IF YOU HAD READ THIS CHAPTER BEFORE NOW, PLEASE RE-READ THE ENDING SO THE REST OF THE STORY MAKES SENSE!

Hey everyone!

Ok, so I'm really really sorry for not updating for a long time, I've had so much going on with school and personal commitments so I haven't had time to post. I've managed to read some of the reviews and thank you so much for your lovely comments!

Lots of you said you'd read the Flowershop idea, so I'll try to work on that, but this story will be my priority. If you're new to this story I'm so glad that you've started reading, and let me know your thoughts.

Hope you enjoy!

Pain.

Excruciating pain.

The first thing I feel when I stir. It's everywhere, infesting every limb and every inch of my body. It's like my arms and legs are attached to weights and I'm sinking, sinking, incapable of moving.

I'm so tired, exhausted, and I immediately recognise the feeling. This is my body reacting to me using my powers, a consequence I never imagined I'd have to face. This time however, I've been pushed further than I ever have before. My energy has been almost fully depleted, and I feel like I'm frozen on the spot.

It's at this moment that I look around, trying to piece together where I am and what I'm doing here. Have I been transferred again? What has happened to Adrien? My brain aches just as much as the rest of my body and for now I don't want to think. I want answers, to know where I am.

I know that I'm not in the same cell, because there is no window, no portal to the outside world, to sanity, to reassurance. Now there's no window, there's no hope.

I try to get up, I try to call out, but everything is too weak and limp like it has been too many times before, so I collapse back to the floor and instead feel my kneecap collide with the hard stone of the floor. I gasp in agony as I writhe on the floor in a pathetic heap.

"Help! Somebody, please!" I croak, wanting, needing anybody to rescue me, to comfort me.

I don't know why I do.

I know that it's useless.

The only person in this whole place who I thought would, isn't who I thought they were.

I make a very bad decision next.

I curl up into a ball and wallow in my own pain, not knowing how I could do anything else. I stay there, huddled in a ball of my own thoughts.

Adrien broke my heart.

I really did like him, thinking that I'd finally found that one person who cared enough about me to not see me as the girl who got locked in an asylum, but I was wrong. I was so unbelievably wrong when I actually thought he was being genuinely kind, and it turned out it all meant nothing. Not a single thing.

And the worst part is, I still really like him.

I'm so used to being screwed over and alone, what's one more time. At this point I've learned to deal with it, and treat it as the normal, but no matter what, every time it just hurts a little bit more. Lies are the plaster that try to contain the scar that is the truth. And every time you move, the scar will open and the truth will keep on being remembered and all of the painful memories bleed back in a scarlet puddle of someone else's creation.

I don't see the point in shouting anymore. Then again, I suppose I never did. There's no one who's going to come and rescue me. Ai hat this stupid place for filling me full of something so dangerous.

Hope.

It's a terrible thing, building you up in a tower of glass just to be shattered and broken as soon as you come into contact with anything. Hope is like this illusion of a better situation that isn't real. It's this realisation that a small part of you is dead and has been replaced with a cold, cruel fantasy which is unattainable. So, for now, I've got to wait here for my body to repair itself before I can think clearly again.

I end up curled up on the cold stone floor, shivering from the icy stillness in the air as goose bumps lace every inch of my skin. I trace patterns on the floor with my fingertip, feeling the grime and dust beneath my finger. Immediately, my mind begins to wander, and soon I find that I am having an internal conversation with myself.

Almost like I'm crazy.

Which I'm not.

I'm not crazy.

I squeeze my eyes tight, a new memory searing into my brain, ripping off the bandage that I had tried to fix everything with and letting a fresh tidal wave wash over me.

The last time I said that was before, before...

Adrien.

The name breaks me over again. I'm trying so hard to think rationally about everything he's done, trying not to let my emotion influence my thoughts so I have a fair chance at letting the last time I see him not end so badly.

Surely, he must have a good reason, a plan, for doing everything he did.

'You've done what we asked.

No, he hadn't told them anything, had he? But I suppose Lila ended up knowing about our skin cancelling each other out, so he didn't need to really. She found out anyway because we were together. It wasn't done on purpose, right? A click in my mind.

Crack. Doubt has a hammer and a chisel and it's chipping away at my skull.

'You mean you haven't told her?'

He chose to keep it from me. I could've told me at any point and yet he chose not to. But then he said it was because things were going so well with us. What things? Did he maybe feel the same about me as I did him? Or did he have plans to expose me and my powers? Maybe he didn't think that I'd find out, that I wasn't smart enough to catch on and find him out.

Crack, crack. Doubt has prised open a small part of my head and I feel it filtering in slowly.

I'm beginning to reason with myself, and I still don't know which voice to trust. What is truth and what is a lie, I have no idea. I'm staring at everything through a funhouse mirror and everything is distorted, not being what it seems.

Surely, Adrien wouldn't do those things. He wouldn't. He's not like that, is he? He hadn't done anything to me. He had let himself be tortured or hurt by Lila instead of me. Yeah, that's right. It's Lila. It's Lila, it's Lila.

Right?

'Experimenting with your abilities.'

'Testing what you were willing to do to help him.'

No.

That was it.

The evidence is staring me in the face, eyes wide, daring me to ignore it. I laugh bitterly to myself. Even now, I'd tried to defend him to myself. To prove to myself he wasn't trying to go against me.

That ends now.

Right now.

Yeah I'm upset.

Yeah, truth and lies can become one and the same, they can be deceiving, morphing occasionally to form blurred, imperfect truth.

Yeah, betrayal breaks your heart and darkens your soul, leaving a black tarred handprint on your heart so that you never, ever forget the pain.

Yeah, this whole thing is awful, and they aren't going great right now.

But I'm going to be ok, I'm going to heal with time and things will get better. Because I was fine before Adrien. So I know that if I try really hard, I can get back to that place again.

I will make it happen.

In one last attempt to find any strength, I crawl over to wall and try to pull myself up whilst holding onto it, but it's no use at all.

I remember Adrien telling me last time that I would need to wait it out for my body to repair itself and it was no use moving a lot until then. As much as I hate to admit it, he's right.

Slowly but surely, I start to think about him again. Like a silent predator, he slowly starts to creep back into my mind, becoming all of my thoughts. When I close my eyes, I can see his dazzling smile, always so nervous and conscious, I can feel the feather light touch of his gentle fingers as they caress my cheek, so gentle and careful. Most of all, I can still see his beautiful emerald green eyes glinting at me when my eyes are closed. Shamrock green when the moon was out and yet golden in the sun. Eyes that could be brimming with emotion: longing, terror, self-consciousness, sadness, pain, affection... honesty.

I scoff at the latter two, finding myself hilarious for even considering them. It's almost embarrassing how much I still want to trust him. I'm so embarrassed it brings a fresh wave of tears, the worst one yet, so bad that my whole body wracks with every sob. Every tear feels like it's made of one percent water and about one million percent feelings, broken feelings, hurt feelings, crushed and angry feelings, all flushing out of my body. I realise how good it feels to be alone, so I can pour my soul out without being judged, and I can think without being influenced, and I can be isolated, without Adrien, without Lila. Just loneliness and I.

These are the facts:

There's no hope of me ever getting out of this place.

There's no hope of me ever truly finding someone who I can trust again. They all come with freedom, because the only people who truly cared are a world away, and I've left them behind.

And I'm so humiliated, I can never see Adrien again. A part of my cries for him, another part of me never wants to see his face again.

What he did, what he didn't say, would've been more acceptable if he hadn't chosen someone like me, someone who is so fascinated by the notion of friendship, of romance, of comfort and warmth, that I was stupid and broken enough to believe him and everything he said to me.

When I don't think I can cry anymore, when I'm hurting so badly I can feel it physically, an overwhelming tiredness engulfs me, taking me into its arms like it's the only one who wants me. And I happily oblige, handing myself over to sleep so I can do the one thing I dream of most in the world, the one thing I lone desperately to do in this moment, the one thing that can make me forget who I am and where I am and just let me step out of my own shoes and just be neutral for a moment.

I sleep.

I escape.

What Marinette failed to notice as she fell asleep, was the rough stone floor beginning to decay and blacken, forming patterns on the floor, and a small cracking sound next to the wall. A sound so quiet it was almost unnoticeable, but to the broken and eager heart of a girl who wanted a friend, it would've been as deafening as an avalanche. But Marinette was asleep. And if she were awake, she would've seen the last beam of the dying sun shine onto the stone floor and illuminate the smallest of patterns that chiselled itself into the stone as if by magic. Someone's magic. And if she had looked closer, she would have seen that they weren't in fact patterns, but small words.

Small.

But powerful

12 words carved into the floor.

'M, i Will fix THis, i Have to. i lOve you, oK? A'