you have grown to love her over five hundred years. you have learned her flaws and her intricacies. she'll be your future, one singular constant for you for years upon years.
you know her well (or at least you like to think you do), and you can see, ever so slightly, the hairline fractures of the facade. there are things falling apart where they should be coming together, pieces not fitting together quite right but try as you might, you do not have the information to make it work properly.
you have to try though. you have to try for your people, for her, for any concept of a future. so all you can do is force the person you love into a public spectacle of a trial. all you can do is watch her lose the fight to live and exist, and know that you had a direct hand in this outcome.
the pieces come together, the cards fall where they may, and there is fear.
a guilty verdict, the first death sentence. there is blood on neuvillette’s hands. the world collapses with her lying motionless on the chair, and everything changes.
there are two performances happening on the same stage. one is the woman you love dancing for someone else, putting on her greatest five hundred year performance. one is the echo of the woman you love for you, killing herself in front of you. it’s to save you, dont you understand? it’s to save you, and to save her, and to save your people. you have to understand, neuvillette.
things manage to be alright in the end. she’s okay and you’re okay and the people are okay, but everything is different. there is no eternity for you two anymore.
she’s human, she’s always been human, she’s going to die and you are going to be alone. you have eighty years left with her, if you’re lucky, and the woman you love is someone else. she behaves differently, and she runs away and hides from you. you have eighty some odd years left, if you are lucky (and when have you ever been lucky? there is not luck in the law. it is facts. you have nothing else.) sixty, maybe, and she is spending each day hiding away from you and rotting in her home. what is the use of sixty years with her if she will not see you? how are you supposed to make the most of rapidly depleting time?
it rains more these days. she stays inside her home too much to notice.
you know where she lives, but you don’t know if she wants to see you. you’d assume not, despite how much of you aches to see her. you send people to check up on her instead, hear about her buying pasta noodles and novels to retreat home again.
the traveler coerces her out of her home.
the traveler coerces her back into the theater.
the traveler coerces her back on stage.
you sit there and watch her gorgeous performance and you love her. she is granted a hydro vision and you love her. she takes her bows, and you love her.
but maybe she is happier like this, happier without you. so you leave before she sees you, and you do not notice her eyes on your back.
she could have been him. most people think it with this sense of horror, as if being like keith kogane is the worst thing that could have happened to them. pidge thinks it passively, a fleeting thought as they sit together, like ever moving lines of data. if things were different, she could have been him. the same central event, the same loss of their family to the sky, the same drive to find them at any cost. katie had had the support she needed. she was scared and she was angry and she wanted her fucking brother and her fucking dad back but she still had her mom and she had her dog and she could cut off her hair and pretend to be someone else and get somewhere.
keith didn’t have that. keith didn’t have the support systems, didn’t have the ability to try to hack their systems for information, didn’t have somewhere to go. he had focused himself differently, had honed himself into a weapon, angry and violent, because he didn’t have the ability to become something else, not back then.
they had both been desperate, been willing to throw everything away for a chance to get their loved ones back, and isn’t that something. maybe, he could have been her if their circumstances had swapped. he could have been a “prodigy” he could have been “brilliant” he could have been supported. while he had foster homes and an empty shack in the desert she had family that ruffled her hair and taught her to code and told her about space with awe in their eyes, and so she loved it. space had called to keith but it had taken from him and taken from him, krolia first and his dad and shiro, and him becoming a voltron paladin is by the sheer strength of his will as opposed to any adoration of it. but it could have been. god, it could have been. the thought rings hollow in her mind.
she loves him, not quite a brother but not quite a friend, but the thought of keith, small and alone, makes something ache in her chest. she shifts, presses herself into his side, and he stiffens before relaxing against her with a soft hum.
was thinking about how i imagined monster daisy and just
imagine how much more horrifying it would be to hunt down the woman you love reconstructed. she has the same eyes and the same braid in her hair that you watched her hands shake as she did on herself but now her body is more animal than human. her jaw sits unhinged from her face to accommodate the rows of razor sharp teeth, her legs bend in more places now, the legs of an animal crudely shaped from human bones. the bones of her fingers break through her fingertips forming pointed claws and coating her hands in a layer of her own blood with the blood of others. she is still miserably, woefully human (to outsiders, to you, but you can see the joy dancing across her misshapen shoulders and the smile twitching at her bloodied and torn lips) but she is not Human in a way that can never be fixed. she is predator she is animal but she is still the woman you love and isn’t that cruel? isn’t that awful? to have her look at you with human eyes and animal instincts, to have her reach out hand paw hand and ask you to join her. to plead for you to be by her side once again. you cannot pretend that you are shooting an animal when you kill her. the shot pierces her chest, cracking distorted bones. then another, and another. she still bleeds like a person does. she still dies like a person does.
back on my monster daisy bullshit featuring my qpr jondaisy headcanons 💪
you know you are going to run into her at some point. this fearscape is nothing if not narrative, if not some dream logic incarnation of everything that haunts you, so of course you will find her. you choose to put effort into it though, to Find Her instead of being found.
you are not sure you’d be able to hurt her, even as the twisting mass of limbs she is, even as you See her tearing apart innocents with her pointed teeth and clawed hands. those hands had braided your hair, once and again. her hair still falls down her back in a braid you had watched her make a million of, the golden hair blood soaked and matted but still plaited. someone is going to have to kill her. it cannot be you. you are not the one that promised, even if it is your fault she is like this. (if you were stronger then could you have saved her? if you could defeat the hunters by yourself would she have had to regress to become this? you Know everything now but you cannot predict the future and you cannot change the past, no matter how much you wish you could.)
you See her victims, one by one, the innocent lives she has torn to bits. you know she wasn’t a good person, you know that there was always going to be blood under her fingernails despite how she washed her hands (and you know some of it is yours. she knew it too, and she never asked you to forgive her. you still cannot tell if you did, but she was important to you, and you to her, and wasn’t that enough?) but the monstrosity is hard to look at nonetheless. you can see the way her legs bend and See the broken arrangement of her bones to fit this shape. you can see the teeth crowding her mouth and you can See the way muscles and ligaments tore to make her gaping maw. you know she did not want this, but at the same time you Know she is the happiest she has ever been, sans thoughts of anything but The Hunt.
she kills someone in front of you, devours his organs in a way that is burnt into your memory. basira has a gun and it is pointed at daisy and you want to tell her not to shoot but at the same time this is no longer the daisy whose hand you held or the daisy you saved from the coffin or the daisy who told you you were one of her reasons to stay. you keep quiet but martin does not and then she is upon you.
her teeth are latched to your leg they are digging into your flesh and drawing blood. nothing could hurt you here but the pain is visceral and you think it will scar (the same way her knife scarred your neck the same way you can still feel the tender touch of her fingers on your scalp the same the same the same). she does not recognize you and while you know why (not Know. just know. you understand her in a way The Eye could never) it hurts anyway. you wanted to say goodbye. you wanted to lace your fingers in hers one last time. you wanted you wanted you wanted but you cannot have.
she lets go of you to beckon basira to her side. she begs and she barks and she yells, forcing out the sounds from a mouth that is no longer built for words, and she does not recognize you. she does not call your name, she does not speak to you, she does not recognize you as anything but prey. (you were something different to her once. you were inhuman and so was she, you helped her remain suicidally human because she did not want to become this again, you were redeemable to her. has anyone else ever thought you were redeemable? has anyone else ever viewed you, monstrous as you are, in the way she did? but then again, does it really matter, when she is not viewing you at all anymore?) basira shoots, once. then again and then again. daisy falls. her eyes are still human, still void of recognition. her clawed hands lay limply on the ground. you want to reach for them, to feel as she goes cold, but martin is here worrying about your leg and basira is standing over daisy’s body and all you can do is hurt.
you do not stay to watch her corpse burn. you do not stare as your leg mends itself together, scars blossoming in your skin. you get up and you keep moving. that is all you can do for her now.
aphelion (n.): the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid, or comet at which it is furthest from the sun.
perihelion (n.): the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid, or comet at which it is closest to the sun.
years before the story, there's teenage clorinde catching glimpses of navia, golden and gorgeous and glowing, and falling for the way she smiles and the way she cares about people and the way she walks as though she’s trying to put her feet directly into her father’s bootprints.
and then callas is put on trial and then clorinde has his blood on her hands and navia will never smile at her again. she is trying to take care of navia, she is trying her best, but it is only driving her further away. fleeting smiles turn to dust and a frigidity that burns, the care is given to everyone but her. the flowers take root easily. sunflower petals that crawl out of her throat desperately seeking a light that no longer shines on clorinde. she starts coughing during a match and allows a sword to graze her cheek to pretend that the blood is coming from her wound instead of her mouth, before swiftly disarming them.
most of the cuffs of her white shirts have blood stains now. she stands ramrod straight next to furina, next to her god, and stifles the petals and the blood.
of course she notices when navia enters the theater, the petals crawling up her throat as they desperately try to turn to her sun from the dark shadows of clorinde’s lungs. and she still glows just as brightly as she did when clorinde was seventeen and when she was fourteen and every single glance in between. but it is not for clorinde, it is for the golden traveler and for the shining magician twins and for navia’s men. it is not for clorinde (she needs to remember that. she may need to carve it into herself, if necessary). navia’s light is for people who can shine on their own. clorinde will beat back the roots as best she can, she will train her breathing until it no longer falters at the petals in her throat, she will go and go until she cannot anymore.
of course she has to save navia, her and the traveler (her partner, the person she wants more than she wants clorinde), and she tries not to choke on the petals that navia’s gaze (navia’s scorn) evokes. she thinks, above all, that this is what might kill her. she’s never feared for her life in a duel, or in any fight or battle, but these flowers but navia might just end her. (clorinde isn’t sure she’d mind.)
navia’s gaze is uncharacteristically warm during the trial for the magician twins. as she asks clorinde for the help she’s never wanted before, as she gives clorinde a chance to explain the duel, it is warm. and clorinde aches with it, her lungs and stomach and throat and everything. as soon as she can get away without making a scene she excuses herself from her archon’s presence, finds a secluded room, and chokes on it.
there is blood on the floor and on the petals and there are whole flowers coming from her throat and she might just die here, on the floor of some random room in the opera epiclese, and wouldn’t that be ironic. furina’s prized little fighting pet dying of a disease of love backstage.
and she doesn’t, of course, but it felt like she would. and maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad to die on that floor. (she wonders how long it would have taken for them to find her body).
but she lives, and the flowers grow in her lungs, and she hides them every day until she gets home and she nearly dies every night choking on them in her bathroom before going to bed and starting the process again. when she and navia met though, it was the worst it had ever been. if she thought that she’d die in the opera epiclese, she couldn’t have imagined dinner with navia. she couldn’t have imagined her uninhibited gaze, the high of navia’s undivided attention, the inability to taste anything beyond the sickening taste of the flowers that crowded her throat. navia left, clorinde following shortly after, and she quickly turned into some out of the way alley to choke on the petals navia left behind. (she thinks she’s going to choke forever)
clorinde would die choking if it meant navia’s life would be slightly easier, and navia has never met a challenge she’s unwilling to take on.
so. navia invites clorinde places, and clorinde accepts, and she desperately tries to hide the coughing and the flowers and the blood stains.
but navia is brilliant and has a bit of a taste for the detective work and an inkling that something is wrong and she figures it out, bit by bit. and maybe through that process she figures clorinde out too, her devotion and the things that make her tick (that she pretends doesn’t) and why she wanted to be a duelist and her opinions on it.
and by the time that navia figures out clorinde has hanahaki she’s steps away from also figuring out that she’s in love with clorinde.
so “i’m in love with clorinde” and “clorinde is dying” come hand in hand, gorgeous and fleeting and terrifying all at once, and navia crumbles and builds herself back up in an instant.
clorinde is choking when the knocks on her door come, and she swallows desperately and tries to wipe the blood off her mouth (she can still taste it on her teeth) and there is navia and navia is kissing her?
navia can taste the blood on clorinde’s teeth, the sickening taste of the flowers on her tongue, and navia pulls away to shove a bundle of papers at clorinde’s chest. “you fucking fool. i might have been upset with you for killing my father but that does not mean i wanted you to kill yourself!”
clorinde stares at navia, then down at the shifting pile of paper at her feet, seeing photos (when did navia get these?) of her blood stained cuffs, of the occasional yellow petal she forgot to leave behind. she finds the one pressed sunflower she gave navia, too sentimental foolish to not try to offer her feelings in some way with such a perfect flower, and she realizes what has happened. “you don’t have to love me to save my life. it’s alright, navia.”
navia, furious, grips clorinde’s collar in her hands, pulling their faces together. “i’m not in love with you to save your life! i’m in love with you because you’re you!” and she kisses clorinde again, desperate, and. oh. oh.
and clorinde nearly falls into it, nearly lets her knees buckle and her eyes close, but suddenly she is choking again. and she shoves navia backwards, and rushes back into her home in a desperate attempt to find somewhere to hide the blood and the flowers that are trying to escape her lungs. navia follows, because who has ever been able to stop navia from going where she shouldn’t? so she’s there to pull clorinde’s hair back again and to wince at the blood and the stems and leaves, and she’s there.
clorinde’s last sunflowers lay on her bathroom floor, facing her sun.
nsfw warning! not incredibly graphic but also still somewhat graphic.
imagine clorinde, fresh out of killing someone she cares about, fresh out of killing navia’s father, trying to reach out to her, trying to take care of her the way she was begged to, the way she promised to. she tries to make things better for her, to protect her, and all she gets is navia’s tears and anger. and clorinde gets it, she does, because to navia she is not clorinde, she is her father’s murderer.
so clorinde backs off, does what she can from the shadows, tries not to force navia to see her. and somehow, she ends up in navia’s bed. blonde hair splayed across the pillow, the taste of her arousal on clorinde’s tongue, echoes of moans in her ears and the scratch of navia’s nails against her skull. and maybe this will make it better. maybe this will fix something.
maybe if she can’t take care of navia properly she can take care of navia like this. and so it happens again and again. navia takes clorinde to her bed, tells her that this won’t happen again (lies, all lies), and lets clorinde eat her out until she’s spilling all over the sheets. and then clorinde leaves, a sated navia falling asleep in her own bed and clorinde walking home with an aching cunt.
clorinde loves navia. she’ll do whatever she can to make things better for her. but some things are too far. there is no penance to be found in her own pleasure so she doesn’t ask navia for anything, and navia doesn’t offer. until she does.
navia starts slipping her hands in clorinde’s clothes, grasping at her chest or trying to rock her knee in between clorinde’s legs. this is new. this is unfamiliar and it’s new and why would navia want to please her? why would navia care for the pleasure of her father’s killer? clorinde is here to take care of navia, and she loves her, but she’s never been deluded enough to think that that care would ever be reciprocated.
but clorinde lets it happen, lets navia take what she wishes, whether it be clorinde disrobing or clorinde kissing her or navia putting her hands between clorinde’s thighs. navia can do as she wishes, even though clorinde knows she would never truly want her like this. navia can do as she wishes, even as it tears clorinde apart.
the traveler arrives, brilliant and golden in the same way navia is (in the same way clorinde is not). and clorinde watches navia saddle up besides them, watches her smile and call them partner and work together, and clorinde thinks it is time for the curtain to close. the sentence is complete, the penance isn’t paid but it can’t be, and it’s time for clorinde to fade back into the shadows. navia is destined for something better than being touched by hands coated in her father’s blood. navia is brilliant and golden and kind and she helps people in the way clorinde has never been able to.
navia does not invite clorinde to her bed. not after the trial with lyney and lynette, not after their magic show, not after clorinde saves her life in the street. she doesn’t before the trial, before she accuses her father’s true murderer, before any of it. not after any of it either, clorinde notices. of course she notices. the curtain is drawn, the guilty are to be punished, and the innocent get to move on. clorinde is guilty, and navia gets to move on.
she does not expect her testimony to change much. callas may have wanted death, may have embraced it, may have wanted her to protect his daughter, but that does not erase his blood on her hands. she does not expect anything, especially now that navia has eclipsed her. the sun can always shine by itself, and the moon is damned to its reflection. the story is always told the same way.
that is, until it isn’t. that is, until the traveler walks away, the murderer dead on the street, and navia doesn’t follow. that is, until navia approaches her for once, until navia takes her to a meal, until navia is in clorinde’s bed. navia has never been in clorinde’s bed. the sheets are pure white but stained with blood nonetheless, and navia is far too clean to be here. but she is, and she is kissing clorinde and she is apologizing. why is she apologizing? what apologies can she have for the woman who killed her father? but navia is apologizing anyway and clorinde is trying to apologize too but all of her words are interrupted by the plush skin of navia’s lips.
but navia notices clorinde’s hesitance, notices the way her hands do not touch her, and stops. they’re both barely clothed and navia is gorgeous and clorinde is ruined and “clorinde, you have nothing to apologize for. clorinde, i was unimaginably harsh towards you. clorinde, thank you for trying.” and clorinde cries. barely dressed and in her own bed and with the most beautiful girl she’s ever known sitting naked in front of her, she cries. and navia kisses her, soft and sweet and starts putting their clothes back on, putting clorinde’s arms back through her shirt and taking clorinde’s jacket for her own, and navia sits next to her and holds her hand. and she speaks in soft words as clorinde cries for the first time since she became a duelist, the first time in years, navia tracing patterns on the back of her hand and talking about games she heard the children playing and performances she’s seen in the street. eventually clorinde stops crying, and navia takes her by the hand, brings her to the kitchen. she pulls barely used ingredients out of clorinde’s kitchen, almond flour and eggs and cream of tartar, and they are half dressed in clorinde’s neglected kitchen when navia apologizes again, when navia tells clorinde that there is nothing she has to repay anymore. clorinde is not guilty, and navia is not innocent
and navia pulls her signature macarons out of the oven and she shoos clorinde onto a chair and sits down opposite her.
clorinde is not guilty, and navia is not innocent; so maybe they can be human together.
he reached for the sun, and the sun took his hand.
Ao3
There are benches both inside and outside of their school, even without counting the cafeteria, but they’re all encompassed by the hustle and bustle of their school. And so, when Marinette starts walking away from the school after the lunch bells ring, Felix follows like a moth to a flame. She walks past her house, waving at her maman through the windows of the bakery, and he waves too, stiffly. Her maman smiles at them, and points to the display cases to ask if they want anything. Marinette shakes her head and raises the bag she’s holding, to which Mme. Cheng nods, and they keep walking.
Marinette stops them at one of the benches in the park, and sits down in the shade. He sits down without prompting, and Marinette beams at him, a smile that could challenge the sun. He freezes and looks away, trying to hide the warmth growing in his cheeks, and pulls his lunch out of his bag.
“Did you hear what Lila was saying in class today? Talking about her latest trips to far off places but all the images she showed you can find online with five minutes of searching. Like, it’s nice to sit by you during class, but sometimes I wish I could still sit by Alya in the seat we earned, you know?”
He hummed in agreement, perfectly content to let her talk while he ate his lunch, but she instead let the statement hang in the air before pulling out her own lunch.
The silence was companionable, broken only by remnants of conversation from other small student groups and the laughter of some of the playing children. Around halfway through their allotted lunch time, Marinette puts away her containers with a content noise and a full body wiggle before pulling her sketchbook from the confines of her backpack. “Do you mind if I sketch? I have a couple ideas for some outfits that I really want to get down!”
“Feel free.”
“Thanks, Fe!” She smiles again and he’s lost in it, left staring even after she’s turned away. It’s as if her smile is burned into his eyes, an entoptic phenomenon that steals his breath from his lungs. By the time he pries his eyes away, Marinette is already immersed in her designs, her tongue poking out from between her lips. He reaches into his bag to pull out his book, but none of the words stick in his mind, eyes trailing back to stare at Marinette’s quiet joy.
Eventually he gives up, placing his book back in his bag and sitting there, staring into his own personal sun, sitting right next to him. The ice in his chest is melting into a pooling ocean and it feels like he’s about to overflow with it, surface tension being the only thing keeping his feelings from spilling out and he can’t bear to stare at her for any longer.
He tears his eyes away, trying to turn the water back into ice, to freeze the feelings back in his chest and keep it contained, but there’s too much water and too many feelings and even if he can turn some of them into icebergs it doesn’t change the amount of water and finally everything comes spilling out.
“It hurts to look at you sometimes, Marinette.” His words, soft as they may be, break the silence between them. She turns to look at him, endlessly blue eyes piercing into his skin, eyebrows furrowing with worry, an expression he’s seen time and time again: when he gets too close to akuma fights, when the bags under his eyes are darker and he forgoes his usual coffee order for something with more caffeine, or when she’s worrying about other people and he gets to watch the all-consuming flames of her care.
“Felix?” Her voice is soft and confused, and it takes everything within him to not turn to look at her, to not let the words freeze on his tongue, to not shove everything he’s feeling back underneath his infamous “ice prince” persona that she so carefully took apart.
He watches her out of his periphery, continuing to stare ahead and try to figure out how to melt the ice in his chest that he had tried so hard to freeze. He can’t take this back now. He can’t leave her with just that phrase, not with the twists and turns and dark corners all throughout her brain. “You’re incandescent, a sun of your own volition, and I fear that I am forever just going to be orbiting you at a distance.” He tightens his grip around the strap of his bag, white knuckled and shaking softly, before releasing it and stretching out his fingers. Felix sees her move, place her hands down on the bench, moving to get up, to stare him in the eyes. Her mouth is opening, an indignant cry of his name on her lips, and he feels like he’s going to burn from the inside out.
“Please,” he croaks, voice unsteady. “Please, let me finish, Marinette.” His tone is worrying her even further, and so are his words. It’s written plain on her face, a book she never chose to lock. Her emotions are her strength and it’s awe-inspiring to see from inside his several layers of ice, carefully frozen to keep everything locked inside. She continues to melt it with ease, leaving him scrambling, but he needs to tell her.
“Try as I might, I can’t keep this in any longer. I feel as though I am bursting at the seams, combusting. You melted the walls and pillars of ice I formed for years, nosing your way into every nook and cranny of my being, and I believe I have fallen for you.” Marinette lets out a soft gasp and he turns away, lacing his fingers around the strap of his bag once again.
He can’t bear to see the look on her face when she rejects him. Disgust? Horror? Her quiet kind of upset, where her eyes fill with tears and she tries to stifle it, to push away her own feelings over and over again?
He keeps talking, a desperate bid to keep himself away from the truth for as long as he can. “I apologize for the hastiness of my confession, and I hope I didn’t upset you too much. I’m sorry if I did, I truly had no intention to, but I understand if you reject me and I’d even understand if you never wished to see me again, I just wished to--”
“Felix.” Her voice stops him in his tracks, body tensing. “Felix, do you mind if I touch you?” Her voice is soft and her words kind but he flinches regardless, giving a jerky nod. He didn’t expect her to want to touch him, not after he ruined their friendship, but he tensed further as he thought of all the power contained in her body and prepared for backlash. He knew, intrinsically, that someone as kind as Marinette could never hurt someone maliciously, but that knowledge fell into the chasm of fear in his chest, and all he could hope was that she would choose to spare him, even a little.
One of her hands enters his line of sight and he flinches, closing his eyes, before her warm hand is placed softly on his cheek, slowly turning his head to face in her direction. “Felix, I could never be upset with you for that.” Her tone is impossibly tender, her hand is still cupping his cheek, and he exhales slowly before opening his eyes.
There are tears dripping down her cheeks, rolling down to the beaming smile stretched across her lips, and she raises her other hand to hold his face like he’s something precious. “I adore you, did you know that?” She smiles even brighter, looking him in the eyes before continuing.
“Each pen has a specific place in your pencil case, and you change which pen you use each school period. You take your coffee with cream and sugar even though you say it’s black when anyone asks. You pretend you’re made of ice because it’s everything you’ve known, but you still care even if it’s not in your best interests. Everything about you is something to love, and I do. And you’re here. Despite everything, you’re here, not orbiting some foreign sun or wasting away in a cavern of ice. You’re right here, with me, and I am holding your face in my hands and you are beautiful.” She’s still crying, tears catching the sunlight, and she presses her forehead to his but it’s just warm. Nothing burns and she is so close and she’s not a sun, she’s simply Marinette, and he loves her more than anything he’s ever known.
“Thank you, Marinette.” Those words, choked out his throat, try to compact everything he’s feeling into one simple statement. The love, the awe, the feeling of reaching something he never thought he would be able to reach, the pure joy filling in every gap where fear laid just moments before, like the sun rising over Paris. But instead of being that sun, Marinette is here and she is right in front of him and she is watching the sky turn pink and the darkness retreat and it may be noon but he thinks this is the prettiest sunrise he has ever seen.
“There’s nothing to thank me for, Felix.” He smiles at her, leaning against one of her hands, placing his own on top of hers. He feels ridiculous holding his own face but she brightens impossibly more and there is blush flaring on his cheeks and he tries to look away but she’s still right there.
“Well then, how about saying I love you instead?” He tries to put confidence in his voice, but he is putty in her hands and she can tell, her smile turning from something big and beaming to something small but so fond it almost makes his chest ache.
“I love you too, Felix.” And she locks eyes with him and looks down and he tries to nod but forgets that she’s that close and bumps heads with her instead.
Marinette laughs and it’s joyful and he just stares at her and hopes that she can see the fondness building in his chest when he looks at her. She stops laughing and her cheeks flush to a pink color that he thinks could be his favorite color. Every part of her is his favorite color. The blue color of her hair in the light, the blue color of her eyes, the color of the faint freckles on her cheeks and the pink of her blush and he’s staring again, he knows he is, but she just smiles and places her forehead back against his.
“Can I kiss you?” She whispers it, like they’re in their own little world, and he presses forward and kisses her first. Her lips are soft and she tastes like a fruit flavor he can’t quite recall, not with her hands on his face and her lips on his.
There aren’t fireworks, or sparks. There’s no burning or fire or hurting. There’s just him and there’s Marinette and a feeling of home and rightness like everything he’s ever wanted.
He breaks away first, offers another whispered “I love you” against her lips before she pulls away too, far enough away that he can actually see things beyond her eyes and her cheeks and her hair.
She moves one of her hands and he lifts his so she can take it back, and she puts on a mock-serious face that can’t hide the joy in her eyes.
“If you ever talk about yourself that way again I’m going to fight you.” She waggles one finger at him, lips curling to conceal her laughter, and he raises his eyebrows even as he melts further into her remaining hand.
“You’re going to fight me?”
“Yes! With love and affection and pets.” He doesn't get a chance to ask what she means by pets before her nails are scratching through his hair, and he wished he could deny the way that his eyes flutter shut at the feeling.
“You make a formidable opponent, my dear.” She giggles, moving to scratch behind his ear before the alarm goes off, telling them that they have to make their way back to school if they don’t want to be late.
She reaches her hand out to him and he takes it, lacing his fingers between hers.
hi! i wrote this for @maribat-angst-fluff-april with prompt 14, goodbye. you can check out my partner, @yoltastic09 ‘s fluff submission here. anyway, warnings for major character death and descriptions of blood and the fic is below the cut!
the video is blurry, filmed with shaking hands. when it focuses, they see a girl coated in red spotted spandex. she’s leaning against a wall, eyes closed and smiling softly, but their eyes are locked on the stab wound through her abdomen.
“thanks… thanks alya.” her voice is soft and raspy, and behind the camera, someone chokes on a sob.
“lb, please. just hold on a bit longer. chat... carapace. Someone will bring your lucky charm and it’ll be okay.” the voice, alya, trembles, and the spotted girl’s eyes fly open.
“i didn’t tell you, did i? alya, there’s no saving me. that’s why we’re recording this. I have his miraculous but my lucky charm can’t fix me. it’ll fix paris and i’ll still be here.” the camera falls to the ground with a clatter, and beyond the black screen they can hear alya’s sobs.
“alya please, I need you to do this. I need to be able to tell them myself. I need to be able to tell you myself.”
“tell me what?” alya’s voice is thick and broken, and the camera is lifted off the ground. they see a girl, fox ears coming from her head and in another spandex suit, before the camera focuses on the bleeding girl again.
“hello viewers, hi alya. my name is marinette dupain-cheng, also known as ladybug. and this is my final goodbye.”
the dark room where they sit is filled by the sound of things shattering, a mug falling to a ground, a wine glass being crushed in someone’s tight grip.
“alya, i love you. it’s been an honor fighting alongside you as ladybug, and despite our ups and downs, and even how things were before you got your head on straight, it’s been amazing being your friend. i’m so sorry that this is how things turned out.” alya sniffles, and her soft words are easily picked up by the mic.
“mari, please. you can’t leave us, please.” marinette smiles and looks away, faltering. she takes a deep heaving breath and looks back at the camera.
“maman, papa, i’m so sorry i couldn’t tell you about this. i’m so sorry that i can’t say goodbye properly. i’m sorry that i lied and i’m sorry that i kept this from you. i just didn’t want you getting hurt. you two are the best parents a girl could have and i’m so grateful to call you two mine. please don’t blame yourselves. i chose to keep this a secret to protect you, and you raised a pretty clever little girl. there isn’t anything you could have done to stop this.” marinette is crying at this point, tears streaking across the red of her mask and down her cheeks. “make sure they see this alya. please make sure they see this.”
“of course, i promise girl. i’ll do anything.” alya’s voice is broken but marinette nods solemnly before continuing.
when they see this, marinette’s parents wail and sob, the sounds echoing throughout the arrondissement. their neighbors tense, waiting for the destruction their akuma could cause, but hawkmoth is gone, and tom and sabine dupain-cheng are free to mourn their only daughter.
“bruce, or, well, dad. i thought you might want to hear me call you that at least once, considering i’m not going to be able to meet you again for you to hear me say that legitimately. i’m sorry i didn’t tell you about this. i’m sorry that when i said goodbye, that when i said i’d see you again soon, that it turned out like this. it was nice being your daughter, at least for a little while.” the viewers turn to look at him with the mention of his name, and bruce opens his palm, glass shards falling to the floor. he stands up, staggering to the side, and walks out of the room.
when bruce had first met marinette, he thought she’d fit in with the rest of them. he wasn’t oblivious to the jokes his kids made about the black hair, blue eyes, and the way she held herself made him think she’d fit in in other ways too.
she was always cautious, always nervous, like she was expecting something to attack her out of nowhere. she was good at hiding it, beaming sunshine smiles and a charming yet genuine demeanor, and he could see the resemblance from miles away. he had seen her baking with alfred, laughing with dick and jason, drinking coffee with tim. she had found a slot in their family and fit herself there perfectly, and in the short time he knew her, he had grow to care for the daughter he was unaware he had.
the last time he saw her, she hugged him and smiled, a soft tentative thing, as she whispered goodbye. she turned to leave, but her back was too straight, her shoulders too tense. he swore to himself that he’d find out what was troubling her back in paris and that he would see if there was anything he could do about it.
bruce never got the chance.
“dick. you’re a great older brother. i’m sorry that i couldn’t be your younger sister for very long. it could have been fun. we might have done acrobatics together, or you could have showed me trapeze if you wanted. you try so hard to take care of people, please remember to take care of yourself.”
marinette, dick thought, was tiny. she was so much shorter than he was, and she looked up at him when she introduced herself. bruce’s other unknown child. she has the hair, and the eyes, clouded with the same world-weariness he had seen in all of them. he hadn’t been the first to meet her, as that honor had gone to bruce and alfred, and tim had been walking by when she walked in the door, but he had been the first to declare her his younger sister. he asked her questions and she responded, she asked him questions and he responded.
he learned of her love of fashion and cooed as she bashfully showed off her outfit that she had sewed and designed herself. he told her of his gymnastics and trapeze skills, and she was wide eyed and nearly glowing when she asked if he could teach her. he had swallowed heavily, looked away and back at her, and told her that “maybe we can next time, marinette. i think b-man has an itinerary for you and everything.”
she had looked disappointed for a second before composing herself. “okay, maybe next time. but speaking of mr. wayne, i should probably go find him again, talk to you later dick!” he had heaved a sigh of relief, scared of bringing her so close to something that had already taken his family once.
when he hugged her goodbye before she left for the airport, small hands clasped around his back, dick resolved that he would try to teach marinette the trapeze next time she came over. There would be nets and she wouldn’t get hurt and then there would be more memories of the trapeze that didn’t come with the bittersweet tinge of all his memories at haly’s circus.
dick didn’t get that chance.
“hi jay. i was making you something, did you know that?” marinette laughs softly, then inhales sharply as she aggravates her wound. and yet, she continues. “no, of course you didn’t. i didn’t tell you. it was almost done, just had a few finishing touches. you could still wear it though. it's a leather jacket. i saw that the one you had seemed to be getting worn out, thought you might want a new one. a new leather jacket for my big brother.” her tears quicken and she attempts to curl in on herself, even as her body lay against the wall. she looks so small. “even if your advice wasn’t the best you were still there and i was happy to be ‘pixie pop.’ i wish you were here. you’re safe, you know that? you feel safe, like if anything tried to hurt me you’d fix it. And i’m scared but at least other people are safe now. Thank you for making me feel safe.”
jason todd did not think he was a good man. there was too much blood on his hands for that. and even if the bastards had deserved it, it still didn’t make him a good person. so when he had seen the tiny slip of a girl who ran into him as she attempted to find bruce, his first instinct had been to stay away. she was so tiny, so pure, and no amount of washing would ever be able to clean his hands.
but then she had flinched and started spewing out apologies, hands flying everywhere as she drove herself further down this spiral, and he saw in her what he had seen in so many of the other street kids. fear of retaliation, a desperation to appease him because she was afraid of what he might do.
and jason was furious. not with her, but with whoever had taught this girl (bruce’s daughter. he had warned them all about her, telling them to hide the objects that showed their “nightly pursuits.” he hadn’t told them she’d be so small.) that she had to apologize like this. whoever had traumatized her in this way.
“hey, no need to apologize, pixie pop. no harm, no foul, right?” she had looked up at him, confused, and he grinned at her and clenched his fists, trying to dispel some of the anger festering in his chest.
“who’s pixie pop?” she had said, eyebrows furrowed adorably.
“you are, of course. because you’re so tiny, like a little fairy. and all my siblings need nicknames, like dickie-bird, or replacement, or demon spawn. and since you’re my little sister now, you get a nickname too.” she had smiled and nodded, responding with a soft “okay,” and he swung an arm around her shoulder.
“so let me help you find bruce. but on our way there, is there anyone you’ve got any problems with? Any bullies you’d like big bro jason to deal with?” she had tensed, pursed her lips, and shook her head.
“there’s nothing you can deal with. it’ll be fine.” he hadn’t believed her, but he wasn’t going to pry.
when he hugged her goodbye, she had shook, clutching the sleeves of his jacket within her hands, but when he went to ask her what had happened, she said she’d tell him next time. he said he’d help her through anything.
jason never got the chance.
“cass.” with this, she attempts to lift her hands from where they lay on the floor. she’s shaking with the effort, but manages to hold them up to her chest. slowly, she signs out every word with her hands. “i think that you could tell something was up. i don’t know how, and i’m not sure even you knew it would end up like this, but i think you could. thank you for trusting me, even if it ended up like this. thank you for being my friend, and i’m sorry i couldn’t improve my sign language fast enough to have a full conversation with you. i hope this is good enough.”
cass could tell that marinette was like them from the way she held herself. she had muscles curled under her clothing, and whenever she tripped she shifted her center of gravity if she didn’t catch herself first.
cass hadn’t really spoken with her, standing as bruce introduced her to marinette. she could tell when marinette had processed bruce saying she preferred sign language, and when marinette’s shoulders sunk, she could tell it was with concern instead of malice.
marinette turns to her with a small frown, apologizing for not knowing any sign language. marinette smiles afterwards though, and reaches out a hand. “i’d love to learn asl though! and i’d also love to be friends if you’d want to be. of course we don’t have to be, i don’t want to…” she trails off as cass takes her hand and nods. marinette’s smile grows wider and a small warmth grows in her chest.
friends sounds nice. and marinette promises that she’ll try to learn asl and they’ll have a conversation in a way that cass is comfortable with, talking with that same smile.
the last time cass sees marinette, she signs goodbye. marinette’s right hand goes up, thumb out, and she closes the rest of her fingers to her palm. she continues with the sign for cass’ name, and cass responds in turn, goodbye and marinette, and marinette leaves, excited at getting it right.
marinette inhales, a wheezing breath, and the video is interrupted by the sound of heavy footfalls and a man’s calling voice. “ladybug? rena?”
alya lets out another sob and the man approaches. they can tell when he sees marinette, as he stalls before sprinting towards them.
he’s clad in blue and snake print, teal tips at the bottom of his black hair, and he goes directly for marinette, trying to press a red and black spotted objects into her hands.
“ladybug please, please take it you can fix all of this with the lucky charm. just do miraculous ladybug and the magic will fix it.” he begs her, voice jumping. marinette clutches the object in her hand but makes no motion to do anything with it, and he speaks again. “ladybug…” he hesitates for a second before continuing. “marinette, my melody, please don’t die on me.” her eyes widen slightly before she looks away.
“i should have known you already knew, mon coeur. but you also have to know this is the end.” she smiles at him, lifts the object in her shuddering hands and attempts to yell miraculous ladybug. she’s cut off halfway through by her own coughing, shaking her whole body and sending blood spilling from her lips.
it works regardless though, and the remaining waynes watch in awe as glowing ladybugs reverse the property damage. they fix the walls and the pavement before crowding around marinette’s body, but when they leave the wound is still there. the blood is still there.
marinette’s eyes are drooping, and when she tries to talk, it comes out a whisper. “damn it. i thought i had more time.” she coughs again, more blood dripping out of her mouth. “tim, i was so happy to be your work buddy. steph, you are so fun and so important and it was so so lovely being your sister and your friend. damian, i wish i could have been your sister without scaring you, but that won’t be a problem anymore.” her breathing is shallow but she continues going, trying to say all the words she’s scared she wouldn’t be able to. “alfred, being your granddaughter, baking with you, all of that was such a pleasure. babs, spending time with you was so much fun and i wish we could do that again, that we could be friends for longer. duke, i know we didn’t interact much but i wish we could have.” she exhales, leans her head back against the reformed wall. her eyes flutter closed.
“goodbye.” she says, one last word before her chest stills and marinette dupain-cheng dies.
