Mosmordre

Months passed, the days blurring together in a haze of monotony. Adrien went through the motions of his life on autopilot, drifting aimlessly from one moment to the next. It was as if the world around him had become a muted, colorless place—voices dulled, sounds softened, everything fading into a distant hum that barely registered in his mind. He felt like a ghost, drifting through a life that wasn't his own.

Nothing seemed to have changed, not really. He still woke up every day, still ate when he was told, still went to therapy sessions where he sat silently, staring at the clock as the minutes ticked by. The doctors and nurses spoke to him in gentle tones, asking questions, trying to coax some response out of him, but Adrien rarely bothered to answer. He didn't see the point. There was nothing left to say.

He heard rumors—whispers from the staff, snippets of conversations caught in passing—about Shadowmoth's attacks becoming infrequent, erratic. But he didn't care. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore. His only desire now was to be left alone, to curl up in his small, sterile room and let the world pass him by.

Social interactions felt pointless, exhausting. He kept to himself, isolating from everyone around him, preferring the solitude of his own thoughts. He found himself staring at the walls for hours on end, watching shadows shift and change as the sun moved across the sky. Time seemed to lose all meaning. Sometimes he would close his eyes and daydream about the past, about better days—except even those memories felt distant, warped, like they weren't real.

Maybe they weren't. Maybe he'd made them up, fabricated a past where he was happy, where he was loved and cared for. He couldn't tell the difference anymore and he didn't really care to. He let the fake memories blend with the real ones, twisting into something unrecognizable. A life that never existed. A happiness he never had.

The only comfort he found now was in the quiet voices that echoed in his mind—soft whispers that filled the silence when he was alone. Sometimes they sounded like his mother's gentle lullaby, or the soothing tone of Plagg's voice from when the kwami had still been with him. He knew they weren't real, knew he was talking to phantoms, but it didn't matter. They were better company than anyone else.

In an effort to get him to engage, the doctors had given Adrien a sketchbook and a set of pencils. He'd ignored it at first, but one day on a whim he picked up a pencil and began to draw. His hand moved almost of its own accord, lines and shapes forming on the page. There was something soothing about the act of creation, about seeing something tangible appear where there had once been nothing.

He drew for hours, losing himself in the intricate patterns and details. Sometimes he sketched familiar things—his old room, the Eiffel Tower, Ladybug's face—but more often, his drawings were abstract, a chaotic swirl of emotions and shapes that made sense only to him.

The doctors seemed pleased. They encouraged him, praised his work, urged him to continue. Even his therapists tried to use his drawings as a way to get him to open up, but Adrien remained silent, letting the art speak for him. He filled sketchbook after sketchbook, the pages a testament to the turmoil inside him.

And as the drawings piled up, the world outside moved on without him. Shadowmoth's attacks, though rare, still left scars on the city. Ladybug continued to fight, continued to protect Paris, but there was an unspoken absence—something missing, a void that no one dared to acknowledge.

But Adrien didn't know any of this. He didn't know and he didn't care. He stayed in his small, quiet world, drawing away as the chaos outside swirled on without him, oblivious to the pain and fear and destruction that had once been his reality.

He was numb to it all. Numb to the passing days, the changing seasons, the desperate pleas of the people who tried to reach him. He had his drawings, and he had his solitude, and that was enough. The world could burn and he wouldn't notice. Not anymore.