Before he could recover, hands were on him again, rough and efficient, pinning his arms long enough to loop rope around his wrists.
“Who are you?” Louie shouted, voice breaking. “What do you want? Let me go! Please!”
Still nothing. That was somehow the worst part.
Not even some evil monologue. Not even a smug threat. Just silence.
The van doors slammed shut.
A second later the whole vehicle jolted as it started moving.
Louie’s breathing came too fast now, shallow and useless. The dim interior smelled like gasoline and dust and something chemical underneath it all. He tried to kick backward at whoever was nearest him, but another figure grabbed his ankles and tied those too. His pulse roared in his ears.
Then a bag was shoved over his head.
The dark became absolute.
Louie choked on a cry.
“Hey—hey, don’t do that—” His voice came out high and thin with panic. “My brother is best friends with Gizmoduck!” he blurted, grasping for anything, any leverage, any thread. “You do not want to mess with me, okay?”
No response. The van rumbled on.
Louie’s chest tightened further. The air under the bag felt hot and used. He twisted against the ropes until they bit into his wrists.
“If this is about my uncle,” he said, words tumbling over each other now, frantic and breathless, “I don’t know anything important, okay? I mean, I do, but not stuff you’d want, probably, and if you want ransom money you should really take one of the others because Scrooge likes all of us but I’m, like, not the best value option—”
His voice faltered.
Something in the air had changed.
There was a smell now. Sweet, strange, faint at first and then all at once too strong.
Louie coughed.
His head swam.
No. No, no, no—
He tried to hold his breath, but panic made that impossible. Another inhale slipped in before he could stop it. The world tilted sickeningly beneath him.
“If you want info on my uncle…” he mumbled, but his own words sounded far away, thick and slow, like they were sinking through syrup.
His limbs were suddenly too heavy.
His thoughts wouldn’t line up.
He tried again to fight, to kick, to scream, to do something, but his body was already going slack in ways he couldn’t control.
The van’s engine droned on and on beneath him, steady as a lullaby.