Six days after the confrontation with Asteroth. a malaise had settled on Wildwing that he could not shake.

And even though everyone should have, no one held it against him. The team talked in those annoying hushed tones of people trying to be respectful, trying to not mention death, and the strange absence of normal conversation left more than enough room for death to invite itself in. It occupied the space and could not be banished. They avoided Wildwing, parting like a wave before the bow of a ship, and even Nosedive, the most reliable irritation of the majority of his life, had suddenly become scarce.

Death simply followed him wherever he went. It hung over him while he lay sleepless in the night, and was a step or two behind him when he moved from that spot, and it sat with him while he took a meal.

Wildwing knew he was slipping backwards into a hole of self torment. He had even tried valiantly to fight it this time. Knowing the hazard was there did little to stop its coming. Rather, the past experience of being eaten by despair was informative instead of preventative. He watched depression come for him and observed analytically, almost from outside himself, as it caught him again.

He was allowing his responsibilities to fall by the wayside and he did not care. If Dragaunus killed them all at least he wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.

Nosedive had somehow become more a skittish animal than a brother, and Wildwing knew he should have been more concerned about that than he actually was. It was something he had never seen before, it meant something was wrong, and rather than stand up to investigate Wildwing did nothing.

Tanya was too busy in her own problems. It was not that she didn’t know he was struggling, or that she didn’t care to do anything about it. Rather, almost all responsibility for their safety had fallen to her as the most competent, the most knowledgeable, and it would have been an unreasonable demand to expect her to tackle his problems simultaneously.

Grin was perhaps the most like himself. Wildwing would arrive at the kitchen hours after everyone else had eaten their meal and left, with the full intention of avoiding them all, and Grin would somehow already be there, ready to feed him. Between death and Wildwing sat Grin, a bulwark. Grin never said anything, not even the usual bits of wisdom or council that Wildwing had come to expect. He just sat there, a third presence in the room, and gave a small nod when Wildwing left again, before setting to the task of tidying up after him.

Mallory was frustrated by Wildwing, the same way Mallory was always frustrated by him. Since he had screwed things up. She had sat her vigil at the deathbed with him, maybe out of a sense of duty to Canard more than anything else, and had tolerated his company until the moment he was able to finally give the order to have the body placed with the others, in cold storage. Then, she continued as she had been before, avoiding him. There was a new layer to it now, because on top of all the other ways he was inadequate, he was also not executing his duties as the leader. She was a creature that thrived on structure and he had no interest in it anymore.

It was Duke who got so annoyed with Wildwing’s apathy that he came uninvited through Wildwing’s door on that sixth day. He should have known somehow, that it was going to be Duke. It had been him the first time around, after all. The second time, too.

“Aight, that’s enough melodrama, get on yer feet and in the shower,” Duke declared.

Wildwing groaned in annoyance, though he did not move from his spot, staring at the ceiling. “How does everyone know how to break into my room, specifically?”

“ Break in , the passcode is 0-0-0-0, ya twit, that’s basically an invitation. You should just leave the door open, it’s more polite,” Duke shook his head, though he seemed amused. “Now get yer ass up, there’s somethin’ fishy going on.”

“Fishy,” Wildwing repeated.

“That’s right, fishy enough to warrant a clean change of clothes, believe it or not. Up.”

Surprisingly, Wildwing did manage to stand. His body gave off the dull complaints of a creature that had not moved in some time, and he could not recall when he had last bothered with any sort of personal care. He looked back to Duke, realized that the older drake was going to stand in place and wait for him, however long it took.

“There wasn’t an alarm,” Wildwing observed.

“Quit stallin’,” Duke instructed.

Everything took longer than it should have. Wildwing felt heavy, as if that shadow of death had tired of walking behind him and now leaned on him with its full force. He did, in time, emerge from his personal bathroom somewhat cleaner than when he had entered. Given that there did not seem to be any urgency, he did not bother with armor, and settled for the rumpled and discarded casual wear that mimicked its markings instead. Duke gave another shake of his head, just so that it was clear that he did not approve of the half-assed effort, and ushered him out of the room, toward the hangar.

“Where are we going?” Wildwing questioned. The weight was still with him, he could feel it straining against him with each step, but now that he was upright and walking it seemed a little easier. Curiosity began to carry some of the burden.

“Out,” Duke shrugged.

“Just us?”

“Don’t trust the others,” Duke said. “Things are weird.”

Wildwing could not argue. Duke waved him over to the line of duckcycles.

Wildwing had lost track of time, and had not realized that they would emerge from the underground maze of the Pond into a bright afternoon. The Pond was kept a comfortable cold, that the humans that sporadically visited its bowels did not seem to like, and was not cold enough to be reminiscent of home, but it was enough to cut through the worst of the California heat.

As he followed Duke, be became more and more confused at their route. Again, it did not seem urgent, rather closer to a mild afternoon ride south and west from the Pond. They passed through the business district with the smaller airport, and then by a country club that seemed an unlikely shade of green, and then finally row upon row of homes that grew larger and larger as they approached the coast. It was not an unpleasant ride, and perhaps only thirty minutes long, but it was not what he had been expecting.

They ended in a parking lot at a crowded beach, with one single public pier that stretched out into the open ocean. On the far end of the pier could be seen a bright red line of umbrellas that suggested a restaurant.

Wildwing sagged forward, depression catching up with him and pressing him downward against the controls of the cycle. “Is this the something fishy,” he said, an accusation more than a question.

“And chips, now that you mention it,” Duke said.

“Why have you brought me out here?” Wildwing sat, unmoving.

“Because it’s better than lyin’ down in the dark all day,” Duke said, and walked for the pier.

There was a breeze that came in from over the ocean, and while the day was still too warm for comfort, that air was pleasant. The pier itself seemed to be a traditional wooden support, but the path was paved over with concrete and wide enough that two cars could have passed each other comfortably. To either side, the sand of the beach sloped down to reach the water, and there were more than a few screaming children to be heard over the wind.

Most of the humans on the pier ignored them. It had taken a remarkably short amount of time for them to become entirely desensitized to the ducks, and the initial fervor of interest had vanished as their presence had lost its novelty. There were fishing poles lining both sides of the pier, and most people did not look up from their intent gaze on the water as the two of them passed. The ocean was a flat line of deep blue against the brighter horizon, dotted with the occasional white crest of a wave. Far out on the water, distant floating dots of large ships were visible.

The seating area at the end of the pier was empty. The lunch hour had passed, and the mess left behind was being fought over by an aggressive flock of gulls. There were only a handful of people there, who did not bother looking up as they entered, too absorbed in their own problems.

The woman that took their order looked like she wanted to be just about anywhere else, which Wildwing found a great wellspring of sympathy for.

“So,” Wildwing said, pushing away the glass of water that she had left him. “You’re going to tell me about the obligations and responsibilities and duties I’m failing right now.”

“Nah,” Duke said. “That all sounds like what motivates Mallory.”

“Stars, does it ever,” Wildwing said, burying his face in his hands.

Duke was silent for a long moment, and then leaned back in his chair with a grin. “I see.”

“No, you don’t,” Wildwing said, firmly.

Duke raised his hands in mock surrender, but the grin did not vanish. His fish and chips arrived and he pushed it towards the middle of the table, with the implication it was to be shared.

“I suspect people have spent a lot of your life tellin’ you all about responsibility an’ shit,” Duke said.

“Responsibility and shit,” Wildwing admired the eloquence.

“Doesn’t really work on you though, does it? Just makes it harder to think.”

That didn’t encapsulate the enormity of Wildwing’s anxieties. Every choice he made was so vital that something mundane on the surface could easily be what killed them all. It was a level of stakes that no one person was built for, and he had once again reached the limit of pretending.

He did not articulate this to Duke, and Duke, thankfully, didn’t make him try. Duke simply ate his meal and swatted away the greedy gulls that had started a slow advance on their table.

“Why are we here?” Wildwing asked again.

“Well, just about anywhere outside would have worked,” Duke said. “I know your weakness.” He gave a nod back the direction they had came. Wildwing followed the motion with his gaze, looking back through the tangle of people walking the pier, and then to the smaller specks of those on the beach and in the shallow water, and then beyond that to the other side of the isthmus the pier stood on, into the marina were a handful of small sailboats milled into and out of dock, and then further beyond that, into the hills dotted densely with homes.

“Damn,” Wildwing said.

“Mhmm,” Duke agreed, with a degree of satisfaction that was grating, but not unearned.

Mallory’s lectures would never make much impact on Wildwing. Shame had never helped him. Duke, on the other hand, had lead him to a crowded beach in the middle of a bright sunny day, where Wildwing could see for himself thousands of people that would become Dragaunus’s canon fodder and workforce. It would all happen again, a billion lives ruined, ground into paste for the war machine, just like it had before, if Wildwing didn’t personally intervene.

It was just a little spark of anger, tiny and unexpected, but it was the first thing Wildwing had actually felt in days.

Duke sat there and ate with the slow, exaggerated movements of someone enjoying a particularly savory meal.“S’alright, I won’t tell anyone.”

Wildwing still did not partake.

He watched the crowd, as they sat in the shade of the umbrella, for long enough the meal was replaced with a new one, and drinks were refilled. He had been lying down for days, and exhaustion was still threatening to overtake him anyway. It may have done him some good, to put things back into a perspective he understood, but it did not solve his problems. It did not bring Canard back.

“Tanya says Emily didn’t kill him,” Wildwing said, at long last.

“Well, somethin’ did.”

“What do you think?”

“It’s like you told me, before you changed your mind. I get to say I told you so when this is over.”

“I didn’t change my mind.”

“The girl you got outvoted on, the guy was all you.”

“Nosedive-” and then Wildwing paused for a moment, remembering how angry he had gotten in the heat of the moment, and realizing that perhaps he knew exactly why his brother was avoiding him. He was going to have to apologize. “Nosedive was right. If the intent was to kill us all they could have simply done nothing.”

Duke did not leave his unbothered posture, but there was no question he was not deeply invested in the argument. “Doesn’t prove anythin’. Maybe they just decided fightin’ us was easier than fightin’ whatever those things were.”

“He’s also right that we can’t watch them forever,” Wildwing said.

“So you’re not even goin’ to try?” Duke asked.

“It didn’t work ,” Wildwing said, that little spark of anger finally catching on something else in its surroundings. “We didn’t learn anything, we didn’t solve anything, and we didn’t keep anyone safe.”

Duke seemed to take this outburst in stride. “What are you goin’ to do if they decide to turn on us?”

Wildwing pressed his palms into his eyes again, frustration pushing in on him. “I don’t know.”

“You need to be ready for that.”

“What am I supposed to do? Execute them?”

Duke shrugged, indifferent. Maybe that's how things ran in a thieves guild.

But that wasn’t Wildwing. It did not matter how angry he was, he could not simply fix things by stabbing someone. “I said she had one chance.”

“And then?”

“Containment. We’ll just have to allocate space somewhere for a secure cell.”

“That’s it?”

“We need to figure out what that parasite does and it disintegrates when the host dies. Containment.”