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Dewey slips away from the clean-up effort. It’s going to be another week or two before the mansion stops smelling like old pizza and sadness, and anyway, he rationalises, he wasn’t making much headway on his particular grease patch. He hums a little something along the lines of getting a new cloth, thunks his old one into the bucket by Mrs Beakley and strolls out. Scrooge was only without his staff for three days, but the corridor is laid low with cobwebs and streaks of grime on hardwood. The squick-squick-squick of his feet on the tacky floorboards is muffled by the oppressive, musty air. Dewey hurries right past the laundry room where the rags are kept, and pounds up the grand staircase. From there it’s a straight run to the end of the hall, a left, two rights, scramble up another little staircase and through the door.
Webby not being in her room is only a minor setback. Her room looks as it always does, bookshelves stretched up to the ceiling, worn rug underfoot littered with stuffed toys and sharp objects.
“Webby!” Dewey calls. The element of surprise isn’t one best used with Webby. It tends to get you grievously injured, or at the very least, cuffed and dangled out the window. “Webby, I’m coming up! Don’t shoot!” He’s balancing on the desk, ready to leap for the attic cord. “It’s Dewey, by the way!”
Right as he jumps, the trapdoor swings down and he promptly smacks his beak into it and does a spectacular flip across the room.
“Sorry!” Webby yelps, peering down from the dark. “Are you dead?”
“No!” Dewey yells back, cheerfully enough, though his hands are cupped around his beak. “Did that look as cool as it felt?”
“Yeah,” Webby admits, unfolding the ladder and sliding down. “Also looked like it hurt, though.”
“It’s okay,” Dewey says, rubbing hard at his beak and then taking his hands away cautiously. “At least I got you to come down.”
“What does that mean?” Webby singsongs, unconvincing. She’s never been a good liar. “I haven’t been avoiding anyone, especially not you!” Her hands are darting around her desk, poking pens and plastic monsters back and forth.
“Webs.”
“It’s not suspicious that I haven’t been around! I’m just busy, maybe - maybe Scrooge stashed a bunch of pizzas in my room the way he did with yours! I might have been cleaning that up!”
Dewey looks at her.
“If that happened,” Webby mutters. “Which it didn’t. My room was fine. There was a rat but now we’re friends.” She deflates. “I’ve been avoiding you.” She splays her hands flat on the desk, head bowed. “I understand if you don’t want to be friends anymore.”
“Hey, Webby, c’mon.” Dewey pads over to her and places a tentative hand on her shoulder, touch feather-light. “You’re, like, my best friend. I just wanna talk to you. I dodged out on cleaning duty ‘cause I was worried about you. But don’t tell Launchpad I said you’re my best friend, he’ll be devastated.”
Webby grins weakly. “You don’t hate me?”
Dewey looks bemused. “Why would I hate you?”
“Because,” Webby toes at the ground. “Because of what Magica said.”
-
You made a friendship bracelet for a shadow! You fell in love with a shadow!
It had felt like the world had fallen out from under her. The hard, cold, jutting edges of gold coins digging into her hands were barely-there touches. She felt blood pounding in her head, dizzying her and, as if looking through a soap bubble, she could see Dewey. He just had to be there with her (he was always there with her!) when Magica bared her soul like that. He looked bewildered, eyes wide and mouth agape, trying to process what he’d just heard.
Webby had felt like doubling over and puking. Magica’s laughter was ringing in her ears, and she was advancing, and Dewey was grabbing at her sleeve and babbling, and the bracelet around her wrist had gone white-hot and blinding…
-
A finger poked square into her forehead snaps her out of her reverie. She opens her eyes and looks, again, at Dewey looking confused and hurt and thinks oh, why did I remind him ?
“Webby,” he says gently, “it’s okay.”
“It’s not ,” she says harshly, tugging at her hair. “Magica was right , I’m pathetic and weird and wrong, and I couldn’t even have a friend without messing it up like I always do. I should just go back to being on my own, like before you guys came.” She sniffs. Her shadow flickers unseen. “At least I couldn’t mess it up then.”
Dewey screws his face up. He grabs her wrist, and his grip catches her bracelet and she’s flooded with hot shame again because she hasn’t even had the decency to take it off. He turns and marches for the door, tugging her along, and she goes willingly.
She doesn’t ask where they’re going, but her encyclopaedic knowledge of the mansion informs her anyway, and she follows him up staircases and out onto the balcony and up the ladder, until they’re on the sloping roof of the west wing.
“Remember when we came here stargazing, with Launchpad?” Dewey asks, picking his way over to the exact spot they’d lain.
Webby nods. “We couldn’t agree on who we were seeing in the stars,” she says, watching him settle down on the smooth slate, lit up orange in the setting sun.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Webs,” he tells the sky, arms crossed behind his head. “You must really be missing her.”
“I am,” she says quietly. “You really don’t hate me?”
“I could never hate you, Webby,” Dewey tells her earnestly. “Especially not for loving someone.”
Webby twists her hands in her skirt. “What about Huey and Louie?”
“What about them?”
“Do they hate me?”
“What? No!” Dewey sits up, squinting at her. “They wouldn’t, anyway, but… you think I told them?”
She blinks. “Yes…?”
“Webby!” He yells. “Ugh!” He flops onto his back again, furious. “Why would I tell them? It’s your secret, and you didn’t even tell me! I just found out by accident!”
“Are you mad I didn’t tell you?”
“No.” He crosses his arms tightly. “Maybe.” He rolls over and his next words are muffled. “I don’t know.”
“Okay,” she says simply. After a moment he rolls back over and sits up, and she takes a tentative seat a foot away. Dewey shoots her a glare, then reaches out and yanks her close to his side, arm around her shoulders.
“You’re my best friend,” he says again, staring ahead at the sunset. “You can trust me with anything. I trusted you with…” he looks down at his feet. “With the most important thing to me.”
“Sorry,” Webby whispers. She lets her hands curl in the sleeve of his shirt, and she feels it when he shakes his head.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for. I mean it.” He turns to face her. “Listen.”
“I am.”
“Do you trust me with this?” He’s looking at her, eyes wide. She’s nodding before she even thinks to answer. They turn back to the horizon, shades of violet settling around them. Their shadows are long and strange.
“Hey, Dewey?” She asks, after a seeming eternity has passed and the sky is dark.
“Yup?”
“Can this… Can this be our next investigation? Or, I guess, adventure?”
Dewey stands suddenly, knocking her off balance, then drops to one knee before her. “Webbigail Vanderquack, I would be most honoured to be your humble servant.”
Webby laughs, the sound loud and bright in the velvet dark. “Tell me, noble Dewford. Do you hereby solemnly swear your allegiance to me?””
“I do!”
“Do you vow never to traffic with traitors? Aside from, you know, our friends?”
He laughs. “I do!”
“Do you vow to be brave, to be charitable, and to always tell of your escapades?”
“Oh, you know I do!”
She lays the flat of her hand on his shoulder, and whispers, “I don’t have a sword on me, but it’s inkeeping with tradition to use your hand, too.”
“Okay!” He whispers back.
“ Sois chevalier, au nom de Dieu, ” she announces grandly. “ Avancez chevalier !”
Nothing happens.
“That means arise, knight ,” she hisses. Dewey leaps to his feet with a yelp.
“Now that the accolade has been transferred,” she says, businesslike, “there’s one more part of the ceremony.”
“Ooh, do I have to prove my strength? Ride a horse? Fight a horse?”
Webby answers him by pulling him close in a hug, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek.
“This is better,” Dewey mumbles.