Of Sunny Days and Starry Nights ~ A Miraculous Ladybug Oneshot Collection

Happenstance || Adrien & Chloe

Title: Happenstance

Words: 1.6k
Pairing/characters: (Somewhat) onesided Chloe/Adrien, hints of Ladynoir, hints of Adrienette
Summary: Okay, so maybe she's self-centered only ninety-nine percent of the time. - The five times Chloe saved Adrien, and the one time Adrien saved Chloe.
Notes: I have no self control. At all. I'm too obsessed with Chloe for my own good apparently. Feel free to send in suggestions for future chapters into the askbox guys (and gals!); I have ideas for each "time" but nothing concrete. Uploaded here too since I'm probably not going to continue this idea. 

Trigger warning: suicidal thoughts, thoughts of self-harm (I'm sorry for doing this to Adrien)

[1]

ADRIEN ran, and ran, and ran. He ran and he ran and he ran until he could run no more. He ran until he reached The Park with the laughing mermaid fountain, and then he fell. No, he crashed. He crashed onto his knees, pain burned ... unable to hold himself up anymore. Tears made his eyes prickle and burn as he gasped.

And then the suffocating sadness crashed over his shoulders again, and again, and again. He clutched his chest and his side, not sure if his heart was shattering into a thousand tiny pieces, or if it was just a stitch in his side from running too far and too quick. He folded over, hugging his arm to his chest as if that would hold him together, a sob ripping out of his throat.

Maman, come back! Come back, please. I'm sorry!

The memories pushed into the forefront of his head, replaying over and over like a broken ear bud and pausing like a scratched DVD. There had been a dinging sound, his mother had reached over and looked at something on her phone. She'd moved forward when the light had turned green and then there was a crashing sound. The car crushing, his head hurt and his ears rung—there'd been lights and a siren and people talking and thenwhite. White, white, white. White that had replaced the red, red, red—the crimson. The red had been the crimson color that had escaped his scraped knees.

He clutched at his head, pulling, yanking —get a hold on yourself, Adrien! But the bitter scolding that he wasn't sure he'd spoken out loud didn't do anything. No. It had been building up since day one and seeing the grave stone had been the final straw —it hadn't been real until he'd seen the Trisha Ageste on the gravestone. It'd been seared into his mind like his greatest nightmare, the cold slab of gray rock. The words Trisha Agreste andJuly 31, 2012 – May 9, 2041 on that horrible, horrible rock were his greatest nightmare and he hadn't even realized it until he'd seen, seen, seen and now he could un-see it.

Please, God – bring her back. Bring her back! I'll give you my life for hers. Pere can be happy again. Please...

He couldn't breathe. His chest was tightening and squeezing and hurting and the air wasn't coming in right and he was pretty sure he was gasping for air and choking on the loud, ugly sobbing sounds. He grasped the fountain in an attempt to ground him to reality, tether him to the real world, but that only flung him back into happier times. Of smiles and laughter and warmth, of maman singing while papa played on the piano and him pounding pan against pan. It brought him back to days of painting and drawing, where paint splattered all over his clothes and all over his cheeks and papa had lead all over his hands from sketching and maman's sure stroke of paint on canvas, making whatever he'd attempted to draw legible.

And then he was thrown back into the present. He grasped on inane memories of the day – laying in bed, listening to Chloe complain about something he couldn't even remember, grunting and humming in the right places, the date on the newspaper (June 3), something about civil unrest and seven earthquakes happening yesterday at the exact same time. One disaster happening right before the next until the world was no longer able to recover from them and plunged into a spiral of darkness and terror and night. ...Walking to the cemetery after another argument with his father, to prove to him that it wasn't real, that maman would come back, that maman was just gone for a little while ... the grave, freshly dug up earth and wilting flowers. Dying.