A/N: Okay, random, but... damn you, Netflix. Okay, I swear, the movie, 365 Days was not a source of inspiration... I didn't even know about this movie existing until like two weeks ago. (I also think it's fairly new.) But, yeah... (For those of you who get curious, that movie is very mature, be warned.)

Too Close for Comfort

Negaduck had been gone for nearly three days. It wasn't overly unusual. This had happened several times over the many months, nearly year, that Gosalyn had been his prisoner/unwilling guest. But this time felt different. She tried to tell herself that she was crazy, that it was just like any of the other previous "gone on business" times. But, things had changed between this time and the last.

The last time Negaduck had been gone from his skyscraper-turned-castle-turned fortress, Gosalyn had seen it as an opportunity to sneak about, gathering information. She had been newly gifted her necklace and wasn't about to squander such an opportunity. But, now, after… well… after their date—and several others—Gosalyn no longer felt the need to sneak around. It wasn't that she no longer thought Negaduck evil and full of dark plans for her city, and the world. No, quite to the contrary. Gosalyn knew he had designs on ruling the world. He didn't keep them from her. Yes, he had yet to share anything concrete with her… but, after several months of searching and prodding the Mallard Menace, she was pretty sure his plans weren't exactly concrete. Every time she asked about the plans now, he brushed off her questions.

So sneaking around, searching for clues to something that she pretty sure wasn't fully formed yet wasn't going to help her. Also, it wasn't like she was still tied to a chair or chained to the bed. With the mystical necklace, she had practically free reign about the place. And the scores of thugs that filled the skyscraper knew that she was Negaduck's—not exactly Gosalyn's favorite way of hearing about herself—so they left her alone. It was a childish way to feel about things, but… sneaking around had kind of lost its allure.

But once she had come to terms with the fact that she no longer felt it necessary to sneak about and search for ways to bring about Negaduck's downfall… what else was there for her to do in his absence? She tried flipping through the news channels. After the incident with Morgana, and the way her rebels (but, with the way they were attacking—and killing—Negaduck's thugs, were they even really her rebels anymore?) had organized that attack, she was curious to see what else they might be up to. The news anchors were oddly tight-lipped about the almost complete defeat of one of Negaduck's gangs—something that hadn't happened since… well, since Darkwing had been alive. Gosalyn almost wondered if Negaduck had threatened them—or if that's what his "gone on business" was this time. But that was proved to be incorrect as she stumbled upon a news report a few hours into her search.

The female anchor and her male co-anchor were speculating about who the "new" leader of the rebellion was. Gosalyn arched a brow. The anchors went on to assume that the rebellion's former leader, the Quiverwing Quack, must be dead, due to lack of appearance these last few months. This, of course, led to them bringing up the death of The Arrow Kid, and Gosalyn actually closed her eyes, as if that could block their conversation from her. But, after a moment, the anchors moved on with their chat and seemingly idle speculations. They referenced the new hero that had been spotted leaving the museum—the one Gosalyn had correctly guessed to be Tank Muddlefoot. They mentioned other sightings of this hero, and this was accompanied by photographic evidence of those sightings, and they wondered if he had taken over. Gosalyn let out a derisive snort. Tank was, well… a tank. He had none of the skills required for leadership. The anchors, in short order, came to the same conclusion, though through very limited and different means by comparison. Then, they showed a picture of a hero Gosalyn had not seen before.

The figure was female in a solid black suit that covered her from head to toe. Only an opening for her small, short beak was visible. The anchors revealed that they had yet to learn this new hero's name, and that they had only glimpsed her once, in the background, recently. This led into a discussion of "leading from the shadows" and if she was "Quiverwing's hand-picked successor." Gosalyn shook her head. This new heroine might be the one "leading from the shadows," but Gosalyn, seeing as she had not intended to be caught and held captive for nearly a year, had left zero instructions for any potential successors. She had no idea who this nameless, black-clad heroine was. It bothered her, to be sure. After all, her rebels had previously been instructed to kill only when absolutely necessary.

She used to, back in the earliest days, have a "no kill" rule, in effort to honor her father's memory. But the harder the streets of St. Canard got under Negaduck's rule, the looser her set of rules had to be. But death, under the rule of Quiverwing Quack, was an absolute last resort—a kill or be killed situation. Her looser definition of what it was to be a hero went on a growing list of reasons why she was sure Darkwing would not be proud of his baby girl. This budding romance—if, you know, she wasn't just losing her marbles completely—with his murderer and tyrant of the city, Negaduck, was another bullet point on that list.

Gosalyn lost a solid ten minutes of real time as she kept adding items to this Darkwing Disappointment list, finally shaking herself free of the spiral of shame as her eye caught the clock in the bottom corner of the new channel's screen. Negaduck would be gone from the skyscraper for a full seventy-two hours in about six minutes. She pursed her beak and told herself that she must be going insane.

Insane, because she was actually worried about the Mallard Menace. She knew Negaduck was capable, dangerous. She also knew that him being gone for days wasn't out of the ordinary (it just happened to have not been necessary for a while).

Besides, whispered that little voice in her mind that was usually busy berating her, wouldn't it be best for everyone if something did happen to him?

But that thought made her stomach feel like she had swallowed a whole ball made of snakes. She clutched it as she flipped so fast through the television channels that, had she had epilepsy, she probably would be inducing a seizure. Her hands were shaking, but she chose to ignore that. She felt ill, and she truly didn't know which thought was causing it more. That she was worried about Negaduck… or that she dared to be worried?

With a little tch of disgust at herself, she hit the power button on the remote and all but tossed it to the other end of the sofa. She took a deep breath and shook her head.

She wasn't herself. That much was clear. Neither Gosalyn Mallard nor Quiverwing Quack would ever be this worried over someone like Negaduck. Or any potential boyfriend.

She almost laughed herself to tears over that. The idea of using the word "boyfriend" to describe the nefarious Negaduck was nothing less than a joke. But… what else was he to her? Was he even her… she couldn't even think the word a second time. She drummed her fingers, hard, on the sofa's arm. She glared at the bedroom's door, as if she could make him appear through sheer willpower alone. (Because she was quickly discovering that she really shouldn't be left alone to her own thoughts.)

With a jolt of surprise, the door slammed open to reveal Negaduck, huffing and growling in the threshold. He took a quick step forward and slammed it shut again. Gosalyn blinked, rising to her feet. Something was off. Yes, Negaduck still did get a weird joy out of slamming doors, but he had started to avoid slamming the bedroom door open—she suspected this was in case she was sleeping but decided not to press her luck on actually finding out.

"What's wrong? Where have you been?" she asked in quick succession.

He huffed out a deep chuckle and took a single step forward—a small one. Gosalyn blinked and eyed the tyrant. His suit—usually immaculate in its cleanliness—was dirty and torn in small places here and there. His hat was a little askew on his head, and his beak was a bit swollen and bloodied, like he had been punched. His eyes were a little dark and sunken, like he was exhausted. He was still huffing, and he took another small step. Negaduck wasn't a "baby steps" kind of guy. He—in a more menacing fashion than the doppelganger that had raised her—was a large stride kind of guy, stomping his way into a crowd and demanding all eyes on him. That's when she caught it. He was holding his cape over his left side, only his fingers gripping it visible.

"What happened?" she demanded.

He held up a finger on his free, right hand. He reached into his suit with a pronounced wince and pulled out the switch that controlled the trap that Megavolt had set on the bedroom door. Only when it crackled to life did Negaduck move the cape.

Gosalyn gasped, shoving a hand to her beak. A large, bloody stain had spread over most of his left side. Acting on only instinct, she rushed forward and pulled him onto one of her shoulders, so that most of his weight rested on her. She guided him to the couch and eased him down. He chuckled, which sounded hoarse to her.

"It's not as bad as it looks," he assured her.

"You've got blood all down your side! Did you call Morg?" she asked.

Without a thought, she began to unbutton his suit, and his eyes widened at her. She had it half undone before she glared up at him.

"Did you call for Morg?" she demanded.

"Yeah, but I might cancel if you're so insistent on getting me undressed," he laughed.

She would have said something, or maybe even hit him, but the laugh ended in a groan as he grasped his injured side. Gosalyn decided that that would be punishment enough. She shook her head.

"Negaduck," she said.

He blinked at her, and that seemed to sober his mood. "I called. She's hip deep in magics, according to one of the other witches. Apparently, if she just stops in the middle of what she's doing, it's gonna cause a tear in reality, or an explosion, or blah blah. So, we've got a wait. And I'm sure as hell not gonna have one of her lackies working on me."

She looked up at the villain and noticed that he was a little paler than usual, and that his eyes looked a bit unfocused. Her brows knit together.

"You've lost a lot of blood. I don't know if we can wait for her," she said, standing.

She charged across the room, dropping to the floor in front of the console that held the television. She flattened herself out on her stomach and wiggled a hand underneath a decorative arch that rose less than an inch off the ground.

"Gos? What are you doing?" he called from his seat.

"Don't move," she ordered.

"My, aren't we bossy. Give you a little freedom and control, and it goes straight to your head, doesn't it?"

He chuckled again. Gosalyn shoved her hand under the arch, wincing as it just barely fit (and the fit was still tight). The ruby pendant of her necklace bobbed in her view as she continued her search under the console. She heard the cushions on the couch rustle, and she snapped at him to stop moving. After a moment, she found what she searched for and worked it out from underneath the piece of furniture.

A sewing kit and some fishing line. During her initial searches of the skyscraper, she had taken to hiding items she thought might be useful to her escape in the room that she was expected to return to each night. She got back to her feet and poured some of the amber liquor that Negaduck kept into a tumbler glass. She undid as much as the fishing line as she thought she might need—plus a little extra—and dropped it, as well as a few of the larger sewing needles, into the drink. She carried the tumbler with her back to the sofa. Negaduck stared at the glass, then at her.

"I'm not sure where to start with my questions, Gos," he said, his words a bit slurred.

"I hid items I thought I could use to escape, back when you first gave me the necklace. Now, I'm going to use them to close up that wound."

He arched a brow at her, but she slid into the seat beside him, setting the glass with the inedible items still floating within. She didn't actually ask so much as start posing him as needed to work him out of the suit. Before long, he was sitting in nothing but his boxers, hat, and mask. It had been easier than she had originally thought to get the part of the suit that was around the wound off. It was a clean cut, whatever had caused it, and very little of the suit's fabric had gotten caught up in the sliced flesh.

It was here, just before Gosalyn turned to grab the needle and fishing line, that she paused. She swallowed, hard, and averted her eyes as one glaring truth dawned upon her. This was the most undressed she had ever seen Negaduck. She could feel a blush coloring her cheeks as she made her body continue to move and grab the items she needed. When she turned to fully face him, she expected herself to freeze completely. She did, but not for the reason she originally thought.

His wound almost completely went the length of his left side, from under his arm to his waist. The arm itself was unscathed, and Gosalyn was starting to realize what a miracle this was. The wound, as she had noticed as she removed his suit, was not jagged. Whatever had caused this had made a very clean cut. She turned on her heel and went to the attached bathroom, returning with a cloth she had wetted with warm water. Slowly, she began to clean around the cut, noticing that some of blood had begun to clot into his feathers.

"How long ago was this?" she asked.

Negaduck did a right-shoulder only shrug. "One hour? Maybe two?"

She blinked at him, pausing only for a second to shake her head. "You've been bleeding for maybe two hours? And you've been gone for nearly three days? None of this is adding up."

"Wasn't aware you were in charge of my calendar," he growled.

She fought the smile that dared to quirk up at the sides of her beak. Apparently, Negaduck didn't like to be kept track of. The blood had slowed from the wound, which was a good thing. She threaded the needle with the fishing line, sparing the Mallard Menace a glance.

"This is probably gonna hurt," she noted.

She didn't wait for a response—she had half not expected one—which was why she gave a huge start when Negaduck reached across with his right hand to grab hers. Something about the force of his grip caused her to meet his eye.

"You could just let it go. Wait it out for Morg," he noted.

She blinked at him. "It could get really badly infected, and Morg's only so-so at certain healing magicks, if I remember things right. Fixes like this, sure. But pulling infection out of a wound? She was never great at that. Odds are, you'd end up as a yak or pudding. Plus, you're still bleeding a bit."

"You were hiding items to escape," he murmured, and if she wasn't crazy yet, she would have sworn he sounded a bit hurt by that. "This could be your way out. Let me get sick and I would slip. Or, possibly, I could di—"

"Stop."

He blinked at her. The force she had put behind that word had shocked even her.

"It would free the city," he whispered.

Her hands were suddenly shaking. Her chin quivered. But her voice remained as steady as her gaze. "Why are you saying this to me?"

"Tell me the thought hasn't crossed your mind."

She blinked at him. For a moment, her thoughts were blissfully blank. Finally, she pushed him back, gently, against the cushions so that she could better access his side.

"It hasn't. Now, stop being an idiot and tell me what really happened."

Gosalyn wasn't going to give her words—which had been true—much thought. He didn't answer immediately, and she chalked that up to the fact that she was currently threading a needle in and out of his flesh. Finally, he sighed.

"I put the word out on the street that I wanted the new leader of the rebellion. One of my gangs in the west side of town told me they had a good lead. I wanted to take this one out myself, make a point to the rest of the rebels that my rule was a permanent feature to this city. Especially considering the fiasco that you helped me out of with the museum."

Gosalyn pursed her beak and concentrated on her suturing. Negaduck had been very liberal in reminding her of her helping hand in saving Morg—and that one thug. He knew it got to her, that she had aided him in outsmarting her rebels. And it just made him happy as a clam whenever she got edgy because of it.

"So I met up with the gang. Took this new girl nearly three days to show back up where my boys had originally seen her. And she was ready for a fight. We ended up in a shoot-out with her and some of your other rebels."

Gosalyn finished up the sutures, her heart thudding in her chest. She thought of Cecilia and Tank, and several others she had become friends with. Negaduck saw the question in her eyes.

"I didn't recognize any of the rebels with her. I think they were new recruits."

He seemed annoyed that his instinct had been to give her, what he perceived as, comforting news. Gosalyn began to clean up the items she had used as Negaduck stretched experimentally. He gave a little "hmm" of pleasant surprise at her work. She shrugged at him.

"First aid is really useful for heroes to know, you know," she said.

She didn't add that most of her first aid had come from her and her father's camping trips through the years. Negaduck stood, popped his back, and moved to dig another suit out of his closet. Once he was dressed, it looked as if nothing had happened. He was Negaduck, tyrant and self-proclaimed ruler of St. Canard, her captor, her… whatever this was.

"Yeah, immortal and invulnerable aren't the same thing. I think Morgana deliberately made that distinction when she gave me that potion," he said, gingerly patting his injured side.

Gosalyn nodded. Normally, she would be enraged to remember what Morgana had done for Negaduck. But, now that she had become a little more accustomed to life on this side of the looking glass, she had to fight a laugh. He was probably right.

"Did you kill them?" she asked, tossing the rest of the items in a trash bin.

Negaduck grinned, and this was another one of those moments where Gosalyn felt her soul darkening. She couldn't fathom what he thought as he smiled at her, but she knew it couldn't be good.

"How cold," he purred at her. "No sympathy at all for your rebels anymore?"

She crossed her arms over her chest. "If I asked for mercy for them, would you grant it?"

"And if I asked you to aid me in disbanding them, would you?"

Neither answered. Both knew the answers.

"So what happened?" she asked after a measure of silence.

"The rebel lackies were taken care of. And we captured the new leader. She didn't go down without a fight, as you saw."

He indicated his newly stitched side. Gosalyn's eyes widened.

"What are you going to do with her?"

Negaduck reached inside his suit and hit the button for the electric trap over the doors. She had no idea when he had grabbed the switch from his other suit. "We're going to find out who she is, first of all. I have a couple of my thugs waiting with her out in the throne room."

He turned, ready to shout—no doubt to said thugs waiting beyond the doors—but Gosalyn crossed the room at a run and clapped a hand over his beak. He glared at her, but she shook her head in a panic.

"You can't bring her in here! She might know who I am, even without the Quiverwing costume!"

Negaduck lightly cupped her chin and grinned. "Oh, snookums. She's not gonna live long enough for it to matter."

He bellowed "Boys!" before she could protest further. Joe and Moe charged into the room, dragging the bound body of the new leader of the rebellion between them. Gosalyn gasped. The news anchors had been right. It was the girl clad almost entirely in black. Her beak, the only part of her body uncovered, was bloodied, bruised, and swollen. Her arms were tied together behind her back, and both her ankles were bound. They dropped her in a kneeling position, and Negaduck waved them away. They left the room, shutting the doors as they went.

The mysterious rebel lifted her face—and in her movements alone, Gosalyn could tell that it caused her a great amount of pain. She seemed to start when she saw that Negaduck wasn't alone. Negaduck, for his part, grinned.

"Don't worry. Your secret is safe with us," he said, motioning between himself and Gosalyn. "Now. Let's find out just who the hell you are."

The girl didn't even try to struggle as Negaduck gripped the top of her mask and pulled it away. Gosalyn gaped, too shocked even to gasp, once her face was revealed. Negaduck, however, gasped aloud, dropping the mask and backing a few steps away.

There, still mostly in black, her red hair still trying to curl despite being tightly bound to her head, was Gosalyn. Or, at least, she looked exactly like Gosalyn.

"Hi, Lord Negaduck," she said, her voice—while still identical to Gosalyn's, still coming off as softer and sweeter—dripping with sarcasm.

"You're NegaGosalyn," Gosalyn said.

"That's not possible!" Negaduck growled.

NegaGosalyn only smiled and shrugged. "I bet you have just so many questions."