Sleepwalk. webby vanderquack/gosalyn mallard/lena despell. ducktales’17/darkwing duck.
Between sleep troubles and lullabies, Gosalyn kinda fell in love with the girl Webby seemed so heartbroken about.
n/a: fluff, angst, grief, comfort, falling in love, pre-poly,when is lena coming back from the shadow war?
“Are you sleep?”
Webby heard a snore.
She turned around to see Gosalyn snoring softly at her side, kind of sprawled on the bed, unconscious to the world and to Webby’s predicament.
At first, the idea of having a pajama party with Gosalyn had been amazing, but now that insomnia was haunting her, and her insistent thoughts pushed her to do something that would distract her from them, the idea looked pretty inconvenient.
It had been tolerable before the Shadow War but now…
Webby hummed softly to herself, looking for a way to get out of the bed without waking her.
Webby took a single breath and passed herself over Gosalyn, who kept sleeping soundly. It had been going fine until she fell to the floor. Piercing into the quiet room. Webby felt her beak tight still lying on the floor. Maybe jumping from the bed would have made less sound than trying to get out of the bed the boring way.
She looked back, Gosalyn didn’t even move. Webby got up, tipping toeing to the door. Then Gosalyn moved, and Webby paralyzed mid-step. Ten seconds of total silence passed, Gosalyn not moving anymore. Webby thought herself safe and sighed, loudly.
“Um, Webs?”
Yikes.
Gosalyn blinked, turning around to see Webby up weirdly in the middle of the room. “Hey, where are you going?”
Webby giggled involuntarily. “Going to the bathroom?”
Narrowing her eyes, Gosalyn looked at her suspiciously. She took the blanket and let it fell to the ground, she got up from the bed and walked to her. “You seem a little too awake to be just that. Come on, Webby, what is it?”
“It’s just… I can’t sleep.” Webby confessed. It seemed futile lying to Gos.
“Oh.” Gosalyn frowned, deep in thought, seemed to think what she could do in that case. She looked at her, a question in her eyes. “Is it for…?”
Lena.
Is it for Lena?
“No!” Gosalyn almost jumped at the sudden denial, Webby looking like someone had asked her to kill somebody. Webby must have realized because in the nip of a second she was smiling, nervous and obviously uncomfortable. “I mean…no, I was just thinking about stuff, and well, I-.”
Gosalyn held her hands up, in look for peace. “Hey, it’s fine. No judging here.”
“Oh, I…” Webby took a breath, her hands behind her back, playing nervously with her own feathers. “I know it been months, and I’m better! Like I should be but…”
“Hey, really, it’s fine. When—” Gos took a breath, to give herself enough courage to continue— “my grandpa died, I spent a lot of time awake. Sometimes, I still do.”
Webby looked up. A sparkle that wasn’t there before appearing. “Really?”
“Yeah, really.” Webby smiled this time around, big and clear and happy to be comprehended. Gosalyn wondered if anyone had told Webby before that she wasn’t expected to overcome lost that easily. Gosalyn hummed, considering. “Moving around helps you?”
“Oh, yeah, sometimes. It depends, I guess.”
“Oh! Then, let’s try!” Gosalyn walked to the door with confidence, taking Webby’s wrist, feeling that bracelet she seemed to never get off between her fingers.
Webby gasped, letting herself be strung along. “Aren’t you tired?”
Gosalyn shrugged. “I’m more of a night person, anyways.”
.
Webby let out every tiny detail she had about the mansion, or about the McDuck Clan, or Scrooge McDuck himself. They kept walking around the mansion, Webby rambling and Gosalyn trying to remember the way they were taking, kind of impossible since it was so big it felt more like a maze.
A sudden question came to her. She had heard of it from time to time, but just bits and pieces, nothing concrete.
Gosalyn whispered into the night, careful to not wake anyone else.
“Hey, can you tell me things about Lena?”
“Oh!” Webby was actually surprised by the question. “She is one of the coolest people I’ve ever met! There was this time when…”
Gosalyn paid her as much attention as she could, as hard as it was to keep up with Webby’s excited rambling.
She talked about her like some poetic wonderful appearance. So much that for a moment Gosalyn thought that maybe Webby had invented her out of loneliness. If she had not remembered that the boys talked about Lena too (albeit in a completely different way), maybe the feeling growing at her chest would have felt more insane than it actually did.
She didn’t know what made her grin more, the fact that Webby was so oblivious heart-struck by Lena or the fact that her own mind was thinking like in a whisper, you should be too.
It made her blush in a strange way to realize that Webby felt things for this girl that were stronger than she probably knew because there was a feeling equals parts green and pink growing in her chest.
She wanted Webby to talk about her like that, but at the same time, she wanted to talk about Lena in the same way Webby did.
It was a confusing feeling that her mind didn’t know how to deal with yet.
At least she was certain of one thing. She was strangely charmed by a person she didn’t know at all.
And for that, a little comment escaped her before she could stop it.
“I wish I could have met her. She sounds like she was amazing.”
Webby stopped in the middle of the hallway, and Gosalyn stopped too, feeling like she stepped on a mine. Webby stayed quiet for a moment, her hands on her chest and head a little down. It wasn’t until she heard a sob that Gosalyn actually felt like screw it up.
“This bracelet is…the last thing I have that reminds me of her.” Webby turned around, tears falling down like a river. Gosalyn felt her chest tight. “Gosalyn, do you think one day I could forget her like everybody else?”
That was it.
Gosalyn ran forward, opening her arms and hugging her as tight as she could, trying to protect her from an invisible threat. Webby cried on her chest, the hand with the bracelet between them.
“No one has or will forget about her, Webby. I-I promise. Not you, not anyone,” But she didn’t know if it was true. She had to try anyway. “She sounds like a too wonderful person to forget.”
“But everyone is just acting like- like it didn’t happen. Even I do! I-I-.”
“That’s not true. You’re still using the bracelet, right?” Webby sobbed and nodded against her chest, her grasp on the front of her pajamas tightening. Gosalyn patted her hair. “Then, that means you’re not acting like that, okay? Sometimes we don’t talk about things that hurt us with others, but that doesn’t mean we don’t care. We show it other ways. Sometimes, people should notice by themselves.”
Webby let out another sob and kept hugging her. Gosalyn didn’t know how to proceed from here. Should she tell Mrs. Beakley? Launchpad? The Boys? Uncle Donald? Mr. McDuck? Webby had been hurting this bad, and no one had seen it or do anything about it. Why? Webby couldn’t be that good at hiding herself from others, right?
Gosalyn hugged her a little tighter. Webby could protect herself, she knew that, but this was a little bigger than that.
She would try to resolve it in the morning, for now, maybe she could help with the first problem.
Gosalyn called Webby’s attention breaking the hug, without letting go of her completely, an understanding smile on her face. “Hey, when I couldn’t sleep, my grandpa used to sing to me a special lullaby, then dad started to do it too so now it’s even more special, he even wrote new lyrics for it. Maybe it can help you.”
Webby played with the loose threads of her bracelet. Tears still falling down. “But isn’t it especially for you?”
“Hey, if it helps, it doesn’t matter. And… I think—” she started to say, her voice shy, a soft blush under her feathers— “it would be even more special if I share it with you.”
Webby let out a little smile.
“I have never been sung a lullaby before,” she said hesitantly, now a little more at ease, cleaning her face.
“Yeah? Well, you will like this one. I promise.”
They sat down, supporting themselves at the nearest wall. Gosalyn rasped a little, she had to be quiet. She started to sign as low as she could, her voice still cracking in the same notes that it always did.
Rest your head, little girl blue, Come paint your dreams on your pillow.
Webby let her head rest on Gosalyn, finding comfort in her breathing and trying to tone hers to the rhythm of the lullaby.
I'll be near to chase away fear, So sleep now and dream 'til tomorrow,
Their hands met between them, and they threaded their fingers firmly. Gosalyn felt how some of the strands of the bracelet came between their sweaty palms. Like a safe reminder that they were not alone in that exact place in the big mansion, in a way.
I'll be near to chase away fear, So sleep now and dream 'til tomorrow.
“Hey, Gos…” her voice was at the verge of disappearing. Gosalyn took that as a good sign.
“Yeah?”
“I really want you to meet Lena. She’ll think you are amazing, just like I do.”
Gosalyn stopped breathing, feeling her heart picking a pace she wasn’t used to, her hand feeling hot where the strands touched her. The shoulder where Webby rested felt like that too. Gosalyn took a breath, trying to calm herself.
She felt Webby’s calm breathing making her go up and down, finally asleep. They were going to stay there, right? In the middle of the hallway. Gosalyn was completely lost in that mansion, too big for her to remember how to come back to Webby’s room on her own. And even if she remembered, she wasn’t so sure she could pick up Webby and not wake her up. She would feel terrible if she waked up after all the trouble they went to make her fall asleep.
She distracted herself with thoughts of the mansion, scared to acknowledge the real feeling of loss she was feeling in her mind.
Not even confronting Negaduck had ever made her feel like this.
She looked at the bracelet, then at Webby. She simply took a wild strand of hair out of her eyes, softly.
“Good night, Webby.”
Gosalyn looked at the bracelet one more time and sighed, a sad smile in the corner of her beak.
“Night, Lena. I hope we meet soon.”
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