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]

[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.