Chapter Text
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❝the sea leads to many places,
dearie, perhaps you’ll land somewhere better.❞
- tim burton’s corpsed bride
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She tries to think about the last party she attended, and her mind goes blank. Parties remind her of Plagg, so she doesn’t go. Parties remind her of happiness and dark allies, and that night they kissed, of his first i love you that meant lies, so she doesn’t go. It’s better that way because bad things happen at parties; that’s just a simple little fact of life.
But it’s Rilla’s birthday and their classmates host her a party and she’s dragged to the Liberty before she can explain why she doesn’t go to parties anymore. The boat gleams with colorful lights from afar, and the loud music blasting from the speakers that even the water shakes under the vibrations.
Tikki pulls at the sleeves of her black cardigan again, gulping as she takes a step into the parlor.
“Relax, Kiki,” Daizzy whispers in her ear. “Nothing’s gonna happen. He’s not even here.”
But she knows somethings going to happen, she knows he’s here. She feels it in her very bones, tingling alarms at the back of her mind telling her that he’s there. She takes another step until she’s on it; the lights blind her momentarily. She looks around the room: teenagers dancing, others standing near the dessert table, others drinking down big gulps of alcohol. She searches the room for a pair of familiar forest green eyes, for a blob of black hair, for a scent of cheese and mint — but she finds none of those things.
She frowns, spotting Marinette and Adrien sitting together silently. Both look up at her as she approaches them, they glow beneath the colorful lights, but they’re eyes are washed in pigmentless hues.
“Hey, Tiks,” she greets, quietly. “How are you?” Her question is sad, her eyes dull.
“Fine,” she replies, because that’s just the word that describes her now. And perhaps it will be forever.
“Everything okay, Tikki?” Adrien asks, leaning forward in his seat to look at her. “You seem down.”
Tikki shrugs her shoulder briefly because down isn’t the word. Fine is. “Everything’s good, thanks.”
He nods, sitting up straight again as he drinks the last of his punch — his eyes are empty, his face dark with no trace of emotion. “Good. I’ll see you later then, Tikki…” And then he leaves without even glancing at Marinette.
“What happened?” Tikki asks Marinette as she watches Adrien disappear in the crowd. Marinette follows him with her gaze as well.
She swings the contents of her cup, lifelessly. “Nothing old, nothing new, just the same.”
(That’s a familiar phrase.)
“Mari…”
Marinette sighs, staring down at her hands with glassy eyes. “He tried to kiss me, Tikki, he told me he loves me,” she confesses, voice broken and sad. “And I just— just can’t.”
Tikki frowns. “Why? You love him and you know that,”
“I — I don’t know… I just… I just don’t know what’s happening to me. It’s like— like there’s something in me keeping me from him and I can’t— I can’t break through…” Marinette explains, biting her lip as if to stop herself from crying. But she still cries as shadows of color dance on her face, party lights of glee reflecting in her glossy eyes.
Tikki hums, looking down at her hands. “You’re stuck,”
Stuck living with truths you wish weren’t true, goes unsaid, stuck with lies you wish were true.
Marinette nods, wiping the single tear that rolled down her cheek. “Stuck in uncertainty. Or… fear? I don’t— I don’t know…”
She bites her lip. “You don’t have to be with him if you don’t love him, Mari,”
“That’s the thing… I do love him, but I just know I can’t…” Marinette lets out, lowly. “I can’t love Adrien.”
Tikki doesn’t really know what to do, but she feels a stab of guilt she doesn’t understand.
___________
She looks at herself in the mirror one last time before exiting the bathroom: red curls falling just below her shoulders, pink cheeks and plum lips, teal blue eyes. She leans forward over the sink, catching a glimpse of the dark rings beneath her eyes, contrasting significantly against her pale skin.
She pulls away from her reflection, straightening her clothes with a deep breath. Fine, she thinks, glancing at the mirror one last time as she walks towards the door. Tonight, fine means happy, means great, means strong, means perfect, it means nothing can hurt me. Fine is a lie, of course. Because she’s not happy and she’s not great and she’s not strong and she’s not perfect and everything can hurt her.
But she breathes in the lie as she opens the bathroom door. She swallows the lie as she closes it behind her. It sits in her stomach as she walks through the hallway.
“I heard about Adrien and Marinette,” a familiar voice says from behind her, and she stops, she turns around, and he’s there; green eyes narrowed on his phone, black hair messy and perfect. She vomits the lie. “He’s pretty heartbroken; he left home crying.”
Tikki takes a shaky breath, tugging at the ends of her cardigan again.
(She eats a new pair of lies: it’s okay, nothing is wrong, he can’t hurt her, he doesn’t matter.)
“Understandably.” She replies, her tone steady and fake.
“Why did she reject him, anyway? It’s clear she loves him back.” Plagg says, looking up at her. She tries not to burn under his gaze, she tries not to grab him by the collar of his black shirt and crush their lips together. She tries not to think at all, actually, because maybe then she’ll forget about that love of hers that kills and heals her with every heartbeat. Maybe then she won’t vomit the new collections of lies.
“I don’t… I don’t know…” She answers, looking away from him because she can’t concentrate on not loving him if he looks at her, because when he looks at her, she’s the moon and the stars, and she’s important — and those are also lies. “She said she just can’t…”
“That doesn’t make much sense,” Plagg reasons, raising his eyebrows.
Tikki bites her lip. “I know.”
“You know?” He asks, prompting her to continue.
“I know that it doesn’t make sense, I don’t understand either, but I can’t change it. She made up her mind, and there’s nothing that can change that, not even me. I’m not— not some miracle worker, Plagg.”
(You just seem… quite miraculous, one may say.)
He lowers his gaze to his hands, fiddling with the silver ring on his finger. “Maybe…” he looks up at her again. “Maybe it’s all a lie.”
(He would have never told her he loved her unless he truly meant it; he wouldn’t have kissed her in the twilight of an alley, stars dancing in the sky, if he didn't want her. Plagg wasn’t a liar; he was everything and anything but a liar.)
Tikki frowns in confusion. “A lie?” she echoes.
“Yeah, everything— everything she’s saying or… or everything—” A flash of panic rises through his eyes, a flash of desperation settles after, filling the entirety of the forest. It reminds her of forests burning.
“Like your lies? Like your I love yous?” she accuses, trying not to cry because it’s okay, nothing is wrong, he can’t hurt, he doesn’t matter — she chants in her mind over and over helplessly trying to be strong because he doesn’t deserve her tears anymore.
(She also comes to find out that I love you always means something different to Plagg. It means lies, it means fake, it means joke, it means nothing.)
“Tikki, I didn’t—” He begins, getting up from his seat. His eyebrows furrowed in a frown, his lips tugged down, and Tikki wonders if he can feel her heartbeat like she can feel his — a quickened pace of guilt and desperation. And hers: love, fear, anger, and confusion.
“You didn’t what?” She growls, hot tears stinging the edges of her eyes. “Mean it? Of course not, because I never meant anything to you and everything we did was just to pass your time, just a joke, just—”
He places both of his hands on her shoulder, and she reminds herself to breathe and that it’s okay and that she shouldn’t cry. “Hey, calm down.” But she can’t calm down, not when he’s there, not when he’s looking at her, not when she’s drowning in waves of unsaid things and pain and love — love she hides behind careful layers, love that leaks through, slipping from her fingers before she can stop it.
“H-How can I calm down, Plagg?” She cries when she shouldn’t, she loves when she shouldn’t. “I love you, I’ve never stopped. I love you and I’m so stupid for loving you.”
Tonight I love you means truth, it means real, it means love, it means everything, it means please love me back. It’s a desperate sort of I love you. One that blazes through her heart like a meteor, crashing her reality with the delicacy of a star, with the splendor of the moon. But meteors destroy, stars burn, and the moon abandons.
“I wish that was a lie; that I love you miserably and forever, but it’s not,” she confesses, quietly as she stares down at the floor. “It’s the truth and I I wish it wasn’t.”
She takes a deep breath and leaves home because she doesn’t go to parties anymore.
___________
<3 years, 2 months before>
“Not enjoying the party?” Plagg asks her, taking a seat beside her, a red plastic cup of punch in his grasp.
Tikki swallows, trying to hide that wave of love that threatens to wash her gaze. “No, not really. They’re just being boring.” She admits, careful not to notice the brush of his arm against hers, the intoxicating proximity between them that just doesn’t feel like it’s enough.
He hums, eyes focused on the audience of dancing teens. “I always did tell you Kaalki and Daniel can’t throw a good party to save their lives.”
Tikki chuckles. “Everyone just came from the drinks, anyway. And I don’t drink alcohol."
“You’re the boring one here then, Sucrette,” he smirks, turning to look at her, and Tikki blushes, glancing away because their faces were too close — yet, not close enough.
“You’re drinking punch, Plagg,” Tikki notes, gesturing her head towards his cup. “And you don’t smell like liquor to me.”
“You smelled me?” He leans forward, that same smirk that beats her heart on his face. The smirk she dreams of kissing away.
“N-No!” She squeaks. “I j-just — alchochol has a strong smell — no need to sniff you, I’m not a dog or a cat to do that!” She laughs, blushing madly as Plagg watches her with a glint of amusement lighting the forest of his eyes. (That’s a little lie because she had smelled him, savoring the familiar scent of his cologne and embracing it.)
He gets up, and Tikki misses his warmth, his fragrance. “Anyway, wanna dance? I promise it’ll be fun.” He extends a hand to help her up, she glances at it and then back at his face, trying to find any trace of lying and games — he’s never asked her to dance before.
Plagg wouldn’t lie to me like that.
Tikki smiles, placing her hand in his. “Lead the way, LeNoir.”
___________
I: Destruction
The first time Creation and Destruction meet, the stars appear.
It’s said that to have been a mistake, Destruction hadn’t meant to destroy the five other moons and then, consequently, create millions of small moon fragments — later called “Stars” by humans. Destruction had been exploring the sky and its moons when, suddenly, Creation came to be — lighting up the world in pink rays.
Destruction had been captivated by the light, by its pink and luminous glow. Blinded by her beauty, Destruction could not see. His eyes were entirely filled with pink. And so, Destruction, too captivated by Creation, crashed against the moons.
The stars had been a mistake, beautiful as they are, but unintentional nevertheless. And they had come from Destruction meeting Creation — from Destruction being captivated by Creation’s light. And so we learn that Destruction can be beautiful and that beautiful things come from Destruction too.
___________
Tikki doesn’t think too much about the book, nor the eerie familiarity, the clear images in her mind.
Instead, she focuses on Plagg.
He sits, ever so graciously, on the edge of the fountain. He’s almost entirely hidden by the structure, but she can see the corner of his head. She knows it's him. She feels it.
The distance is almost daunting, a barbaric condition. She wants to break it but dares not move from her seat where the Grimoire book rests quietly beside her. She doesn’t want to talk to him either way, not after last night. At the party.
How could he so bluntly confess to having never loved her? Just like that.
“Maybe it’s all a lie.”
All, including every one of his promises. All, including their love, their story, their lives.
Just lies. Just lies. That’s all she ever was to him. Is.
“Tikki!” A chirp happy voice she’s learned to hate says. “What a surprise! I didn’t expect you to be here!”
Nora smiles at her brightly. It’s so blinding, not because it’s beautiful but because she’s jealous.
“Hey,” she responds, quietly, hoping she’d leave.
Nora looks at the book and smiles again. “Oh, reading fairy tales, I see!”
Fairytales.
Tikki grabs the book, holding onto it. Like it's a treasure. Like it’s her life story.
“Must be quite exciting reading it!” She goes on, “Given that your name and Plagg’s are there. Must feel like reading some kind of fanfiction!”
Tikki wishes she could punch the smile off her face. But she says nothing.
“Nora!” Plagg calls, looking at Tikki with a sorry written all over his face.
All a lie.
Nora turns around and walks over to Plagg, practically skipping to him in a manner that says I won. But that is fine.
All is a lie, anyway.