Archive of Our Own

Lena doesn’t sleep much in McDuck Manor.

It’s a whole thing.

At first it was because she usually had grim plans of vengeance to carry out for Magica and there wasn’t time for bed what, with all the running around after money sharks and number one dimes. After that it was because she was a spirit and therefor not alive and therefor didn’t require sleep, try as she might. Then it was because Magica was trying to get into her head and Lena couldn’t drop off lest her aunt (?) wrestle control from her. And now it was just because she couldn’t.

She stills goes for sleepovers of course, Violet at her side now. It’s just that for Lena, they’re less sleepovers and more just…overs.

She’s sure if she told Webby or Violet that she still couldn’t sleep, they’d offer her all kinds of solutions. Warm milk to drink, soothing sounds to listen to, special pillows and weighted blankets, or breathing techniques and positive affirmations.

The thing is, Lena’s not good at accepting help. Too much of it and she feels like she’s being suffocated. She spent so long needing to be self-sufficient that it’s still hard to get used to things that most people take for granted. She’s not used to living in a house. She’s no sure how to act around people who actually like her. She doesn’t know how to react to people offering her help, rather than being told to toughen up and stop being a baby.

So, when she can’t sleep one night while Webby and Violet snore peacefully by her side, Lena slips away and into the darkness of the mansion. The shadows cling to her as they are want to do, sensing perhaps a kinship in this young girl who never feels quite like flesh and blood. At this hour, Lena knows she won’t be disturbed. After all, she’s the only one crazy enough to be up this late.

Right?

Only apparently not, because there’s a light in one of the many, many living rooms that Scrooge McDuck’s mansion boasts- a clear sign that somebody’s in there. After all, the penny-pinching duck would never allow a light to be needlessly left on, thus raising his electricity bill for no apparent reason. Looks like Lena wasn’t the only one not sleeping after all.

The only sensible thing Lena can do is just head back to Webby’s room and lie awake until morning, where she can convince Webby and Violet that she got a full night’s sleep once they start to rouse.

Never let it be said that Lena was sensible.

She pokes her head around the door, hoping to catch a brief glimpse of whoever was awake. If anything, it’ll clue her in to whether she should make a hasty retreat. If it’s Teatime well…it was nice being alive again while it lasted.

It’s not any of the people she’s expecting though. Not an insomniac Della, or a hyperactive Dewey, or even the ghost butler up to ghost business.

It’s…Louie?

Louie, who describes himself as loveably lazy? Louie, who somehow nods off on life endangering adventures? Louie, whose dream was to be a cat and sleep even though they already were asleep?

Louie, who is awake.

He’s lying on a couch, scrolling mindlessly through his phone. Lena rarely sees him without it. For a moment, she wonders what makes it so fascinating. She’s never had a phone- not really. Not the kind that Louie has anyway. The ones that do heaps more than just texting and calling and playing one singular grainy game to alleviate boredom.

It makes Lena feel almost angry. Here is this kid just lying about on his phone, awake and occupied, unlike her, who’s just awake. He could be asleep, but he isn’t. She can’t fall asleep, and he won’t. He has some fancy piece of technology and Lena has nothing.

She remembers the accents she and Webby had put on to escape the Beagle Boys- Webby no doubt having drawn from a lifetime with Teatime while Lena went pure Cockney. Surely if Lena tries hard enough, she can copy Webby.

“What are you doing up?” she snaps in her best Mrs Beakley impression. Louie jumps a mile, and his phone goes flying.

“What the fu-udge?!” He covers the swear clumsily and Lena laughs. That had felt good. “Urgh, Lena?”

“The one and only.” She gives him a mock two-fingered salute.

“You do a good Mrs Beakley,” Louie grumbles. “Is Webby teaching you?”

“I might have picked up a few tricks,” Lena says, and steps forward to scoop up the phone turn missile. “Want it back?”

Louie’s lidded eyes follow the movement of her hand lazily, like he’s trying to calculate how much effort he’d need to expend to get it back. Lena’s bored and grumpy and tired enough to turn this into a whole thing should he make a lunge for it, but Louie turns away. His phone is apparently not worth it.

Boo, no fun.

“Why are you up?” Louie asks, which, ew, even less fun.

Lena shrugs. “Toilet.”

“And you came to pee here?” Louie asks incredulously.

“Obviously not, idiot,” Lena snaps. “I just saw the light and got curious.”

“Urgh,” Louie says. “Knew I should’ve kept it off.”

“That desperate to stay hidden?” Lena jests. Or at least she tries to jest. Louie only nods thoughtfully.

Huh…

They stay like that for what seems like an eternity- Louie slumped on the couch and Lena standing over him, silence slowly settling itself back over them like a much-loved blanket.  

“Alright, budge over.” Lena makes a decision.

“What?”

“Make room.”

“No, hey!”

Lena shoves Louie’s legs out the way and flops down in the space she’s made for herself. It’s surprisingly easy to move him. Then again, Lena has height on him. Not age though- not really. Lena isn’t sure when she started truly existing. And can she count the time spent as a shadow?

“Go back to bed.” Louie kicks at her weakly.

“Can’t sleep,” Lena says truthfully.

Louie sighs. “Me neither.”

“You sleep all the time.”

“Not at night.”

“Why not?”

Louie fixes her with a startingly intense look. It makes Lena shift, suddenly uncomfortable with the scrutiny.

Finally, he shrugs. “It’s too loud at night.”

“No it’s not. This house is creepily quiet.”

“Not out there.” Louie waves a hand around. “In here.”

He taps his head.

Lena can’t help but stare. Probably for too long, but she can’t think of what else to say. This is a whole new side of Louie, and somehow it’s one she finds herself relating to. Isn’t she awake right now because everything’s too loud in her head and if she went to sleep she wouldn’t be able to escape it?

“I guess,” she begins. “I guess that’s why I’m awake too.”

It’s Louie’s turn to stare. She can’t blame him. Of the three triplets she’s the most hostile towards him, mostly because it’s so easy to be. The red one- Huey- is only fun to mess with when he’s already worked up, and the more they get to know each other the harder it is to want to provoke that reaction. The blue one- Dewey- is quick to banter but it’s on a much more equal footing that can leave Lena floundering. Louie is just…well he’s different. And to sidestep a chance to mock him in favour of offering a connection is not her brand, nor is it his.

“Is this like the dreamscape stuff again?” he asks. He doesn’t sound as scared about it as Lena thought he would.

“No,” Lena says, though she can’t be sure if she’s being truthful or not. Magica isn’t anywhere nearby, sure, but distance doesn’t stop magic. If Lena wanted to she could probably broach space and time with an ease nobody should have. Power is fun in theory until you have it. Then it’s just too much of a burden to handle.

“Then what is it?”

“It’s like you said,” Lena says. “It’s loud in here.”

Silence- as if to contradict her. But that’s not where the noise is coming from; they’ve both established that. Lena wonders what it sounds like in Louie’s head. Certainly it won’t be the burden of an existence half-lived, the fear of a power you can’t control, the ruthless pursuit from someone who brought you into existence and then took you out of it. Lena feels confident in her belief that she’s the only person truly like her in the entire world.

“Does the phone help?” Lena tosses the device up and down in the air.

“Yes,” Louie says. “No. Sometimes.”

Lena groans. “If you don’t know then just say that.”

“It’s the truth,” Louie says. “Sometimes it shuts things up. Sometimes it just makes it…louder.”

“Tonight?”

“Bit of both.”

The sometimes of the equation.

Lena presses the home button and watches the lock screen spring to life. The chosen image is a horrendous selfie of Huey and Dewey that actually makes her snort.

“Sentimental much?”

“I did not set that,” Louie says.

She can believe that. But the fact that he didn’t change it after speaks volumes- volumes Lena never thought she’d have any desire to read into.

“Give it here,” Louie says, making grabby hands. Lena surprises herself by doing just that. Louie doesn’t thank her, but he unlocks the phone and shows her his background, perhaps the part of the visual design he’s gotten to choose. It’s a cat that’s clearly been photoshopped green- badly. Once again she surprises herself, because she laughs.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Louie says.

“Wouldn’t be my first choice for a home screen,” Lena says. “I nearly got you all killed.”

“Uncle Scrooge nearly gets us killed like every hour. I don’t hold it against him.” Louie pauses. “Mostly.”

“Is that what your thoughts are about?” Lena asks, before she can even stop to consider that it’s a bad idea. Another surprise, another betrayal of her character. That’s what lack of sleep does to you. Ew, she kind of hates herself a bit for it.

Louie sits in silence, staring at the screen like it can give him an answer. “Sometimes,” he says finally. Maybe he’s surprising himself at well. Maybe he hates himself for it. He says it anyway, same as Lena. “I mean, it’s kind of hard not to be when you keep almost dying.”

“I’m not scared of dying,” Lena says. She’s not, not really. There’s something else that she fears more and it terrifies her to her core.

“Whoopee,” Louie drawls. “Gold star. Sorry I can’t be braver.”

“That’s not-argh- that’s not what I meant.”

“I’m not a mind reader,” Louie says. “What did you mean?”

Lena folds her arms defensively over her chest. She wishes she hadn’t sat down. She wishes she hadn’t started talking. She wishes Webby was here instead. She doesn’t get Louie. Like, on a fundamental level she just doesn’t understand. Except apparently she does, because he’s awake and she’s awake and nobody else is.

“Suit yourself,” Louie says, sounding like he means it. He just doesn’t care and that’s what Lena really can’t fathom. She’s tried her entire life- however long or short that may be- to not care and she can’t succeed. Her effortless persona masks fears and insecurities and a self-loathing so strong sometimes it threatens to knock her over. If Louie is wearing a disguise as well, then it’s so perfect Lena can’t tell where he starts and it ends. She isn’t that good. In fact, she’s awful.

They sit there until the silence is awkward. Getting up feels like it’d be a defeat and so Lena remains rooted in place. Louie fidgets with his phone but he doesn’t open it again. The lightbulb burns defiantly above them. Surely someone discovers them soon. Violet perhaps, on her way to the bathroom. One of Louie’s brothers while they duck to the kitchen for a midnight snack. Lena mentally urges Louie to get up so fiercely that she feels the familiar tingle of magic start to spread before she cuts it off. She isn’t about to force Louie to leave through anything other than her purposefully annoying persona.

“It’s not just dying,” Louie says. He startles Lena, and she jumps a mile on the inside. Only years- if it’s even been years- of training herself not to react to Magica keeps her actual body rooted in place.

“No offense,” Lena says, and she finds that she means it, even as she cuts him down. “But I don’t care.”

“You asked.”

“Like, ages ago.”

Louie flashes his phone at her. “It’s not even been ten minutes.”

Great. Fucking great. Everything’s so awkward now that a minute feels like an hour.

“Look,” Louie says. There’s a determination in his voice that Lena doesn’t like. “You come bother me. You steal my phone. You sit down and you start asking me weird questions. What else do you want me to do?”

“Go to bed.”

“No.” There’s fear in the word, and it almost freezes Lena in place. No one else speaks of sleep- of lying down- with as much terror as she feels. No one else seems to think that a bed is such an awful place to be in that anything else is a better alternative. Another bond is being formed, against her will and probably his as well.

To sleep is to risk never waking up. She wasn’t lying when she said dying doesn’t scare her. It’s the thing that usually accompanies dying. It’s…it’s the idea that her entire existence can be snatched away without anyone realising. It’s never leaving a footprint on the earth.

It’s being forgotten.

Lena sighs. It’s a world-weary sound and typically reserved for people even older than Scrooge. “I thought sleep was your whole thing,” she says. It’s meant to be an olive branch but it’s just sarcastic like always, because that’s just who she is.

“It’s meant to be,” Louie says. He sounds angry. “It’s supposed to be. But now it’s…”

Loud.

“Was it me?” Lena asks, because she has to. Did she drive this fear into him because she took them into her dreams and showed them her fears.

“So self-absorbed,” Louie says, rolling his eyes. “This was happening before you showed up. I’m…you know, there’s stuff.”

“Stuff,” Lena agrees. Always stuff. How can you be so vague and still make so much sense?

“You know,” Louie says. “Sometimes…not all the time, but sometimes it’s all too much.”

“Yeah,” Lena says. She knows that feeling with a familiarity that hurts.

“And I don’t know what to do,” Louie goes on. Lena bites his head off and tells him she doesn’t care and he keeps talking for some reason. “So I just sit and scroll. Try and not have to think about the fact that I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Lena would agree again, but she knows what’s wrong with her. It’s a long list and it grows and grows with each day that she gets to live. It’s a cursed life- in a very literal sense- and she spreads that rot, no matter how much she gets told otherwise.

“I…” he starts and then stops, flashing her a look that Lena sees in herself every time she stares into a mirror. “Sometimes I’m not scared of dying, you know?”

It takes her a moment. She doesn’t understand the callback; she thinks he’s trying to make himself sound braver than he is. And then it clicks and she gets it and somewhere deep inside her a voice that sounds like Webby begs her to reach out to him.

She sits still- stunned and frozen.

“Greenie…” it’s her turn to start and stop. She should say something, but Lena feels lost. She feels forgotten, which means she’s scared. She doesn’t know how old she is but she knows Louie is eleven. To be that young and feeling like this…it doesn’t sit right with Lena.

“Whatever,” Louie says. He’s gripping his phone tightly. “I just…that’s why it’s loud tonight. You asked. I answered.”

She had asked. She had sat down. She’d extended something and he’d answered.

And he’d asked. An exchange- an equivalent thing- only so far Louie’s done all the giving and Lena hasn’t done anything.

She worries that’s what it’s like with her and Webby and Violet. That she continuously reaps the benefits of a relationship while not putting anything in herself. It’s hard not to, when things started on such unequal footing. Lena’s friendship with Webby had been forced and false, until it hadn’t been. But it’s hard to just erase that and Lena grows guilt inside her with the care of a gardener tending to their flowers.

“It’s being forgotten,” she says. Takes a breath and takes the plunge the exact same way she had with the money shark. Funny how it still feels just as scary and she hasn’t even moved. There’s not golden gullet to dive down here.

“Huh?”

“That’s what makes it loud sometimes,” she says. “That’s what’s making it loud tonight.”

“Webby would never forget you,” Louie says. He sits up a little straighter, the first real movement he’s made in a while beyond clutching at his phone.

“Not on purpose,” Lena says. “But the kind of magic I’m made from, the kind of shit that I’m always involved in. It’s pretty easy to imagine it happening.”

Just like it’s probably easy for him to imagine all the ways he could…not be scared of dying.

“If no one remembers me,” she says. “Then it’s like I never existed. Sometimes…sometimes I don’t even know if I’m real.”

Louie kicks her.

“What the fuck?!”

“That felt real to me.”

The anger is a brief but overwhelming sensation and Lena is hitting back before she can process it. It stings the tips of her feathers and she recoils as quickly as she’d lashed out.

“That felt real too,” Louie supplies.

“I hate you,” she hisses.

“I know.”

He sounds like he believes it. Another misstep Lena apparently can’t help but make.

“I don’t hate you,” she says. “Contrary to popular belief.”

“You don’t like me though,” Louie says. He rubs absently at the spot where she made connection.

Lena glares at him. “Seriously? Yes I do. I wouldn’t make a friendship bracelet for you just because.”

“But…” Louie falls silent. Is he searching for proof to back his claims? If so, Lena is ready to fight back. Maybe she’s on unequal footing in all her relationships but she’s done pretending she isn’t allowed to have friends. These bonds she’s slowly but surely making- they’re on her own terms and not Magica’s. They’re real and fuck, she’s bad at it but it’s something she’s trying really hard at.

“I know, I know,” she says. “I always sound sarcastic and I like to make fun of you, but that’s just what I’m like. You’re like that with your brothers and you know they like you.”

They love you.

Lena is getting tired of these pauses- she prefers conversations to be fast paced and over before they’ve truly started- but this isn’t the time nor place. The two of them are both numb from lack of sleep and from sharing pieces of themselves they’ve never shared with anyone else. Though, actually, is Lena the first person Louie has shared this with?

“Do your brothers know how loud it gets?” she asks.

Louie shrugs. It’s both an answer and not an answer. It’s the kind of cop-out Lena is usually so fond of, but now she gets why it annoys people.

“Louie,” she says. His name- his preferred name- that she never uses, but she’s using it now.

“No,” he says. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t happen all the time, so it’s fine.”

Until it’s not. Until they go out one day and he doesn’t come back.

Lena almost jolts from the bolt of fear that strikes her. She can see it so clearly she almost thinks she’s dreamed it into existence. The group head off on a mission- bright eyed and excited. They invite her but she declines. Maybe she’s having a bad day, or maybe Violet and her dads have made plans. It doesn’t matter what keeps her away- it only matters that she’s not there. The four kids set out and only three return. There are tears. And anger. And when Webby’s heart breaks, Lena’s breaks with it.

“It matters,” she says, and surprises herself once more with how fiercely the words come out. “Don’t say it doesn’t matter- it fucking matters.”

“You’re a hypocrite,” Louie says. She wishes he’d get angry but he just looks at her with bored eyes. “You’re telling me it matters but you clearly don’t think it does when it comes to you.”

“Where are you pulling that from?” Lena huffs.

“Uh, every interaction I have with you? You’re so blasé it’s kind of unbearable.”

“Then don’t bear it,” Lena snaps.

Louie scowls and turns away. Lena puts her head in her hands and tries not to scream. This is why she hates this stuff. She’s so fucking bad at it. Louie clearly is as well, so at least there’s that, but he has some sort of emotional maturity that being a triplet probably gets you. Lena can’t even say if she was raised or just like, conjured, so she has no idea what foundational teachings she can use to justify her current existence.

Honestly, none of them are good at this because they’re just kids.

Just two kids sitting on a couch. One scared of being erased and the other scared that he’s not scared enough of that happening.

“Can we just pretend this never happened?” Louie says. He’s still got his back to her and Lena can’t decipher anything in his voice.

“Fine by me,” Lena says. She wants to turn away as well but since Louie has already done it there’d be no point. Leaving feels like it wouldn’t work either, so once again they’re stuck in a stalemate. Louie’s supposed to be the tactician of the group but this doesn’t feel like a purposefully laid trap. More like the kind of situation where you bumble into a clearly labelled pit because you think you’re above falling for something like that.

Once again she finds herself wishing she’d just kept walking. She wishes she’d stay lying down between Violet and Webby, praying for sleep that wouldn’t come. She wishes it had been Mrs Beakley in the room. Better a fight with an opponent she knows, than Louie and this stranger he’s become.

So why had she stopped? Why had she let the light draw her in? And why had she sat next to him when it would have been so easy to just walk away?

Simple.

It was late night and everyone else was asleep and Lena had been alone. She’d been a ghost, a shadow. She’d been forgettable.

Erasable.

Lena raises her hand and twists it in the light, watching the way the shadows ripple and flow. It’s slightly unnatural to her expert eye, but someone who doesn’t know who she is wouldn’t even realise the control she has over the darkness. She wriggles her fingers and the shadows do the same- an echo she has long grown used to.

I am a shadow and the shadow is me, she thinks. The kind of useless prose that sounds deeper than it actually is. Before she was a duck, she was a shadow for someone else. Then that person was her shadow, but it was like, a multiplication of shadow. They were both the darkness. And the thing Lena has come to realise about the darkness is that it swallows and it absorbs and when you get lost in it, it’s almost impossible to find you way out on the other side. That’s when you get lost. That’s when you become unseen.

That’s when they forget you.

The light had drawn her in. A tiny beacon in a well of shadows that beckoned to her the way Webby’s brightness had once beckoned- still did beckon. In the void between worlds Lena had almost lost herself, but then she’d tracked down her best friend. Webby’s aura of swirling colours had called, and Lena had answered. A part of her still works like that. In the gloom and doom of her life- whether it be literal or metaphorical- she sees a guiding force and she follows it. Sometimes the source is Webby, and now sometimes apparently, it’s Louie Duck.

“I can’t,” she says abruptly, surprising herself.

“Huh?” Louie doesn’t even summon the energy to look at her. He’s staring at the TV, mesmerised by the blank screen as though a program was actually playing.

“Forget this happen,” Lena says. “I…”

I owe it to your family to not do that. I owe it to myself.

“So what?” Louie asks. This time his avoidant gaze seems more deliberate. “You gonna go wake up Huey and Dewey and tell them about our deep, personal conversation?”

“Maybe,” Lena says, just to see what he’ll do.

Louie groans. “I don’t get you.”

Well, that makes two of them.

“You know what I wanted most when I was nothing more than Magica’s puppet?”

“To not be her puppet?”

“Well, yes,” Lena says, a tad impatiently. “That. But I wanted someone to notice what was going on.”

“Did you really?” Louie says. He doesn’t sound like he believes her. “Could’ve fooled me. You kept it a whole big secret until you literally couldn’t. Could have told any of us at any time.”

He has a point, but it’s a few months too late for that. Lena has already confronted herself, wondering internally why she wouldn’t have just been straightforward with Webby when it hurt her to hurt Webby. The answer she gave herself is probably the same answer Louie would give, if he only he allowed himself to challenge his own thoughts.

It’s fear. That terrifying belief that the moment you let such a dark and closely held secret slip, nobody will ever look at you the same again. If you barely feel like a person already, then a change that cataclysmic could wipe you out. Destroy your being.

Erase you.

It strikes her at odd moments, but for the most part Lena is not really self-destructive. Not intentionally, anyhow. Being alive- or whatever you can call her existence- is a gift she doesn’t want to take for granted. But the self-loathing creeps in and she can’t help the anger and grief and disgust she aims at herself. She’s a horrible person for taking advantage of Webby. A destroyer of all things good. A manipulator, an overpowered being of dark magic, a liar and a betrayer.

She’s alive, and it’s messy.

“I guess I kept it hidden because I didn’t know how people would react,” Lena says. She wonders if Louie will realise what she’s trying to say- realise the words are mostly for him. Probably not, because Louie is still a kid and he’s a stubborn asshole at the best and worst of times.

Louie shrugs. “Okay.”

A pretty clear hint that he still wants this conversation to be over. He still wants to pretend they haven’t even spoken at all.

“When people found out,” Lena begins slowly. “I mean, it was kind of the end of the world-”

“Kind of?” Louie interrupts. “It was literally the end-”

“Yeah, because it got stopped. So it was only kind of. And so me and my stupid problems were mostly in the background. Sure, you read my diary and my fake Aunt took your real Uncle hostage, but then you all just…”

Forgave me.

“The point is,” Lena says, though she thinks she might have lost track of the point ages ago. “When people…urgh…when people love you, they want you to tell them things.”

They want you to tell them when you’re sad so they can try and cheer you up. Or at the very least, sit by you until you start to feel better. They want to know your interests so they can talk to you about the things you like. They want to know when you’re angry, and when you’re happy, and when you’re hurting.

Especially when you’re hurting.

“If you do that then it just makes it more real,” Louie says.

“Isn’t that the point?”

“No, it’s not. Then it’s just constant check ins and censoring yourself because ‘oh you might upset Louie’ and it’s thinking maybe an adventure is a bad idea because ‘maybe Louie will throw himself into a volcano’ and everything stops being normal and starts being weird.”

Weird, maybe, but it’s the help that he needs, the same help Lena needs and yet finds suffocating nonetheless. Another bond between the two of them that she despairs in her typical dramatic creature of darkness way. She gets it, even if Louie is saying it in a roundabout way that makes sense to a kid but maybe not to anyone else. Sure, she’s a creature of shadow masquerading as a living, breathing being and he’s a regular duck- albeit one belonging to a famous clan or whatever you call it- but in simple words it’s the same.

It's suffocating to be helped.

“Fine,” she concedes. “Maybe you’re right.”

“I know I am,” Louie says.

“But what’s the alternative?”

“Huh?”

“Maybe they treat you weird,” Lena says.

Maybe they treat me weird.

“But if you don’t tell them, then what happens? This- the loudness- gets too much and you…”

The loudness gets too much and I-you-we don’t come back.

“You die.”

The phone slips through Louie’s hands and hits the ground. Lena winces at the sound, sure that it would have alerted Mrs Beakley, or maybe even Scrooge. For the first time since Louie looked away, he turns to stare once again.

“I’m not-”

“Don’t,” she cuts him off. “Don’t lie, and maybe I won’t either.”

“I don’t care if-”

“If I lie? Well maybe I do. Maybe this isn’t about you.”

“So it’s about you?”

“Sure,” she says.

“I thought you didn’t want to die,” Louie says. His eyes flash in the light. “Didn’t want to be forgotten.”

“And what am I doing about it?”

“I don’t know, living?”

Lena is doing a lot of things with her supposed life but she can’t actually be sure she’s living. At least, not the way that she’s always been led to believe is the true way to experience existence. To the fullest, people say. Be happy, pursue your interests. Do those things you get to do when you don’t have any cares- not the kind that drag you down.

“You can want things,” she says. “And still not get them because you’re too afraid that other people might need to be a part of it.”

“Stop,” Louie snaps. “Just stop. You’re not making any sense. You haven’t since you sat down and started bothering me. You’ve never cared before. Maybe we’re friends but not this type!”

“What type?”

“The type that gets to know about my-about this! About me. The type that starts spouting crap at me like it’s supposed to make sense just because you’re older and wiser or whatever. Sometimes I’m fine and sometimes I’m not and nobody else should have known about it.”

Lena recoils, furious. “You told me. You started this.”

“You sat down.”

“And I told you I didn’t care but you didn’t shut up! So you did want someone to know. You just didn’t think it would be someone who actually cared.”

Louie leaps to his feet, standing over her. His eyes are furious and he’s breathing hard, shoulders rising and falling with the effort. He’s clenched his hands into fists but Lena doesn’t think he’ll try to hit her. She stays sitting, meeting his gaze.

“I care,” she says. “Maybe I don’t know why but I do. And you can’t change that. And if I have to tell your brothers because I’m worried about what you might do, then I will.”

“I’ll tell Webby and Violet,” Louie counters.

An instinctive bolt of panic strikes at Lena and she almost breaks her composure. Her fingers itch to make fists of their own but she restrains herself. Age is funny but on paper she’s the older one here. At the very least, she can prove she’s more mature.

“Do it,” she says. “It’s time they knew. They deserve better than me thinking they can’t help.”

It’s not a bluff, but Lena wonders if Louie will think it is. She’ll hate that it’s not coming from her, but suffocating or not, Webby and Violet do deserve for Lena to be honest with them. And if Lena thinks they’ll scorn her for it then she’s not learnt anything, and she never will. Being alive is growing and changing and Lena wants to do that. Each experience she gets to live is part of the puzzle of who she is. It’s time she actually started to assemble a picture instead of stubbornly refusing to even make a go of it.

Louie takes a step away from her. He bends down and picks up his phone. She sees the screen flicker to life and she watches as he stares at the picture- at his brothers. His hand tries to form another fist around the device. He clutches it so tightly Lena actually starts to think he might be strong enough- or desperate enough- to break it. He lets go at the last second, and it hangs limply in his fingers.

“I hate this,” he says. “I hate me.”

“Join the club,” Lena says, and she’s not even joking.

“But they don’t,” Louie says. “I don’t get it. I could wake them up right now and I could tell them about what’s going on and they wouldn’t be angry. They’d just be worried.”

Suffocating.

“Like you are,” he looks at her. Lena looks back.

“Does it feel weird?” she asks. Everything stops being normal and starts being weird.

“Yes,” Louie says. “But…”

“But?”

“The world’s not ending,” Louie says. “I guess that counts for something.”

“Yeah.” Lena leans back into the couch. “I guess it does.”

A beat. A silence. A pause so long it becomes a moment. A minute, maybe even two. Louie keeps his eyes on Lena and she keeps her eyes on him.

“Seriously,” she says. “They need to know. I won’t tell them, but the stuff your family gets up to. Louie…it just takes one bad day to do something you’ll really regret.”

“You don’t think I don’t know that?” he asks despairingly. “Sometimes we go cave diving or labyrinth exploring and all I can see is how easy it would be to…to not come back.”

“I see escape routes everywhere,” Lena finds herself saying. “Ways to cut myself off from everyone so I never put them in danger again.”

“Ever tried to leave through one?”

“Yes.”

“Why’d you come back?”

“Cause that’s me at my worst,” Lena says. “And I’m not always like that. Just like you’re not always not afraid of dying.”

Another long silence.

“I’m gonna talk to Webby and Violet,” Lena says. “And you’ll talk to Huey and Dewey.”

“Is this a promise we’re making?”

“I’d like it to be.”

Lena gets up off the couch and puts them on the same level- as much as they can be when she’s a great deal taller than him. She’s almost gratified that he doesn’t take a step back, or turn away. Louie keeps meeting her eyes and she does him the same courtesy of doing the same. The strange energy buzzing between them is one Lena wants to dissipate, but there’s a risk of an explosion- more than there has already been- if she attempts to do anything to ease it. The light glows above her head- the beacon that first beckoned her in. If Louie hadn’t turned it on, she never would have come.

“Never thought we’d have the most in common,” she says. “Did you?”

The energy wobbles but holds firm. Louie crosses his arms over his chest and shrugs. “Never considered it. Guess it makes sense though.”

“How so?”

“If Webby and Dewey are way too much alike, and Huey and Violet are practically the same person at times, then we have to pair off somehow as well.”

“I don’t think you can pair people off like that,” Lena says. “But point taken.”

She stands there a little longer, and then realises with a start that she feels…tired. Like she might actually be able to sleep if she returns to Webby’s bedroom and crawls in between her sleeping friends. Emotional maturity takes a lot out of you but it’s also something else, Lena thinks. Like even by just affirming to herself that she’ll stop holding so much of herself so tightly, that she’s lifted a weight off herself. It’s like the fateful sleepover that Magica crashed- after a long battle comes the moment when adrenaline wears off and you can start to be yourself again.

“I’m going back to bed,” she says, and half turns for the door. Louie stays where he is, usually half-lidded eyes watching her. She waits to see if he’ll agree, or start walking, but he doesn’t move.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” is all he says.

Lena’s heart sinks. All of this for nothing, huh? She hasn’t gotten through to him at all and now she’s going to have to go behind his back and have another icky emotions talk, this time with Huey and Dewey which is just so not-

“Well,” Louie’s sharp voice cuts off her thoughts. “Are you going to just stand there or are you going to move? You’re blocking the exit.”

“Right,” Lena says. Her mouth and body move before her mind does. She steps aside and watches as Louie makes his exit first, phone now hidden in his hoody pocket and footsteps a light tiptoe that won’t alert anyone to their movements. He pauses in the doorway and looks back at her.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” he says again. “But not too early. I…lots to talk about with Huey and Dewey, you know.”

“Same,” she says, and feels her entire body relax. Fears alleviated, she takes a step of her own. “Especially since I’ve gotta catch up on sleep as well.”

“You and me both.”

He slips out of sight, shadow lingering for a moment before he snatches it away. Lena hears his quiet footsteps on the stairs, but only because she’s listening out for them. The silence that settles over the room is oppressive, and the light starts to become less of a guiding beacon and more of an annoyance that threatens a headache. Lena tiptoes across the floor, pausing only to flick the switch off.

The darkness leaps and everything is swallowed in its wave. Lena greets it like a friend- wraps it around her like a welcoming blanket or a luxurious cloak. Her eyes adjust immediately and her body settles. She’s better in the shadows, more alive and alert, and these days she’s trying to accept that it’s a good thing. She waits until she hears a door open and shut above her, and then begins her own walk- back to where her family lie. She effortlessly dodges the expensive side tables and remains of games left scattered around the mansion, tired as she now is. She never sleeps at McDuck Manor but that’s the thing about being alive. Never can easily be changed into sometimes, or often, or maybe even always.

Tonight has been weird, and it still feels weird and might always feel weird. Lena is torn between wishing she’d never gone to the light, and being thankful she did. It had been a jumble of a conversation where points were made and discarded, things kept repeating themselves, and Lena had been so sure that she could easily ruin the relationship the two of them had. But hearing Louie’s confession and picturing the future it implied had been downright chilling. One bad day, she’d said to Louie. Just one moment where things perfectly aligned and you were able to just be…gone. Louie is her friend and Lena doesn’t want to imagine a world without him, just like she doesn’t want to imagine a world without her in it either.

As she passes the room the triplets share, she listens for any sound that might indicate Louie has woken his brothers up already, but hears nothing. She feels assured though, that he’ll keep the promise the two of them made. She intends to do the same, after all. She doesn’t understand him- Louie Duck- but it makes sense, because half the time Lena doesn’t understand herself either. It’s a funny world the two of them occupy now, and things might be better off because of it.

The scene she finds in Webby’s bedroom is almost identical to the one she left. Webby is sprawled across her sleeping bag and then some, taking up the kind of space that could be annoying, if you cared about things like that. Violet paints a contrasting picture with how tightly she’s tucked herself in. Lena is used to how she sleeps now, considering she lives with Violet, and it brings a smile to her face. Her own spot waits for her, and Lena crawls back into it gratefully. The floor presses into her through the thin fabric but she has never felt more comfortable. Webby almost immediately flops even further out, a hand lying lazily over Lena’s chest. The friendship bracelet she always wears is on display, and Lena runs a lone feather along it absently. Violet rolls over as well- still tightly wrapped but facing Lena now, as if she knows her sister is there.

The hour is early and it’s practically morning already, but Lena closes her eyes and waits for sleep.