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louie duck is a sharp kid.
louie duck is a sensitive kid.
louie duck is a lazy kid.
louie duck uses those three words to describe himself. he won’t say selfish, even if it’s true. he won’t say cynical, even if it’s true. sometimes he might. not very rarely, but not his ideal set of words.
from this point onward, he will absolutely never describe himself as okay.
not in the, “oh, he doesn’t cause trouble” okay. no. in the, “mentally he’s perfectly fine and happy” way.
louie duck is not okay. there’s no doubt in his mind. not when things get too overwhelming, and he has this urge to grab handfuls of his feathers to tear from his skin. not when, sometimes, he’ll look at his golden khopesh and suddenly wonder what it’d feel like to cut his skin.
not when, sometimes, he wouldn’t mind dying during an adventure. definitely not when he’d actually rather die while out on one, instead of having to do it himself.
he wrote that down. louie wrote all of this down, in a secret little journal he kept hidden. it stayed in a box underneath his bed, buried under the contents. if he couldn’t tell his family, the paper would know.
sometimes, he gives in. sometimes, he takes a little box-cutter and presses it against his arms. sometimes, he stares down at the suddenly growing scars forming on his skin. the way the feathers are mismatched now, some sticking out at odd points.
he hasn’t tried to die. he doesn’t have the guts, really, so he’ll do this.
nobody will ever know. he always wears that long-sleeved hoodie. keeps the sleeves snug around his wrists so they won’t fall. so it won’t reveal the secret he’s been keeping, the scars he’s quickly developing.
sometimes louie stares down at his sleeveless arm in horror, wondering how he let it get this bad. how he decided he relished in the pain of his skin under a blade, how it came this far. wondering why nobody noticed he was getting worse.
most of the time, when he looks at them, he feels the urge to make more. louie thinks it looks like paint strokes, and his feathers are his own personal canvas to cut and fray away.
nobody will ever know. they’ll never find out. never have a reason to, never have a need. louie will keep it under control by painting the white with red, cutting and slicing apart the paper to reveal strange new shapes.
. . .
until he hears the door open.
he can’t hide the blood dripping down his arms. he can’t hide the box-cutter in his hand. he can’t hide his feathers sticking out in every which way.
louie duck is sitting in his room, holding a box-cutter dripping with blood just above his bleeding arm after he’s been slicing away at the flesh, frozen. frozen because this time he forgot to lock the door. and someone found out. someone knew.
shit.
if he hadn’t thought of dying before, he sure did now, and he wanted to more than ever.
it was violet.
she was staring at him, one hand half-way up to her beak, the other fallen off the handle. her expression was fear, shock, concern, and despair at the same time.
funny, louie always imagined anger if someone saw.
she left a book in here. that’s what she was here for. violet would grab the book and leave. louie would say she imagined it.
“what’s taking so long?” someone else said.
nevermind.
louie blinked distantly. he saw webby come from the door and looked down at his arm just before she let out a half-gasp half-wail.
a sound that would get everyone’s attention.
lena, dewey, and huey were the other ones here.
louie doesn’t really want his brothers to know. they’ll find out, though. webby and violet will tell them. it’s inevitable, now, they all find out.
he tunes out the remaining gasps of shock and only snaps into focus as the box-cutter is snatched from his grip.
his head jerks up. he makes eye contact with lena. lena? what’s with that face? why is she so utterly hurt, and afraid, and horrified? why isn’t it a lie on her face?
“that’s mine,” louie mumbles half-heartedly.
“it’s mine now, and i’m not sure you’re ever getting it back.” her voice wobbles. that’s weird. since when did lena care?
he glances down at his arm. makes sense why she really wouldn’t trust him with it. but also, not really.
“i’m— i’m getting uncle donald,” he hears someone whisper.
everything catches up to him in a flash. it slams into him from his back, suddenly sending red hot pain into the slices of his arms.
“no!” he shrieks, “no! don’t do that!”
that freezes everybody.
“you can’t… you can’t tell him, guys, please! i’ll do— literally anything! please, you can’t tell uncle- uncle donald…” louie finds his vision wobbly, raising his arm despite the searing pain, wiping his eyes with the ball of his hand. “you can’t, he’ll be so worried and disappointed and-“
when lena wraps her arms around him, despite it being so uncharacteristic of her, he grabs her shirt and he cries.
this might first time he’s cried in a while, he thinks. normally it’s just using the box cutter when he’s upset. his arms just itched.
“‘m sorry, ‘m so sorry,” he whispered. “i didn’ mean ta get this bad. ‘m sorry. it was only meant ta b-be once. ‘m sorry,”
his siblings and violet come up to join the hug. they don’t let him go and whisper soft things he can’t quite hear. he keeps apologizing.
after a while, louie is resting against dewey’s left shoulder. his arm reaches across dewey to hold webby’s hand. he leans against his bedframe slightly. violet sits on the bed behind him, absently running her fingers through his hair. lena sits in front of him, glaring in the direction of the trash can. she put the box-cutter in there, to keep it somewhere nobody saw it, just until she left the room.
huey bandaged his right arm. louie’s left was already done. he winced lightly, huey muttering a “sorry, lou,” as he paused.
it was quiet. louie didn’t like that they were quiet because of him. louie never should have started doing that. he knew it’d get out of hand, and it did. so fast.
“please talk,” he murmured. “about anything. you can even ask. i just— don’t be quiet?”
violets hand stopped moving for just a second before she let out a breath. “i had pancakes for dinner.” she hummed. “me and lena went to a diner before we came here. there was a sale on pancakes, and it tasted exactly like how mrs. b makes them.”
“they were good.” lena muttered weakly. she glanced at louie, and smiled gently.
louie offered a tiny, wobbly one back. he wasn’t sure it looked like a smile.
huey finished and laced his hand with louie’s fingers. there was a pause, and louie knew what the next question was. webby opened her mouth.
“grab the box under my bed,” louie hummed. “there’s a journal. it’s got answers. not a clear cut why. but- it’s enough, i think.”
webby hesitantly let go of his hand, scrambling to grab the box and—while she was careful—skimmed through the box as fast as she could. after finding the journal, with confirmation from louie, she went back to holding his hand.
louie braced himself.
. . .
the third entry, and dewey has already stolen louie’s hand from webby; squeezing it like he’d explode if louie let go. webby opted to lay her head in louie’s crossed legs.
his eyes were squeezed shut, leaning against violet as her fingers combed his hair. whenever she stopped, in shock or another, he moved his head. he liked the movement. she started up every time he did that.
a choked sob meets louie’s ears, and he glances at huey. oh no. he looks at dewey. double oh no.
“the adventures,” huey forced out. “lou, you should have screamed at us. hit us. made us understand— i didn’t- we were torturing you by bringing you on those.”
he flinched. “hey…”
webby leaped out of his lap. louie glanced at the floorboards. so she finally got there.
“i- wha— ‘most of the time i go on these adventures because if i die to a monster, at least i don’t have to do it myself’?!” she whips around. “louie,”
he blinks when her hands meet his cheeks. “louie, no, please don’t say that! i’m never going on another adventure again, i promise,”
weakly, he says, “you love adventuring. don’t give it up for me.”
dewey squeezes his hand harder. “we love you more. if anything happened, i’d- i feel like the worst brother in the world.”
“i’m good at hiding. it’s not your fault.” his throat hurts. louie chances a glance at lena. she’s still glaring at the trash-can.
“len, it can’t- it can’t do anything anymore. it’s not in my hands.” he ignores his brothers squeezes.
“tell us next time. i don’t care what set it off. the second you get that itching feeling, find one of us. okay? i need you to promise.” lena says when she finally turns to him.
he blinks in surprise. everyone stares at him with bated breath.
“i… i’ll try. i promise.”
. . .
if there’s anything louie is good at, it’s keeping promises for his siblings.