Ducktales Oneshots

What's in a Family?

In his twenty-something years of life (not that he's an adult) as a definitely real boy, Boyd has had (he mentally counts on his fingers) five families.

He's lucky. He doesn't know anyone else with so many families. He's an anomaly; an outlier.

Not in a bad way.

His first family was formed the moment he opened his eyes. A young, slightly nervous chicken smiles gently back at him. Waves of reassurance and safety wash over Boyd before his internal, online dictionary can define his feelings.

"All systems online. Welcome to the world, 2BO!"

Boyd loves the way young Gyro says his name. There's so much exhilaration, triumph, and love in his tone. During his time lying in the junkyard, before he powered off for good, he would replay that memory in his mind. His first moment, his core memory.

And his core creator, his core father.

Gyro and Boyd formed his first little family. They were a unit. The two of them against the world. Boyd loved sitting in the lab while Gyro ran tests and completed intern tasks. He would ramble on and on about various scientific things and projects.

(Dr. Akita was there too, and, for a time, Boyd considered him part of his little family as well. But Akita was always distant. He gave Boyd calculating looks he would only come to understand much, much later. Akita never joined them unless he absolutely had to, and he never directly addressed Boyd, or treated him like a real boy, the way Gyro did. Boyd didn't realize that until Gyro stopped, twenty years later, and Akita revealed his true colors.)

Boyd has always loved science. It's in his blood. (Well, it would be, if he actually had blood.) It's in his programming (the good part). But he mostly loves it because Gyro loves it.

Gyro talked endlessly about all kinds of science, especially robotics and coding. Boyd soaked it all up. When Gyro was caught in a ramble of ideas and defining unknown terminology never crossed his mind (more often than not), Boyd would search them up himself inside his brain. He relishes the rush that comes with learning. Boyd takes that original practice and tucks it close against his heart. He uses it to keep himself occupied when Gyro and Akita were busy with other brilliant, world-changing experiments (which only stung just a little), or for the endless ages he was stuck at the junkyard, or late at night, the darkness like a thick, smothering blanket around him, when Mark Beaks or Doofus or whichever family he's with has fallen asleep.

It's a link to his past, before he even realizes it. It stays with him when the memories of Gyro and Dr. Akita are incomprehensibly fuzzy and pushed to the back of his mind (but never gone, never gone).

(Someday, in the not-so-far future, Boyd will sit with the kids he's come to know as part of another family, and pore over studies and science about nature versus nurture. He, Huey and Webby are at the forefront of the research, with Lena trying and failing to pretend she's not that interested. She hangs just behind them, peering over their shoulders and squeezing Violet's hand so hard it must hurt, but Violet's face almost never changes. Dewey and Louie are there as well, less interested in the science itself but just as invested in the final result as the rest of them.)

Besides, while Boyd relishes the pursuit of knowledge, he always prefers when Gyro is a little less hyperfocused on his own projects, and realizes that Boyd doesn't have the knowledge and experience that comes with three degrees and a mentorship in robotics like he does.

He loves it most when Gyro explains the science and the terminology himself. Out of all the interesting things he's learned, those are always Boyd's favorites.