Thank you all for your wonderful comments so far! I hope this chapter is good enough, and I'm really sorry if it isn't. There might be not enough description, but let me know if you think it's alright!

I think we're both still trying to comprehend what I've done.

But Blond Boy looks a lot more shaken than me.

"Are you ok?" I ask, worried.

I think he's frozen. Or dead. Or paralyzed. Or all of the above. Just as I start to panic, he moves his mouth, as though rummaging through his brain to put together a coherent sentence.

"I- you... how?" he stammers.

"What do you mean?"

"How did you do it?" he asks.

That's a good question. I don't even know if there is an answer.

"I just wanted to help you. Honestly, I don't know what happened," I reply, equally as confused. There's so much I want to ask, so much I want to know. But I'm just lucky we're having a conversation at last.

"I'm not talking about that," he says, eyes fixed on my hands. Now I'm panicking. Does he think I'm a freak now? Millions of panicky questions swarm into my mind, clouding my judgement of the situation.

"What?"

"How did you touch my skin?" he asks.

It's my turn to pause. What on earth is he talking about? I think about answering but he must decide he doesn't want to know.

"Never mind."

Another long pause between us, both with so much to say, both with so little bravery to do so.

"Thank you," he says, looking at the floor.

"It's ok," I reply bluntly as I clasp and unclasp my hands. He seems slightly less uneasy around me now, which in my eyes is a step forward; however, his questions do unnerve me a little.

"I'm Adrien," he looks at me and offers a small, tentative smile.

"Marinette," I reply, smiling back. Feeling braver I try another question, "why were you crying?"

Adrien looks embarrassed and rests his hand on the back of his neck.

"You saw that, huh?"

"Yeah."

"It was nothing," he says. I'm sure he's lying. I see it in his eyes.

"It can't be nothing," I say indignantly, "no one cries over nothing."

"Fine. Why were you crying earlier then?" he replies.

I contemplate lying to him. It crosses my mind ever so briefly, and the temptation is nearly enough to make me do it, but I eventually settle on the truth. The real truth. I don't know why it's so hard for me to say, but I think it's because if I admit it out oud, I'm admitting it to myself too. I sigh, giving in.

"Why? Because I've been imprisoned for 728 days and have never spoken to a nice human all that time, and then I finally get moved here with you, hoping that at last I can have one friend in this whole insipid world. And then I try to talk to you, and you don't even want to talk to me back," I gush, not realising that I was holding that much back.

It feels surprisingly good to tell someone what is going on. It even surprised me as to the burden that I was carrying all this time. Adrien is unable to look at me again, and he turns away. I feel like we're just moving in circles.

"It's not that," he finally says.

"Then what is it?" I ask, intrigued to find out what it was that was stopping him from being nice to me. There is an uncomfortable silence.

"They told me you were a psychopath."

I almost laugh out loud.

"They told me you were a murderer."

Silence. It's deafening at this point. I shift, uneasy.

"I'm not crazy. I'm also not a psychopath, if it makes you feel any better," I say, giving a small laugh.

A tear falls down his face and he meets my eyes. His expression is scaring me. A lot. In fact, it's chilling. I don't think it's one my brain will soon let me forget. It's a red-hot metal pen, tap tap tapping at my memory to ingrain his expression there forever like a scolding tattoo, burning deep into my soul. In a voice that's barely above a whisper, he speaks.

"But I did kill somebody."

I don't really know what to say at this point. My first instinct would be to panic and leave as soon as possible, but there's something about him that suggests there's more to him than meets the eye.

The more I think about it, the more I realise that if I was in his place, I'd want someone to give me a chance. After all, I don't really know what has happened. I can tell that he's waiting for me to shout at him, ask him why he's such a monster, what he was thinking, was he happy now. So instead I shuffle around to face him directly and he faces me with scared eyes. Petrified eyes.

"I'm not going to judge you."

"Y-you're not?" He sounds incredibly unsure.

"I promise. After all, we're both in here for a reason. But I can't fully understand unless you explain to me. Is that ok?" I reply.

Adrien closes his eyes.

"I was fine, normal, for the majority of my life, until I turned 13. I don't know what it was, but on my birthday, I touched one of my presents, and it seemed to dissolve under my fingers, turning to black dust. I was absolutely terrified. I didn't know what to do. From then, if I touched something with my hands or fingers, whatever I touched would crumble or rust or break," he explains. I listen, enticed and more curious than ever.

"I didn't tell anybody about it. I guess I just figured it would go away. But it didn't. So, I started wearing gloves and always covering up my skin so no one would find out. This worked most of the time. But when I was 15, I was careless, thinking that it might have gone away, thinking that it would be ok," he continued, looking at my reaction. I'm lying on my back hands either side of my face, trying to work everything out. My mind is swimming in possible reasons and ideas and theories to how any of this could be possible. Adrien doesn't see it this way.

"It's awful isn't it," he sighs, running a hand through his hair, "I know, I'm a monster."

I sit up straight and sigh. Is that what he's been made to think by everyone else? I feel so immensely bad for him. He needs reassurance. I put my hand on his shoulder, cursing myself for being wary of touching his skin.

"N- no, you're not a monster at all. You can't let yourself believe the things the people out there tell you. What do they know? We know who we are, and as long as we stay true to that, that's all that matters, ok? And... for someone who thinks they're a monster, I'm not scared at all," I say, grinning.

"Why did you look so scared then?" he asks, still not completely sold.

"I wasn't scared. I'm just... freaked out. Not by you. It's just... on my 13th birthday, I saw this girl who had fallen over on the path. She had cut her knee and was crying. I went over to see if she was ok, and I wanted to help really badly. So, I touched her knee to try and see how much pain she was in, to see if it was ok, and it healed. She pushed me off her and started to scream. I fell back onto the grass behind me, terrified, and the grass started to grow like crazy. Everyone around us saw, and they started to shout at me," I say, tears welling in my eyes as the painful memories flood back into my mind.

"Then what happened?" Adrien asks gently.

"They said I was a freak, a weirdo, someone who should be kept in an asylum, a mutant. And I tried to tell them. They were all screaming at me. What are you doing? Who are you? Someone take care of her! Someone phone the police!" I cry, too lost in my own memory, to deep in my tragic past to immerse. I'm sobbing now, "And I tried! I tried to tell them. I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, I don't know what happened, I'm sorry! But no one listened to me. So I ran back home. I was so scared. I didn't leave my room for ages, until my parents forced me to go to school. I was so terrified and on edge, strange things always seemed to happen around me. A girl in my class, Chloe, got me sent away, to my old cell, where I've been until I moved here," I finished, head resting on my knees that I'd brought to my chest.

There is silence between us. Neither of us quite sure how any of it works. And then I remember I was so wrapped up in my own tale of woe I didn't hear the end of Adrien's.

"What happened next, when you were 15?" I ask quietly, head still resting on my knees.

"I was so careless, so stupid, thinking it was just bad luck and some weird thing that had randomly happened to me. That there were exceptions. I kept thinking that it would only ever happen to objects and that people couldn't rust or break, so it would be fine. It wasn't fine. At all. I didn't think about it and forgot my gloves. And... and..." he broke off, too overcome with emotion to finish.

I decide not to push him. So I wait. Ready to listen, if he's ready to talk.

"And I killed someone. By touching them," he whispers.

"Who was it?" I ask quietly, voice as sincere as I can muster.

"My mother."