Disclaimer: I don't own Ducktales!
Title: Remember Me
Summary: The worst dreams aren't of Lena, swallowed up or bleeding or vanishing. The worst ones are of forgetting who Lena ever was. Not overnight, of course- but in small increments and pieces as the years went on and the adventures got harder and trickier and life was ever-so-fun. She could see herself, in her mind's eye, standing at the amphitheater they met, calmly watching the waves. She's buff and scarred up like a hero in a movie, and she likes it that way.
...
The worst dreams aren't of Lena, swallowed up or bleeding or vanishing. The worst ones are of forgetting who Lena ever was. Not overnight, of course- but in small increments and pieces as the years went on and the adventures got harder and trickier and life was ever-so-fun. She could see herself, in her mind's eye, standing at the amphitheater they met, calmly watching the waves. She's buff and scarred up like a hero in a movie, and she likes it that way.
"Howdy, stranger," a voice will say, and Webby will turn her head slightly, and there's Lena. Lena, still fifteen, smiling ever-so-oddly, a mix of pleased and off-put. She tugs the midsection of her shirt away from her belly, away from where Magica zapped her, and she'll go on, "Been a while since I saw you."
"Do I know you?" Webby will ask, blunt, and Lena's face will fall. She'll pick up on that. "Sorry, it's just... you know, lot's of faces on adventures. They all go by so quick."
"It's fine." Lena's voice will be curt, trying to hide the pain she must feel, having come back from the dead to get a brush-off. And Lena, the moon to Webby's sun, the prettiest girl in Duckburg, one of the first and last friends that lonely little girl had made before adventure and family filled the void, turns and shambles away like nothing happened. "Just pretend I don't exist. Because I don't."
The waves turn to ink and suck her in. Webby's left desperately trying to save someone so important to her, so dear, her name and face on the tip of her tongue and eyelids, never to spring forth fully-formed.
Lena has to exist. She couldn't have lived and died otherwise.
Webby will wake up, sweaty and sticky and gross, like she's run a marathon in summer, and she'll really want to cry, but the urge to take a shower is stronger. Webby slips down the hall to the nearest bathroom and climbs in, desperate to wipe away the notion of time. She doesn't want to forget Lena. She wants it to hurt when someone brings up her name- and if the rest of the world decides she's just a shadow, just an error in the code of magic, she wants that to hurt too. Lena can't have her heart, but she can have a piece of it for free.
And maybe it's the hot steam, or maybe it's just desperation, but Webby will see just a flash of someone taller and skinnier than her. And she knows it isn't real, but she'll peek around the curtain anyway, and it'll just be her and the steam and a bunch of hopes that she'll never talk about. Giving them a voice means they'll win.
She crawls back into bed, not willing to push her luck with starting the washing machine, and she tucks her face into her knees. She cries for a long time.
Author's Note: More of a stream-of-consciousness thing than a full drabble, but it was important to me to write. Moving on is important, but sometimes you find yourself forgetting, and sometimes that's more terrifying than anything else.
Fun Fact- I picked the name vaguely recalling it was a reference, but it wasn't until I was almost done writing that it clicked it was from Coco. So. Y'know. Irony.
-Mandaree1