Heading back to the amphitheater from Webby's sleepover gave Lena plenty of time to ponder on what her life had become, and the result wasn't really leaving her in the best of moods. It was a fairly decent sized trek back and the quietness of the walk had put her into a rather introspective mood. For probably the first time in her life, she was actually on her own. Being alone had not exactly been a normal experience for her and she wasn't exactly sure what to feel about it all.
For the past 14 years of Lena's life, the only period where she didn't have Magica looking over her was after the magician tried to kill her and inadvertently bonded Lena's soul to Webby, a close friend of hers and the youngest duck in the McDuck home. To Lena, it hadn't been a pleasant experience to have her soul bound and banished to be an eternal shadow forever stuck following her best friend from the darkness.
In some ways, Lena did feel that being banished to mere shadows was rather freeing as it allowed her to finally be herself without having her every action and mistake being commented and criticized. Of course, it wasn't all sunshine and roses, mostly because neither of those things even existed in the shadows, but also because it was incredibly lonely to watch the world pass in front of her with every action and touch ignored by the land of the living.
Sometimes when she was in there it felt that she didn't even exist, the darkness crushing all around her with nothing to pull her back to being properly formed, and for months she honestly felt that her permanence was no longer true. And yet, despite the lonely and miserable existence, she did see some more positive aspects of the whole ordeal and rather liked the chance to finally stop spending her life worrying about magical oblivion and long-running murderous feuds. In the Shadow Realm, there wasn't really anything of substance or existence to hold her there and judge her, giving her a certain kind of wonderful relaxation that reality had so far barred her from.
Of course, it was also incredibly boring and she was soon getting incredibly restless with her only real entertainment provided by the enforced shadowing of her best friend Webby. At times the experience made Lena feel in no small part like a creepy stalker as she watched over the young duck who had once been her friend. In some respects, she was somewhat thankful that the McDucks had such insane lives that gave her a lot of enjoyment that allowed her to vicariously live through their adventures. In truth, she was well aware her mind likely would have not survived the experience had the frequent ventures not given her something to so clearly latch onto. Even an obsessed mind can fall apart without variety, and the McDucks were uniquely skilled at turning even the most mundane trips into epic adventures of varied insanity.
Naturally, it was one of these mundane activities that had allowed Lena to think these very thoughts. It had meant to be a simple sleepover between Webby and a new friend of hers, and yet it had led to the insanity of a shadow ritual that forcefully dragged Lena out of the shadows and back into the real world.
The return to reality had been rather abrupt and left her more than a little bewildered struggling to understand what had happened and what it meant. Since then she had somewhat gotten a better hang of her sense of self, however, the long walk back was bringing her more suppressed worries back to life. She had honestly never really even dared hope that she'd ever had time to return, and whatever dreams she'd had never stretched beyond getting the chance to give Webby a new hug and take a real proper breath of real air.
Lena had never really considered what she would do after her return, it had seemed like such a fantasy to even get that far, to even consider beyond such as impossibility and ponder on what would come next just didn't seem possible, and yet it happened. If there is one thing that Lena had quickly leaned about the McDuck family, it was to never exclude the impossible. With their amazingly perplexing ability to make their reality almost always work out perfectly for themselves in some of the most absurd ways possible, and if that meant that an innocent sleepover would result in Shadow rituals dragging her hollow form back into reality then she was not going to protest it.
However, this did leave her in a bit of a dilemma. She was finally where she aspired to be, with her so dearly desired freedom, but beyond that, she had absolutely no idea what she wanted to do next. With no real thought about what she would do if she finally managed to escape from Aunt Magica meant that when she finally got to live that fantasy, she found herself lacking any greater aspirations.
As she continued walking along the quiet streets of Duckburg, she briefly considered perhaps wandering the world and just getting lost in it without a plan, or maybe even forgetting the whole adventure thing and trying out what a normal life would be like with a job and a small apartment and everything. However, nothing really caught her desires and she found herself only really desiring the chance to spend more time with her only friend and eat junk food. Leaving her feeling guilty that she had been given such an impossible opportunity born of a lot of effort and sacrifice of her closest (and only) friend, and all she could do was squander it.
As she finally neared her destination, her hidden room beneath the ruined amphitheater that she unironically had called a base of operations for over a year, she was left with just one simple question bouncing around in her mind.
What was she supposed to do now? She wondered as she opened the hatchery to her room.
The amphitheater had clearly seen better days, and the concrete seemed even more worn than the last time that Lena had walked there, but at that moment she just didn't care. This was her room, her dwelling, her one shelter that she owned and controlled and would protect her.
Lena cautiously stepped down the cold concrete stairs and into the darkness of the room that had once held her every worldly possession, reaching into the darkness to hit the lightswitch by sheer force of habit. The room was cast in a pale blue glow from the single bulb that she had scrounged from the amphitheater lights a long time ago, the dull lighting still bright enough to reveal the mess of what had once been the closest thing she had to a home.
Grimacing at the mold that adorned the walls, she couldn't help shuddering at the thought of what would be growing within her refrigerator after so many months of neglect and abandonment. However, despite the mold and mess, she only had eyes for the bed that had taken so many hours to drag from the refuse pile to her refuge. It was an old mattress with more than a few lumps, and the covers were probably more holes than material by this point, but it was what she had and that was what was important.
Slumping on the bed, she cast a dispirited look around the room, taking in the faded and water-damaged posters that adorned the worryingly cracked walls. When she had last been here the posters had done a much better job at holding the mold and cracks, but time had done a much heavier toll on the building than she would have thought possible.
While it had never exactly been a home to her, it had been the closest thing she had. Sure it looked like an utter hovel at the moment, and she speculated that new lifeforms had been created in the fridge, it was hers and that was the only thing that mattered.
Groaning to herself she pulled herself back to her feet deciding that if this was going to be her real home, then she needed to at least attempt to get it somewhat livable. Webby had expressed quite a lot of interest in having a sleepover, and while she was really planning on just camping on the beach, if it rained Webby might have wanted to stay indoors, so a good cleaning was in order. Besides getting sick because she neglected to scrub down a few walls would just result in her suffering alone and being unable to meet up with Webby.
Gathering the discarded takeaway packets wasn't too much of an ordeal for her, though the fact that most of the mess was remnants of Magica's rushed meals in the final days of her revenge preparation more than slightly annoyed her.
"How is fair that I need to clean up after the witch that tried to kill me?" she bitterly asked herself, making a deliberate effort to blink away the annoying moisture that had mysteriously appeared in her eyes. "After everything she forced me to do, you'd think she'd at least have the common decency to bother cleaning up after herself, but apparently even the mere concept of cleanliness was far beneath her."
She shoved the trash into the small bin next to the entry as she eyed up the biological hazard that had once been a refrigerator filled with some of the few vices that Magica had allowed her. The milk was certainly spoilt by this point, but her real concern was the small slice of cake that she had nabbed from the McDucks many months ago that she had hoped was going to be a celebratory meal for finally gaining her freedom. She didn't care if it was stale, she just wanted to enjoy something she had spent years waiting for.
Her nose uncomfortably twisted as she opened the fridge to find the result far too predictable. The milk was clearly trying to create new life if the green mold growing on it was anything to go by, however, she was relieved to see that the container was still sealed. Cautiously she reached in and tenderly pulled out the quarter filled gallon of milk as if was a bomb about to explode. In truth, if she dropped it there was every chance that her room would no longer be inhabitable
Placing it carefully with the previously discarded waste, she looked back into the fridge and breathed a sigh of relief to see the small slice of cake still enclosed tightly in its plastic wrap. Gingerly, she reached in and withdrew her prize and sat back on her bed with it, ready to finally enjoy something that she had planned for so long.
Slowly, she peeled open the wrappings and prepared herself to take the biggest bit in her life, when she saw the obvious appearance of mold unveiled covering an entire side of the cake slice.
"Can't something, ANYTHING, go right for me for once!" She yelled before throwing the ex-treat across the room where it splattered over the concrete wall, the foul smell quickly permeating the room. Her nose may have complained, but she was beyond everything by this point and instead just collapsed back onto her bed and screamed. "Can't I just have one thing? Just one little stupid thing actually turns out in my favor. Or does fate think that I haven't had enough yet?"
Eventually, the horrid strength overpowered her sense of smell, and subsequently her sense of stubbornness, forcing her to pull herself to her feet and trudged away from the caustic stench and back outside. She barely made it two steps away from the hatchway before she slumped over on the amphitheater's edge and looked out over the ocean.
"Is this really what I fought for?" She asked herself quietly, her arms the only things still holding up her weary head as she became lost in thought. "All I wanted was the finally do something that I wanted to do, something that I planned, something that she didn't tell me to do. And this is the result."
She looked back at the hatchway, wondering whether she could even bring herself to clean it up and if she would ever want to. She looked up at the bright midday sun pounding down on her, she looked back at her ruined room, and then she looked out at the tattered clothing that poorly wrapped around her. She looked everywhere she could, but ultimately there was so fix. There was no solution. There was nothing.
It was in that instant that Lena finally gave up.
Everything hit her and she felt her vision blur as every frustration boiled up insider her until she was sobbing quietly to herself, sitting against one of the amphitheater's pillars with her feet dangling over the water that lapped quietly against the foundations of the stage.
Time passed and Lena's tears eventually grew dry, but still, the storm clouds swirled around her mind, hammering every negative deeper and deeper into her.
Discarding her plans for a sleepover, she just sat on the water's edge, wondering why her life loved to ruin her plans.
She probably would have silently sat there until the sun slept if a familiar voice hadn't called out to her, jolting her back to her senses.