"Stop it!" She screamed. The tears that had been her eyes were trailing down paler than usual cheeks, as she pulled a blood-soaked Kleenex away from his face. "You, stop this right now." She looked at him like she'd caught him betraying her. "You can't be like this right now."
There was a strange taste in his mouth. "Then when?" He swallowed and missed the look of disgust that waved through his wife's face. The words came through clearer. "When do I get to be freaked out that my dad nearly killed my daughter? Or that I spent the better part—the actual BETTER PART—of my childhood playing hero, trying and failing to save the world from my personal monster?"
Nonsense. Marinette was hyperventilating. She could feel it. She was losing control and she hated it. She was a retired superhero and a current nurse, but she couldn't save her own bloody child. And here was husband, bodily waiting with her, emotionally distant, literally biting the tip of his tongue off. She really needed him to stop.
Alya ran into the room just in time. "Marinette!" She called, catching her friend's hand before she could hit Adrien.
Marinette sank into her. "Make him stop. Make it stop. I can't—"
Alya shushed her and swayed, experimenting with how to distribute her friend's body weight.
Nino was like an angel. This whole situation ran deeper than Alya could manage at the moment. She knew that there were parts of this nightmare that neither she nor her husband would hear tonight, but— between the two of them— maybe they could keep these two very hurt people from going into a darkness they could not return from. Nino quickly took in the scene—Alya barely holding a sobbing Marinette up, Adrien staring with hurt-filled eyes at a space before him with blood running out of his mouth. "Oh, buddy." Nino's voice was gentle, like he was consoling a small child. "Adrien, come 'ere." He put his hand on Adrien's shoulder and steered him into a hug. Adrien started shaking. Nino knew his friend was crying more from the strangled noises that started pouring from him than the liquid that was now running onto his shirt. "Alya. Dear, take Mari and get a nurse."
"I was supposed to protect her," Adrien whispered when they were alone. "I was supposed to protect them." Nino patted Adrien's back and lifted his own head, focusing on the clock to hold back his own tears.
Nino was silent a moment, deciphering his friend's words. "Adrien, what could you have done? You weren't there. You didn't know there would be anything to save her from. Who could have predicted that something like this would happen?"
Adrien breathed through his mouth and then pulled a mucus-filled breath through his nose before speaking. "Me." Adrien pulled away to look Nino in the eye before wiping his mouth. He looked at the blood on his hand and gagged a bit, but swallowed anyway. Adrien talked through the blood, some of it dribbling out, and around the precariously hanging tip of his tongue. "I should have known that my dad was—"
"Lord," the nurse on duty prayed, seeing the blood on Nino's shirt and and Adrien's face. She pulled Adrien into one of the chairs to begin the examination, not daring to try dragging a disturbed parent out of his child's waiting room.
Oct 9, 2018
Edited 04/30/19
