a/n: an old touched up ducktales fic from 2019. mostly preserved, with things only changing for accessibility's sake
If you had asked Louie, you'd get one of a handful of responses.
If you were family and you asked, there were a few differences, but ultimately just the same answers with a new coat of paint.
If you happened to be one of the only two ducks in the world who looked just like him and asked, well.
Well.
Well it depended on the day, the hour, the minute, what he was doing and if he was eating at the moment. Sometimes it was sugar coated and sometimes it was blunt but after he'd returned home it was never a lie. He'd promised them that first night while they held each other and cried, even Dewey, which meant it was a big deal.
Louie didn't take big deals lightly when it came to his siblings, it was one of the only things he'd felt consistently even through his hellish downfall, and he was sure it would be with him to his grave.
But of course, it wasn't about the after. It's rarely about the after. It's always about the before, the during. The happened, the happening. Never the will happen.
In the Before, there are several things Louie is prepared for.
After all, every person knows the word depressed but they're not all privy to what it means.
There were differences between the emotion and the clinical diagnosis, as he knew, and Huey would sometimes tell him on their visits, but the groundwork was there.
It meant wanting to die and it meant cutting and it meant crying and it meant lashing out and it meant being a schoolkid who nobody understood.
It meant colors graying out and people becoming dimmer around you and places you once liked meaning nothing to you anymore and things you once loved being little more than dirt under your foot.
It meant slowly and painfully slipping from a hold that you and nobody else, except others with the same affliction, would ever know how hard you were struggling to keep.
(It didn't mean all of that to Louie, but he considered it better that way, so he didn't dwell on it. Or, he did, but not as often as he'd like, which felt like a good compromise.)
Louie was a fan of treasure and sparky things more than he'd ever be of adventure. He loathed adventuring if he was honest, but he'd liked spending time with his siblings and Webby (who might as well be lumped into that category as well).
And before, that was enough. Even if he was horrible at the outings and scared of everything it had been enough. He'd follow this pack of kids to the ends of the earth, even sans treasure, because it was simply enough for him to be with them.
And then, slowly, so slowly not even ever perceptive Dewey could see it, it wasn't.
The one thing nobody seemed to mention was the static. There was so much static. It was an interference unlike anything he'd ever quite felt or seen or read about before. And while he was no Huey, could honestly never dream of retaining as much information as she seemed to, he'd read a lot.
Many nights spent under the harsh glow of his phone, searching what the problem with him was. A plethora of symptoms lead to a hodgepodge of reasonings and further issues, but nobody had ever mentioned this.
Adventures and outings in general started becoming more than Louie could handle. He'd go on less, have less schemes and cons cooked up, and became a shell of himself. Almost comical amounts of thick layers of TV static blocking him from feeling or wanting or needing. From liking and loving. From his will to move and his will to live.
It wasn't something he'd think about often, not wanting to live. But it was something he'd catch himself thinking about more and more.
It started with huge things, shattering plates because he was too lazy to put them away correctly. Upsetting Dewey so much he would stop talking to Louie for an entire day. Ruining Uncle Donald's mood. Then it progressed, got smaller and smaller, until it was every little thing.
Bad grades? Death would solve this. Lost his phone charger? Wouldn't need it if he were dead. Can't find a clean binder? Might as well jump off the nearest balcony.
They stopped being alarming and started being commonplace. Just a thought that'll inevitably pop up whenever he screws something up.
(Then with that of course came the self hatred.
The, why am I like this?
The, what's my issue?
The, why don't I just clean up my act already?
The, why can't I be better?
And with those come the need to get them to go away, have something else occupy the space.
Nothing's ever done the job better than a good snack for the youngest triplet.
Louie snacks more than his siblings combined, and then some.)
The first time Louie messes up big time on an adventure, it almost costs him his life.
He's not paying attention and the world is slow around him and it's only thanks to Webby tackling him that he escapes the temple with only a tattered hoodie.
The plane ride back home is fraught with scared and worried kids and adults, except for Louie, who can't feel much of anything except stupid.
The second time Louie messes up big time on adventure, it almost costs Huey and Dewey's.
Louie doesn't let there be a third time.
He stops going on adventures. Refuses before and doesn't regret it after.
Louie had felt a whole lot of nothing good for a while now but his family's safety was something he'd never waver on. If they were safe, all was well in the world, and he sure as hell wasn't about to be the one to put that in jeopardy.
While they went out and solved mysteries, Louie slept.
While Scrooge remained the richest Duck in the world, Louie cared less about wanting even a dime in his possession.
While everyone else had always been full of almost infinite energy, Louie upended every feeling he had onto his wrists and arms.
(Not with blades, never with blades. He'd tried exactly once, on a day worse than others, and made it as far as feeling it press softly against his flesh before it was all real suddenly and he panicked.
His teeth did a good enough job anyways, and bite marks were a lot easier to hide than bright red blood.)
Louie the Crybaby becomes Louie the Emotionless. It makes him impossible to read and for someone who's spent 14 long years being easily placed, it makes him both love and hate it.
On one hand, he can't make a face and essentially tell his two mirror images his entire thought process without words anymore.
On the other hand, that means he has to use words now, and words are harrowing at best and unavailable at worst.
Louie the Smooth Talker becomes Louie the Selectively Mute. He'd always been that of course, not that anyone outside of his family knew it, but never by title.
It stung in a way that pierced his veil and for just a moment, Louie the Calm became Louie the Expensive Heirloom Breaker.
He doesn't apologize for it, but hopes the sorrys he mentally projects everyone's way make it there as he stands amidst his mess, angry and speechless.
Many, uncountable amounts of times do his siblings and uncles and even Mrs. Beakley ask him how he is, what's wrong and how they can help. And it's always the last one that gets him, how can they help? Is there even something to help in the first place? Is there something worth helping? Isn't this just a him problem?
He can never answer them truthfully, because really, there's no reason to.
Sometimes he thinks he says it convincingly enough for them to believe, but his tone is always so flat it's hard to actually believe it himself.
(One day, out of the blue, Uncle Donald comes by and says nothing as he drops a hefty book in Louie's lap. When the duckling looks up, there's enough emotions swirling in the sailor's eyes to make even lowly expressionless Louie balk.
Reading others is not a skill that just goes away it seems, even through days that stick together like syruped pages in a book and a haze befitting a cave.
His uncle tells him if he can't tell them what's wrong, he can tell the journal. For just a second, Louie sees something lost and wandering inside of his uncle, and even though it's gone just as quick, Louie initiates the first real hug he's gotten in ages.
The first couple pages of the book are later stained with tears.)
The flood that breaks the dam is an honest accident.
It's early when Scrooge whisks Louie's siblings away from the mansion in a rush neither of them were prepared for.
(Like always, Louie is offered a spot to come, and like always, he declines. It's a tired dance at this point, but there's something in him that basks in a brief glow at the action nonetheless.)
Louie watches with lazy eyes as his siblings make haste from the bottom bunk. Dewey nearly leaves without his top shirt and Huey is a foot out the door before she spins back and grabs her guidebook without looking, clearly caught up in her own mind like usual. It's a scene that leaves him fond for a while even after they leave and he's content.
It's noteworthy, he thinks, to be content, so he goes to write it in his journal.
Except his journal isn't where it should be.
Huey's guidebook is instead.
The panic and fear that grip him holds him in place for much too long. By the time he runs out and tries to catch the lot, the aeroplane is already a medium sized dot in the sky. Louie feels himself fall to his knees and a chill encases him as he cries silently.
(Somewhere along the way, Mrs. Beakley finds him and wordlessly guides him to his bed. His tears don't dry, but they don't worsen either.
Beakley runs her hands over his head exactly once, and then she's gone. He falls asleep without realizing it or wanting to.)
When he's shaken awake sometime later, he's surrounded by his family.
Normally, it'd be just Huey and Dewey and if the adventure was really exciting, Webby, but everyone was here.
That alone would raise the boy's alarm, filled with anxious energy, but that wasn't the full scene.
Huey and Dewey are sat next to him, Huey sobbing about how sorry she was for something he couldn’t parse and Dewey looking just as upset but offering her support in the only way Dewey could.
Webby was there too, on the edge of the bed, quiet.
Uncle Donald stood, something flickering on his face that Louie couldn't quite make out.
Scrooge and Beakley were further away, drawn in their own conversation, but they kept stealing glances at Louie.
The confusion he's feeling must show, because Huey quickly babbles out about how she hadn't meant to read it and she was just trying to get her guidebook's reassurance but it wasn't her guidebook but she'd already read what she'd read and she cuts herself off with a wail and engulfs Louie in a hug.
He's stiff, not because he wants to be, but because he's trying to puzzle piece everything together and oh. Oh.
When he finally wraps his head around the situation, Louie pales. It's an impressive feat for a pekin, all white feathers after all, but it's more like he's lost all flush of life in only seconds.
Suddenly there's anger, as white as him, and just as fast as it comes it leaves. He wants to will it back, blame someone, anyone, but the spark won't reignite and he settles for finally wrapping his arms around his sister and shushing her softly.
It succeeds in only adding more water to the oil fire and when she asks him, voice painfully stripped, why he didn't say anything, it's filled with so much fear he feels it reverberate inside of himself.
It's tough, to know you had written something with the confidence and foolhardy assumption that no one was ever going to read it, only to have your big sister come apologizing to you for doing just that.
To know exactly what you'd written.
To know exactly what she must have read.
To suddenly know exactly how you'd feel if you read the same thing coming from any of your siblings.
To feel like the worst brother in the world.
To know intellectually this was nobody's fault and yet emotionally yours alone.
Everyone (sans Huey, who had firmly buried herself in the crook of Louie's neck) looks at him for a response.
Dewey is very tactfully leaning into him but he's fidgeting in a way that Louie knows means he'd like to be staring at him too.
Webby looks a special kind of haunted, like she'd never expected something of the sort to happen within her own family.
Uncle Donald's eyes are shiny with unshed tears.
Scrooge looks worried and put out, and Beakley just the former.
Louie opens his beak twice, blinks, and closes it. He doesn't have a good answer.
Louie is considered a Danger To Himself and spends two months away from his family.
Thus begins the coveted During.
Everyone visits as much as they're allowed: 3 times per week. Even still, time passes both too fast and too slow.
He feels nothing and he feels everything.
His roommate is both the best and the worst.
He vehemently refuses to journal anymore.
He thinks about ways he could die just to speed up the process.
He receives a lot of its okays and you're doing greats and sometimes he believes it but most of the time he doesn't.
He refuses any group activity as much as he can and participates as little as they'll allow.
And he takes his new medicine diligently out of sheer necessity alone.
There is nothing but bad his daily dosage brings him at first. It's not immediate, but when they kick in his emotions are all over the place.
Happiness is not among them when they flip flop seemingly on the hour. It was somehow worse than having things always muted. Now, they're a little louder until they're so loud so suddenly it's all he can do to cover his ears and try not to let out a sob.
Strong, unavoidable feelings hit him whenever they so wish. Louie couldn't play Break The Vase or Have Uncle Donald Hold Me or Complain To My Siblings here though, which was troubling to say the least, and just made things that much harder.
Anger and sadness and general distaste pop up long before anything even remotely good does and there was little to do about it, except nap.
Louie took a lot of naps during his absence from the mansion.
Then one day as he makes his way to rest, Louie notices the others watching Ottoman Empire in the TV room and finds himself sitting and watching with them. He gets genuinely interested. It's a good time.
(On one visit after that, Louie laughs at a particularly bad pun from Huey.
It's an honest, loud laugh. Others in the visiting room turn to him but he can't find it within himself to care. He's got tears pricking his eyes when he finally recovers and his sister looks like she's just seen the sun after three days worth of rain, her hands clasped and mouth slightly ajar with a smile.
Dewey looks similar, albeit with more bouncing, and so does Webby, after she's finished throwing daggers at everyone who had stared at him. It was overwhelming in the best/worst kind of way, but Louie had simply grinned and took a mental snapshot of the moment, waiting until they left to retreat into his shared quarters and break down about it.)
After that, day by day, Louie finds himself in more group activities, actually participating.
He talks to the other people more, never much but he can actually remember some of their names now.
He thinks upsetting thoughts less and thinks of returning home more.
He's allowed to learn how to sew, and something about the repetitiveness of it puts him at an ease he's not sure he's felt in ages.
(When he shares the news with his sister on another visit, he jokes about snatching her stitching badge from under her nose and she laughs with him and dares him to try. He thinks he just might.)
And one day as he sits on the couch of the gathering room, sitting amongst faces that all have names, a supervisor knocks on the door frame and calls him by his full name. It's curious enough to him that he forgets to be upset about it as they beckon to him. He gets a questioning look from his roommate, Honker, and responds with a shrug before sliding off the chair and following the adult.
Uncle Donald greets him at the door and Louie is just confused at first. It wasn't a visiting day, and he'd doubted his uncle would've forgotten that.
But then Louie spots the bag he'd been living out of for two months slung across Donald's back and how big his smile was and the second it has painted the correct picture in his head Louie cries out, loud and joyous, and clings to his uncle.
And then it is about the After.
It's about coming home to a house full of people who crash into you the moment they see you.
It's about catching up, enjoying it, wanting it.
It's about taking medicine, not out of obligation but out of a genuine desire to.
It's about getting into shenanigans again. Not always, and never consecutive days, but doing it nonetheless.
It's about trepidatiously going on an adventure for the first time in years and coming out unscathed on his own accord.
It's about seeing something sparkle and feeling it's thrall again.
It's about making hand sewn pillows for everyone in the house.
It's about writing down his thoughts when they're bothering him again and burning the pages later.
It's about actually telling others when things are getting too much and trusting that they'll always have his back.
It's about not wanting to die anymore.
It's about wanting to live.
The After is full of emotions. It's not always smooth sailing but it's not always rocky, either.
There are some days, weeks so bad Louie feels like he's slipped and fallen back into a world of grays and pins and needles and not even his siblings can help entirely.
And then it slowly ebbs away and Louie's back to himself and it's so relieving he thanks every star in the sky.
He's clingier than usual after those bouts, but nobody seems to mind much and he's never more grateful.
Louie lets the bad days come as they will and takes the good days by storm. He lets himself be lazy without worrying about it. He doesn't begin to stuff his face every single time he feels anxious or worried. He does schemes and adventures and he enjoys doing them.
For the first time since the Before, Louie looks up instead of down. And when he can't, he confides in his family, and they help him. He can fully and truthfully say he's happy.