Chapter Text
It’s always a matter of balance, isn’t it? The universe takes and gives in equal measure, and there is always a price to pay.
But when Paris burns and a hero is needed, Marinette pays it all without question and without much doubt. In the heat of the moment…in the seconds that it takes to see fear searing in her loved one’s eyes, she clips on the dusty red earrings and embraces the red of fate.
There’s a warmth to it all, comforting and supportive. It’s what gives her the strength to shorten her life, and cup a sobbing kwami in a gentle grip after all is peaceful.
“It’s okay. I’m okay, Tikki. Thank you for giving me this gift.”
And she truly means it, even if she will wake up this night, with hitching breaths and a panicked flurry of questions. But she is not alone, because Tikki will comfort her through the night, answering them all with a millenia’s worth of love and care for her hero.
Marinette learns the meaning of regret when she meets her partner.
He is dark where she is light. Destruction where she is creation.
But his green eyes are so bright and earnest, it’s almost too easy to fall for his quips and puns. So they play, and she steps in tandem with his leaps and bounds across Paris.
They save they day again and again. Trust each other, again and again.
And then…she finds out who he is.
She wants to laugh at the absurdity of it all. The fact that her red fate has tied her in ribbons too inextricable to be unlaced. Her red is her luck and her life, and she would give it all up if it meant keeping him safe and happy. This person…her first love, her first choice to run to when the world is turning upside down…they are the same person.
But luck for once is not on her side, when she remembers that the black dots on her earrings mark more than just the time left in her transformation. They mark her lifeline, slowly leeching away into the deep color of a dying sun.
So even when identities are revealed, it is much to her regret that she must keep dancing away from him. She must remain distant, even as she selfishly reaches for him with trembling fingers and a confession wilting in her blooming smiles.
She doesn’t know what to do when he makes a far enough leap and embraces her as he says the thing she fears and wishes for the the most.
“I love you.”
She is selfish when she wakes in the night, screaming with muffled sobs into her pillow that she is scared.
She is selfish when she refuses Tikki’s comfort and instead seeks him out to lay all out. Tikki wordlessly, apologetically slips into her place in those red earrings, and Ladybug streaks through her city, moonlight painting her silver and gray in a way that makes her look heartachingly ghostly.
Her sacrifice in black little dots, marking a path that will no longer exists once she fades away. Her decision to save the city she loved, balanced by her life cut short.
His silence is telling. but she returns his confession with her own.
“I love you too…but I’m so scared, Adrien. I’m going to die, and I can’t leave you alone. I’m going to die, and I’m going to leave behind everyone that loves me.”
He doesn’t answer, but his teeth are grit and there are tears that stain his mask impossibly blacker than before. He pulls her tight to him, his sobs weaving themselves into her starlit strands.
And here, she feels held together. As if she isn’t just a number of dots slowly floating apart to become nothing but a faint memory in the grand scheme of things. She’s strong enough here to be honest with herself.
She clings to him desperately, slim fingers more frail than ever when cries into the crook of his neck.
“Adrien…I’m so scared. I don’t want to die.”
He shakes harder, but still they cling onto each other as the world keeps turning, woefully callous to their plight.
“It’s the natural order of things. To have incredible power, a sacrifice must be made. I told you this before you accepted.” Plagg chides, his eyes betraying all the pain of lost Chat Noirs in his time as their guardian.
They all accepted whole heartedly. They all knew the terms. And they all were heroes, every last one.
But Plagg remembers their tears in the middle of the night, the regrets and the memories and each and every one’s last words. It’s the least he can do for the people he loves and kills.
“BUT WHY HER?” Adrien rounds on the kwami floating lazily over his bed. His pacing stops, his hands dig through his already messy hair.
He’s done his research.Read the ancient texts over and over, but the contracts are iron clad. He had accepted his fifteen years with a grace and foolhardiness only youth can impart. Because when you’re sixteen, fifteen years is almost double your life.
It seems okay in the moment.
He hadn’t realized how fast time could pass. He hadn’t realized that he would fall in love with someone who paid a heavier price than he.
And he can’t save her.
It hits him with a finality that is crushing to realize. So he crumbles to the ground in despair, burying his face in his hands and oblivious to a Plagg who curls against him with an age old regret.
They decide to live by the moments life gifts them.
Marinette still smiles, but it’s something deeper…much more tender than before.
She tells Alya that she adores her. She tells her parents that she loves them very much as she runs out with a croissant dangling from her mouth, backpack hoisted over a slim shoulder and Tikki flapping undignified inside.
She breaches a truce with Chloe, becomes Lila’s closest friend.
She does things she’s never thought of doing.
She kisses Adrien a lot more now, holds his hand when everyone or no one is watching. She wipes his away his tears when ever the subject of her lifespan comes up.
And he weeps, forcing a smile on his face because he should be the one comforting him.
But his Marinette is strong and brilliant and dying. She laughs whenever she pleases, floats away from his tender caresses whenever the notion strikes her.
She is free, dancing on red ribbons to a place he can’t reach her.
“You’re not scared anymore?” He asks one day, very quiet as they sit watching the winking lights below them.
And she merely looks at him with that piercing gaze of hers, starry eyes edged with a smile so melancholy, that he wants to cry again.
A year has passed, and she’s growing weaker. But still she smiles, and he pretends to.
“It’s not that…but you know something…it’s a lot better when I think about everyone I love and who loves me back. ”
He glances at her, shock etched into his expression. Eyes wide behind a mas that does nothing to hide his feelings.
“W-why?” is all he can say in a strained voice.
Her hand moves to cover his over his knee, lacing her trembling fingers through his own.
“I might be selfish. But it’s because I know…I won’t really die…not as long as just one person remembers me. And that’s the best I can do, isn’t it? That’s why we live…to love and be loved. I think…that’s just enough to make life worth living. And to live means to die right?”
And she’s smiling as she explains this, and he may agree at a later time. A year from now when rain falls over a new gravestone, but for now he can’t. For now, he just wants to love and be loved by her. So he presses a hesitant kiss to her waiting lips, his tears running down his cheeks and she can taste the salty sadness of it all.
But acceptance is a part of life, and she’s grateful she’s met him. She can’t regret her choices…not when they’ve led her to this moment where the lights shine bright and the moon smiles. Everything is as clear cut for once, and she leans her head against his shoulder after a breathless, desperate kiss.
“Thank you, Adrien. Please keep living so that when I do see you again, you can tell me so many good stories, okay?” She whispers, but she doesn’t know if he can hear her over his own sobbing.
“Thank you, Marinette” He says, as his hand caresses the gray stone. The rain patters on, and he looks at the toes left on the pawprint of his ring with a bittersweet satisfaction.
To live means to die. He hadn’t understood that until now.
But he does, and he lets himself close his eyes for a moment, feel the rain running down the back of his shirt as he lives for the present. There’s lots to do, things to see and stories to write. He wants to build up a library of memories so that when he does see her again, he can smile proudly and say “ I remembered, and we both lived.”