Starlet • Lukadrien [Miraculous]

Chapter 4 | memories

A/n: look at me drawing a PICTURE for this chapter oooh.

Seeing Luka again for the first time in years had Adrien thrown into a pit of nostalgia so quickly he barely had time to react. And after hanging out again, talking and playing video games just like old times, it had Adrien reminiscing. Which- he was having mixed emotions on. On one hand we wanted to forget everything about his life from ages 13-17. But he also missed the highlights of it, the days out with friends, the banter in the classroom, the patrols with Ladybug. It was a diamond in the rough when he had moments like that, which is why he treasured those memories so much.

One of the things he and Nathalie took when they sold off the old mansion and moved, was the absolutely massive photo album his mother had started when he was born. It had all Adrien's baby pictures, his birthdays, his trips around the world as a kid. You could see his whole life up until now through that album. The years from birth up until 13 were full of smiling faces and notes added by his mother on each picture. After she died, Adrien kept the album going as it's what she would have wanted. Although there became less and less pictures to put in it, as the years after her death became isolated and dreary. It wasn't until he made friends at school the album started to fill up again.

Days out with the group, kitty section gigs, the times he'd snuck out to go to friends birthday parties. Notably, his smile wasn't as bright as it used to be, but whenever he was in a picture with Luka it was just that little bit brighter. Ironically though, the picture he was smiling the brightest in, you couldn't even see it.

He remembered that night well. Halloween of 2018. His father didn't let him go to that party, but Nathalie said she'd cover for him. So he snuck out in full costume to attend the Couffiane's annual Halloween party. He knew that he was smiling in that picture though, because he remembered the conversation he was having with Luka right before the picture was taken that had him so happy.

Luka was the first person he'd come out to, and of course, because it was Luka, he'd accepted with open arms. It'd be pretty hypocritical if he didn't, seeing as he was bi too. The relief and support from Luka had him smiling all night. So even though you couldn't see how bright he was smiling under the costume veil, Adrien knew that was the picture he was smiling the brightest in.

Being the video game nerd he was, he'd dressed as Link that night. In the outfit from gerudo town. Luka told him he looked good in a crop top, and wondered how the hell he'd managed to get his hands in an outfit like that without his dad finding out. Nathalie was the answer, as usual when it came to Adrien hiding stuff from his dad.

Now several years later, Adrien sat staring at the picture in his album, thinking.

Of all the people from his past to run into, Luka was the best one. Nathalie was right. He hasn't realised just how much he'd missed Luka until seeing him again. Just how much he needed Luka. It was always Luka that had the solutions, the comfort, the place to hide or right thing to say. Somehow, despite his own unfair treatment in the friend group regarding that messy breakup with Marinette and him always being treated like the therapist friend, he was always able to find the energy to be there for Adrien.

Adrien didn't really make any friends after he moved, at first Nathalie had understood why. He'd just gotten out of an abusive environment and out of the public eye, he needed time to refresh. But after a while had passed, she'd started to get worried. Adrien needed someone, even if it was just one person. Sure he had her, but she was a parental figure, not a friend or lover that he needed.

Luka being in the same town of Italy was a miracle, one Adrien needed.

Because he was lonely. He was free yes, but he was lonely. It had him feeling like he was stuck in that damn mansion with no outside connections again. He had the whole of Italy to roam freely but he still didn't have one friend. He seemed to be pretty bad at making friends, in the past it was always someone who'd adopted HIM into the friend group, never the other way around. Maybe it was the treatment he'd had in the past that shaped him that way. Maybe it was autism and the lack of understanding about social cues, sometimes Nathalie wondered if Adrien had it.

And hey if he did, Luka would be the kind to accept him and help him through it anyway.

Adrien closed the album, looking down at his hand on the cover. His now adult hand sat right next to the tiny handprint his mother had put on it by putting paint in little Adrien's hand and pressing it down. He'd grown so much, and yet, sometimes he still felt like a clueless child who didn't understand why he couldn't make friends.

On his hand, sitting right above his miraculous, was the ring. His mothers ring.

He'd have received it anyway, even if the circumstances were normal ones. Because it gets passed down through the family. But his circumstances were far from normal. It was that ring that his father used to control him all those years. Whenever the mental abuse didn't work the way he wanted it to, he'd use that ring instead.

And now, he had it. He had his own amok.

Nathalie had been torn on weather or not to give it to him at first. She wanted him to have completely free will, but she also didn't want him to do something reckless in his bad mental state and make a very irreversible decision. But in the end she figured it was best he had it, and if the need came she could take it back for safe keeping. She'd never control Adrien like Gabriel did of course, just wear it so he couldn't snap himself in a fit of depression.

But so far, he'd not sunk that low. The thought had crossed his mind, more than once. But he never acted on it, because if he wasn't there... then who did Nathalie have left? He needed to stay alive, to help her. Even if she was doing well now, when she's old and grey, still suffering with the chronic miraculous illness, she'd need someone to stay by her side. That was what Adrien intended to do.

But that ring, the source of his very life and also, the source of so much of his trauma. It haunted him, the fact he had to wear it to have free will but also live with the trauma it carried every day. Maybe that ring, and what was inside it was the reason he felt so out of touch with humanity sometimes. Like he was an alien surrounded by beings he didn't fully understand.

The worst part though? How did he tell Luka about this... should he even tell him?