Marinette's progress had slowed over the next week, but she was getting a little better. She was sitting up, staying awake for longer periods of time, and sleeping a little less frequently. The doctors ruled that Marinette's slowing recovery was due largely in part to her reluctance to eat. Whereas before, she was desperate to eat anything, lately she decided that eating such tiny portions was making the hunger so much worse. Now that she was staying awake longer, she was really starting to feel the effects of teasing her body. She was forcing herself to eat but never finished her food. This time it was the nurse who would beg her to eat.

Personally, he didn't just see her in pain from all the hunger, he saw someone who had lost heart. Someone on the brink of giving up. Even reminding her of Erek wasn't enough to motivate her anymore.

It probably didn't help at all that the morphine would start to wear off while she was still awake. The pain wasn't something she couldn't sleep through anymore. Her stomach would, as she described to the doctors, send sharp, stabbing pains paired with nausea which made her have less of an appetite. Meanwhile her chest would feel like it was exploding and her breathing would pick up and become erratic, and she described it as agonizing suffocation. Her heart would start to hurt with each pump. Combined, she more aptly said it was like a white hot pain she couldn't reach or soothe.

She was now on a more steady supply of morphine, but to avoid addiction, they wouldn't give her enough to fully take away the pain. She just had to do her best to deal with it until it became unbearable.

The pain in particular became a major point of depression for her. She didn't want to see or talk about Erek at all and his pictures didn't even garner a smile. She truly felt trapped.

The doctors said it was all normal…but…

She was peaceful now, sort of. Silent tears. He wasn't sure if she was in pain and trying to knock herself out to avoid it before it hit hard, or if she was just sad. She had already made it very clear that she was sick of people trying to cheer her up and telling her she would be okay, but they all still went to talk to her and give her companionship. She was usually too exhausted from pain and sleep deprivation to keep up any conversation, making most of them one-sided, but they still tried.

He reached for the doorknob but hesitated. Marinette didn't like showing weakness. Maybe her parents were okay but what was he to her? Was he okay too? If he went in, how would she react? She hadn't cried in front of him before but there was nobody else here to comfort her. There was never anyone else when he came—he was a parent by night and a model by morning and afternoon, all times that other people were off work and the only times he didn't have the freedom to visit Marinette. He didn't like being so alone with her…not because he didn't like her or anything, but because she was becoming so cold lately and he didn't feel like he was doing much to help her in any way.

He sucked in a breath and came inside anyway. She didn't wake up, or at the very least, she didn't acknowledge his entry.

He slowly crept up to her bed, intent on letting her rest if she was trying to sleep off the pain.

Still no response.

He leaned over to examine her face closer. She was in pain. Maybe the tears were sad tears too but she didn't really cry when she was sad. Her eyes would become hollow, empty, cold. She would shut down and turn away from everyone trying to support her. But in her defense, she'd been in this bed for ages being told she could barely eat, barely stay awake, barely move, barely breathe, and her heart could stop at any moment if she didn't obey them. Now she was in constant pain, praying for the sweet relief of sleep to claim her. He hoped she hadn't been wishing for a coma, still unaware that she had already been in one.

He ever so softly brushed some sweaty hair off of her eyes. Her hair was so long now…so unruly…messy and kind of tangled up from episodes of writhing in pain, usually more at night.

"Leave me…alone…" she muttered.

Her voice crackled, like she was forcing herself to speak.

"I just wanted to check on you," he said, his voice barely above a whisper to allow her some amount of peace whilst still providing company.

"You…checked…"

His eyes dropped to the floor and he put a hand on the bed rail.

"Erek's doing okay. He still wants to see you. Today he asked me if he could call you but I didn't know if you were awake…or if you wanted to talk to anyone..."

"You…gonna…bring him…here?"

"No, not without your permission."

"So…suddenly…my opinion…matters?"

"I know this is hard on you."

He felt her glare without having to see it for himself. He didn't even want to see her expression towards him right now.

"No. You don't."

Sure. Because having to tell her son he wasn't allowed to see her was easy. Watching her hate the world was fun. His favorite part was shouldering all the guilt and blame for putting her in this very situation—making her hate the world and separating her from her son, putting her in a world of starvation and agony on a daily basis after she finally woke up from a coma that lasted for months only for a team of doctors to tell her she wasn't permitted to so much as touch the floor and they didn't know when she could.

His pain paled by comparison to all she was having to go through but it did give him an idea of how much hopelessness she felt. Best to be agreeable anyway.

"You're right…I'm sorry," he apologized. "I just… I wish…there was something I could do for you…"

He felt her glare go away but the animosity she had for him, for this place, for everything, was still very much there and powerful. A prime candidate for an akuma…

He let that one thought sink in. All these awful things she felt, all these terrible feelings she had right now, were like a beacon to corrupted akumas. The perfect target. And all Hawk Moth had to do was promise to ease her pain and hunger. He could see her giving in to that without a second thought. And Chat Noir, the person who let her down so hard, she wouldn't take any issue with stealing a miraculous from. In fact, he wouldn't be surprised if she considered that a form of justice. And assuming Marinette could find her, it would be all too easy to take Ladybug's miraculous too, given that Ladybug hadn't seemed much better off than Marinette.

He stepped back a few more feet and tugged on his jacket, summoning Plagg up to his collar.

He turned his back to Marinette and whispered, "We need to keep a close eye on Marinette. There's no way Hawk Moth will ignore her like this."

Plagg smiled and saluted him.

"About time you started thinking like Chat Noir again," Plagg happily whispered back.

He tucked his kwami away and returned to Marinette's side. He wanted to remind her that she could be akumatized if she didn't try to think positively, but then she would probably come to want that. What problem would she have with trading two miraculous for a moment's relief? Especially when she didn't know what would happen if the two were wished upon. If she did…maybe she would want that as well…since it would mean her pain could permanently disappear. What if she was willing to gamble on that?

"Marinette…do you trust me?" he asked.

She was befuddled by the question and lowered her eyes in thought.

"I… Of course…" she mumbled. "This…is nothing…personal."

"Can you…c-can you do me a favor?"

Anger returned to her and her breathing started to pick up, each breath guttural.

Part of him felt awful for asking anything of her after what he'd done.

"Could you please…calm down?" he hesitantly asked.

"No," she growled.

She gritted her teeth and added, "I'm…not…doing…this…any…more."

Before he could ask what she meant, she reached up, pulled off her oxygen mask, and threw it on the floor. At first he was too stunned to move. She didn't need a ventilator…but…didn't she still need oxygen? What…what would pulling it off do? What would it accomplish? What was her end goal?

She stared at the ceiling for a few seconds before squeezing her eyes shut. More tears rolled down her cheeks and she hissed sharply, the pain clearly intensifying. Maybe…she…maybe she needed more painkillers.

He rushed to reach for a red button that would summon a nurse but she grabbed his hand the moment it was over her head.

"Don't…you…dare…" she wheezed, one eye cracked to watch his every move.

Th-The mask. He could put it back on. No nurse, oxygen, everyone won, right?

He pulled his hand back and ran to the other side of the bed, where she had tossed it onto the floor, and scooped it up.

"Here, here, put this back on," he said.

He tried to fit it back over her head but she slapped it back down.

"Leave…me…alone."

Her breath was hitching now, now like her lungs were desperate for air…kind of like how they sounded when Chat revived her, except without all the blood pouring out of her mouth. Was her plan…to…to go…?

He picked the mask back up but his hands shook with his indecisiveness. If this was what Marinette truly wanted, i-if she only wanted to stop the suffering…that was her right…and who was he to deny her that?

A doctor and two nurses burst through the door. One of them took the mask straight out of his hands and pushed him aside. He could do nothing but watch from the sidelines as Marinette fought against them. No matter what they tried, she protected her face to avoid the mask and snapped her hands to her head or neck if they tried to move them out of the way. It was like a sudden surge of energy washed over her. She promptly turned onto her side and curled over herself in pain. She was practically gasping for air now.

One of the nurses pulled out a needle from somewhere—he was still watching helplessly from the back—and stabbed it into Marinette's arm. The speed at which it was done caused him to flinch.

She continued to struggle for a few more minutes but eventually calmed down enough for them to put the mask back on and reposition her on the bed.

"Is…is that normal…?" he breathed.

By pure chance, one of the nurses heard him from behind her and answered, "Some patients can get so frustrated they start resisting medical help. I suppose being in so much pain could trigger this kind of response."

"Res..ponse…like…d-death? She…she wanted to die…?"

He swallowed hard.

"Oh, no, I highly doubt that was her intention," the nurse said calmly.

She left Marinette to comfort him instead.

"When the brain doesn't get enough oxygen, it begins to shut down. Marinette wanted to sleep, dear."

The plan was to escape, then.

"I'm sorry I didn't do more, I…"

"No, no, don't blame yourself. Marinette was aware of what she was doing."

"What was the needle…the medicine?"

"It's just a sedative. It won't last long."

"Isn't there anything…better?"

"We have to be careful of what we give her and how much. We can't just stack more and more medication on her."

Or in her.

"If…pain is what's causing all this, can't we do anything to help the pain?"

"We're doing what we can. The pain will eventually fade away, she just needs to ride it out as long as possible."

He looked at Marinette and frowned. They were tying her wrists to the bed rails…

One of the nurses over near Marinette clicked her tongue and picked up a series of tubes from the floor.

"Ripped out the IV…" she muttered.

He noticed a small stream of blood coming from Marinette's arm. He didn't remember her pulling it out but her thrashing probably did.

The nurse next to him put a hand on his shoulder.

"Will you be okay?" she asked.

"Yeah…"

"Any questions?"

"Can I stay with her?"

The nurse took her hand off and prepared to leave with her colleagues, not before nodding to him though.

At least Marinette wouldn't be alone… He would have to tell Alya and Nino and her parents about this little event. That wouldn't be fun.

The doctor finished securing an IV in her other arm before he left with the door cracked open. No words. No emotion. Just another routine part of his job completed.

Adrien shut the door the rest of the way and moved over to Marinette again. Her heart was back to normal and her breathing was already steadying back out.

"You okay, Marinette?" he asked.

Her eyes were closed but she giggled.

"Yeahhhh, I'm okayyyyy," she answered.

"You should try to sleep," he said.

"Naahhhhh. This feels sooooo nice…like…I'm on a fluffy cloud." She jerked an arm upward but failed as the tie held her down. "Aaaalllllll the way up high in the sky."

This was strangely the happiest he'd heard her in quite some time. And to think, she needed a drug for this. She couldn't do it on her own. At least she was safe from akumas like this though…if…if that could be considered a good thing.

She slowly opened her eyes to look at the "sky" but could only get her lids about halfway up.

"I have something on my face," she laughed.

She tried to touch it with a hand but once again it was held down.

"I'm hungry."

"Yeah…I know…" he said.

"You know what we should do later?"

"What?"

"We should…um, go to the, uh…that one place with the green plants…trees. We should bring sandwiches."

"The park?"

"Yeah, we can park the car, yeah."

"How many sandwiches should we bring?"

"We should…huh… A hundred…billion sandwiches."

He chuckled. "A hundred billion? Can you eat all that?"

"Yeah, uh…I…yeah. I'll eat all of the sandwiches."

"You won't get full?"

She hummed in pleasure and closed her eyes again. "I miss being full… Let's just…let's get full again."

"Yeah…we'll get full tomorrow morning, okay?"

"We can have pizza for breakfast."

He rubbed a thumb over her forearm, careful to avoid the new bandage where she'd torn out her previous IV. Even as loopy as she was now, she was able to recognize how badly she wanted to eat. Consciously, she thought it was better to just hold off on eating to ease the pain in her stomach a bit. But in this state of mind, she wanted food and would probably go after it if given the chance. Maybe now would be the best time to feed her.

"You can have a whole pizza all to yourself," he said.

She mumbled something unintelligible but trailed off, her words replaced with soft snores.

He sighed and pulled some stray hairs out of her mask. One less thing to deal with when she woke up to find herself all tied up and really unable to move. Maybe some good would come of this incident. Now the doctors knew how far she was willing to go to make the pain stop. Maybe they would try to figure something out…if they could.

He fished out his phone from his pocket and dialed Sabine's number. He knew she might've been busy at the bakery so he didn't expect her to answer immediately, and instead took the time to put the phone on speaker while he sent Alya a basic rundown of what had just happened. Nothing too graphic, nothing too wild, just that Marinette went into a fit earlier and pulled off her oxygen mask so the doctors sedated her and tied her to the bed. It wasn't the most eloquent of texts but Alya would call him with any questions when she had the time.

Shortly after the message was sent, Sabine picked up on the other end.

"Hello?"

"Ah, hi! It's Adrien, how are you?"

"I'm doing fine. Is everything okay?"

"I'm just visiting Marinette."

"Oh, good! How is she doing? Has she eaten anything today?"

"She's asleep now and I'm not sure if she ate, but something happened earlier and I thought I should tell you about it."

"Oh…oh, no…i-is she alright? What did the doctors say? Is it her lungs again?! Did her heart stop?!"

"No, no, nothing like that. It's just. Marinette is getting very frustrated with how things are going. She took off her oxygen mask and wouldn't let anyone put it back on. They had to sedate her and a nurse said she was trying to get to sleep."

By starving her brain of oxygen…

"Oh my goodness…"

"Yeah…and…they sort of tied her wrists to the bed…to make sure that doesn't happen again. So…when you come in and see her this way…"

"Well…they're doctors, surely they'll be able to help her."

"I hope so. She's not in any pain at the moment, she's sleeping peacefully."

"I'll…I-I'll tell all this to Tom. Thank you for calling me, Adrien, I really appreciate it."

"Of course. I hope Tom takes it well…good luck with him."

He hung up the phone and awaited Alya's inevitable call.

It was nearing time for Erek to be done with school. He didn't want to leave Marinette yet but…she would probably kill him if she found out he'd neglected her son. Hopefully it would be okay by her if she found out he was sending people to pick Erek up rather than him doing it himself. He wouldn't have as much of an issue with it if he wasn't so famous. This had absolutely nothing to do with ruining his image—in fact it could make him look like a saint, adopting a soon-to-be orphan—but he didn't want to expose Erek or Marinette to that kind of attention. Constant privacy violations, paparazzi around every corner, interviews behind his back… All the nonsense society wanted to know about his personal life would reflect onto them. He could already see headlines about Marinette's condition and asking Erek about his feelings towards the matter. The very idea of it disgusted him so he was careful to avoid being seen with Erek publicly, and he was sure the media was beginning to suspect someone he knew was in this hospital. Why else would he visit it so many times?

Maybe he could try to pass it off as charity.

His phone started ringing and he braced himself for Alya's panicked voice.

"Tied up?!" was the first thing to come out of her mouth, before he even had the chance to standardly say hello.

"Yeah. They don't want her taking off the mask again," he replied.

"Well, yeah, okay, but tying her up?! Isn't that extreme?!"

"She…kind of had a really extreme reaction today…"

"So now she can't move at all and they think that'll help things get better?"

"I guess so. She isn't herself right now and she's in constant pain."

"What…what about now, is she okay now?"

"Yeah, she's asleep. They gave her some kind of sedative to stop her from fighting."

"Can't they use that to help the pain?"

"I already asked if they could do something about it and I quote, 'We have to be careful of what we give her and how much.' So, um…I don't think they plan to do anything."

"I…well, actually, certain medications can interact with others. Maybe she's on something and they're trying to avoid interactions?"

"That's pretty much all they told me. The nurse said Marinette just wanted to sleep so she pulled the mask off."

"Oh…poor thing… We went through something like that with Marcel during his infection…"

He didn't want to picture Marcel in a hospital bed too, tied like Marinette for acting against the staff and putting herself in danger. But he couldn't help thinking about it.

"It's not the same, of course, but he wasn't sleeping well either and we always had to stay ahead of the pain and fever with his medicine. It wasn't always easy to get him to eat, either…"

"I'm hoping they'll figure out a way to get Marinette to eat. If she can hold down a full meal, I'm sure the pain in her stomach would go away. Maybe not her chest but…it's better than nothing, I guess. How did you get Marcel to eat?"

"He wouldn't always eat, but most of the time he would respond to a lot of encouragement. Nino and I had to…ah…stretch the truth a little about his recovery sometimes. I don't think Marinette would fall for the same excuses but maybe encourage her more…? I-I don't know with her."

"She doesn't want anyone in the room when she's being fed. I'm not sure how to encourage her when nobody else can be there. The nurses try but they're not having any luck."

"Yeah, well…I'm not sure then. Maybe it's something she needs to wait out."

"She has been waiting and she's only getting worse."

Worse and more rebellious, with slower and slower physical recovery. In fact, all her gasping and the removal of her oxygen mask may have set her back. He could definitely see that happening. The doctors would likely run more tests on her to see if she'd caused any extra damage to her lungs.

He'd known she was sick and out in a storm—it didn't matter how long, she was still out there soaked to the bone and pale—and the smartest thing to do would've been to take her to a hospital immediately. Erek would've been worried sick but at least he would still have a mother. Instead he was content to take her home. Now Erek was basically motherless, fatherless, not even a goldfish to consider family. Marinette had no desire to eat, speak, or stay conscious. She refused to talk to or see her own son and had no interest in the pictures he drew and colored to cheer her up. He understood that she wasn't herself at all, and that she would probably return to normal after this ordeal was over, but at the moment it was almost as if she didn't want to be a mother anymore.

And he did that to both of them.

A/N

I appreciate your thoughts very much, I'm so happy to know everyone is still enjoying this fic! :') I was worried it was becoming too stale or too old or just people didn't really like it anymore. I also just got a new job and it's very stressful on me, so reading your reviews is a breath of fresh air (sometimes I read them multiple times because they make me feel good lol).