Chapter Text
Heart thumping, Adrien pulled Marinette to his chest. He buried his face in her hair, trying to commit to memory the silky soft feeling and the scent of her shampoo. Because what if this was his last chance to do so? What if the things he'd always known deep down—that she deserved better than what little he could offer, that it was only a matter of time until she figured that out, until Adrien lost another person he loved. Another person he needed—were coming true at last?
He could hear the words already. I love you, Adrien. But that's just not enough.
Why else would she be here with her beautiful, tear-filled eyes, needing to tell him something important?
Her cries gained volume, and she trembled in his arms. "I'm s-s-so sorry," she hiccuped, and Adrien's heart sank.
This was it. This was the end.
Adrien knew that if he tried to speak, he'd only start crying. The lump in his throat was a ticking time bomb. So he just shook his head against hers, feeling her bangs tickle his nose. It's okay. I don't blame you.
Someone like Marinette—brimming with passion and creativity—could never have been happy with him for long. He spent his days finding new things to fail at, and wasted his nights staring at the ceilings of a bedroom he hadn't had even had the energy to make his own.
Then again, maybe the desolate room represented him perfectly. Empty and aimless. Dull and abandoned.
Marinette's tears had soaked through his shirt, and her breath came hot against his collar. "I'm sorry," she repeated. "All this time, I've just—you deserved so much better. Someone you could depend on. Someone honest, who wouldn't try to—" She broke off with a sob, her fingers curling tightly—almost painfully—into his back. "I'm the worst. And if you hate me after this, then I'd understand. It's what I deser—"
Adrien pulled away. "What? Marinette, I could never hate you. I—"
"But you should." Marinette rubbed furiously at her red-rimmed eyes. "I've been awful. I knew you were hurting. I knew what a hard time you were having with your father, but—but I still kept lying."
Her voice had risen to a shout by the end, and those final words seemed to echo through his empty room. Adrien's lips quivered. He pressed them together, dropping his eyes to the ground as he struggled to keep his breaths even.
Was that all she thought their relationship had been? Just a series of lies? And what did his father have to do with any of this?
Had Marinette only been pretending to love Adrien this whole time because he was grieving?
That thought felt… wrong. For everything Marinette had done that Adrien hadn't quite understood, there were a hundred things she'd done to let him know she cared. Smothering his face in kisses or cuddling up next up to him at the beach. Helping him try to discover his passions, or being there to support him when he met his grandparents. And she'd even gotten akumatized when he'd nearly broken up with her over a misunderstanding. That couldn't all be fake.
Unless he'd misunderstood everything from the start.
Still staring at his feet, Adrien swallowed hard. Maybe it was better to just get this over with. "Should we… How about we go sit down?"
Marinette sniffled. "Okay."
He nodded, still not meeting her eyes, then brushed past her to push his bedroom door closed. He turned around slowly, painfully aware of his proximity to Marinette, then walked past her towards his bed, not waiting to see if she followed. He took a seat near the edge, first crossing his legs, then uncrossing them, then crossing them slowly again. It didn't really matter how he sat. Either way, he doubted he'd feel comfortable.
It turned out that Marinette had followed him, though she seemed to be dragging her feet. She shot Adrien a strained smile before turning stiffly to sit down beside him. Her legs stuck straight out, knees bouncing up and down, until she abruptly leaped to her feet. "A-actually, maybe I'll stand."
"Sure," Adrien said, his heart collapsing further. She didn't even want to sit beside him. Did that mean she wouldn't want anything to do with him after this? That they wouldn't even be friends?
He felt nauseous at the very thought. How could he possibly survive this if she no longer wanted to be in his life at all?
The walls of his room were closing in. Adrien could only watch as Marinette paced back and forth, her hands shaking at her sides. Tears pricked the corners of his eyes, and he didn't bother trying to hold them back any longer. Marinette didn't seem like she'd notice either way.
He barely processed it when she pulled something from her pocket. Only a minute or so later, when she unfolded the paper to reveal an envelope, did his eyes catch on his name scrawled across the front.
The letters sparked a memory. "Is that… the poem you were writing me?"
She stopped pacing and whirled around to face him, wide-eyed. A long moment later, she shook her head. "N-no. Well, yes, it's the same—I told you it was a poem, but…"
Adrien lowered his head, squeezing his eyes shut and sucking in a deep breath before he could burst into sobs. If it wasn't a poem inside the envelope, then it must be a break up letter. Which meant she'd been planning this for weeks, if not longer.
He must have been making her so unhappy.
Regardless of her feelings, he still loved her. The last thing he'd ever want was for her to suffer—for her to feel trapped. Adrien knew that feeling all too well, and he'd do anything to keep Marinette from feeling that way.
Even if it meant letting her go.
"It's okay," he said, wincing at how gravelly his voice sounded. He cleared his throat before continuing. "If you want to break up, then you can just tell me. You don't need a letter, you can just talk to me."
Her mouth dropped open, then slammed shut. Adrien braced himself for the end.
"I don't want to break up," she finally breathed, hugging herself tightly.
"You don't?" His voice sounded pathetically small.
"Oh, Adrien, no." She rushed forward and knelt in front of him, setting the envelope gingerly on the bed before taking both his hands in hers. "Breaking up is the last thing I want. I love you so much, I could never…" A tear rolled down her cheek. "That's why this is so hard."
"I don't..." He should have been elated—Marinette still wanted him—but none of this made any sense. "I don't understand."
She tried to pull away, but Adrien wasn't ready to let go. He clung to her hands, pulling them up to his lips. Grazing her knuckles with a quick kiss, he waited until her eyes settled back on his.
"Marinette, please. Whatever it is, whatever's hurting you, you can tell me. We can handle it together." Now that he knew there was a together to fight for, nothing seemed as scary as before.
"I want to tell you. I mean, I also don't, because it's so…" She took a deep breath. "But I also know you deserve the truth, and… I don't want to be someone who lies to you. It hurts. A-and I can't claim to be someone who loves you, who wants what's best for you, if I'm the one who's keeping you from getting the closure you need to really move on."
"Okay…" he said slowly. "I don't totally understand all of what you're saying, but… I know that if you've been keeping something from me, you must have had a reason."
"I thought I did, at first. I thought… you'd already been through so much, losing your mom, and then your father too. And if… if knowing the truth would only hurt you, then why did you have to know at all?"
She regarded him cautiously, as though waiting for an answer. But he didn't know what to say. It didn't seem like it would be helpful to admit that he would have preferred to know the truth—whatever it was—from the start. So he stayed silent, waiting until she found the courage to continue.
"A-anyways, it didn't take long before I realized I was wrong to lie. And I wanted to tell you then. I really did. But I was already in too deep. I was supposed to stick to the lie, because we—I'd already committed to it. The more time passed, the worse I felt. But it also felt so much harder to tell the truth, because I knew I might lose you if you found out I'd been lying all this time, and I couldn't have... I couldn't imagine..."
She bowed her head, taking a few breaths before she continued. "And then… that day you thought you saw me kissing Nino, I…" Her voice lowered to a whisper. "I got akumatized. I could have hurt so many people, I could have ruined everything…"
Adrien let go of one of her hands, cupping her cheek instead. "But you didn't," he said. "You broke the akumatization."
"Because you came back. But if you hadn't…" She turned her face to the side, making his hand slip from her cheek as fresh tears welled in her eyes. "If I lost you, I could have lost everything."
Her whole body crumpled beneath a new wave of sobs, her head coming to rest on Adrien's knee as she squeezed the hand of his she still held for dear life. The raw sound of her cries made him want to break down again too, but instead he gently pulled her up and into his lap, letting her bury her face in the crook of his neck.
"I know it's scary, the idea of getting akumatized." Even if Adrien hadn't personally experienced it, he'd certainly had nightmares. "But Ladybug and Chat Noir would fix everything."
The words only made her cling to him harder. "But what if they can't. Wh-what if I get akumatized again, and nobody can stop me, and the whole world suffers?"
Guilt pulled at Adrien's gut. He'd had no idea Marinette had been carrying all this fear around since her akumatization. No clue she'd been suffocating under the weight of some unknown secret for even longer. Shouldn't he have known?
He vowed to do better. To teach her she could trust him.
"I won't let you get akumatized," he said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
She stiffened in his arms. "You can't promise that."
He could, actually—there was no way he was letting an akuma get anywhere near her right now. He would transform before it could reach her, even if that meant that this time she would actually remember he was Chat Noir.
Marinette was more important than his identity. And clearly, if she was so upset about whatever she'd been keeping from him, it was in their best interest not to have any secrets at all.
One thing at a time, though.
"Just trust me," he said. "I won't let you get akumatized. And I promise that even if what you have to say upsets me, I won't leave you alone. I'll stay here with you, so we can work things out—like I should have done last time, instead of jumping to conclusions."
Marinette didn't respond at first. But she did relax in his arms, and Adrien contented himself with laying his cheek against her head as her sniffles evened out.
When she finally moved, it caught him off guard. He thought she was standing up again—leaving his arms again—and he instinctively moved to stop her. But she only reached for the envelope that rested beside him, snagging it off the bed before leaning back into his embrace. She turned the paper back and forth a few times before letting it rest in her palm, Adrien's name facing upwards.
It was the first time he'd really gotten a good look at the writing, and he quickly realized it didn't match Marinette's handwriting.
Still, it looked vaguely familiar…
Marinette cleared her throat. "S-so, a few months ago, when we were going through your boxes of childhood memories… I found this letter. It's… your father wrote it. I've read it, and…" She leaned back slightly, just enough for her eyes to flash briefly up to his. "In the spirit of full honesty, Nathalie's read it too. She… well, I don't think she'd be very happy with me if she knew I was showing this to you now. But I don't blame her for that. She's just… she's afraid of losing you too, you know?"
Adrien stared at the envelope. What could possibly be inside that had both Marinette and Nathalie so wary? And who was he to disagree with their assessment?
Maybe he didn't want to know.
But there was no way out now. Marinette flipped over the envelope one last time, pulling out a folded letter and setting it in the palm of Adrien's hand.
"I know you said I could just talk to you," she said, "but these aren't really my words, so… I think you should read the letter instead."
Adrien passed his thumb across the bumps of ink that rose from through the backside of the paper. The words penned by his own father—who'd barely had time to spare a word for him during the past year or so of his life.
Fighting back a new surge of tears, he unfolded the page.
My son. If you're reading this letter, it means I am with your mother.
Adrien's breath hitched. Marinette squeezed his hand, and he read on.