Chapter Text
The concept of Soulmates was not one that Lena was familiar with.
It wasn’t like Aunt Magica had any interest in it and the first few years of her existence could be described using the word ‘confusing’ only as a charity. (Downright incomprehensible would be more accurate.) It had taken her several months to even figure out language, much less what the hell the screaming thing on the floor was and what it wanted from her.
Still, the concept of Soulmates never so much as crossed her mind. It probably never would’ve if it weren’t for some bad luck in Paris ending with her getting picked up by the local authorities and deposited in the closest group home.
(She just wanted a hot meal, was that too much to ask?)
The group home was one of the nicer ones she stayed at-- the host being a woman with a big heart and sizable paycheck didn’t hurt-- so Lena had decided to stick around for a couple of days (much to the chagrin of her shadow). The other kids were relatively close to her in age, but even at that point Lena had already known the best thing to do in a social situation was to keep her head down and mouth closed.
It was a week into her stay when a boy came back from school, shouting his elation and waving his wrist around like it was a prize.
The other foster kids had crowded around him, cooing over it and talking in excited, hushed voices that Lena only barely understood.
She got the gist of it, though. People were born with names on their wrists that told them who the one person in their life they could always trust would be. He, the boy with his wrist clutched so tightly she feared he’d give himself a bruise, had met his.
Aunt Magica had scoffed at the display and urged Lena once again to get a move on.
Some of the other kids swapped their names in bright, excited voices, brandishing their wrists like badges of honour.
Lena glanced down at her own only to find the skin empty.
She hid it behind her and nodded along to anyone who tried to engage her in conversation.
Her french was never that great anyway.
~
Later that night, as she carefully lifted up the edge of her windowsill and slipped out, she asked her aunt why she didn’t have a soulmark.
The witch laughed.
“Because you’re not real!”
Lena knew by this point that she was the only person who could hear her, but the sheer volume and shrillness of that sentence nearly sent her tumbling off the roof she’d climbed onto.
“Honestly!” the witch had continued, heedless of her charge’s near-death experience, “You having any form of sentience was a complete fluke! You were supposed to just be another body for me to inhabit after Scrooge took mine, but no!”
She spat, or at least attempted to. You don’t exactly have saliva when you’re just the absence of light.
“I must’ve poured too much magic into you or uttered the wrong words… you can’t have a Soulmate if you don’t have a soul.”
Lena had the nagging sensation that was a mean statement, but she couldn’t really argue with it. The nature of her existence was never a secret and Aunt Magica seemed to almost parade it around, like it was something to be proud of. Lena wasn’t real, she never was and never would be.
Her blank wrist was proof of that.
~
Most of the time hiding the absence of a mark was easy. Long sleeves, wristbands, sharpie scribbled across her wrist in an approximation of someone’s name she’d never actually get to meet (she was rather fond of Gertrude Webfoot) all worked wonders to throw off any prying eyes or overly concerned adults who would try and ‘help’ her. But she wasn’t infallible and occasionally she’d be caught with her wrist in the open, bare skin for the world to see.
Reactions varied, but among people her age (technically they were older than her but most people guessed she was fifteen so she just ran with it) the consensus tended to be disgust. Sometimes, if she was lucky, pity.
Apparently not having a soulmark just wasn’t acceptable. More than that, it was a sign of evil, of a lack of empathy or whatever. It didn’t matter, usually getting discovered just got her a verbal altercation, sometimes a beating, more than once an attempted murder… life was hard when you had no legal proof you existed. People thought they could get away with whatever they wanted with you.
She learned to be more careful, made sure her sleeves always fell over her hands, wore wristbands if she had to, even considered getting a tattoo at one point only to eventually deny it.
If she ever did run into a Gertrude Webfoot it wouldn’t be fair to tie her to someone who wasn’t even real.
~
“Hi, I’m Webby!”
The girl thrust out her hand, all but vibrating out of her skin. A smile tugged at the side of Lena’s mouth, trying its hardest to escape despite the ‘cool teen’ facade she’d spent years building. She was not going to succumb to this girl’s infectious energy, even as she grinned a smile so wide she was sure it could be seen from space.
“Hey,” she muttered, taking the hand with a reproachful shake. It took more energy than it should have to tear her eyes from the smiling face and set them back on her paper.
“Is that a vintage Sumerian Talisman?!”
Lena had to bite her bottom lip to keep it from quirking up in a smile.
“Dunno, found it at a thrift shop…” she pretended to scribble something on her paper.
“You, uh, you’ve got some pink in your hair, I think someone pranked you.”
“It’s supposed to look this way.” Lena deliberately did not glance up at the girl now adorably bouncing her thumbs together.
“Oh…” a beat of silence. Then, almost like the thought couldn’t stand being trapped for longer than a second, “I like your shirt!”
Finally, Lena let the smile lift the corners of her mouth, placing the sheet of paper back down.
“Not my shirt,” she offered with a smirk, “actually got it off the lead singer of the Featherweights after a gig in Paris.”
Stars filled the girl’s eyes.
Lena felt her shoulders drop, just a little. She was cute. Not to mention practically glowing with energy, something that Lena often found she sorely lacked.
Things were finally starting to look up, she’d made it to Duckburg, gotten herself a (mostly) dry and safe place to sleep, and attracted the attention of a cute girl on the beach.
Freedom was finally within her grasp, the eclipse was only a few months away. Everything was coming up Lena.
~
Everything was not coming up Lena.
“That’s my house,” Webby-- the very cute, very cool, very much Lena’s current Favourite Person (a title not too terribly hard to earn all things considered)-- thrust a finger forwards and up, pointing directly at the atrocity on the hilltop Lena had spent the past several nights being forced into staring at while her shadow ranted like a madwoman beneath her feet. “If we can make it there, we’ll be safe.”
A weight dropped in Lena’s stomach, so sudden and so violent she thought she was going to be sick.
“Woah,” her mouth moved without her permission, sputtering off some half-thought out compliment while her brain ran wild.
She was dumb. So very, very dumb. Of course she’d be unlucky enough to finally actually find a girl who she liked only for her to somehow be related to the stupid man that got her stuck in this mess in the first place. Fan-fucking-tastic.
Fate really hated her, didn’t it.
She didn’t have any longer to dwell on it as three skateboard-riding Beagle Boys came bounding over the rooftops, but that weight remained in her stomach.
~
“Aunt Magica,” Lena tried her very hardest to convince herself that she was doing what she had to, what she had been created to do. She wasn’t a person, after all. It was her nature, she was just a shadow, just a creature. All she could do was hope that Webby would understand. “I’m in.”
~
“I made us matching friendship bracelets!”
The weight that had long since made itself a home in Lena’s stomach made a mad attempt to escape through her throat. Guilt was a new emotion, one that Lena hadn’t known she was capable of feeling, but it was quickly becoming one of her least favourite.
It was also very distracting so Lena didn’t have time to process what exactly was happening before Webby had grabbed her by the wrist and slipped her sleeve down to place a corded blue and purple band upon it.
Webby froze, the breath caught in Lena’s throat.
“I uh,” she spluttered, searching for an explanation that didn’t lead back to ‘i’m not a real person, I have no soul, and I’m here to help your Uncle’s worst enemy get revenge on him, please don’t hate me?’
Webby didn’t seem to notice though. In fact, she didn’t seem to notice anything at all. Her eyes had zeroed in on the bare patch of skin where a name should’ve been and Lena watched as she brushed her fingertips over it, almost reverently.
“Webby?”
Webby didn't answer, not verbally at least. Instead, she carefully placed her wrist next to Lena’s, showing off the matching patch of bare skin.
The breath she’d been holding rushed out of her and she had to resist the urge to touch Webby’s hand.
“You…” she found herself whispering, “you don’t…”
She watched, stunned, as Webby carefully and gently turned her hand over so she could intertwine their fingers, press their bare wrists together. A smile, just as wide and blinding as it had been when they first met, was tugging over her face and Lena was still so stunned she couldn’t find it within herself to feel guilty this time.
“I knew there was something special about you.” was all Webby said.
The weight all but evaporated, replaced with a light, fluttery feeling. It was just as strange as the guilt had been but… nicer, somehow. A good kind of strange.
It grew stronger when Webby slipped a matching cord on her own wrist.
~
“I thought you said that I couldn’t have a mark because I didn’t have a soul?”
“Are you even hearing yourself?!” Aunt Magica roared. Lena rolled her eyes hard enough to pop a blood vessel… if she even had blood vessels… actually come to think of it she doesn’t think she’s ever gotten a cut before… does she even bleed?
“It’s just that Webby-”
“We were so close, the Dime was in your grasp and all you care about is your stupid little pet!”
“She’s not stupid!”
Lena knew, almost immediately, that was the wrong thing to say.
Magica’s form tripled in size and Lena stumbled back, her spine making painful contact with one of the pillars of the amphitheatre.
“Oh?!” She all but shrieked. The familiar sensation of her feet becoming welded to the ground surged up her spine. “What was that? I must’ve misheard, it almost sounded like you were defending the Ward of our sworn enemy!”
Lena grit her teeth and pressed her eyes shut. Aunt Magica couldn’t actually hurt her, she would’ve long ago if she could’ve, but that never quite made her feel better. Especially not when she got like this. She was just so loud and dark and, sure, she couldn’t touch her but…
That never stopped her from blocking out all the lights, washing the room in an endless black and screaming until Lena’s ears rung like a church bell before mass.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, hands clamped over her ears like that’d do anything to quiet the screams of a woman who spoke in her mind. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t forget what your purpose is, Shadow.”
Magica’s voice washed over her in waves, travelling down her spine and digging greedy little hands into the flesh until Lena was forced to bring her knees to her chest, curling into a ball.
“If you want to entertain fantasies of destiny or fate or,” she didn’t exactly have lips to curl but Lena got the impression she would’ve if she could’ve, “ Soulmates… I can’t stop you, but remember you have no chance of getting them if you don’t Get. Me. That. Dime.”
~
“Does it ever bother you?”
Lena’s known Webby for a few months now and, well, she’d be a liar if she said she wasn’t growing quite fond of her. Aunt Magica didn’t like it but as much as Lena understood she was bound to her she couldn’t entirely believe that her life was completely hers. Especially not now because as much as the ‘soulless’ explanation made sense for her, Webby…
There was no way Webby didn’t have a soul, she was Webby.
Webby looked up from where she was sharpening the knife that Lena had given her upon arriving. (She’d gotten it buried in her abdomen by a would-be mugger earlier that week but, as she quickly learned she didn’t, in fact, bleed. The mugger had been so startled by her apparent immunity to knives they’d taken off in a sprint and Lena was left with a switch-blade she didn’t know what to do with.)
“Does what bother me?”
Lena thought, for a moment, of dropping the question right then and there but… but no. Something in her gut wouldn’t let her.
“The…” she waved her wrist limply.
Webby hummed, thoughtful, and went back to sharpening her blade.
“It used to,” she muttered, “when I was little. I thought it was a sign I’d never get to leave the mansion.” She chuckled, soft.
Slowly, Lena sat up. She hadn’t expected that response.
“What changed?”
“Eh,” Webby shrugged, “mostly I just kinda forgot about it. I mean, you’ve met my family. Soulmates kinda take a back burner to constant near-death experiences and life-threatening adventures.”
Lena supposed she had a point.
“But also,” Webby dragged the switchblade over the wet-stone one final time before dropping it in the tub of water waiting next to it. “That kind of stuff just happens sometimes.”
Lena blinked.
“What?”
“Yeah,” Webby smiled at her, oblivious to the ground falling out beneath Lena, “I mean, sure, most people have soulmates but it’s not, like, a universal constant. Sometimes people just don’t have soulmates, sometimes they’re unrequited like Scrooge’s, sometimes they have multiple like Donald, sometimes they change with time, fate is fickle like that.”
Lena stared at Webby like she’d just proclaimed the earth was flat.
“You… really?”
Webby cocked her head to the side.
“Yeah… Granny gave me books about it when I was a kid. I guess she wanted me to understand that it was ok…” she trailed off, glancing at Lena’s wrist. Subconsciously, Lena was already holding it close to her chest. “Does it bother you?”
Lena blinked, once again blindsided. Webby rarely asked about her personal life, at least not things she couldn’t spin into some exciting story that wouldn’t reveal just how sad her life really was. Her gaze dropped to her feet and her knees came to rest against her chest.
“I uhm…” she cleared her throat. “... no one ever… I didn’t know that…”
Gosh, why did talking have to be so hard?
Somewhere Magica was tugging on her shadow, urging her to shut up before she gave something away. Lena ignored her.
“I just thought something was wrong with me…”
She couldn’t see her face, but Lena could feel the sad look Webby was giving her like a physical force. Before she could splutter some half-assed assurance that it didn’t matter, though, arms were wrapped around her shoulders and a head was buried in the crook of her neck.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, you beautiful idiot.”
The smile that pulled at the corners of Lena’s mouth didn’t reach her eyes. The warring feelings of weight and a feather-like lightness fought for control of her chest. Something warm was welling in her eyes and trying its hardest to escape.
She settled for hugging Webby back.
“Thanks Pink.”
~
All things considered, Lena did not imagine herself a particularly needy child.
She didn't complain, at least not about things like hunger or sleep or the state of her living space.
Now, though? Now Lena knows what it means to want, to really want, with all of your being. She'd thought she wanted freedom, to escape her aunt and be able to live a life that didn't revolve around a half-dead sorceress. Now though, she knows it's changed.
Aunt Magica does too.
The thing is it doesn't feel like how wanting freedom had. It's not something that just vaguely resonates in the background, that she can ignore in favour of pretending everything is fine. No, this kind of wanting hurts.
It burns in her chest, chokes her lungs, leaves her staring at her empty wrist late into the night and imagining a name inscribed there that'll never be.
Lena wants Webby, and Magica knows that she isn't a price she's willing to pay so she takes matters into her own hands.
~
Dying hurts.
Like, a lot.
It hadn’t really occurred to Lena up until this point that she had no real measure to compare against when it came to pain. Sure, she’d gotten kicked around and roughed up plenty of times in her existence, but when you don’t bleed and don’t have internal organs that can get bruised or injured ‘pain’ is little more than a sensation. A momentary thing. There are no bones to break, just limbs to be reset. No blood vessels to pop, no skin to knit itself back together. Lena wasn’t real and so her pain wasn’t either.
Not like death.
Death hurts like a bitch.
It feels like every fibre of her being is being ripped apart, torn from itself seam by seam, follicle by follicle, memory by memory. She’s shredded and torn and coming undone until there is nothing left to be.
In theory, she’s existed much longer than fifteen years. In theory, she’s existed just as long as Magica has, she is her shadow after all, but she’s never been able to remember a time before she was brought to life. This, she assumes, is what it feels like to be returned to that, returned to the void of nothingness, of nonexistence.
This is what it feels to lose everything that makes you a person.
It is agony, though Lena doesn’t know what she has to feel it with. She has no nerves, no heart, no body, all she has is…
What?
Her soul?
Does she have a soul after all?
What a terrible way to finally figure that out. Death makes all things clearer she guesses. Puts things into perspective. She only had fifteen years on earth and she spent all that time being ordered around by a fucking shadow. How pitiful. How stupid. How pathetic.
How Lena.
She doesn’t know if they’re her thoughts or Magica’s, is there even a difference?
There is nothing left for her and now all she can do is float in the infinite void with her regrets and her pain. The void is trying to return her to itself but it can’t, whatever spark of life Magica accidentally gave her when she created her won’t let it. She was never supposed to exist in the first place. If Magica’s stupid spell had just worked the way it was supposed to then she wouldn’t have to feel like this. Existence is a prison she can’t escape even now.
The world is screaming.
Not at her, she doesn’t exist, but it is screaming. A dull roar, really. Words tossed back and forth between millions of voices, all vying for her attention and all going unheeded. The Shadowrealm is infinite, after all, and she’s just one of thousands anchored to Magica. Trying to distinguish anything from the ocean of voices whirling around is as fruitless as trying to find a needle in a haystack the size of the planet.
Pointless.
And yet, not impossible.
She doesn’t do it intentionally-- and later she’ll call it a rare act of mercy from Fate-- but Webby has always been good at screwing with her intentions.
“I just got a family! I thought I had a best-friend in Lena, but you took all that away!”
It should be just another cry in the endless void of sound, but it wells up inside Lena like a water pipe fitting to burst.
Another thing to add to her list of regrets: Webby.
Collateral damage wasn’t something she’d ever had to worry about before. For the first fourteen years of her life the closest thing she had to an emotional attachment was the shadow constantly screaming at her, there was no one to hurt. No one cared about the homeless teenage runaway in any capacity other than pity, the worst she could do was disappoint someone, and in the grand scheme of things disappointment was a passing emotion.
Then Webby came along and suddenly she got to experience people actually giving a damn. The McDuck's were a family of misfits, idiots, and international incidents waiting to happen and Lena had never wanted so badly to be a part of something.
Webby made her want, like some stupid snotty-nosed spoiled brat, to be a person. To be good. To be anything other than what she was created to be. She made her want to be better to the point that it hurt, to the point where Magica had to physically wrench control away from Lena like she’d always intended but never been able to.
Webby made Lena want so badly to be good that she actually stood up for herself for once, and she still managed to let her down.
“Lena couldn’t be your friend because she was never real!”
If Lena had eyes she would’ve closed them.
“I don’t believe you!”
A pressure is building, though Lena doesn’t know where it possibly could, she doesn’t have a body. It feels like a laugh, or like it wants to be a laugh, though certainly not a happy one. More a… morbid sort of amusement.
She supposes that Webby is right, she is real in at least some capacity. The fact that she is still sentient is proof of that.
For all the good that did her.
“You had sleepovers with a shadow, you gave it a friendship bracelet! Honestly it’s embarrassing how pathetic you were!”
That familiar ‘need-to-protect’ that Lena had started to develop, pulses. It’s stupid, fruitless. She can’t do anything, she’s just a consciousness.
“Here, let me put you out of your misery.”
Lena’s stomach drops. Well, it would drop if there was something to drop, as it is she’s just left with the familiar weight of guilt settling over her. Aunt Magica couldn’t possibly mean that she… Webby was just a kid.
A kid that grew up in the house of her greatest enemy and who she knew full well meant a lot to him.
Yeah, she would.
Something wells up in her again, not a laugh this time. It feels just a bit like a hand grabbing her by the back of the shirt, tugging insistently and with growing intensity.
It happens so fast she barely even has time to react.
One moment she’s consciousness in the endless void of nothingness, the next she’s…
What is she?
She’s not… it’s not like she has a body again. It’s not like she’s back to as she was before Magica took control, before she dragged her back into the shadow realm with little more than a backwards glance. She can’t feel the pull of gravity, the sensation of air on her skin, the need to breathe.
But she can see.
See the startled face of her shadow, her Aunt before her, staff held up and sending a beam of murderous magic (just like the one that killed her) at the cowering form of the one person to ever believe in her.
Anger is an emotion she is infinitely familiar with.
“Get away from my best friend, Aunt Magica!”
Dying the second time isn’t any less painful than the first, but at least this time she knows that Webby won’t blame her for her failure.
~
When she latched onto Webby’s shadow it had been an entirely subconscious choice. The blast, or whatever, that destroyed Magica’s powers and sent all of the shadows in Duckburg back to their rightful owners had freed her from whatever endless void she’d been confined to (which, as it turns out, was not the shadow realm. The real shadow realm was a lot more complicated.) and left her floundering about like a chicken with its head cut off. She only managed to grab onto Webby at all because whatever she’d done to that Friendship bracelet had turned it into an anchor of sorts. Most of the other shadows went out of their way to avoid it so in her disoriented state it practically glowed like a lighthouse.
It worked out in her favour, at least, even if sometimes it didn’t really feel like it.
The upside is she’s no longer confined to just the inner workings of her own brain, the downside is that she’s forced to watch helplessly as the world goes on without her. More accurately: as Webby goes on without her.
She’d never doubted for a second that Webby was anything short of remarkable. She was smart, skilled, adorable, the list went on… but she wasn’t infallible either. Lena knew that all too well now.
Oh, she put up a good front for the boys, for Scrooge and Donald, the reporters, heck, even Colonel Crumpet. As far as any outside observer would be able to tell, Webbigail Vanderquack was coping with the loss of her first friend who wasn’t obligated to tolerate her incredibly well.
Lena had the unfortunate privilege of not being an outside observer anymore.
That first night after everything went down was the worst. Lena was emotionally drained and just barely holding onto her own consciousness by the thinnest of threads, she’d almost mistaken Webby’s stuttered breathing for allergies, but they didn’t stop.
Then, they got louder.
Then, they grew wet.
She didn’t really know how to manipulate the shadow she was confined to yet so she couldn’t change her perspective, but from her position against the wall she could just barely make out the rise and fall of Webby’s shoulders and how they trembled in the light.
Webby wasn’t a loud crier, or a messy one. She didn’t writhe on the bed, didn’t clench her hands into her pillows and blankets like she was holding on for dear life. No, she went limp.
Tears slid down a face that Lena couldn’t see, she could just barely hear teeth chattering together, could only vaguely imagine what facial expression she might be wearing against her pillow.
All she could do was listen, watch in her negative perspective, warped by the damn angle of the light and the wall. All she could do was watch as her first friend cried herself to sleep, mourning a girl no one else would.
The tears didn’t stop after the first night, but not once did Webby break in her ability to hide them. The family offered her their condolences of course, asked her how she was doing, Scrooge even offered to get her grief counselling. Webby just waved it all off with a smile and a shrug.
“It’s ok. I’m not giving up on her yet.”
Lena couldn’t tell if that sentiment was sweet or sad. The McDuck's seemed to lean in the direction of the latter.
Regardless it was a front, no matter if she meant the words or not. Lena couldn’t count the number of nights she’d spent watching as Webby poured over book after book, turning pages until her fingertips were raw, staring at words until her eyes became too watery or too heavy to keep open.
She would’ve given anything to place a blanket over those shoulders that seemed much too small for all they carried. She would’ve given anything to lift her head and slide a pillow beneath it. Anything to move the hair from her face.
The nights got further and farther in between and Lena was ashamed to admit that was the only reason she knew time was passing. The sun didn’t rise and set in the Shadow-realm and Lena’s internal clock was already fucked up before she lost her corporeal form. Webby was the only metric for her to measure against.
Eventually, the research-fueled all-nighters had become a rarity rather than a nightly occurrence. Even if the library visits still occurred weekly, Webby didn’t stumble home with half a bookshelf in her arms anymore.
Healing, she told herself. Webby was healing. That was good.
Why did it hurt?
Because if she was real, if she was going to admit to herself that Lena De Spell or whatever the fuck she was supposed to call herself actually had free will and all that junk she also had to admit she was a selfish bitch.
Honestly, she’d screwed Webby over for weeks before deciding she cared about her more than her own freedom, what kind of selfish asshole did that?
The same one that, when Webby went to the Library on one of her designated research days and all but tossed it out the window the moment she was confronted with a small dark-haired girl, had to remind herself that Webby couldn’t actually hear her when she screamed at her to leave.
Selfish.
Selfish, jealous, stupid little brat.
Lena never had to think of herself in the guise of a child before. Sure, she’d only existed for fifteen years but she’d never grown during that time and any change that had occurred was internal. She was just Lena and that was all she’d ever be. In the shadow realm that hadn’t changed exactly, she still didn’t age, but she was forced to confront the reality that, without Magica constantly breathing down her neck, she wasn’t entirely sure what she was supposed to do.
She was lost and confused, directionless, and Magica’s absence made her feel it all that much more. If nothing else, Lena had never been alone before, even when she had wished she was.
She didn’t know how to be alone.
She will admit she jumps to conclusions, will admit that she saw a girl look at Webby and Webby smile back and nervously gather herself up to go through the motions of making a friend for the first time since her death and she feels like the shadow realm will finally come up and consume her. She will admit that when Webby smiles at Violet she feels angry and betrayed and protective but most of all…
Most of all she just feels resigned.
Then she pulls them through.
~
When the dust has all settled, when the world is colour and Lena’s body once again can feel the pull of gravity she’s so overwhelmed she doesn’t even notice.
It’s just that she’s here . She’s alive and whole and it’s all because of a little girl with too much hope and too much love to give. That’s more than she ever dared to hope for.
It’s not perfect, there’s still a lot of things she needs to get through, needs to come to terms with, but just the ability to actually feel the sensation of weight. The need to breathe. The ability to close her eyes.
It’s enough to make her want to cry.
It’s enough to make her completely forget about anything else for one night and be the teenage girl she’d always been pretending to be.
When Beakley, Scrooge, and Della all finally notice her in the morning she is so hopped up on relief, adrenaline, and lack of sleep she doesn’t even have it in her to poke fun at their gob-smacked expressions. (Or make a comment on Beakley’s new hobby). All she manages is a silent wave before diving into her pancakes with gusto and savouring the sensation of taste like she’d never done so before.
By the time everyone has finished their bewildered/shocked/concerned interrogation, the triplets have squeezed all of the breath from her lungs (does she have lungs now?), Scrooge has talked to some social workers about getting her a place to stay, she’s moved what little belongings she has into Violet(of all people)’s house, gotten introduced to her dads, and actually had a chance to sleep in a real bed without having to worry about the ceiling caving in on her during the night or fading from existence the absolute last thing on her mind is her blank, empty wrist.
Then, the next morning, she gets to take her first shower in almost a year.
And she sees it.
April McDuck
What the absolute Fuck.