#it is truly miraculous that no one took a rage token

[audible301]

Thinking about Porter refusing to sign Gorgug’s MCAT resulting in him taking 4 full years of classes at once and taking stress tokens to try to pass.

Thinking about Gorgug getting closer and closer to taking a rage token to pass his classes.

Thinking about Brennan saying “in most futures your head is chopped off by a raging Gorgug who lost control”

[capesandshapes]

Goodbye (LoveSquare)

Summary: Marinette gives up the Miraculous box and forgets. Adrien is left behind as a result.

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“How did I know that I’d find you here?” She said, and for a moment it was so easy to pretend that she was someone else, that he was in another time, another place in which things went right.

But he wasn’t.

And it was Rena Rouge beside him, that pitying smile on her face that she always had, her long legs covered in orange instead of red and her eyes brown instead of blue as she looked at him, a million things she wanted to say and not the time nor courage to say them.

He could only swallow, because he knew why she was there, and that he was supposed to be anywhere else.

But he couldn’t help it.

It was just like it always had been for the past year, him sitting on that rooftop, his legs hanging over the edge—so close to falling, but so far from it at the same time—and his green eyes trained forward, resting on the windows of a bakery that he had not been to in a year, on the room of a girl who he had not truly known for even a few months before he lost her. Wishing. Waiting. Wanting.

“I guess it’s better that you’re here than over there,” Rena said, slipping onto the ledge beside him, her hands braced on the cement edge as she sighed in that over-dramatic way of hers. As the Guardian of the Miraculous, she should have said more, the Order of Guardians would want her to.

But Rena was always soft on him—Alya was always soft on him.

“She still doesn’t remember,” Adrien said, pulling his knees up to his chin, watching as the girl in the window went about her day, pinning a dress into shape atop the cloth form she had only just bought.

“They said that it was unlikely that she would,” Alya reminded him. “Magic is pretty steadfast, Adrien.”

He, of all of the people, did not need to be reminded of that.

It took a long time to understand that his mother was gone.

And even longer to accept that Ladybug, as he knew her, was gone.

They had just a few months together.

“If you would only let me go over there,” Adrien began the same argument that he always made. Because he was so certain that up close, if she really looked at him, she would see him and remember. They would have back their Ladybug, they could pull her miraculous out of the box—

“Adrien, it’s better this way,” Alya reminded him, frowning as her eyes moved to look where exactly he was watching—taking in the black-haired girl that toiled over yet another design.

“For who?” He asked, but he already knew the answer.

For her.

Because the new Papillion hated her, because she targeted her, because Marinette had to give up the box—because she had to give up everything, and now she was content as Marinette.

But it was easier for Alya to think that, because she remembered her. Because Alya wasn’t so tied up in the Miraculous box that all hints of her vanished from memory, that she was demoted from a partner to this… an acquaintance.

Marinette hardly even knew Adrien’s name anymore.

“We used to dance on this rooftop,” he informed Alya, unable to even look at the place anymore. “Ladybug and I.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“I don’t want to forget it,” he informed her, because memories were fragile, fleeting things as it turned out, and they could leave you with a single beat of a moth’s wings.

“She’ll approach you someday.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Not soon enough,” Adrien said, and once again he had that urge to climb onto her rooftop, to knock on her trap door like the old days and wait for her to grab a blanket and sit out with him. Those days were better than nothing. Those days were better than now.

How was it that losing one person felt like losing everything? How was it that he was the only person meant to feel like that in the world?

Alya and Nino still had each other, and he?

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Alya begged, because if he did approach her, he would lose his miraculous. The Order of the Guardians practically demanded it. Over and over again, he couldn’t help but think that it would be worth it to forget as well, that Paris could be damned, and so long as he didn’t have to feel like this anymore it would be okay. But that was such a selfish and callous thought, the kind of thing that Gabriel Agreste would think of, rather than Adrien.

He wasn’t like him. He would never be like him.

So he had to sit and wait. Every single day.

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He knew it was her when she came out with a black, Agreste-branded umbrella.

Actually, he didn’t know, he just hoped.

Because when she looked at him with those sky-blue eyes, the rainwater trickling off of her lashes—all he wanted was for her to be Marinette.

And then he said her name and it was true.

And then she whispered his and his life was complete.

A few months. Only three months of that. Of his lips on hers, of her hand fitting in between all the spaces in his—and then a new Hawk Moth, a spiteful Papillion.

And then being alone once more, the empty space beside him feeling more devastating because he knew what it was like to have it filled.

He’d find the miraculous someday and put it away, lock it deep within the box that Alya kept hidden in her room. He would never let it see the light of day, just let Nooroo out and the token he was tied to be lost to time.

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Whenever it rained, he thought of her.

Whenever it rained, he thought of walking up to her, a new umbrella in hand, and pulling her under it, protecting her from the downpour. He thought of kissing her, like he should have done so many times before, and of her pulling away and warning him that they should get inside, then him asking why, telling the stupid joke that ‘lightning never strikes twice’.

Because the chance of her kissing him again always felt abysmal, and when she did he couldn’t help but gape.

Because now, as a year stood between them and she always acknowledged him last amongst her friends, the idea of his lips touching hers was once again an improbability.

But still, he couldn’t help but think of it, he couldn’t help but get lost in the idea. Even as the rain sank into his skin and made his t-shirt cling to his body, his eyes trained forward as his mind trailed off.

He hadn’t gotten enough sleep again, he’d been too busy watching her the night before. He’d forgotten that Marinette was some miracle of nature, that she almost never got tired.

He could barely keep his eyes open even in a torrential downpour.

“How did I know that I’d find you here?” Said a voice from above. The same song, the same dance as always.

He could only swallow.

The black shade of an umbrella eclipsed the sky over him, providing a momentary reprieve from the cold sting of rain, as a familiar pair of blue eyes looked down at him in amusement, the same as always.

The same as always.

Because he did this too often too, he sat at the bench where she could see him in the rain, waiting for her to realize that he was there. He let the rain wash away any hope of her knowing just as well as it washed away the tightness that always filled his lungs when he thought of her.

And he said goodbye, just as he always wanted to, just as he always wished that he did. She would bring the umbrella over him, he would thank her as he always did, and he would tell her goodbye.

I’ll see you again sometime soon.

God. This was insanity wasn’t it? Repeating the same action over and over again, hoping for a different outcome? But it was always the same.

And somehow it was better than sitting in his old house with his father, who was in just as bad of shape as her, and remembering when things were better all alone. That house could burn up with him inside it and he would have felt nothing, he wouldn’t have even noticed the smoke.

“Hey, are you okay?” Her voice filled his mind, and he could only close his eyes at the sound. “Adrien?”

There was a thump next to him, but he couldn’t be bothered to notice, because, today more than anything, it was too hard.

One year.

A whole year without her. A whole year like that, in that quasi friendship state, waiting for her. One year waiting at the beginning, wanting to start it all over again.

One year remembering when he told himself that he could have had his mother and her, then the crushing realization that in the end, he walked away with nothing. With a father who couldn’t even properly apologize for what he’d done, with a father who couldn’t even remember the past five years. With a dent on the side of his bed where she used to lay and talk to him, one that slowly faded away over time.

With a broken heart, one that he feared would never be repaired.

Was it stupid to cry? He couldn’t help but fear that it was, but that didn’t do much. He cried all the same, wishing that he didn’t.

And then her arms were around him, cradling him closely, and he could pretend that they meant more than they did.

“Adrien, I’m here… I’m right here…”

But you’re not, he wanted to tell her, but you never will be again.

Instead, he held her a little closer, clung desperately to her skin like he could save himself from the raging current threatening to pull him away, from the dangerous thoughts of loneliness that echoed in his mind. He wanted nothing more than to touch her, to press his lips to her forehead and know her skin once again.

But he was just Adrien, and she was Marinette—stuck in the hellish in between.

“I really did love you,” he admitted, the words tearing so softly out of him that he wasn’t sure anyone else could hear him, and her hands only tightened in response, some small part of her calling back, I really did love you too.