#also yes i make the 'she' vague on purpose. schrodinger's female lead

[wisteriasymphony]

ughhhhhh okay okay i am inspired. churning adrien and grief so hard in my brain. below the cut is a little non canon complaint because it's based on the tweos au so fair warning for the idiosyncrasies!!

"I've never grieved, I think," he said. "Not in the way people say it happens. Never felt the need."

A chill slipped over her shoulder like the hand of a distant parent. Even as the wind blew Adrien stayed still, unaffected, his face stone (or maybe porcelain) while his golden blonde hair was tossed back and forth in the breeze. There was a slight windbitten pink to his cheeks and the tip of his nose, and his lips, dry and pressed straight, bore the same color.

"Really?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. ...She hesitated to protest that he was 'emotional', given his feelings on the subject of how he acted, which side of the line it fell on. Instead, she dug her hands deeper in her jacket pockets, asking "Even when your mother died?"

"No, I.."

It wasn't polite to bring up how deep his loathing ran for that woman. What she'd done when he was too young to figure it out, the things she whispered in his ear that Adrien would only realize the meanings of years after she was gone. Or even that single thought he repeated in his mind like poetry: "Maybe I'd forgive her for it all, had she taken me with her".

"...It didn't feel that much like a death. No proper funeral, no admittance that was what happened. I could swear they started lying that she'd gone 'missing' before they could even cut the rope from where she'd hung it in the rafters."

It wasn't the time to laugh. It wasn't a subject to laugh about. Adrien did it anyways, just as he spoke. The whole thing wasn't really amusing, moreso just absurd. Bizarre that they thought he was so stupid, even at fourteen. Even at any age.

"Besides," he added. "All it really did was reduce the number of Emilies from two down to one. I'm still here, so she's not really dead." Adrien's morbid smile faded again. "...As much as I'd prefer her to be."

Sometimes I think about how Adrien must grieve

How, when he lost his mother, it was a gradual thing, where he lost more and more of her, where he was slowly prepared for an eventuality and a future in which she would not be there anymore. How it was longstanding and tormenting and how his grief began long before the day he would never see her again. How though the pain of loss must have been sharp and aching for him, and he must desperately miss Emilie, at least he achieved some solace in not having to see her in pain anymore.

But then once he's reached a healthy stage and coping style in his grief for Emilie, the wounds are reopened once again.

How his father went from existing to suddenly being gone to Adrien. How he had no warning, no indication that he would never see him again. How even though the grief is sudden and unexpected, it had really started months before Gabriel was gone, and even long before he became injured.

It's how despite the fact that Gabriel was seemingly in good health, and Adrien had no reason to fear losing him, Adrien has actually been grieving for Gabriel and their relationship for a long time. How Adrien has had to watch his father slip away, lose himself, and slowly give less and less of himself over to Adrien, until Adrien could hardly recognize the man that was supposed to be sitting across the table from him.

Sometimes I just think about how grief became a comfort for Adrien, a lifestyle, because he has been taught that all good things in his life, all things he loves, must come to an end eventually.

And I think about how that must affect him as a person.