Chapter Text
She was fallingfallingfalling fast and far and away from no wait hold on please- nowhere, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe – water, hard, soft, cold, boiling water – splashing against her skin and drowning her. Her lungs ached, her heart beat painfully against her ribcage and she gasped. Oxygen escaped her lungs and she gasped again, attempting to pull air back into her lungs and fix an absence that shocked her body into a panicked frenzy. Unnatural and cold and sweltering, skin flash-frozen and turned to ash.
Her chest, oh God, her chest, it was like somebody was cutting her open, reaching in and just…
Pulling…
Tugging…
Ripping…
Please, no, please, make it just stop-
It was bizarre. She was in-between two worlds, floating in the cold-hot of the aether, everywhere and nowhere, splintered across dimensional rifts and whole at the same time and her body was screaming. She wasn’t – couldn’t be, shouldn’t be, wouldn’t be – dying, but her body was hollering in protest, being pulled apart from every direction, and she remembered this, remembered feeling like this before her life at been irreversibly changed.
Her life would cease – not literally, she supposed, but it would. The life she had built in There-Second-After was gone, and she’d never see it again, never had the chance to say goodbye to those whom she’d grown to love more than anything. Her life in Original-First-Before was nice, if she remembered correctly. Loving parents, good friends, sunny days. But it would change now – it didn’t have a choice. She’d changed. She knew what it was like to wield blades and fight for her life. She knew what it was like to spit blood and bleed and bleed and bleed. She’d pretend – had to pretend, needed to pretend – to make family and friends feel comfortable, but the wind would make her tense, and the world would make her whirl.
She knew this. She could smell it through the cold-hot aether.
She’d tasted the sweetness, and now she was addicted. Sweet and overbearing and the worst thing she’d ever tasted, but yet the thing she craved most. Beautiful and alluring, full of power and weakness.
Dust, dust, dust…
The pain was expected, but sudden, and gave her whiplash. She’d rarely questioned the inner workings of There-Second-After, and she’d never gotten more than just magic out of the explanation she’d received. She’d planned to ask later – she had, she swore – but had never quite gotten around to it, especially after she’d been pushed back sooner than expected. The world had turned to glass and broken, and he must have felt it too because his face – oh, his face, she’d miss that smirk and those eyes – fell faster than she’d ever seen before. She’d taken his hand and squeezed tight – it had been warm, and she’d never wanted to let go, even though the claws had scratched at her skin – but she started to melt and his hand slipped through her fingers as he disappeared beside her. She’d never be able to sleep again, not knowing that there was a boy out there who might be searching for her – she’d need to be awake so if he passed her, she’d know. Home wouldn’t get away from her yet – she wouldn’t let him. He wouldn’t let himself, she knew.
Her body was broken, she decided, it had to be, because it was wrong. Her shoulders felt off, and her head was missing something, and her bones were too heavy. There was fire missing from her blood, and storms from her soul, but she was boiling, overheating, like lava in her arteries, napalm in her veins. She knew feeling meant life, but maybe life was overrated if feeling was this. Her eyes began to fuzz over, fluttering closed and open in the same moment, and her hand lost all warmth as his face became nothing more than mush. Blue skies faded away and her eyes were opening to colours and pinks and white, so strange and rare and…
It stopped as suddenly as it had begun. There-Second-After faded into Original-First-Before. She blinked slowly, arms heavy and too short and chest thankfully free from pressure. Gasping and coughing and spluttering. Oxygen rushed to replace nothingness, the beat of her racing heart still hammering in her chest. She was lying on her side, she realised, curled up and missing most of her bed sheets. Cold, but not cold-hot aether. The air smelt of butter and baking and sugar, and her stomach flipped with nausea, fingers twitching, toes curling, every blink slow and deliberate.
And Marinette woke up.