It had not occurred to Tanya, and now seemed obvious in retrospect, that sending the team out on a mission meant they would bring back more work for her. It was just as frustrating as all the other work as well, because the best she could do, yet again, was speculate. Speculating was a much more rewarding exercise when it meant pushing the boundaries of known science, rather than delineating the difference between survival or destruction.

Never in a million years, however, would she have guessed they would present her with the task of determining the origins of what appeared to be their recovered lost leader. It had to be her that did it, because there was no Mask to do it for them. Without its observations, they could only all agree that he looked like Canard, and that meant little.

They had lost Canard early in their journey, when they had fewer resources and less time. When he was initially putting the strike team together, he was preparing to fight an enemy that up until that moment had been a distant, half-remembered fairy tale. It had been impossible to separate the  mythology from what the Saurian’s actual capabilities were. It all sounded like equally preposterous magic. They had not anticipated until much later just what a problem Chameleon could pose. 

They had no physical or genetic profile to match Canard against. Tanya had built one for the rest of the team. She even had rudimentary ones set up for their two visitors. Every single one of them were checked against their record at random intervals, even prior to the Mask’s destruction.

Here she could do no such thing.

The best that Tanya could do was to prove that, indeed, he was a duck. Whatever the internal mechanism was that allowed Chameleon to do his grift, the result seemed no more than skin deep. She did not think he could change the physical structure of his DNA. Or, at least, she hoped that he couldn’t. Maybe his abilities strayed too far in the realm of magic for her to be imposing such trivial things as basic biology.

The sequencing agreed with their eyes, at least. Canard was a duck. 

Canard, for his part, was at least compliant, making him the best patient she had in her medbay in weeks. He acted numbly, clearly confused, but accepted her directions without protest. His condition made no logical sense. He appeared no different than the last time they had seen him. He had been found still in his armor, though had not minded being relieved of it. He had the general stench of someone who had been living in a hole for months. She had forgotten that smell until this moment, presented with the aroma of blood and dirt and unwashed body again.

She had only known Canard for a handful of weeks prior to their mission proper, and that had barely been enough time to make an impression of him. He had been…confident. Full of that weird youthful assurance that everything was going to turn out right. She could not tell if she felt the same now, but the more she looked over her shoulder at him as she worked, the less sure she was of her initial thoughts. Maybe the way she regarded him had been colored by the telling and retelling of his role, after he was no longer around to ground it in reality.

She asked him to recount the mission to destroy the master tower, from his perspective.

“Why?” he balked.

“It’ll help me assess....cognitive function.” It was not exactly a lie.

His retelling was not perfect, but it did have some things that she had forgotten in the intervening time. Wraith had a sword of fire that he had used once, that they never saw again. The Aerowing hadn’t been fully fueled, as there was none to give it.

“I don’t understand,” Canard said, confiding to her quietly, aware that he was under the scrutiny of every single person that had crammed into the medical bay, and it did not matter if he whispered. “Where did all of this come from?”

“What...do you mean?” Tanya asked. She had not been given permission to speak to him beyond necessity, but hadn’t been told not to, either. 

Canard made a gesture that was meant to encompass their surroundings. She blinked, and realized that he was referring to the Pond itself.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, “We built it.” More precisely, she had been responsible for a large portion of the design, while excavators and build drones had handled the rest. The Pond was not a technical marvel, not by Puckworld standards. Most of it had to be improvised from tech that in no way was designed for the task it was given. Any expert of defense systems from home would have scoffed at how precariously it was held together, but they would have been amazed by how little she had had to work with. 

“Built it,” Canard repeated, doubtful, “when?”

“I-I’m not sure I understand the question.”

“When could you have possibly had the time? To make anything like this?” he said urgently. “I was only gone for a couple of hours.” 

Ah, but of course. She checked over her shoulder, and sure enough, Wildwing was there, well within earshot, and watching them very carefully. 

“You...you did something very foolish,” she told Canard. “You left the known boundaries of reality.”

Canard blinked, and looked between a few presumably familiar faces, “I… thought it was the right thing to do?”

“M-maybe it was,” she stumbled with the words. Tanya would have felt fine lecturing Wildwing, but here it felt inappropriate. The equilibrium that they had built in Canard’s absence was much less formal.

“If you leave spacetime, you’re going to leave the rules of spacetime as well,” she said, trying to recover some of her confidence. “That’s why limbo is a prison, it doesn’t follow natural laws. It has none. However long it has seemed to you, it’s...it’s been a year here.”

Canard stared at her, and for a moment she thought he was going to do the obvious thing, and argue. Most people simply did not understand that time was not an absolute, it skipped and slipped as it felt, a current that pulled at varying speeds.

Instead, he blinked and said, “You’re right. I don’t know how. But, I know you’re right.” He paused, and then said, “That doesn’t make any sense, how could I know that?”

Tanya shook her head. “I don’t have any good answers for you. It’s-it’s just simply beyond my ability to know.”

He said nothing else for a time while she worked, checking through health scans and building the beginnings of the profile she would now need to maintain for him, too. The rest of the team, and their charges were spread around them, and though the bay was rather large, nine people did make it start to feel crowded. They hovered as she worked, and while they were not annoying, exactly, their nervousness wore on her. They wanted to be happy, and she would have liked to tell them they could be, and the best she could say was, as always, to be cautious. 

“I really fucked myself up good, I think,” Canard murmured, as she worked.

“If it makes you feel any better, you appear to be well physically,” Tanya said. “Mal-malnourished. We can fix that, very easy.”

He contemplated this, “I can’t remember the last time I had an actual meal.”

“Aw, turns out that Grin’s a culinary genius, he’ll get you fixed right up.” 

Grin must have overheard this, because he dipped his head in acknowledgment in the periphery of her vision, with perhaps the slightest hint of a smile.

“I imagine anything is going to be better than what we had left for rations,” Canard said.

“Well, don’t say that before you’ve tried turkey, but it will overall be an improvement, yes,” she agreed.

“I think,” Canard struggled with words for a moment, “I think I never expected to see any of you again.”

“I would like to talk to you some more about it, when I have time. You’ve been where people aren’t supposed to be. Even the Saurians don’t exist there unaided, they have habitats that generate bubbles of spacetime to exist in. You have just experienced something very unique! An exceptional event,” Tanya paused. “I would like to reiterate again, in case you have another chance at it: it was very stupid.”

Canard seemed knocked out of just daze just enough to find this amusing, because he gave her a half smile. “All right,” he surreptitiously surveyed the room once again, with eyes catching just a second too long on their extra two companions. “Though, maybe it could be a fair trade? I seem to have missed a few things.”

“That,” Tanya said pointedly, giving a nod in Wildwing’s direction, “is going to be someone else responsibility.”

As the only two people that knew Canard for a length of time before they were all separated, Wildwing and Nosedive would be the best way to determine if he was genuine. It would be emotionally draining, and they would have to live with the knowledge that they would never know for sure, but it was truly the best that any of them could do.

Mallory had been standing silently aside for all of this, and though she had not interrupted their conversation, her unease was palpable. She had chosen the route of suspicion. She had not known Canard as long as the brothers, not by a long shot, but she had spent the months that the boys were separated in the Resistance alongside him. She could not claim to know everything about their lost leader, but felt that she, too, was obligated, or perhaps entitled, to weigh in on his validity.

“So, what do we do now?” she asked Wildwing. “We have to tail three people? We’re already stretched thin on two.”

Duke had not been much more than acquaintance to Canard. He had interacted very little with anyone in the Resistance proper, prior to the day of the brief and mission. He excused himself from the present reunion, and left without being dismissed.

Wildwing seemed to be at a loss for words, and the silence that followed hung overlong, as none of them were willing to be the one to do what had to come next. It had to be him. It was only appropriate, as both the leader and the friend.

He started with the obvious question, “What happened?”

“I’m not sure,” Canard responded. “I remember letting go, and watching as the Aerowing got smaller, and a lot of noise.”

That memory had played for Tanya several times, but memory is a fickle thing, and the details that she wanted to remember were lost to her now. She could remember quite well, the exact inflection with which she heard Canard declare to Wildwing ‘you’re team captain now’, but almost nothing else. She could not recall if Canard had looked so tired, and gaunt. She did not think so.

“And then?” Wildwing prompted.

“And then nothing,” Canard said, “it’s dark. And quiet. But, it isn’t perfect dark, or empty. I remember there being things there. I hit the ground and you walked up.” But here he became confused again, stealing a glance at Tanya. “Or it could have been forever in there. I’m… not sure I know the difference.”

Tanya could not adequately describe the effects of dimensional limbo for Wildwing, when he had asked. It was simply too complex a thing. As a place between all things, it simply did not have to follow natural laws. She could not even say for sure if cause and effect existed in that place, let alone if anything they would see in it had bearing on reality.

The mind could not make heads or tails of anything, and a second, a year, and forever flattened out to seem much the same.

“There is something there,” Canard said, this time with more clarity, “and I think it’s important that I tell you.”

Wildwing’s brow twitched just a little bit. “What do you mean?”

“There is something very old, and very angry in there,” Canard said, “and I think it’s upset with you, specifically.”