Vanished (Lukadrien) • Miraculous Ladybug

Chapter 24 | city of love

Adrien didn't feel that well today, he was sore, tired from work and even after being given some of Delilahs signature chocolate muffins for dessert, was feeling a bit depressed.

If the muffins couldn't fix it, nothing could.

It was all part of growing and coping, having days where you feel like a living corpse physically and emotionally just comes with processing trauma. It was something he'd been doing a lot of recently, now he was in a safe place he had the time to. So much had happened over the last now six months, and over the course of his life in general. He finally has time to sit down and just let it all crash down on him, work through it and keep going.

He knew it'd feel bad, but he didn't know it'd feel so psychically bad too.

Pretty much the second he got home he'd taken a shower and crawled right into bed to try and sleep it off, but he couldn't sleep. Too much was running through his mind now.

He'd never actually realised how horrible things were until he was out of the situation and had the added gift of hindsight. Of course, leading up to his runway he knew things were bad, but he didn't realise just how bad.

Looking back, having to lie to your father just to try and go to school wasn't normal. Being screamed at for asking if he could go to a birthday party wasn't normal. Being grounded for your grades dropping by 2 point wasn't normal.

His whole life was strict rules, never spending time as a family and feeling threatened in his own home. It was to confusing for just a little kid, and now he's older and starting to understand things it was hitting him like a ton of bricks.

It was when he felt like this he wished he could just go crawl into his mums arms and cry, but alas she was no longer with him.

So he found himself wrapped up in his favourite starry blanket, starring up at the roof, Plagg asleep on the pillow next to him. Processing, just thinking.

His daze of self sorrow was cut off by a tap on the glass door to the balcony. He knew who it was, and when he turned to look he was right. Gesturing for Luka to come in, he did as he transformed from viperion to his usual self.

"Hey, you alright? You seem out of it" Luka asked.

"Just thinking" Adrien replied, shifting over in bed to let Luka sit with him.

"What about?"

"...everything. Once you're old enough and in a safe enough to start processing it all kind of crashes down on you"

Luka knew from the second Adrien vanished that he must be feeling a lot of confusing and negative emotions. The situation would make anyone feel horrible but someone as young as them? It'd be even harder to work through.

"You wanna talk about it?" Luka asked.

"I do but... I don't even know where to start. I'm still trying to figure things out for myself I don't even know how to explain it to another person yet" Adrien replied.

It must feel horrible, struggling to understand your own emotions.

"Don't push yourself too hard, things will come as they do and the best you can do try and understand things one by one" Luka replied.

Adrien sat up, turning to face Luka. Up close Luka could really see the effects this had on Adrien, his eyes were dark with Eyebags and his hair was lazily tied back and un brushed. It'd gotten long enough that the blonde was showing through enough to make it look like only the small ponytail was black.

"There's one thing you said that I can't stop thinking about though. You don't deserve to be treated like a puppet... you're right, I don't. But I can't help but wonder why I let dad treat me like one for so long. When I was a little kid sure, I didn't know any better. But I've known he's dangerous for... years now. But there was something telling me I was just overreacting and I should stay a puppet... why?" Adrien rambled.