Chapter Text
The days pass, one by one by one. It’s a blur of heartache and actual aching shoulders, of cuts scabbing over and Kepler knitting itself back together. Duck gets his first sunburn of the season schlepping rubble as the days get longer and warmer. Kepler might be a ski town, but Duck has always loved summer in the Monongahela.
Minerva is never far from Duck’s side, even more than before. One day she’s up at dawn repairing roofing on Main Street. Another day she’s put on kid-wrangling duty so the summer camp down the road can rebuild their dock. She spars with anyone who asks. She joins the meal train, and once she is summarily excused from cooking duty (Duck doesn’t ask), she delivers meals.
She’s constantly running through town ferrying supplies and information, making the trips faster on foot than anyone would navigating the roads. Sometimes he’ll hear her sandals pounding against the path and he’ll stop to watch her pass, forehead creased and a toolbox under her arm. If she notices him, she’ll nod without breaking her stride.
If Duck somehow manages to get through a day without seeing her, he finds Minerva in his bed more often than not. He tries not to think too hard about it.
Duck is kept running, too- between his regular shifts and the reconstruction he’s picked up, he’s been arguing with the Feds about camping season and whether or not they can allow folks in this part of the Forest. That’s a different issue than the argument with Feds they’ve been having about the need to do an ecological study about the goddamn mountaintop that got dropped on town; nobody in their unit has the geology background they’re going to need to assess things, but the Feds are being squirrely about bringing in anyone else on the secret.
When Duck’s not working, he’s trying to put his town back together. He makes stew for Mrs. Adams. He picks up groceries for some folks whose car got busted. He goes to the funeral services for every person they lost in the fight.
That’s its own kind of miserable. A couple of the Hornets eye him suspiciously when he shows up for the first service, and Duck hesitates at the door. But then Hollis steps up, makes their way to Duck through the crowd. They look Duck in the eye and shake his hand, and that’s enough for their crew. Still, Duck tends to hang in the back and doesn’t bring attention to himself.
Barclay shows up at most of the funerals, too, dressed in an ill-fitting suit and wearing the same helpless, miserable face that Duck knows he can’t shake. Barclay usually manages to cajole Duck into a meal afterward up at the Lounge, and they sit with whoever’s there and talk about shit that isn’t ‘this’. It’s nice, for an hour or so, and then they all jump back into the fray.
In the scant few hours that Duck’s home, usually all he’s up for is getting the three of them (himself, Minerva, Kairi) fed, getting himself clean, and falling into bed and trying not to dream.
He usually fails.
It’s usually the spaceship dream, with Aubrey or Janey in the tubes. Sometimes it’s watching Ned die and die and die again, the details of the scene filled in from the police reports and Aubrey’s quiet, shaky retelling and his own imagination until it’s like he was there, rooted to the ground instead of miles away across town–
Anyway.
It’s usually the spaceship dream, and tonight it’s the spaceship dream again, but this time it isn’t Jane or Aubrey or anyone from Kepler in the tube.
It’s Minerva.
And Duck turns around to see another Minerva behind him, but she's been impaled by some unseen figure, a sword sticking out of her chest. Duck lunges for her, but her eyes are already going dim as he catches her arm, and they fall to the floor together in a heap. Blood pools on the ground, blooming from the sword in her torso and spattering against the floor beneath her. It's on Duck's hands, soaking into the knees of his pants where he's kneeling next to her, underneath his fingernails. The tube opens with a hiss, and the other Minerva steps out, and she draws a sword just like the one in her chest, and she crosses the floor toward the with those long legs and the same dead look in her eyes and-
“Duck!”
Duck bolts upward, nearly avoiding colliding with Minerva. It's pitch dark; it takes him a second to clock his surroundings. He's home, in bed. Minerva is crouched over him, the frown barely visible on her face.
"Are you alright?" she asks. Her hand is gripping his upper arm. He covers her hand with his own, still reeling. His hands still feel wet and tacky; he’s afraid to look at where his hand covers hers, afraid of smearing blood across her skin.
“Yeah,” he says, heart still pounding. After a minute, he says it again. “Yeah. Fuck.” He lets his head drop, chin tucking toward his chest. In an oddly gentle gesture, Minerva leans forward to press their foreheads together.
They breathe like that for a minute. Duck tries to let it go, settle into Minerva’s reassuring presence, but Minerva is falling to the floor over and over again, the light in her eyes guttering and dying and it feels like he’s been impaled, too-
“Can I-” he starts, and then he tilts his head up to press his lips against hers. The rush of heat and relief that sweeps through him as she leans into the kiss nearly manages to drown out the dread in the pit of his stomach. Minerva lets him lead, for once: he pushes himself further upright and sweeps his hand along the strong plane of her back. She's solid and safe and here, and Duck wants to burn that feeling into his brain.
"I want to-" he says against her mouth. "Can I, uh-"
"Whatever you need," she says, and a quiet, punched-out noise gets caught in Duck's throat. She noses along his jawline, lips brushing at the spot under his ear that makes his eyes roll back into his skull. He pulls her in for another searing, desperate kiss.
Duck mouths along her collarbones, taking his time at the hollow of her throat. She tips her head back, gives him more room to work, and he licks a stripe back down her neck and bites into the meat of her shoulder. She flinches, barks out a laugh, and Duck smiles against her throat. Minerva is alive, alive, alive, how could he have ever thought she was a dream.
He presses his face into her chest and just breathes- traces the raised edges of scars with his lips- teases at the swell of a nipple until Minerva's shifting impatiently on the bed. She reaches down, sinks her fingers into his hair and pulls. Duck moans against her stomach, electricity shooting through his spine and straight to his cock. She hums, considering. Yanks again. Duck whines, high and needy. She loosens her grip slightly, and Duck slides the rest of the way down her body so he can get his mouth between her legs.
She's slick against his mouth, warm and wet, and when Duck swipes his tongue along the center of her, she arches her hips to press herself into Duck's face. Duck points his tongue, circles it around her clit; Minerva curses, loud and low. She reaches down to card her fingers through his hair, and Duck moans, pushing into her grasp. Miraculously, she understands, curls her fingers against his scalp and pulls hard, maneuvering him into place.
Duck loses himself in the feel of her thighs pressed against his ears, the soft curl of hair below his nose, the ache in his jaw as he works his tongue against her. He brings his hand up alongside his jaw, slips a finger into her alongside his tongue. The sound she makes burns through him, clearing away the last of the nightmare and leaving only this. His heart is pounding in his ears, an unrelenting drumbeat of 'alive, alive, alive'.
When she comes, Duck's name or a prayer or a curse locked behind her teeth, she grinds against his chin, pulsing around his fingers. For a split second or a heartbeat or a lifetime, Duck's world narrows down to this: the taste of Minerva on his tongue, the wet heat of her, the way she is so brilliantly, vibrantly alive. The way he gets to be here with her in this moment, having her fall to pieces before him.
Then the moment passes, and Duck is desperately hard in his boxers, barely holding himself back from grinding down against the mattress. He presses one last kiss to the inside of Minerva's thigh, rubs his chin against his shoulder, squirms his way back up the bed toward where Minerva is sprawled out onto his side, breathing hard. She smiles at him, pleased and relaxed, and Duck grins back.
“You mind if I-” he gestures vaguely southward. Minerva snorts.
“I think I can return the favor,” she says. She shifts, and in a move Duck can’t quite follow, straddles him. She licks into his mouth, unhurried even as Duck’s mouth goes slack at the combination of her breasts against his chest and her hands skimming down his sides.
She makes her way down his body, her weight pinning him to the mattress, which is reassuring in a way Duck might have to examine later. When she divests him of his boxers, she hesitates for long enough that Duck’s about to let her off the hook when she shifts her grip on his hips and swallows him down in one smooth motion.
Duck groans, thrusting into Minerva’s mouth before he can catch himself. Minerva’s grip on his hips is a brand, ten points of searing heat keeping him still. He shudders, his head falling backward. He wants to watch her, wants to catch every detail, but he’s on fire, he’s burning from the inside out.
Minerva’s hands flex against his hips, her tongue curling experimentally as she moves. Duck’s hips twitch again involuntarily and Minerva hums in the back of her throat, which doesn’t help matters at all. She shifts, leaning more of her weight against his hips, forcing him to hold still as she takes him apart.
Duck’s already overwhelmed, heat coiling at the base of his cock. One of his hands fists in the sheets, the other flailing for Minerva’s shoulder. “Miner- Min, I’m gonna-” he gets out before Minerva presses her tongue against the underside of his cock and it’s all over.
He comes hard, clapping a hand over his mouth to muffle the shout that rips out of him. Minerva doesn’t loosen her hold on his hips, keeping him pinned no matter how hard he tries to thrust into the velvet heat of her mouth. Her name falls out of his mouth on every exhale- Minerva, Minerva, Minerva.
“God,” he manages, when Minerva finally pulls away. He forces his eyes open, meets her gaze in the dark. She sweeps her thumbs across his hips before letting go and shifting back to her side. If it weren’t for his Chosen One buffs, Duck thinks he’d have bruises there in the morning, Minerva’s fingertips pressed into his skin.
Minerva wraps an arm around his shoulders, tucking him against her. After a moment, she speaks, her voice a quiet rumble in her chest: “What did you dream of, Duck Newton?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Duck mumbles, his eyes slipping closed. “It wasn’t real.”
Minerva lets it pass, brushing the hair from his face and settling them back into the covers. Duck falls asleep to the steady drum of her heart.
A few nights later, after a shift in the forest and another four hours hauling around rubble, Duck drops onto the couch for just a minute while his leftovers are reheating and wakes up an indeterminate amount of time later in the dark. The TV is still on, late-night news running depressing headlines- there are fires in Brazil, some politician somewhere said something stupid, some other politician lied about something heinous. Duck hauls himself up to re-reheat his plate and listens with half an ear to the commentator as he shovels food into his mouth.
It’s a quiet night. Kairi’s purring at the other end of the couch. The space between his shoulders aches as much as it ever does, and he leans back to press them against the couch. He’s got another shift tomorrow, and yesterday Barclay dragged a promise out of him to come up to the Lodge for dinner. Duck’s drifting, toying with the idea of bailing on Barclay and spending an evening with his good friend the PS3, when something pricks at the edge of his consciousness.
Duck’s eyes snap open. He pushes himself back upright and mutes the TV. The murmur of the talking heads goes silent and he listens hard, adrenaline spiking in his chest.
There’s nothing but the hum of the fridge and, faintly, frogs croaking outside.
Still.
Duck stands up, quiet as he knows how to be. He crosses to the door, double-checks the deadbolt. Locked. Kairi’s still asleep on the couch, sprawling into the hollow left from where Duck had been sitting. There’s nothing out of the ordinary.
Still.
Something’s wrong. He can feel it in the backs of his teeth, feel the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. There’s nothing out of the ordinary, but something has changed in the last five minutes, and uneasiness is crawling down Duck’s spine like ice.
It’s not as reassuring as it could be that Minerva hasn’t emerged from the bedroom; it could be that it’s nothing, or it could be that whatever’s tripping Duck’s alarm already got the drop on her. Duck cracks open the door to the bedroom, heart pounding in his ears.
And then it makes sense: the reason Minerva hasn’t noticed the problem is because Minerva is the problem.
Minerva is trembling in her sleep, face twisted up in some awful expression. She doesn't thrash so much as shiver, like she's used to smaller spaces, like she's used to keeping quiet. Her face twitches, and her whole body shudders again. She makes one, tiny, pained noise that echoes in Duck’s ears.
He eases the door open. “Minerva.”
It’s not much more than a whisper, but in the space between syllables, Minerva wakes. It’s subtle- if Duck hadn’t been watching her, hadn’t already been tuned into that prickle at the base of his skull, he might have missed it. Her eyes don’t open, her face doesn’t relax. Her breath hitches once, but the sigh she releases could just as easily signal a return to more peaceful sleep.
Duck watches her assess the threat, realize where she is, realize what’s happened, and force herself to relax, all in a handful of seconds. He leans against the door jamb, squinting into the dark.
“My apologies, Duck Newton,” Minerva finally says without opening her eyes. “Did I wake you?”
“Nah,” he says. “You want to talk about it?”
“Another time, perhaps.” Her eyes open, then, finding Duck unerringly. She stares at him unblinking for a long, long moment. Duck’s pinned by the weight of her gaze.
“I can sit and keep watch, if you want,” Duck says quietly. Minerva would do that sometimes, before the fight: sit with her back to the wall, waiting for monsters to break down their door. She hasn’t since the fight, hasn’t even mentioned it, but also, Duck hasn’t seen this look on her face before.
“That would be…” she trails off. “Yes,” she says, after a moment. “Thank you.”
Duck detours through the living room to turn off the TV and the lights, makes his way to bed in the dark. Minerva shifts over silently. He places himself between her and the door, on top of the covers. Minerva rolls onto her side, facing him. He glances down at her. He can just make out the swirling lines of her scalp tattoos, as his eyes adjust to the dark. He puts his hand between them, resting his weight behind him as he turns to face the door. Beside him, Minerva shifts. He can feel the warmth from her fingertips where they barely brush against his.
“No luck with the Feds on camping, but I think we’re going to have shit figured out for ski season,” Duck says quietly, eyes fixed on the door. “I think Kepler’s gonna get itself along just fine.”
Minerva’s quiet.
“Me, though, I’ve been trying to figure out what happens next,” he continues. “It’s like- Kepler’s been my whole life, y’know? Even back when I was trying to ignore it, my whole life’s been about this. And now it’s done, and I don’t know how to just… go back to the old shit I was doing.”
The minutes tick by. Duck’s pretty sure Minerva’s still awake, but he doesn’t turn around.
“I don’t regret being the Chosen One or whatever,” he adds, after a minute. “Just so you know. I just. I don’t know what else there is to me that isn’t just ‘Duck Newton, Chosen One’.”
“You’ve never been ‘just’ anything, Wayne Newton,” Minerva says quietly. He turns, surprised. Her eyes are open, gleaming in the dark. His fingertips are still brushing against hers.
"Thanks," Duck says, after a long, long moment. He turns back to the door. There's something hanging in the air, something delicate, fragile, and if he breathes too loud it might break. “I’ve been… I’ve been thinking a little bit about leaving,” he says, surprising himself. He hadn’t been, not in so many words, but now that he’s said it, named the thing sitting uncomfortably across his shoulders, it seems right.
“Where would you go?” Minerva asks. She’s almost whispering, like she can feel the thing in the air, too.
“I dunno,” Duck says. “There are lots of other places where I could make a difference. Not like, a 'balance of the world' difference, but like. A 'doing my part' difference. Those are the kind of stakes I’m looking for." Something from the news whispers through his mind, and Duck’s brow furrows. “Brazil, maybe.” Minerva makes a questioning noise. “They've been having some fires, the rainforest needs help. And that's the kind of help I can do. That’s the kind of thing I’m good at. Not at fires,” he corrects, after a minute. “Aubrey was the one of us good with fires.” Minerva huffs softly, and Duck grins to himself.
"I miss her," Minerva says.
"Yeah, me too," Duck says. "Kepler's too quiet without her and Thacker and–" the grief hits less hard than it used to, but it still catches him square in the chest. "–and Ned," he finishes, once he catches his breath. "Kepler's gonna be okay, but it's never gonna be the same."
The room is quiet, the only sounds the ticking of the clock and Minerva, slipping into sleep. He shifts down the bed to lay down fully sometime after she starts to snore. "A new start might be good," Duck tells the ceiling.
When he falls asleep, his dreams are tinged with the soft, brilliant green of the first shoots of spring.
He ends up going to the Lodge for dinner that night, too chicken to come up with an excuse that would hold up to Barclay’s scrutiny. Afterward, he's sipping a beer by the fireplace as Mama holds court when Agent Stern rolls on up beside him, dropping a thick folder in his lap.
"Documents for your friend," he says, commandeering the chair beside him. He looks tired. "Have her fill those out and get them back to me, and I'll file them with the appropriate bureaus next time I go into the city. There should be, ah, let's see. ID forms, Social Security, everything she would need to open a checking account."
"Passport?" Duck asks. Minerva hasn't said she's interested in going anywhere, whether or not Duck leaves, but she hasn't said that she isn't, either. Stern shrugs.
"Sure, I can make that happen. We'll need a picture of her, though."
"Sure," Duck echoes. Barclay walks by, on one of any number of trips between the conversation and the kitchen. He drops his hand to Stern's shoulder, leaves it there for a second. Stern looks up at him, smiling faintly. Duck blinks. Interesting.
"Can you imagine Minerva at the DMV?" Barclay asks. They all go quiet for a minute, imagining. Duck snorts. Stern shakes his head. Barclay claps Stern on the shoulder and continues on his way.
When he gets home, he drops the stack of paperwork on the counter.
"Stern gave me the stuff to get you documents," he calls. Minerva vaults over the couch with frankly impeccable form, landing catlike on the opposite side. She spreads the papers out on the counter, scanning through the fields. Duck boots up his ancient computer and double-checks that the Ethernet cord is plugged in.
"I don't suppose they'll take Miralaviniax Orbital Body 5 as my birthplace, will they?" Minerva asks. She bites on the end of the pen, then leans down to fill in Duck's address on three separate forms.
‘Reforestation Brazil’, Duck types into the search bar.
"You showed up at Green Bank on February 19th, if you wanted to use that as a birthday," he says quietly, as results start loading in. Minerva hums, flipping through the papers quickly.
“Surname,” she says, squinting at another line.
“Oh,” Duck says. “Uh. We can try a few on, if you want? I’m sure half the folks we know would be willing to share.”
‘argoforestry volunteer,’ Duck searches in another tab. Google asks him if he was searching for ‘agroforestry volunteer’ instead.
“Minerva Tarkesian. Minerva... Drake?” Minerva wrinkles her nose. “No, that’s not right.”
“Juno’s always wanted a sister, you could be a Divine,” Duck offers.
“Hm. No, Newton will suffice,” Minerva says decisively.
‘ngo reforestation inita;ldksg’ Duck types. “What?”
“Is that acceptable?” Minerva asks, her forehead scrunched in confusion.
“Yeah! No, yeah, of course. Just. You sure?” Duck says. “You don’t have to pick anybody from Kepler if you don’t want. We can make something up for you.”
“Do you not wish to share your name with me, Wayne Newton?” And now Minerva is leaning over the counter to examine his face.
“Nah, it’s not that, Min, it’s just.” He doesn’t know what it is, what his problem is here. “I just don’t want you to feel like it’s something you gotta do,” he finishes lamely. “Just ‘cause I got you here, or something. It’s a big commitment, is all.”
“Hm,” Minerva says. She looks down at the stack of papers. “I appreciate your concern,” she says after a moment. “Agent Stern isn’t expecting these back immediately, is he?”
“Nah,” Duck says. “You can sleep on it.”
“I will,” Minerva says, looking at him strangely. Duck stares at the computer, pretending to be absorbed in Brazil’s visa process until Minerva moves on.
Minerva Newton, he mouths to himself that night in the dark. It sounds right, is the thing. All that time spent trying to leave her behind, and here she is: in his house, in his bed, wanting to take his name. And he’s glad. He likes having her here. It’s just wigging him out.
He’s not great at family, is the other thing. He’s spent most of his adult life alone, doing his own thing. Calling Mom, calling Jane. Spending time with Juno and the rest of the folks from the Forest Service a couple times a month. It’s just in the last year that he’s scrounged together this weird little family: Leo and Sarah and Minerva; the gang from the Lodge; Aubrey and Ned and Thacker. The last three are lost to him; as for the rest, it’s impossible to completely lose track of someone in a town as small as Kepler, but the things that tied them together are gone. It’s only natural that folks drift apart.
Minerva’s not tied to him anymore, not by a psychic link, not by a shared destiny. Even if he still wants her around– and he thinks he does, actually– he has no right to ask that of her, after all she’s given him. And a Minerva Newton that isn’t part of his family, one way or another, might just tear him apart.
It takes him all of the next day to work up the nerve to say anything. That next evening, he’s folding laundry in the bedroom while Minerva lounges on the couch with his old Nintendo.
(At some point during the last few months, Aubrey had introduced Minerva to Tetris, and Minerva had instantly been entranced.
“We played a game like this as children,” Minerva had said, mashing buttons madly. “This only has two dimensions, though, correct? Do your devices not support 4-dimensional spatial puzzles?”
Duck had resolved to think about it later.)
The music buzzes quietly. Minerva makes an angry noise under her breath, barely audible from across the apartment. It’s… kind of adorable, actually.
Damn it. He’s in too deep.
"Hey, uh, Minerva?" Duck asks, fussing with the shirt in his hands.
"Yes, Wayne Newton?" He can hear her shift to look in his direction, knows without looking that she's craned her neck to try and see into the bedroom from the couch.
"You, uh. You know you don't have to stay here, right?"
"I have not been staying here! We have gone to Amnesty Lodge, and to the residence of Juno Divine, and I believe tomorrow I will spend some time with Leo Tarkesian so he can teach me the Earth game of Rummy–"
“No," Duck interrupts. "I mean, yeah, sure, but. Here. With me. Or here in Kepler, or whatever.” He's crumpling up the shirt. He folds it and picks up another. He folds three shirts before Minerva replies, clearly puzzled.
“Is there something else that you believe requires my attention?”
“I– no, I just.” Duck stares down at the pile of laundry. “You don’t have to hang around with me, if there’s something else you’d rather do.”
The game music stops.
“If you wish to be rid of me, Duck Newton, you need only ask," Minerva says quietly.
"It's not like that, Minerva, come on," he says. He steps away from the bed. Hesitates. If he looks at her, he's gonna have a hell of a time going through with this. But he has to, because the idea that Minerva’s been sticking around out of some obligation to him has been eating him up all day.
"I just wanted to make sure you knew you had options," he says. "Like, now that my destiny's done and you don't have to mentor me, or whatever."
"I believed our bond had surpassed that of mentor and ward," Minerva says, and shit, now she sounds upset, Duck’s fucking this all up.
"Shit, Min," Duck says. He gently thunks his head against the doorframe. “You're one of my best friends, you know that. I just don’t want you to feel stuck in the middle of nowhere with me.”
“Are you no longer planning to visit the other forest in need?”
“I mean– I don’t know. Maybe? That would still be the middle of nowhere– anyway. My point is you don’t have to stay where I am or go where I go,” he says. “If you wanna go travel or find a place that feels more like your old home or whatever, you should do that, is all.”
There’s a long, long moment where neither of them say anything.
"I will take that under consideration, Wayne Newton," Minerva says, and Duck feels something in his chest crack apart. She doesn't say anything else, though, and after another long minute, the Tetris theme starts playing again. Duck folds the rest of the laundry and shoves it haphazardly into drawers before flopping onto the bed and trying to figure out why it feels like he's drowning.
He must fall asleep before he figures it out, and when he next wakes, the apartment is empty. It’s early; the sun’s not quite up. The other side of the bed is cold. When he looks into the living room, Minerva’s things– the handful of possessions she’s acquired in the months she’s spent on Earth– are gone.
She’s left a note for him in the kitchen, big blocky capital letters filling the sheet.
DUCK NEWTON,
I HAVE DECIDED TO HEED YOUR ADVICE AND SEEK OUT NEW EXPERIENCES ON MY ADOPTED HOME PLANET. I WISH TO EXPRESS MY THANKS FOR OPENING YOUR LIFE TO ME, BOTH IN THE LAST FEW MONTHS AND FOR ALL THESE YEARS. KNOW THAT I AM GLAD TO HAVE FOUND YOU, AND THAT I WISH YOU ONLY THE BEST AS YOU FIND WHERE YOUR NEW DESTINY MAY LIE.
AS AUBREY SAYS, YOU HAVE MY DIGITS.
YOURS,
MINERVA.
Duck looks at the note for a long time. Kairi twines between his feet and yowls when he doesn't react. He picks her up, scratches her under the chin as he reads and rereads the note.
After what feels like a hundred years, he sets the note back down on the counter. He feeds Kairi. He reaches into the pantry for the phone.
"Hey, Janey," he says when the call connects. "I think I fucked up. That offer to visit still open?"
Duck's on the road before the sun’s fully up. He makes a couple of calls- one to Mama, to let her know he wouldn't be up at the Lodge for a couple of days and not to worry; one to Juno, to call out of tomorrow's shift. He throws some clothes in a bag before he goes and pounds on Leo's door.
"Can you feed Kairi?" he asks, when Leo answers. Leo frowns.
"You got somewhere else to be?"
"I gotta get out of town for a couple of days," Duck says. "I'll ask Jake or someone up at the Lodge if you can't, but if it isn’t too much trouble–"
"Yeah, Duck, I can watch the cat," he says, waving Duck off. "Are you okay?"
Duck snorts, shakes his head. There's a tear ripping through his chest, the same jagged-edged rift that shattered the world. If he stays here much longer it’s going to pull him apart. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I'm fine, I just. I need to go."
"So, you just shook your head there," Leo says slowly. "So I'm inclined to think you're not okay. Is- nobody's hurt, right?" Duck shakes his head again. "Where's Minerva?"
"She left," Duck says, and the rift yawns wider. and understanding dawns on Leo's face. Duck's face must look awful, because Leo reaches out to put a hand on Duck's shoulder.
"Oh. Oh. Shit, Duck, I- yeah. I'll watch Kairi. I'm sorry, kid. Go get your head straightened out."
"Thanks," Duck says, and then he gets in the car and drives.
There are nearly 800 miles between Memphis and Kepler. The rolling mountains slowly diminish into hills as the sun inches across the sky. The trees stay the same, occasionally broken up by meadows. It’s a beautiful day: no traffic, no construction, just Duck and the trees and the road. He stops in a few faceless small towns for gas, for snacks, for a chance to stretch his legs. They all look like Kepler, and Duck keeps expecting to see her across the street or hear her in the next aisle in the convenience store or turn a corner and–
He never stops for long, is the point.
Jane is going to ask questions– had dragged a promise out of him, that morning when he called. He spends an hour trying out various lies and cover stories that’ll sound less crazy than the truth, and then he spends a couple more trying to pull together a coherent narrative from all the disparate pieces. He’s written reports before, but none that involved magic and aliens and Bigfoot, who’s technically an alien that uses magic.
Jane’s got a little house with a little yard, and Duck pulls into the driveway as twilight’s fading into night. Nora and Devin screech and holler and run around in the yard, and Duck manages to pull himself together enough to be fun Uncle Duck for the hour or so before Jane pushes them bodily up the stairs and into bed, promising that Duck’ll still be there after school tomorrow and that they’ll have plenty of time to play over the weekend.
“I didn’t realize they were still in school,” Duck says sheepishly as Jane comes back downstairs. She waves a hand at him dismissively.
“I’d pull them out if it weren’t field day tomorrow. They’ve only got a week left, anyway. You’re fine, Duck,” she insists when Duck still frowns. “First time you’ve left West Virginia in a decade, you think I was going to stop you?”
Jane pops open a couple bottles of beer from some little local brewery Duck's never heard of, and they go to visit on the front porch. It's a warm, humid night; the familiar racket of crickets chirping nearly drowns out the less familiar hum of cars down the road. "Alright," Jane says, propping her feet up on the swing, sitting sideways to stare at Duck. "So."
Duck leans against the porch railing, tired of sitting. “Yeah?”
“Tell me everything.”
And Duck does.
It’s a long, winding story. It takes a couple hours and a couple beers. Jane listens, mostly, while Duck stares out at the streetlight down the road and talks about the shit he's never said aloud outside Kepler. About Minerva, showing up in his head all those years ago. About Aubrey. About Ned. About facing down monsters. About Minerva, and Leo, and Sarah, and Thacker, and Mama, and Minerva. Jane asks questions, occasionally, but they're smart ones, because she's always been smarter than him: Where did Beacon come from? What was Janelle trying to do with that ritual on the mountain? How often did your visions end up coming true?
Duck answers them all as best as he can. "You're taking this pretty well," he says at some point, and Jane shrugs.
"Kepler's always been kinda weird, Duck. And I've been talking to Juno some. Some other people, too. More of my class left than yours, but some people stayed. I've gotten a couple calls about the folks my older brother was running around with." Duck snorts, and Jane grins at him, lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Yeah, I don’t really miss that part of small-town living.”
They're on their third beers by now, the night finally cooling down. “Okay, next question,” Jane says.
“Shoot.”
“What’s going on with you and Minerva?”
Duck spills beer all over himself. “What?”
“Minerva,” Jane repeats. “I dunno if you noticed, Duck, but you can’t go three sentences without mentioning her.”
“I–” Duck says, and then stops. “She’s–” he tries again.
‘I thought she was a dream and then I thought I was crazy and then I thought I’d never be rid of her, and now she’s gone and I don’t know what to do’?
‘She was my mentor and then she became my best friend’?
‘She put the world in my hands and then she helped me save it’?
“You seem like you care about her a lot, is all,” Jane says slowly, when Duck doesn’t reply.
“Yeah, I–”
Big, tall, warrior-woman Minerva. Badass with no volume control Minerva. Starlight and stone Minerva. Something is coming together before his eyes, something steady and bright and shaped like the curve of Minerva’s smile.
“I think I– shit.”
Shit.
He’s in love with Minerva.
“I think I’m in love with her,” he says.
“Well, yeah, I had gotten that far,” Jane says with a roll of her eyes. “But like, are you dating? Is it just a casual thing? Did you bang it out after the battle?”
“Gross,” Duck says automatically, taking a long pull from his beer to buy himself a minute. “But yeah.” Jane wrinkles her nose. “You asked,” he points out irritably before dropping his head into his hand. “Shit.”
“What?”
“I’m in love with Minerva.”
“Oh, Duck, ” Jane says, putting an unfathomable amount of disbelief into one syllable. “Really?”
“I thought she was a dream for years, Janey!” Jane rolls her eyes again. “I dunno, we’ve been through a lot together lately. It was just about getting through the next fight.”
“Yeah, it sounds like it,” Jane says, relenting. "But it sounds like the fight's over now, right?"
"Yeah," Duck says. "Yeah, it's done." Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Jane frowning at him.
“So what’s wrong?”
“I fucked it up.” He drops down on the bench next to her. “I think I maybe made her feel like I don’t want her around anymore," he says tiredly.
“Duck,” Jane says again.
"I didn't want her to feel like she needed to keep hanging out with me now that all of our shit was done," he says. Jane sighs, the way she's always done when she thinks Duck is being unbearably stupid.
"Do you think she might have been hanging around because she feels something for you, too?" Duck shrugs miserably.
"I was just someone she picked," he says. Jane makes a soft, sympathetic noise. She doesn't push any further. She just sits out there with him until they finish their beers, and then she nudges him up the stairs like she was a decade older than him instead of the other way around.
Duck tries to push it away for the weekend. While the kids are in school, Jane shows him around, and he goes through the whole story again in the light of day. Now that Jane’s pointed it out, Duck catches the traces of Minerva all over the trail that took him from there to here. They go on walks and Nora makes Duck identify every tree. He listens to a lot of blues music, eats a lot of barbecue. Devin shows Duck the new video game he's playing, because Duck still hasn't been able to get him to understand that he knows what the internet is, even if he doesn't use it very much. There’s an ache in his chest that never really goes away, like there’s a cord wrapped around a rib trying to bring him back east. The hurt in Minerva’s voice rattles around in his head whenever he stands still for too long. Jane catches him staring a few times and always nudges him back into motion.
Still, the weekend helps. A weight he hadn’t noticed he was carrying recedes into an ache that’s easier to bear. Duck’s still got family. He’s got Kepler. He’s fought monsters, he’s lost friends, he’s still standing. The world’s still turning, and he’s got the rest of his life to figure out what comes next.
Sunday night finds Duck and Jane back on the porch. He’s telling her about Aubrey, about her freakishly large rabbit and the dumb sleight-of-hand tricks she would break out with a little encouragement. “You would’a liked her,” Duck says when he finds himself at the end of a story. “Damn, I hope she’s doing okay.”
“Me too,” Jane says, which is nice. “Question for you.”
“Yeah?”
“You said Minerva picked you.”
“She picked someone in Kepler,” Duck corrects. “It just happened to be me.”
“Sure, but. This year, when she got here. She still picked you.” Duck glances over at her, brows furrowed. “She had Sarah and Leo at that point, right?” Jane shrugs. “She probably wasn’t hanging around your apartment for the cat, Duck.”
“Don’t talk shit about Kairi,” Duck says automatically. Then he actually considers her last sentence. “We’ve been through a lot together,” he says, testing out the idea. “I just. I don’t want to hold her to something that wasn’t what she was aiming for.”
"Maybe you should let her make that choice," Jane says archly. Duck rolls his neck, gives her a sheepish grin.
"Yeah, maybe I should. When’d you get so smart?"
“Somewhere around the third year of grad school,” Jane says dryly. She’s smiling, though– the moon is waxing, nearly full, and her teeth gleam white. “You gonna talk to her?”
"I'm gonna try," Duck says. "She might not feel like listening."
"I bet she will," Jane says, hauling herself off the porch swing. "C'mon, you've got a long drive tomorrow."
Duck sends a couple emails from his phone before he turns out the lights, The Forestry Service might have connections for reforestation organizations, he figures, and one group just gives out their director’s email on the contact page. He deletes a bunch of spam, and just as he’s about to sign out, a message pops up from Juno.
Duck, you dumb shit.
Duck winces.
‘yeah, i kinda fucked up,’ he texts back. ‘do u kno if she’s ok??’
I’ve kept tabs on her, she’s fine.
‘Tell her i’m sorry.’
Tell her yourself. Duck scrunches up his face at the screen. Yeah, fair enough. He taps his keyboard thoughtfully, but before he can respond, another message appears. No bullshit: you okay?
‘getting there,’ Duck writes. ‘Didn’t ever think about what would happen after saving the world. Can’t go back 2 the way things were.’
Yeah. You need help figuring it out, just shout.
If all else fails we can give that marriage thing a go, she adds, and Duck snorts. He feels warm, though, a smile tugging at his lips.
‘Sure :P’ he sends back. ‘thanks junebug’
Say hi to Jane for me, Juno says, and Duck switches out the light. His sleep, for once, is dreamless.
Duck wakes with the sun. He steals a thermos of coffee off Jane, hugs her hard, and hits the road before the kids can wake up and beg him to stay. Jane drags a promise out of him to visit again, to not make this a once-in-a-decade experience, and Duck complains a whole bunch but is already thinking about meeting them somewhere in the middle before the summer ends. It’s been good, seeing them. Besides, if he’s serious about going to Brazil, he’s going to need some practice being out of Kepler.
It’s not quite dinnertime when he makes it home. He knocks on Leo’s door to let him know, lavishes some attention on Kairi, and then, before he can lose his nerve, drives up to the Lodge.
Mama yanks him aside before he can get more than two steps into the lobby. “You wanna explain why I’ve got a new and exciting kind of alien looking for boarding?”
“Oh, good, she is here,” Duck says. “I kinda figured, but–” Mama’s expression is hard. “I fucked up,” he says bluntly, opting for the straightest path through. “I don’t know what the fuck my life looks like with no destiny bullshit in it and no Pine Guard stuff to think about, and I took it out on her.”
Mama looks at him with that same hard expression for a minute. Duck forces himself to hold still, to look her in the eye. She must find what she’s looking for, because her expression softens and her grip on his forearm loosens.
“Listen a minute,” she says. “You don’t stop being a member of the Pine Guard, alright? You’ve got me, and you’ve got Barclay. I dunno how much help we’d be with the destiny stuff, but with the rest? You’ve got us. Look at me,” she says, shaking Duck’s arm a little. “I mean it. You belong here same as Aubrey did.”
“Yeah, okay,” Duck says. “I mean, I guess.”
“Give it a chance,” Mama suggests. “I miss her too,” she adds, and they share a rueful smile. “Try room three.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Mama says, and then she lets him go.
Duck knocks on the door, shuffling his feet in the hall anxiously. There’s no response, and Duck is about to go check the dining room when the door swings open. And– the thing about Minerva having spent all those years alone on her planet, talking to her chosen ones through a featureless projection is– the thing is, her face is like an open book. So Duck watches her face cycle through surprise, hope, apprehension, and wariness in the handful of seconds before she manages to school her features into something carefully neutral.
"Come to Brazil with me," Duck blurts out. "Also, I'm sorry. Also, I think I'm in love with you.” He takes a beat. “None of that came out the right way."
Minerva blinks at him. "I'm sorry," Duck says again, helplessly. "Can we- shit, Minerva, can we talk about it?"
"I- yes. Come in, Duck Newton," she says, opening the door all the way. He shuts the door behind him and stands awkwardly in the entryway, hands jammed in his pockets. Minerva sits down at the edge of the bed and gestures for Duck to join her. He takes the chair at the desk, spins it around like he's on some goddamned after-school special and straddles it backward. If he sits down next to her, he's going to try and kiss her, and they’ll be right back where they started.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel like I didn’t want you around,” he starts. “And I figured out why I was being so weird about you borrowing my name.”
“Juno Divine informed me of the significance your culture places on surnames–” Minerva starts, but Duck shakes his head, and she falls silent.
"I, uh. I know I was just kind of a person you picked. And I'm glad you picked me and all, but your life has been tied to following around the gate for I dunno how long. And now that it's all over, I want you to do whatever you want to do without feeling like you’re tied to me."
"Wayne Newton, I-"
"No, wait, lemme finish," he interrupts. "If I don't say it, I'm gonna chicken out." Minerva obligingly falls silent. Duck drags his gaze up to meet Minerva's eyes.
"So I know you ain't tied to me anymore and that I just said you should do whatever you wanna do, but. I don't want you to leave," he says all at once. "If you gotta find your own bliss or whatever I'll respect that, but, I, uh." He falters, takes a deep breath, blurts out the rest in a rush: "I'll follow you anywhere, if you'll let me."
Minerva's quiet. Duck shuts his eyes, lets his head drop onto the back of the chair. "I don't want you to feel obligated or nothin’," he says tiredly. His voice reverberates against the wood. "I just thought you should know."
"I know that in my choosing you, Wayne Newton, I changed the course of your life," Minerva says, more quietly than Duck's ever heard her. Duck lifts his head. "Let me finish," she says before he can interrupt. "I let you say your piece, let me say mine." Duck nods. She graces him with a quicksilver smile, there and gone and tinged with something Duck can’t quite read.
"After our final battle, I promised myself that I would remain neutral in whatever actions you decided to take from then on. It wasn't until our, ah, conversation the other night that I realized- through my own inaction, I was still influencing your choices." She pauses, and Duck watches her carefully put together her next sentence. "I wanted to give you the choice, Wayne. To pursue a life without me, if you so chose."
"We're a couple of idiots," Duck says. "We both want each other to be happy, right?" Minerva nods. Duck swings himself around the chair, drops onto the bed beside Minerva. Their knees touch. "Then let's just- let's just do that."
"What do you want, Wayne?" Minerva asks. Duck puts his hand over hers. That question’s been tumbling through his head all day, all the sharp edges wearing away until the answer revealed itself, simple and solid and true.
“You.”
Minerva smiles, slow and fond.
"I really want to kiss you, now, too," Duck adds. The smile breaks into a laugh, and Duck leans in.
Minerva meets him halfway, and the kiss is slow, unhurried, deeper than any of their late-night encounters. Duck surrenders himself to it, lets himself get lost in lips and teeth and tongue. He reaches out for her, finds bare skin and hard muscle, can't stop the moan that bubbles up in his throat when Minerva pulls him closer.
"I want you to come with me to Brazil," he says between kisses. "We can plant trees, and make things instead of killing 'em, but you can still fight shit if you want–" he breaks off with a gasp as Minerva bites at his collarbone. "Or we can go somewhere else, if you didn't want to see the Amazon, but I wanna do something that’ll make a difference–"
"Wayne Newton, do we need to make travel plans just now?" Minerva asks, lips brushing against the shell of his ear. "Because I'd really like to be having sex with you instead."
"No, yeah, let's do that," Duck agrees. Minerva bites down and he swears so loud he hears someone laugh outside.
She shoves him over, and the force of his back hitting the mattress leaves him breathless. Or maybe it's just Minerva, climbing on top of him, pressing him into the mattress like he's something she wants to keep. There's four layers of cloth between them and it's too much, he wants to feel her, but he also thinks he might combust if he does. It's so intense: Minerva above him, looking down at him. It's something he's never thought he could have but it's so right. He never wants to fight again, but still: if she asked, he'd fight a hundred wars to keep this.
"I said I was with you till the end, Wayne Newton," Minerva says, putting a hand on his cheek. It's almost tender, almost possessive. "Did you not believe me?"
"I thought we were thirty four seconds from the end," Duck replies, leaning into the touch. "I thought it was just one of those things you said!" Minerva laughs. She pats his cheek gently, and Duck leans up to kiss her again.
They make out like teenagers, sprawled across the bed, fully clothed, all the lights on. It's pretty great. It's even better when Minerva gets impatient, strips off her clothes, yanks Duck's off too.
Through some miracle or another, there’s a condom tucked into Minerva’s bag. Duck isn’t going to question it when it means Minerva’s climbing back on top of him and slowly guiding him into her. Duck arches up into her, small of his back lifting off the bed. Minerva pushes him down, leaning forward to cover him with her body. She presses her forehead against his.
"The first time I chose you, Wayne Newton, it was a stroke of luck," Minerva murmurs. Duck closes his eyes at the reminder, and she makes a soft noise, stroking his hair until he looks at her again. "Believe me when I say I am choosing you now. ”
She starts to move again, slowly, sitting up enough to give herself leverage, but close enough to kiss Duck again and again and again. He strains up against her, grasping at any part of her he can reach. Minerva pulls his arms away gently, guiding them back to the mattress. She puts one hand around a wrist and squeezes, just hard enough to hurt. A shudder rips through Duck. His other hand fists in the sheets.
“My Chosen,” Minerva says, in that same steady voice. Her grip on his wrist doesn’t budge. “My champion.” Duck rocks up into her, heart racing, breath catching in his chest. “My Duck,” she says, and she’s beaming, and her eyes are starting to glow, and Duck wants to live in this moment forever–
Minerva pauses. Duck presses his tongue to the backs of his teeth to stop the whine from escaping his throat. "I can send more than just strength through our connection," she says. "Would you– with your permission, I want–" Duck nods frantically. Minerva closes her eyes, furrows her brow. One corner of her mouth curls up, and then it hits Duck like a sledgehammer. He can feel what she's feeling, and she can feel what he's feeling, and he can feel her feeling his feelings, and it goes on and on on.
Duck can't contain it, it's going to break him apart. He bucks underneath her, and Minerva leans in, presses her weight against Duck's wrists. Duck is pinned and surrounded and safe and loved and sofuckingclose–
He comes harder than he ever has in his life, Minerva's name in his teeth and her grin stamped on the inside of his eyelids and her hands tangled in his. Minerva's not far behind him, grinding against him fiercely until she comes to a shuddering halt, letting out a wordless cry as she collapses against him.
“There’s no way everybody didn’t hear us,” Duck says, once he finally manages to catch his breath. Minerva rolls to the side and places her head on his chest. The tattoos on her scalp are still fading.
“Nope,” she agrees, popping the p.
They’re going to need to talk about it. About closing the door on everything their lives have been built around. About what happens next. If the people they are outside of the things they’ve faced together are even compatible.
It can wait.
Life goes on.
Duck gets in contact with some folks from Brazil. Juno starts to make some noise about coming along. Minerva continues a one-woman campaign to befriend everyone in Kepler. Barclay’s been teaching her how to drive.
Once a week, Duck goes up to the Lodge on his own and has a drink with Mama and Barclay. Some other days, he and Minerva and Leo spend some time together. Jane has started calling to chat when she’s got a long commute to kill. All in all, Duck’s a hell of a lot less lonely than he was, before.
When Duck gets home from a shift one night, Leo's waiting for him in the parking lot, lounging around with a beat-up paperback and a beer.
"Listen, before you go in there," he says as Duck approaches, "it was her idea, okay? I was just here to supervise."
"What," Duck says flatly. Leo smiles at him, something crooked and loose.
"I'm glad you two figured it out," he says instead of answering. He shoves the book under his arm and heads for his own apartment. Duck watches him go and eyes his own door with trepidation.
"You've faced down monsters," he says under his breath, shaking out his shoulders. "Whatever the hell's going on in there is nothing."
There's... a little smoke. It's fine; Minerva's got the window open and the fan on blast. There are several candles on the counter, and his computer's shitty speakers are blasting a song he thinks he last heard at prom. Minerva herself is wearing a tux, jacket and crisp white shirt and all. She's got a black bowtie sloppily tied around her neck; it kind of makes Duck's brain short out.
"Duck Newton!" Minerva booms, easily drowning out the music. "I meant to surprise you! I have been discussing your courting rituals with our beloved friends Leo Tarkesian and Juno Divine, and they suggested a romantic meal!"
"They're not my courting–" Duck shakes his head, gets back on track. "What'd you make?"
"I attempted to prepare a Shepherd's Pie," Minerva says, frowning at the oven. "It seems the shepherd and I do not agree." Duck snorts, rounding the kitchen island to take a peek.
"Yeah, that's probably not salvageable," he says after a minute. "I appreciate the thought, though, Min, don't get me wrong." He tilts his head and she leans down so he can press a kiss to her jaw. "Wanna see what they've got cooking up at the Lodge?
"That would be good," she agrees, putting an arm around his waist. "My apologies, Duck Newton." He kisses her again, just for the hell of it.
"I don't really get our courting rituals either," he confesses, and Minerva laughs.
Duck cracks the window a little further and makes sure all the candles are out. They walk out of the apartment, and Minerva locks the door with the extra key Duck found for her underneath his potted fern. Leo sees them go, lifts his hand in a wave. Minerva takes Duck's hand, squeezes it a little too tight.
Together, they make their way up the mountain.