Marinette finally gathers up the courage and confesses.
‘I’m sorry,’ Adrien tells her.
She can’t say she’s surprised. Funny, she should be breaking into pieces right about now. She can’t face him properly (not that she could before), but there’s something about his voice that makes her look up.
He looks as wrecked as she feels. And she remembers that this isn’t just about her and her feelings. Adrien has lost so much already. He’s lost his mom. In a way, he’s lost his dad too. He grasps people like a kid with toys he doesn’t want to share, as if that could prevent them from leaving him. She won’t leave him, she vows. She tells him as much.
Smile watery, but composed, it’s as eloquent as she’s ever been with him. ‘We’ll still be friends Adrien, don’t worry.’ She means it, but why doesn’t he look happy?
It’s a bit unfair she thinks. She’s the one who got rejected, so why does he look like the one who had his heart broken?
But Marinette has been selfless for other people before. She can certainly be selfless for the boy she loves.
Later, Chat Noir comes to visit her on her balcony. The same balcony he inadvertently confessed to loving her, or loving Ladybug at least. Ironic how that works. Her chaton has impeccable timing. How does he always know to appear when she needs saving?
At his lost look, she shatters.
The dam breaks open, the floodgates let loose, she grasps at him, hands scrambling trying to hold on to something or else she’ll drown. She just might with how hard she’s crying. It’s near painful, it feels like she’s coughing out her own soul.
She needs something solid to ground her. She needs her partner, the same boy she’d trust with her life, the person who can understand perfectly how she feels. She’d made sure of it.
Chat Noir is without quips, without puns, only holds her tight and strong, as tightly and as desperately as she’s holding him that it would have hurt to breathe if everything hadn’t been hurting already. He’s silent, except for mutterings that are too low for her to hear.
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry…’
She meant it when she said that she and Adrien would still be friends. She would never give his friendship up. She tries to move on. Marinette owes it herself and to Adrien. Tries being the operative word. Whenever Adrien smiles shyly at her or casually brings an arm around her shoulder before hastily retracting it as if forgetting himself, Marinette’s breath catches and she has to start all over again. But she’s a tryer by nature.
She would have thought in this scenario, she’d be more awkward, but it’s as if their positions have reversed. It’s Adrien who stumbles over his words now, trips on air, when around her. But she thinks their friendship will survive her disastrous confession. Now when Adrien smiles at her, she can smile back without having to think about it. Their hands had touched for a moment before he’d tangled their fingers, looking confused at having done so. She squeezed his briefly before letting go. It’ll be alright. They’ll be alright. Whatever this was might not be love, but this was good.
Alya tells her that the best way to move on is to find someone new. She’s adamant that Marinette find someone who sees her for how special she was, and though something still lances up her chest whenever she looks at Adrien, she gives it serious consideration. With Adrien, her heart squeezes, and with someone else, her heart lightens.
Falling in love with Chat Noir was easy, easy as falling asleep, done in an instant that she scarcely knew when it happened. Or maybe she had always been in love with him.
Time passes. Her heart has been bruised once, of course she’s scared, but she’s not one of Paris’ greatest heroes for nothing. She trusts Chat Noir with her life. Couldn’t she also trust him with her heart?
So, she tries again.
‘Chat Noir, do you love me?’
‘Always Milady.’
‘I think..’ she heaves in a big breath as if preparing to jump off a roof, ‘I think I might come to love you too.’
He looks stunned as if she hit him with his own baton. He clenches his fists so tight, she’d be worried he’d hurt himself with his own claws, and screws his eyes shut. He grits out, sounding broken and defeated,
‘I’m sorry.’
Whatever remains of her shattered heart breaks into a billion pieces. Will she ever be able to put it back together again?
She’s surprised. When she was Marinette, she had been resigned. She’d been expecting it, but she didn’t expect this. Had she been so cocky? Pinpricks of shame and sorrow grip her heart. She’s in such turmoil that she almost doesn’t hear Chat Noir, until he laughs. Hysterically.
It’s the kind of laugh that’s actually a sob, and when she looks up, Marinette sees tears streaming down her partner’s face, painting silver lines on his black mask. Her chaton’s sorrow cuts sharply into the fog of insecurity and self-doubt she’d been drowning in.
‘You shouldn’t Milady.’ He grips his blond hair tightly in both his hands. He looks almost half-mad. ‘I don’t deserve you. Either of you.’
Oh, there’s someone else, she thinks distantly.
He looks at her, pleading, begging for something through his eyes, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, but I fell in love. I fell in love and she confessed to me but I couldn’t say yes like I wanted to. She doesn’t deserve one-half of a heart, and you don’t either.’ He looks down, stance tense, waiting for her divine judgment.
Marinette softens. Despite his self-flagellation, she knows her chaton is good and kind. Her friendship with Adrien weathered unrequited love, and her partnership with Chat Noir will too. But her heart still feels like lead. Trying for levity, to bring back their normalcy through banter, she asks jokingly, ‘So who’s the lucky girl?’ If her voice stutters and breaks, she hopes Chat Noir ignores it.
Of course he doesn’t, but he obliges, ‘I don’t know how lucky she is having been cursed with me, but she’s been lucky for me. You actually know her Ladybug,’ he pulls out something from his pocket, ‘I fell in love with the girl who gave me this charm. I fell in love with Marinette. The both of you have been the lucky charms that have kept me going all this time. Thank you.’ There, lying innocently in his hand, something pink and familiar.
For another time once again, Marinette has her whole breath punched right of her.
‘Ladybug?’
There are no adequate words to answer him. Hands trembling, whole body trembling, she draws the matching blue charm from out of her own pocket. Side by side, they look like yin-and-yang. He gasps.
‘Marinette?’
She’s the one crying now. No, they both are. Laughing, and crying, and sobbing, they can’t reach each other fast enough, until they finally do, twin charms crushed between their bodies, between their hearts, no longer broken, but merged into one.
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