Nosedive had finally managed to separate himself from having to supervise anyone. It was an annoying chore, but also struck him as pointless. In the days following his own encounter with a beast in the hallway maze, it was not any of their guests that lingered on his mind. Threats seemed to come less from Emily, or Winterwing, or even Canard, and more from whatever it was twisting the space in the Pond itself.

He didn’t like thinking about Canard. He hadn’t in a while. 

He was locked in confusion, first angry that Canard had wanted to leave him behind on Puckworld, and when that fizzled out, was overcome with guilt. Circumstances dictated Canard had been left behind instead. There was no one available that he could have expressed his conflicting thoughts to, beyond perhaps Thrash and Mookie. They were the closest thing he had to confidants. The other ducks thought they were childish and irresponsible, but they thought that about him as well.

In any case, Nosedive would not dared have said a thing to Wildwing, or anyone that would then have opportunity to tell his brother, so the humans would have to do.

He wandered through the Pond with these thoughts, caught between wanting to enjoy finally having time to himself, and the creeping anxiety that walking the space alone was dangerous. Though, near as any of them could tell, walking the space in groups of five didn’t help things much either. His feet took him to the kitchen, as they often did, and it took a few seconds too long for his brain to remember that other people were just as prone to gravitating towards food.

Canard and Duke both looked up from the large round table the team shared, wordlessly. Canard was haggard, listing a little too much to one side in a chair, and Duke may have been introducing his companion to the wonders of coffee, judging from the mess on the countertop and the smell permeating the room. Duke probably saw Nosedive’s hesitation, that split second where he considered pretending he had seen no one and turning around to leave.

Duke kicked out an empty chair at the table beside him, exalting with a bit too much enthusiasm: “Sit on down!”

Nosedive, now embarrassed and unable to extract himself, made his way into the room and sat down quietly in the offered chair, avoiding eye contact with anyone or anything. Duke sprang up with that same odd energy, bringing over a third empty mug for him, filling it about halfway before Nosedive was able to cough out: “I don’t like coff-”

“C’mon, humor me.”

There was something in his voice that Nosedive had not heard often, that rare, genuine plea for help that Duke sometimes uttered. Canard’s form was largely supported by the table, hunched and drawn inward, and Nosedive did not want to be there, but it seemed entirely possible that Duke, under the veneer of cheer, wished to be there even less. As someone who only had a passing acquaintance with Canard prior to the mission, and being cut from an entirely different moral cloth, perhaps he was hopeless at the task of acting as councilor. 

Fine. For Duke, then, Nosedive would stay.

Duke slid over the cream and sugar along with the third mug, and indicated rather forcefully that Nosedive was to be polite and doctor the swill until it was drinkable.

“I’d pull out somethin’ stronger but we almost certainly don’t have enough for everyone,” Duke said. It didn’t completely kill the tension of the room, but it helped. Nosedive gave a sloppy silent toast, sipped dutifully, and then added more adjustments.

 Through the awkward quiet, there was the usual hum of the shield generator, sometimes undercut with buzzing from the refrigerator, and a banging somewhere about them in the ventilation that he did not care for. The base had its own sounds that were hard to distinguish from those of a creeping monster. 

It was Canard, surprisingly, that broke the silence. “I was very shortsighted.”

The other two did not say anything, unsure of what the proper response would have been.

“Mission was supposed to be a day,” Canard gave a half-smile, and looked back down at his hands when no one smiled back, discomforted by the attention. “Sorry.”

Duke leaned back in his chair, contemplating the bottom of his mug. “You thought it was a suicide mission.”

Nosedive looked up sharply, first at Duke, and then to Canard. Canard did not acknowledge the words directly. He sat with his fists balled on the tabletop, feathers still mottled and ratty from malnutrition, and stared hard at his own tight fingers.

Duke asked carefully, “What changed your mind?”

Canard did not answer, instead his eyes flicking up and looking directly at Nosedive, and this was the first time they made eye contact in over a year.

“Ah,” Duke inclined his head in acknowledgment.

“I thought you all understood,” Canard murmured.

Duke grinned, “I plan to die on an island, surrounded by piles of ill-gotten wealth. Saurians aren’t gonna stop me and neither are you.”

“Did Wildwing know?” Nosedive blurted. Duke tried to interrupt and redirect the question.

Canard answered anyway. “Wildwing is an idiot.” And, perhaps a little shocked by his own words, Canard softened again, resting forehead against the palm of a hand, as one does with a heavy headache. “Or maybe I am, I don’t know.”

“Would you like my opinion?” Nosedive challenged.

Canard regarded him for a moment, and declined the invitation to an argument with a sigh. “I was wrong about you.”

Nosedive’s self righteous anger deflated, and he settled back into feeling embarrassed and shrinking in his chair. All he was doing was proving how immature he was, again, and any bit of hate he tried to radiate came rushing back inward.

“Maybe you can do it,” Canard continued, gave his untouched coffee a small taste, and then put it back down with clear dislike. “Maybe you can stop him, and I was wrong about everything.”

“Where do you see yourself in that?” Duke asked.

Canard gave a small shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t, I guess,” and then, after he processed that this was not a great answer, elaborated, “Time is… time got weird.” His eyebrows knitted together, as if he realized the more he said the less sense he made.

Canard had been a mythos, for the last year, propped up entirely by a tacit understanding of heroic sacrifice, as well as a respect for Wildwing’s grief. Duke had known Canard the person, as had Nosedive, but this moment was a vulnerability that stripped away the gilded framing. Canard was no more heroic than the rest of them, and what was perhaps more tragic, the team had time to confront their problems individually and as a group. Canard was in the same place that he had been when they lost him, even more messed up by what he had seen in the space between.

“It couldn’t have been a year though, right?” Canard smiled weakly again. “You can’t just float in nothing for a year. You’d die, surely. Or maybe it was longer?” And then he lost his train of thought again, as if his attention was taken by something else, that neither of them could see or hear.

Out of the corner of his eye, Nosedive watched Duke make a nonchalant turn of the head as he nursed his own mug, and the teen realized he was trying to discern what had caught Canard’s eye, without appearing to do so.

“I am… glad, I suppose, that you’ve made it this far,” Canard said at last, re-centering his focus. “Even if it’s not what I planned. If you can call what I did a plan.”

Duke looked as though he might say something, trying to find the appropriate words, but nothing came. It wasn’t something he could do. For one of the others, maybe he could. He did not have the history necessary to say something meaningful to Canard, and despite his conman reputation, did not attempt the forgery of one.

Nosedive should have said something, because the friendship between Canard and his brother had been years long. Nosedive had always been the tolerated tag-along, but he had been there for most of it. He couldn’t muster the right language either, after spending so much time simply being angry at a ghost. All that he could find in himself was a raw, ragged hole where useful thoughts should have been.

“I don’t want to take leadership, if that’s what you’re asking,” Canard added.

That hadn’t even occurred to Nosedive. While their original supply and orders came from the Resistance, with heavy influence of military command, that level of organization had broken down nearly immediately. Mallory outranked all of them, but had never had interest in asserting herself  outside of situations where her expertise was necessary. In fact, they had demonstrated for themselves that the leadership structure was Wildwing or it was no one, and that was the end of the conversation. 

Wildwing might have been relieved to have responsibility rest on someone else for a moment, right before they were all incinerated due to their own collective incompetence.

“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do,” Canard said. “I used to know, I think. Even when things were complicated, that part was really simple.”

“If you can still aim at lizards, we have use for you,” Duke offered.

Canard flinched at the suggestion, and instead began searching through his pockets. “Let’s start small.” He finally found what he was searching for, and pulled out something that fit within the palm of his hand. Nosedive leaned in, confused. It appeared to be a pendant. A small, purple stone held loosely in the grasp of a wire setting, perfectly round, and a thin gold chain to attach it to the wearer.

Duke took it cautiously from Canard’s hand.

“Make anything of it?” Canard asked. “I remember it there, floating with me. I thought maybe it had been blown out of the Aerowing... that it belonged to someone, but neither of the girls recognize it and Grin seemed… offended when I asked.”

Duke shook his head. “It’s glass.” And offered it back to Canard without another thought.  “Gold’s probably just plating, too. Seems like a piece of costume jewelry.”

Nosedive shrugged and declined to handle it with a wave.

Canard looked at it with clear disappointment, pondering. “Well, we weren’t the first to fly the bird, maybe its last crew left it behind.”

“It’s worthless,” Duke reiterated.

Canard smiled weakly again, and stuffed it back in his pocket. “It’s worthless to your pile of riches, it meant something to someone, once.”

Duke smirked. “Sure, guy that found the most priceless artifact on the planet wants to find the owner of a child’s trinket, why not?”