Hi all!

Hopefully I didn't keep you all waiting that long for another chapter. I'm on holiday now, but when I get back, the next four weeks are going to be really stressful as I'm preparing for a lot of important exams *sighs* so if there is a bigger delay that's why. But, I'm going to write as much as I can until I get back so that you have content to read.

Enjoy and let me know your thoughts!

From the perspective of Adrien...

I'm too late.

I try to reach out for her, but I'm too late.

Before I can do anything to stop it, Marinette is being dragged away, away from the cell, away from me, by the two guards who brought her here. I notice how they're both covered from head to toe in the same protective clothing that everyone around here wears.

So I don't kill anyone.

Knowing that I can't properly harm anyone, I try to get past them, to go with Marinette, only to be restrained, and as I struggle against the guards holding me back, I see Marinette's eyelids flutter open and fix on me. I gasp, a surge of energy coursing through my bones. I reach forward, pushing and shoving and shouting in a wild frenzy of attempts to get to her. To make her hear me. To tell her they've got it all wrong.

I don't know if she'd believe me.

"Don't worry Marinette! I'll get to you, I promise. I'll make everything right!" I yell despite the commotion.

She says nothing, probably still too weak from the feat she has just tried to accomplish. From when she risked her own life to save mine.

Don't think about it too much Adrien. It'll just make it worse.

Before I know it, she's being dragged away.

And then she's gone. Out of sight.

It's like my brain doesn't function properly, and it can only function in segments, creating fragments of thoughts and memories that will explain everything that happened too fast. Too quickly. I can't think, but all I'm sure of is the fact that Marinette was here. And just as soon as she entered this cell, she's being dragged out of it again.

I stare at the door in disbelief.

I'm finding it so hard to believe that mere hours ago, she was here, lying next to me on the mattress of her creation, and she was next to me, near me, holding me, letting me wrap my arms around her like I've dreamed of for as long as I can remember. Hours ago, I was so happy with her, and now I'm miserable without her.

With no one for me to go after, the guards let me go in the most violent way possible, throwing me onto the floor like I'm nothing. My limbs clatter to the floor and graze the stone, making me flinch in pain. I've endured worse, so much worse, so I almost don't feel it anymore.

But what I do feel is the emotional agony, unbearable like a fresh wound that has been knitted closed ever since my mother died. It's more deadly than I remember, gushing violent memories everywhere.

With every click of her shoes, she rips into the wound another time.

Lila, now with a bandage carefully tied around her head, approaches me and folds her arms. The smile spreading across her face is enough to make me want to kill her.

"Well, back to square one for you now!" she stated brightly, not flinching at my downcast expression.

I glare daggers at her.

"What? Why are you still here? Surely you've put us both in enough pain. Or is that much evil not enough for you?" I fume, getting to my feet and standing, taller than her and feeling more in control.

With a flip of her hair, Lila gasps in mock offence, which irritates me even more. She thrusts a pair of black gloves in my direction and I catch them quickly, caught off guard.

"Fine! You don't want me? I'll leave. Good luck befriending Marinette again, that is, if you ever see her another time. I was quite brilliant at getting her to hate you, wasn't I? Just imagine, she's probably in her new cell by now, as broken and crying as you were when you first got here. A delightful picture, no?" Lila sneers, winking at me.

She turns on her heel abruptly and struts out of the room. Before I can celebrate her departure, she pauses in the door frame and spins around ever so slowly.

"Oh, and Adrien? Put those gloves on. You wouldn't want all of our hard work to be for nothing, now would you?"

The door slams.

Click, click click.

The sound of her shoes echoing down the halls with every step she takes.

That's when the silence hits me.

And I realise that I really am alone again.

The first thing I do with the silence is slip the gloves onto my shaky hands, forcing myself to take a breath and calm down. Try to be rational.

I've been alone before. A lot before.

So why is it a problem now?

I don't even have to think about the answer, because I know exactly what it is. Now, I've seen what it's like to not be properly alone, to have someone who understands me and accepts all for my strange imperfect imperfections. Before I was in here, I wasn't cut off. I was surrounded by people, and yet I felt so completely isolated. Because for all I was surrounded, the people refused to see me as one of them.

Marinette was different, she was always so different. She accepted me, showed me kindness even when I wasn't willing to be kind to myself. She always has.

And after what she thinks I've done, she'll hate me.

'You really do destroy everyone you touch. No exceptions.'

Oh my goodness.

She'll probably hate me.

And I'll never have the chance to tell her they're wrong.

I sink to my knees and run my hands through my hair.

Realisation dawns on me, and I'm suddenly more upset than ever. She doesn't know. She has no idea. She'll believe Lila. Of course she will. Because I never gave her a reason to believe anything else. To Marinette everything Lila said will make sense, when none of it's true. Well, some of it is. But- but not in the way she thinks.

This, this is why I should have told her how I felt about her. So she'd know that I would never betray her like she thinks I have. But I didn't, did I? No.

I've probably hurt her so much. I mean, she trusted me with a lot of things, she confided in me told me stories of her past, stories I don't think she'll have told anyone else, and now she thinks that I used her. Lila is right: I might just have destroyed her.

I'm utterly forlorn, and I don't even think I can do anything to reassure her. I've no idea where she is or how much damage I've done. And now all I can do is wait, and hope that she trusts me enough to believe me.

Like that's going to happen.

What else is there to do? I'm frozen, suspended, cut off from the only person I've ever really lov-

Oh.

Oh.

I gasp out loud, running my hands through my hair with the stress of what's just dawned on me. I don't know why it has taken me this long to come to my senses, and I have no idea how I have never realised it before, but I think that I do. I really do love Marinette.

Whilst being strangely relieved to admit it to myself, it just makes everything so much harder. I'd love to believe that we'll catch a glimpse of each other again, maybe one of the times when we're dragged from our cells to relieve ourselves and shower, or maybe we'll see each other when they open the doors to give us food. But somehow, without her here to reassure me, it's so difficult to hold on to any hope at all. When she's not here, it's like she's taken a sliver of my heart with her and I can't function without it. Now that I know what it was like for her to be here, I'm helpless when she's gone.

Next, I do the only thing that I know how to do.

The only thing I've ever been able to do.

I sit down in the corner of this unfamiliarly clean cell, my back resting against the icily cold wall, and I hug my knees, resting my head on top of them. I close my eyes and remember. Just for a second. I try to remember Marinette and when she was here, cursing myself for being so ridiculous because it was mere hours ago when she was taken away.

Another strange memory creeps into my mind, and I welcome it. It's a memory from one of the few sweet moments in my life, before my life became a mess. I was 6, and I remember my mother and father were about to leave for a business trip. I was upset because I didn't want them to leave, and I knew I'd miss them. My mother smiled at me, the same warm smile that I've missed seeing for too long. She knelt down next to me, held me to her and in my ear, she whispered something I will never forget. I recite her words to myself now, hoping I can ingrain them into my brain.

"I know you'll miss us. But remember this. If you're ever alone, search for the moments that you have in your heart. When tomorrow starts and you're by yourself, we're never far away. No one is. When you're missing us, just remember," I whisper to the silence, smiling wistfully to myself at the memories. All I have to do now is remember, use memories to pretend that Marinette is here, and then I can figure out a way to see her again.

So, I sit on the floor in my little bundle of regret, and I remember.

But too soon remembering turns into thinking, and I realise after a while that I haven't sat and done this since the day of Marinette's arrival. I'm sitting just like I did before, before Marinette. Like I've shrunken back to the scared, insecure person I was days ago, who was consumed by guilt and pain. It's now I realise how crazy it is that the absence of one person can affect someone so badly. I'm back to doing the one thing that I can do.

The thing I've resorted to over the years when I'm lost in the labyrinth that is my life, turning this way and that but I keep going around in circles, impossible circles that never end, and at every twist and turn there's an illusion of an escape, a way out of everything, but it's just fate being cruel, another twisted practical joke that makes me believe for a split second, and then rips away my hope before I can get too attached.

Marinette has always been good for me. Ever since the first day she was thrown into my cell and ever since she tried to coax me out of my trance. And I have to admit, it worked. She helped me remember a part of me that I'd forgotten, the part of me that remembers that I can make others happy. The part of me that matters, defines who I am. She helped me find myself again.

And now what? Now, she sees me as the boy who lied to her, the boy who held the truth back after she trusted him. The boy who let her down and used her for his own good even after he kissed her.

I'm beginning to make myself sound like my father.

No, that can't happen. I'm not my father. I won't make his mistakes. I'm going to fix my mistakes, not ignore them like he did. Not lock them up in a cell like he did.

How to fix them? That is the thing I need to figure out next. At least I have time. I know that I need to get Marinette back. I'm going to try and find her.

Because if there's one thing my mother taught me, it's that when I find the person that is right for me, I should do everything in my power to keep them.

So that's what I'm going to do now.

Marinette has always been so set on escaping, on breaking free, on reaching the world outside the window. Every time she mentioned it and told me of her hopefulness, her eyes would always light up with hope, and joy, a concept that is foreign to me now. I decide that's what I'll do.

I'll break us out of here.

And I'll do it for love.