His phone rings as he plays Chopin's Ballade No. 1 in G Minor. It stops then rings again, and this goes on for another minute or two, but he doesn't stop playing, nor does he spare his phone a glance to see who's calling.
Then it stops, and only when it stays silent long enough for him to conclude that it won't go off again, he finally stands up and walks to one of the school desks, where it lies peacefully.
Deep holds appear on his forehead as he sees a voicemail from Alya. He thought he'd never hear from her ever again. He was sure she'd deleted his number on her phone.
He plays it, and right then and there, he realizes how four seconds can change your life.
"Agreste, she's dead. Marinette is gone."
He falls hard on the floor, doesn't even try to catch himself. He lays there for what seems like an eternity, then he's getting up, running, and the hospital comes into view.
He's right at the entrance when a wave of emotions and memories tries to drown him. He remembers that peck on the cheek after their impromptu date, and when he came right after she had fainted, or when he left after she had almost died, then when he kept coming back over and over again. Well, it's all in vain now because he was a coward, and those kinds of people always run out of time.
He feels his throat closing up, so he breaks down on the sidewalk before turning back.
It's been two nights since he locked himself in his room. Food gets delivered to his door. Lunch is replaced with dinner before he could watch it go stale. At one point, he hears Natalie - he hopes it's Natalie - trying to open the door.
It's not until he gets a message from Nathalie that he feels again.
"Adrien, I'm at the door."
He approaches the door like his father's assistant was an intruder instead.
"Mr. Dupain has invited you to his daughter's funeral," the woman says through the barrier between them.
"Your father has instructed you to go."
There's silence, and when Nathalie understands she's not getting a response, she continues, "It's for the best, don't you think?"
Adrien still doesn't respond.
For the first time, he opens the door when Nathalie knocks to give him a suit fresh from the dry cleaners.
The ride to the wake was deadly silent as if uttering a sound would be the end of you, then he breaks it.
"Can I get a month off?"
"Of course, if you come out of your room every day and eat."
He doesn't comment about Nathalie's unusual attitude towards him, so the secretary breaks the silence before it fully heals itself.
"You can't keep running. You have to face your fears, Adrien. If you don't, you'll keep falling down the rabbit hole."
"What exactly am I afraid of?"
"Being consumed by the grief you feel."
There's a pause.
"How did you feel when mother died?"
Adrien doesn't immediately get an answer because he knows it's like putting a handful of salt on an open wound.
"Like what you're feeling right now because she was so amazing, but I envied her so much that I wasted all our time together while she was still alive."
"How did you deal with it?"
Again, no immediate answer because he's redirecting the topic from him to her, and no one likes that.
"Time really does the trick, but only if you let it start ticking again."
He's surprised to get an answer. He was really expecting none.
She looks ethereal when he looks at her open casket, lips parting. Her skin was white as snow, and she looked like a corpse bride with how small she was in the coffin.
He's shed all his tears in his room. All there's left to do is try breathing as normally as he could.
He follows the procession to her grave. Snow is rare in the last few weeks of January. Still, perfect flakes start falling, making everyone silently look at the sky; a rare day for a rare girl.
He watches Marinette's mother breaking down and Alya following suit from a tree far away from the crowd. He's the last to throw in his flower, only when she reaches the bottom.
He takes the ring she gave him off his finger, but before he could have it buried with her, there's a hand on his shoulder, heavy as if putting out a warning.
"Keep it. She would want you to keep it." He looks back and sees that it's Thomas.
He turns to look at the man, then he's accidentally making eye contact with Alya, and all emotions vanish from the girl's face. He suddenly realizes how he doesn't know what'll happen next. Will he transfer schools? Will she leave?
"She had this belief that it'd be easier to find someone in the afterlife with something that connects those two people," Tom says, breaking his train of thoughts.
"I know you're regretting so much right now, but you have to stop thinking about what you missed doing with her and just remember the beautiful memories instead."
He still hasn't spoken a word, letting it all sink in.
"She left you a letter, by the way." It's a simple pink envelope sealed with a rhinestone, his name written in the most beautiful handwriting, and he chokes on a sob.
He opens it like an artifact, so careful as if a mistake would make it disintegrate.
"Dear Adrien, if you're reading this, then we did run out of time."
...
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Take Me With You ✓
Fanfiction"Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings." Marinette Dupain-Cheng was diagnosed with Friedreich's Ataxia at the age of eleven-an incurable, slowly progressing, genetic disease that will e...
