Chapter Text
Adrien stares up at the skyscraper, hesitant to walk through the doors.
GABRIEL, it reads in flowing purple script on the sign next to the rotating glass doors. He hasn’t been here in so long. He rarely even came here as a child, since it was more for the putting together of the magazines he modeled in than where the photos were actually taken. Still, he knows the way to his father’s office by heart. One right, two lefts, up three flights of stairs, take the golden elevator up to the 25th floor, and it’s the door at the end of the hall.
He begins to walk towards the office, but, as he enters the elevator, he changes his mind. Adrien reads the sign next to the keypad, scanning for a certain place where he knows he’ll find who he’s looking for.
On the way up, a few people go in and out. None of them really recognize him, but he supposes that’s for the best. He doesn’t want his father to know he’s here until he steps into that office himself.
Adrien steps out on the 21st floor not quite sure where his feet are taking him. He wanders through the cubicles, peering at the people. He’s searching for someone. He’s searching for someone to stop his wandering.
He’s been wandering for so, so long.
The cubicle he stops at is neatly organized, with lots of pink and rose gold accents on a white desk. The notebook he remembers from the other day lies open. Adrien stares at the dress in question. It’s white fading into purple, butterflies all along the sleeves. She’s titled it Amnesia. Adrien can clearly see his father’s notes on the sides, praising it wholeheartedly.
He wonders if it’s some sort of apology, a reconciliation of sorts between the two of them for an event he can’t quite remember and an event she’s trying to forget. Her words from last night certainly make it seem like that.
The woman at the cubicle next to hers gives Adrien a sly smile. “She’s over in the fabric room,” she says, and points to the room with glass walls over in the corner.
Sure enough, he sees Marinette’s silhouette, hunched over a pile of fabrics, through the glass. Adrien thanks her and walks over.
“A-Adrien,” she stutters, and he smiles because it’s so reminiscent of their time at the collège. “What are you doing here?”
He shrugs his shoulders and hooks his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. “I thought I’d find you here.”
“You could have just come by the apartment, you know. Nino’s on dinner tonight. I think he’s making mushroom soup…”
“As tempting as that sounds,” he starts, leaning against one of the walls so he can better see the fabric she’s working on. “I actually came to see my father.”
“Oh.” She seems surprised. “Oh, um. That’s good. That’s good, right?”
“Yeah,” he smiles. “It’s good. I figure I should let him know I’m in town.”
“What are you doing here, then?” she asks, going back to finger through the stacks of lace.
“I wanted to see you.”
This time, Marinette’s the one to laugh. “You can see me for as long as you’re in town. Why visit me at work?”
“You were on the way?” he tries.
She gives him that look she always used to give him when they were still Ladybug and Chat Noir and she was trying to get him to stop flirting with her and be serious. If he really thinks about it, the now and the then aren’t all that different.
“I don’t know,” Adrien confesses. “My feet just kind of … led me here.”
“Well,” Marinette says, “if you want to talk you’re gonna have to watch me work.”
“Can I whistle?” he tries, just to see if it’ll get a smile out of her.
“You know, just because I no longer have the yoyo, that doesn’t mean I’m not prepared to shove you out of the window.”
Adrien puts his hands up. “Okay, I won’t whistle while you work. Too bad. You’d make a very pretty Snow White.”
It’s always nice to know he can still make her entire face go bright red.
Marinette is trying to focus on her work, she really is, but she’s about five seconds away from calling security and having them take her boss’s son to his father for a talking to because she is trying to work here and him constantly breathing down her neck isn’t working.
It has nothing to do with the fact that Alya was right; feelings you don’t act on can and will pop up years later when you least expect them to.
It’s not like she didn’t try to act on them back then. There was just the whole superhero thing and the whole anxiety thing and then there was the whole thing with Hawkmoth and…
There was that conversation at the school. The thing that exploded their friendship into a billion tiny pieces and left Marinette to pick her heart up from where it was shattered on the ground in the swirling wind. Just a little thing. Not that big of a deal.
Except, when he’s standing like this, with his arm basically around her if she’d just step back a bit, Marinette really has to accept that it is a big deal, because it’s the gap between them, and she needs to bridge it before either of them says something they shouldn’t.
“Did you mean what you said that day?” she asks. “When you told me all my success would be built on a lie?”
Adrien steps back, like her words have actually physically hurt him. “Jeez, Mari, have you been? Have you been thinking that this entire time?”
“Did. You. Mean. It?” she asks him again, more serious this time, because she needs an answer. She’s needed an answer since she first got the internship. Every promotion’s felt like a curse; a bad side effect of her acting without thinking. His words kept echoing back to her, even after she thought he’d forgotten them.
It looks like maybe he has.
“Of course not.” Adrien’s brows are knit and he’s staring at her so intensely she thinks she might dissolve, but she holds her ground. “We both… I think we both said things that day that we regret. We were hurting. We were kids, Mari.”
“That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.” Marinette thinks of the first sketch she’d done after that fight; a leather jacket with stitching like veins up and down the arms. Or like claw marks. Like a cat determined to tear himself apart.
She’d scrapped it, but she still remembers.
“You hurt me too,” he whispers, and all the things she’d said that she’d tried to forget come rushing back to her. Things she’d told him he should’ve done. Dreams of his she’d crushed.
“I’m sorry,” Marinette murmurs.
“I’m sorry too.”
“You know,” she gives a bitter smile, “it’s funny. It took me not understanding what losing someone you love can do to you for it to happen to me.”
Adrien’s eyes grow wide. “You—you loved me?” The words sound like breaths on his lips.
“Can we not talk about this here anymore?” Marinette asks. Her co-workers are starting to stare, and she’d rather they not figure out she was making love confessions to the boss’s son at her cubicle.
Well, not really love confessions, but, with Marinette’s record, she’ll take it.
When she gets back to the apartment, Nino’s not there. Alya’s not there either, which has her suspicious.
What she does find, however, is Adrien Agreste, waiting in her hallway with flowers. Lavender petals the color of the lace on the dress she’s designing for next season. They’re so similar to Hawkmoth’s butterflies, but she supposes that’s the point.
“What are you doing here?” she asks him, but it’s teasing this time.
“You said I should come to your apartment instead of your office.” He swings out the bouquet. “I brought flowers.”
“I see that.”
“Come on.” Adrien holds his arm out. “Walk with me.”
They stroll through the streets, arm in arm, and Marinette wonders what the flowers are for. She suspects they’re not for her. He hasn’t given them to her, really. He just swings them back and forth as they walk.
So, they’ve got to be going somewhere.
Marinette starts to piece it together when she finds herself walking down the same street she used to run every day to get to school. The collège isn’t housing students for the summer, so the traffic isn’t running in their direction.
They are alone on the street, under the dark grey clouds. It’s better this way, she thinks. Without the sunlight it almost looks like they’re performing a funeral march.
And, in a way, they are. Their steps are solemn and precise. There’s meaning in every movement.
Marinette points out the tree Chloe had carved her name in when they were fifteen. Adrien gives a quick smile.
“Are the tabloids right about her?” she asks, too scared to approach the subject with Chloe herself. “Is she really—”
“Sleeping with that Spanish diplomat? Yeah…”
“Is she happy?”
Marinette had never cared much for Chloe’s happiness before they’d been forced to work on a team together. Now, though, she enjoys the small moments when she can make her smile. Even if it’s just through giving her orders a little special treatment.
Adrien looks up at the sky, still lacking sunlight. A drop of rain falls on his face. He flinches. “She’s happy,” he answers.
“Good,” Marinette decides. “We all deserve some happiness.”
More water starts coming down, first drizzle and then full on rain. Adrien tugs on her hand and they both run under the cover of the school’s roof.
Then, through some magic of remembering, he steps out into the rain, holding the lavender flowers up so the top of the bouquet is facing the bursting clouds. Water runs down the purple petals.
“What are you doing?” Marinette asks with a laugh. “You’re going to get a cold.”
“Just humor me,” Adrien responds.
He takes a deep breath and then looks back at her, green eyes innocently wide and filled with sincerity.
“I want you to know I really meant to stay in touch,” he starts, and something about it looks so familiar. “I’ve never been that mad before. I’ve never hurt like that before. All of it for me was… was new.”
He smiles at her, shrugging his shoulders up and down, and then he swirls the bouquet back over to her, and she recognizes the movement. He’d done the same thing so many years ago with a black umbrella.
One she’s really regretting not bringing.
Marinette gasps, she can’t help it. It’s all just as beautiful as it was back then. Even his sopping wet hair. Her hand nervously reaches forward, almost jolting back when their fingers touch, before wrapping around the stem of the bouquet.
This time, there’s no umbrella to close around her, no possible way for her to make a fool out of herself, but he laughs anyway. They both do, because it’s all so old and yet still so important to her and she never would’ve thought it was important to him as well.
“Will you accept my apology, my lady?” he asks her, despite the fact that neither of them have worn masks in years.
“Of course, chaton,” she answers. “I already have.”
Then Marinette leaves the shelter of the roof and steps out into the rain, letting her hair get as wet as his.
They leave the bouquet there; a quiet offering to their childhood, to falling in love for the first time, and for all that happened before they lost their way.
Chatte Noire hops down from the roof of the collège, black boots almost slipping on the wet pavement.
“You sure it was them?” Ladybug asks as she follows her down, rappelling on her yo-yo like it’s a grappling hook.
“Positive,” her partner says. “We saw them at the statue too, remember?” She picks up the bouquet of pretty purple flowers. “And, besides. Do these not look like Hawkmoth’s butterflies?”
“I don’t know about that,” Ladybug responds, leaning over to get a closer look. “Does your kwami ever tell you anything about the old holders?”
“Not really. He just looks sad a lot when I bring it up. Something must’ve happened.”
“Mine sometimes hints at something bad. She used to cry about it a lot. Something about … ending a cycle? Something about forgiveness?”
“Do you think these are important?” Chatte Noire asks, sniffing the petals.
“I think they’re just flowers. Pretty flowers, but only flowers.”
“Well, in that case…” Chatte Noire smiles as she presents the flowers to Ladybug in a flourish. “For you, my lady; the prettiest flower of them all.”
“Shut up,” Ladybug mutters, blushing.
She takes the flowers anyway.