Before you start reading, I have a few things to say.
1.) I'm warning you, this won't be an easy read.
2.) This fic was inspired by two other fics: Hospitals, and Once Four, Now Two.
3.) I'm following the "Felix was Adrien's elder brother" theory. For this, I say there was no Ladybug prior to Marinette that she met, and there was no Bridgette. Adrien and Marinette joined at the same time.
Good luck getting through this one!
9 LIVES
Adrien couldn't help but hate hospitals. They didn't make him feel uneasy. He wasn't disturbed by the many sick people kept in them. You go to the hospital for unexplained pains, broken bones, diseases, infections...and cancer.
Cancer is the true black cat of earth. You can't avoid it, you can't escape it...for the most part, once it's there, it's there.
And in the end, it's made itself known, made it known that it won't be the one leaving.
This is why the akuma attack at the local hospital was one of the hardest he'd ever face. Adrien would never forget the solemn look on his father's face when he saw broken look in his mother's eyes that day, that day they came home from the much dreaded hospital. Marinette couldn't even begin to imagine why such a horrid look had come across Adrien's face that night when they passed room TWO-B.
Room "Two-B Remembered", in Adrien's mind.
The entire mission was forgotten at that moment, he collapsed. Just collapsed, fell to his knees in front of the white-sheeted hospital bed. Marinette couldn't move him. Plagg couldn't move him. Nothing could move him, he was just frozen in place...frozen entirely.
It was then everything came to him, everything he's tried years to forget.
"What happened?" Young Adrien asked, the smile he held fading entirely. His mother glanced at his father, his father became rock hard in the face.
"He has it?" Adrien's mother nodded slowly, not saying a word. His elder brother glanced up at her, glanced at his father, as if even he didn't understand what was going on. The look of sheer confusion that came across Adrien's face was incomparable to any other look of confusion.
"How bad is it?"
At that question, his mother fell to her knees, hugged Felix and cried. The elder brother didn't say anything, didn't do anything. He didn't KNOW what to do.
"What, what happened?!" The question was repeated, with much more force and concern. However, the question was still ignored.
The rest of the day was spent in silence.
"What happened to you?" Marinette asked that night, crouching beside Adrien as he rested his forehead against the foot of the hospital bed. He fought back the tears that stung his eyes, as he recalled the day he found out.
"Son..." His mother called him from his room one day, a few weeks had passed since her eyes seemed broken, now they just seem dull. She had just gotten off the phone, and from how she paled and lost all emotion, Adrien could tell the call wasn't good. "Your brother...he..." She searched hard for the words, the proper words that would be understandable to Adrien's innocent 8-year-old mind. "He's gonna go...bye-bye...earlier than we expected."
Adrien repeated her words to Marinette, not lifting his head from the foot of the hospital bed, it felt cool against the burning sensation that took over signaling he was about to start sobbing.
"He's gonna go bye-bye sooner than he needs to..."
At this, Marinette became very confused.
It was about midnight, but Adrien still wasn't asleep. It had been three weeks since he found out that Felix had somewhere else he needed to be eventually, and that he'd have to head off sooner than expected. Adrien wasn't having nightmares about it, in all honesty he barely understood what it meant. He was awake because he couldn't fall asleep listening to the sound of his brothers retching and coughing.
Heave, retch, cough, cough, sob, sniffle.
Heave, retch, splash, heave, splash, cough, cough, sob, sniffle.
Adrien began gagging himself, he was crying so hard. Marinette had long since run off to finish their mission, someone had to do it. Gagging, coughing, sobbing...
Sob, sob, cough, sniffle, sniffle, gag, cough, sob, sob.
Felix had begun to loose his hair. His once quite long and well-groomed pale blonde locks were now disorganized and lacking. Adrien had yet to understand what was happening to his brother. He suddenly came up with the theory that where Felix had to go would restore him, and that he'd come back good as new, the happy big-brother Adrien had always known.
"I-I-It...w-was...a-all, a-all beca-hiccup-s-se of m-me..." Adrien couldn't speak. Akuma now entirely gone, Marinette had taken to comforting her kitty companion, the door of the room closed. Marinette remained very confused, but she acted like she understood everything he was saying. Plagg understood it all.
"I'm sorry."
Two words, TWO WORDS was all it took to have him broken into tears. It was another sleepless night that night after their mom had left, she had left claiming,
"He needs to have a companion in the sky."
Adrien didn't get it. Felix never slept that night.
And since then, pills were almost always kept out of reach.
Adrien suddenly said he wanted pills.
Marinette asked why.
"Because they'll take my pain away."
"Who's there?"
It had been three years, and now 16 year old Felix was the sole protector of his brother, as the boys' father thought his job was more important than his 11 year old and dying son.
The conversation was a long one, but somehow soon-to-be bedridden Felix became Paris's new Chat Noir.
"Why would he do that when he could barely walk...?"
"Huh?" Marinette asked.
"People are stupid."
The room was silent for the next ten minutes.
After his first akuma attack, he came home exhausted.
"Why?"
"I have a secret. I'm Chat Noir."
"Why?"
At 17, Felix was officially bedridden.
It was one night he sat reading his book, and Adrien, still only 12, had come to visit him.
"Don't cats have nine lives?"
Felix froze. After Adrien left, Felix cried. He sobbed.
"I wish..."
The tears had long since dried.
"Marinette..."
"Yes?" She was quick to answer, surprised that her companion had engaged her for the first time in hours.
"Do you have nine lives?"
Silence.
"Do you have somewhere to go?"
"Not for a long time..." She said.
They sat there and craddled eachother for a long time, just sitting under the midnight moon.
"I have nine lives for you."
The funeral was a quiet one. Few attended. Another victim had been lost to cancer, that was that.
RIP
Felix Agreste
Brother
Son
Protector
He had somewhere to go.
An unlucky cat born without
NINE LIVES.
And so you have it! 9 Lives. I passed 1,000 words in a one-shot, woohoo! Pretty good for my first time back in a while~ I hope you liked it, I wrote in in one sitting and it's 1:14 in the morning for me, so ignore any mistakes or anything that didn't match up.
Did you cry? Be honest here!
Reviews are welcome, so please review!
That said, I have somewhere to go!
...of course I'll be coming back! GRAYSKIES OUT!~