Young Cat-astrophe- Chapter two

Hello again! I forgot to mention last chapter but this story is also posted on A03.

Well, I hope you like this chapter. :) Adrien is now in school.

…

A bit from the last chapter:

"Mummy?"

"Yes Adrien?"

"Will you always, always be here with me?"

"Of course I will darling." She replied easily.

"Do you promise?" Adrien asked urgently, glancing up at his mother worriedly.

She smiled and turned him around so that they were both facing the mirror. Wrapping her arms around him she rested her head on top of his now dry head. They stood there staring at their reflections as she said, "Of course, Kitten."

She promised she would never leave…

...

It had started out as a simple class project, that's all it was. It was simple, really. It shouldn't have been a problem. Except there was.

The project was easy enough to do. Just ask your parents to find a picture of you from zero to five years old. The only catch was that they couldn't actually see the photo until they presented it to the class. Meaning, Adrien had no idea what photo Nathalie picked out for him (his father was too busy to do it, of course).

He knew he shouldn't have been worried. Nathalie wouldn't have picked an embarrassing one of him. Yet nothing could have prepared him for this. The photo she did pick out made Adrien's heart hurt more than an embarrassing picture would have.

He had gone right after Marinette. Her photo was of when she was still crawling and she was hugging a huge teddy bear and smiling happily at the camera. Adrien remembered smiling fondly when Marinette showed her picture. She had been rather chubby then and had the biggest blue eyes he had ever seen on any child of that age.

However, his happy mood had vanished as soon as he took his picture out and he was left staring blankly at his photo as a billions thoughts and memories all rushed through him all at once. The picture wasn't overly complicated or set up. It showed Adrien at two years old. He was wearing a spotted dress that dragged way out behind him. Adrien thought that it resembled Ladybug. He hadn't noticed it when he was young, he was too absorbed in everything else. Besides, he didn't know her back then. He didn't know how amazing she was.

Two-year-old Adrien was grinning at the camera, positively shining with joy. His arms were covered in bracelets up to his shoulders and his face had a lip sticked smile painted on, cheeks covered with pink powder and eyes looking like a sleep-deprived raccoon.

He was striking a pose in that picture too. One tiny arm hand on his hip and the other he held beneath his chin. It was a pose that looked silly with his two-year-old self.

The picture was harmless enough. Just a child having fun.

Except the fact that it brought back so many memories of that day. Of his mother… of their promise.

Adrien stood in front of the class, seemingly lost in his own little world as he stared at his picture. The class was getting slightly worried as he hadn't turned his picture around to show them yet. "Adrien are you ok?" His teacher asked.

Adrien was suddenly brought back to reality. It was only then he became aware that his hands were trembling as he clutched to the picture as if it might try fly away from him. He hung on to it like his life depended on it. In a way, it sort of did. He felt that if he let go of the photo, he would be letting go of all those memories. Letting them go so that he might never remember them again. But he wanted to remember them.

He wanted to remember them, he wanted to remember his mother. If he didn't, he felt he'd go insane. His eyes filled with unbidden tears and he clutched the picture tighter. She promised she would never leave…

Choking on a sob, Adrien shook his head violently trying to clear his head and stop the tears that were now falling from his eyes. He wiped his eyes and sat back down at his desk, still holding onto the picture of him at two-years-old. Resting his head on the desk, he took a deep shaky breath to try calm himself down.

"Dude, you ok?" Nino asked, putting a hand on his shoulder and trying to peer into his friend's face.

Adrien nodded. "Y-yeah. I'm fine." He muttered.

Marinette shared a worried look with Alya just as the bell went. The class grabbed their books and homework and filtered out of the class, glancing at the distressed teen in sympathy as they went. Marinette slowly packed her stuff up, waiting for most of the class to disappear. She grabbed her stuff but paused next to Adrien's desk. Alya grabbed Nino on her way out, ignoring his protests and gesturing to him to just let the two be alone for a moment. The teacher looked briefly at them before also walking out of the classroom to get her lunch, leaving Marinette and Adrien as the only ones in the room.

"Adrien?" Marinette whispered, kneeling down beside him and putting a hand on his knee, while also simultaneously trying to not blow up over the fact that she was touching Adrien. Focus, Marinette. Help him.

Adrien looked up and saw the kind face of a friend but the smile of his mother. He felt much calmer now but he twisted around anyway and slid off his seat next to Marinette, wrapping his arms around her. He held on tight, resting his forehead on her shoulder. Marinette sighed softly and patted his head and back comfortingly. "I'm here to listen if you want to talk about it." She told him quietly. "I won't leave if you don't want me too."

Adrien looked up at Marinette with wide eyes and she stared back at him. "Do you- do you promise?" He asked.

"Of course I do." She answered and Adrien hugged her even tighter.

She made a promise and she kept that promise. She never left him. She stayed. Forever and always…

…

I seriously did not mean for it to be quite so sad or to turn out like that. It wasn't even meant to have this second chapter. It was meant to be just a short one-shot. Pure fluff. But nooo…. my brain decided it didn't want that and so… here we are!

I hope you enjoyed this little two-shot! I actually rather like it.

Tell me what you think!