#25913

At first Luka doesn't realise that Adrien must have had the Snake Miraculous before him.

Luka knows that Adrien knows that he's Viperion, and that's a strange sort of relief, but it takes him too long to think about how Adrien had been the one to suggest him for it, or why Adrien had been there beside Ladybug before Luka had even arrived.

Yeah. True. But also, think of it like this:

For the first few hours, he really was trying hard to do it to save Ladybug. Was it sensible? Nah, probably not. But a few hours of resetting is not a huge deal. He’s a 14 year old who wants to save his crush, fine.

Then the sunk cost fallacy starts happening. The “I’ve already spent so long trying, if I give up now, it’ll all have been a waste” starts to kick in. He doesn’t want to quit now, because all that effort would have been for nothing. This lasts for... hm, who knows? Several hours at least. A day, maybe.

And then the worst starts happening.

He starts becoming used to the continuous time loop. Familiar, comforting, regular. He knows exactly what’s going to happen when, down to the second. He continues looping for hours, days, weeks, because he’s so accustomed to it that he has no idea how he’s going to cope without it.

He lives in the loop.

Imagine how scary that would be? Living with this regularity of knowing that in 5 minutes’ time, you’ll erase everything that just happened. None of your choices matter. You can do anything you want, because in a few minutes it won’t exist. No consequences. And now he’s so used to it he can barely remember what it was like to go through linear time that marched on and on and never went back.

It’s been weeks, and now he’s afraid to come out of the time loop. Because what then? He won’t be able to erase his own actions anymore. He won’t be able to know what’s about to happen anymore, or what anyone’s about to say. He won’t be able to adjust back to normal life.

He stays in the time loop because he is afraid of the alternative. He could just happily keep looping here forever. Because as horrifying as it is to be stuck in this 5 minutes of hell with no escape and watching Ladybug be captured over and over again with no respite...

It has become his life now.

Months later, after the 25,913th time, the act of leaving the loop becomes one of bravery. He has no idea how he’s going to cope with having to live in the real world again. His brain is primed to run on a 5 minutes loop. Flicking his wrist is muscle-memory. He hasn’t eaten, drank, slept, or talked to more than about 3 different people for almost 90 days at this point. He can hardly remember what it feels like anymore.

And on top of all that, he knows he failed. He couldn’t protect Ladybug.

Was anyone else thinking