week 13; midday monday; rec room

[tevinteriscoming]

[Well, Sunday he's in no condition to go retrieve the ring from where he'd left it (dropped it down the elevator shaft). Monday morning he's not significantly in better condition, but he does want to try to see Adrien. Not that he thinks Adrien will want to see him, or that he'll have anything worthwhile to say, but the ring is a decent enough pretense to try. He goes to fetch it and then goes looking for him, eventually finding him in the rec room.]

May I have a moment?

Comments

[tevinteriscoming]

That's not the case - [They wouldn't be better off without Adrien. He wouldn't be better off without Adrien. He doesn't really know what would have become of him without Adrien and Marinette here but he doesn't know how to explain that. And honestly, protecting the feelings of an accomplice to a murder likely isn't the sort of validation Adrien needs anyway. Instead he just. Awkwardly claps him on the shoulder once before pulling away; that's about the limits of physical comfort he knows how to give someone.] No, forgive me. I've never been good at knowing what to say. When I came to learn my friend Felix had the blight, if I recall, I told him at least he had the perfect excuse to decline party invitations. Though my floundering here is if anything worse. How is, instead, that you've the perfect excuse to ignore social graces and tell aggravating well-wishers what to do with unhelpful platitudes. I find that it does help, you know, to embrace gracelessness now and again.

But yes, everyone is all right. [Minus, well, Marinette.] Nothing that can't be patched up.

[monsieurchatastrophe]

[he's tense and surprised at the physical contact, however brief it is. he regrets opening his mouth a little, because he hadn't wanted comfort, but he also can't understand dorian's point at all. from his point of view, people were already discussing how he should be dead back in the trial, so why would there be well-wishers now, after everything?]

That's... I don't think that'll come up. [but he relaxes at the news that everyone is fine; the extent of the damage he'd caused hadn't exactly been a mystery, but whether or not they could heal from it definitely had been.] But that's good. She... she stopped me in time. [again]

[tevinteriscoming]

[Him. He's the aggravating well-wisher he's speaking of. He's telling Adrien he's allowed to tell him off.]

She was magnificent. [He doesn't know whether it's better to upset Adrien by not acknowledging her when he brings her up, or to upset him by acknowledging her. But she was. She was clever, she found a way to save all of them. She shouldn't have had to do it on her own.] We'll see them again. I know that doesn't make it better, but. [It helps? Maybe?]

[monsieurchatastrophe]

... Even if we do, [and it's if because adrien's optimism is-- gone, honestly, and it's hard to believe in any of that for sure] that won't make things right. We can't... erase what happened.

[later they will find out they can go into their cradles and absolutely erase what happened but we didn't pick that end so it's not ironic]

[tevinteriscoming]

No, we can't. [Gently, though.] I wouldn't insult you by pretending otherwise. [Even if they can bring back Marinette, they can't undo everyone's pain. Especially his pain.] Everything still happened, and you still lived through that dreadful experience. But what happens in the future may not be so terrible as it now seems.

[monsieurchatastrophe]

[he looks sceptically amused, for a second. an ... improvement?] I never took you as the optimistic type. [he looks down after that, a sudden doubt on whether that was uncalled for he wouldn't have had even a few days ago. he adds, quiet:] I don't... I don't think I can think about the future, right now. Any kind of it.

[it's a hard thing to admit because of what it implies, but he doesn't want Dorian to think he's dismissing what he's saying out of hand]

[tevinteriscoming]

That's all right. You don't need to. [No, he gets it. He doesn't expect Adrien to perk up just from his words.] It's hardly the same, but I've had my share of moments where it seemed as though nothing could ever be made right or that no future could be, well, bearable. [Never this, nothing like this, but he did spend most of his youth engaged in only semi-deliberate efforts to destroy himself, and when he'd clawed out of it the first time, it all came crashing back down again.]

It isn't always so impossible as it first seems. If that makes me a dreadful optimist, so be it. You needn't be one, but at the least, in the now, try not to let it swallow you, if you can. You're brave, and you have a good heart. I should hate to see that taken from you.

[Awkward now, though. Or, more awkward than he already was.]

At any rate. If you should need anything from me, don't worry about troubling me.