Chapter Text
When she was five, Marinette Ariadne Dupain-Cheng wanted to be a bird.
Sometimes she would look up at the sky, see them flying overhead, and wish she could glide along beside them.
It probably didn’t help that her family spent so much time by the ocean, living in a little seaside house in a small town on the southern coast of France. All those graceful birds swooping in to kiss the water’s surface, then soaring back somewhere toward the clouds, made her wish there was a way for humans to grow wings.
Never mind that people don’t have the anatomical proportions for it. That didn’t matter to her at five years old. She had a dream, and she intended to see it through.
One summer she embarked on a secret project to build for herself the pair of wings God so callously neglected to gift her. They were made out of scraps of construction paper, pipe cleaners, and glue, and covered with bits of costume feathers and glitter for panache. Birds were covered in beautiful colors, so why should she be any different?
The morning she climbed up on the roof of their small, seaside house, wings strapped to her back and her arms, was the morning her mother, Sabine, realized she should have taken the girl’s claims about becoming the first person to fly without an airplane a little more seriously.
It was her sister, Bridgette, that long-haired demon, who ran inside to tell on her, most likely more interested in getting her in trouble than potentially saving her life. Marinette was the younger of two daughters, otherwise known as the spare child, and last in line for every last piece of hand-me-down clothing she ever received.
When her mom, panicked, jogged into view, Marinette perched somewhere up on the loose shingles of their dilapidated roof, she momentarily clapped two hands over her mouth in an expression of horror. But it quickly transitioned to anger (maybe a coping mechanism?), and she immediately ordered the daredevil to get down in whatever way she had gotten up.
Frowning, Marinette put her hands on her hips, then gazed distractedly around, realizing that not only was the jig up, but she couldn’t exactly pinpoint how she had gotten to that place. It was possible she crawled up on a car’s hood, and then a trash can, and then used a thick tree’s branch to hoist herself up. In reality, she wasn’t entirely sure how to get down. With no way back and determined to prove them both wrong, Marinette spun around and leveled her spectators with a glare.
“I’m a bird!” the raven-haired girl loudly declared, then jumped forward, arms outstretched in full confidence that God would realize his mistake and finally grant her what he owed.
She sunk like a stone.
It was fortunate that Sabine had quick enough reflexes to get in her daughter’s way, and that the most injury she got out of the incident was a sprained ankle. Both landed on the grass, Sabine bumping her head a bit on the ground and having the wind knocked out of her, but other than that, not too much the worse for wear. She spent the next hour or so in her room after that to recover from a headache, instructing her other daughter to lock all the doors and under no circumstances allow Marinette outside.
Not that she would have tried to escape again. She was still pretty bitter about the shoddy hand life had dealt her. And that was the last day she ever tried to be a bird.
After her failed metamorphosis, Marinette realized: whatever she ended up becoming, it would have to be something that kept two feet on the ground.
That ruled out a lot of things, unfortunately- many of them interesting.
C’est la vie.
The next best goal within human reach was a pilot.
And then when she was ten, she realized she needed glasses, and there went that dream.
At the age of twelve, her family moved to Paris and opened a bakery, taking away the ocean she loved so much.
When Marinette was fifteen, her aims were tamer- probably due to the limits and realities of life closing in on her. By the time she was twenty, she had more realistic hopes and aspirations, safely cordoned away from heights (which she also inconveniently realized at the age of eight she was afraid of), fame, and anything that could be remotely deemed extraordinary.
Thus, when, at the tender age of twenty-two, Marinette first stumbled upon Adrien Agreste, her life was turned metaphorically upside down.
It was a typical (read: boring) day- even worse, a typical, hateful Monday where everything seems to (predictably) go wrong. She woke up late, didn’t have time to shower, so she went to work with greasy, messy hair, scrambled to make a quick coffee in hopes of it perking her up, and spilled it all over herself. (She was quite well known for her clumsiness, after all). A large, brown stain down the front of a crumpled, white shirt is hardly respectable, especially when that stained shirt is topped by a head of unkempt hair and smeared makeup.
Understably frustrated, the noirette squirreled away to the restroom for an emergency clean-up session, locked the door behind her (once she made sure she was alone), stripped off her shirt, and frantically began trying to tame the quickly setting-in stain. And then, because by the gods and all that is holy, her luck took a turn for the worse.
Or, depending on how you look at it, the better.
Clothed in a pencil skirt and a bra, Marinette startled as the vent up by the ceiling suddenly slammed open, followed by the tumbling of the upper half of a blond man through its breached shutter. His blond hair was messy and dusty, his button-up shirt rolled up at the elbows, unbuttoned at the neck, and streaked with grease, and his green eyes were startled as he suddenly lifted his head and noticed the half-naked woman standing there, gaping like a fish.
Marinette never seen a deer in the headlights, but she mused if such a look on humans were possible, he would fit the description perfectly. To be fair, she probably would have as well.
There were several seconds of shocked silence before he finally spoke.
“This… isn’t the maintenance closet.”
Well, somebody should give him a prize for his insight.
As though recognizing he should probably not climb out of an air vent into a ladies’ restroom, he immediately reached for the edges of the opening he was half-hanging out of and began pulling at them as though trying to push himself back in the way he had come.
The only problem was, his grimy fingers lost their grip, causing him to promptly tumble forward and out the rest of the way until he landed with a (painful sounding) thud on the restroom sink, knee in the bowl and faucet sticking up into his side. With a grimace and a groan of pain, he slowly, awkwardly, rose up until he could successfully climb off the counter.
The startled woman was still standing there, stained shirt gripped tightly in one of her upraised hands, too dumbfounded to make a sound. As he straightened out the best he could (with a poorly concealed wince), one hand to his ribs, Marinette suddenly found her voice.
“Who the hell are you?”
There was a beat of silence as he simply looked at her, blinking owlishly.
“And what the hell are you doing in here? This is the ladies’ restroom.”
Then, like the flip of a switch, he gave her the best charming grin he could muster and took a step closer, unoccupied hand outstretched.
“Adrien Agreste. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, my lady.”
But instead of shaking his hand, she only glanced at it briefly before leveling him with a glare.
Faltering, he let his hand fall and shifted impatiently on his feet. His eyes began to roam about the space, and she felt relieved to have his attention seemingly redirected. But still, she needed to get back to work, and this idiot was in her way.
Then her state of dress finally occurred to her, and in a panic, she crossed her arms over her exposed torso.
“What are you doing?” Marinette whispered furiously. “Get the hell out of here!”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” he answered, sounding absent-minded, not even sparing her a glance as he kept looking about the walls.
“It’s not that hard! There’s the door!”
In her anger, her voice echoed off the white tiled floors. Then there was a hand over her mouth, and she felt herself being pushed back until she was flush against the stall dividers, arms still crossed over her chest and hand still clenching her dirty shirt. The man’s green eyes bore into her own intensely.
“Keep quiet,” he warned, voice low but deadly serious. “No one can know I am here.”
It took a few seconds, but she nodded silently, not sure if she should stay quiet until he left or scream for help. Then she remembered the door was locked, and even if she screamed, no one would be able to break in quickly enough to save her from whatever he might do.
The mysterious man stepped away and resumed his exploration of the restroom, ducking under sinks and stalls as he apparently searched for a way out, but there was nothing other than the vent he had come through, not even a window. As she watched him cautiously, Marinette pulled her wet, coffee-covered shirt over her head, doing her best to keep an eye on him as she considered bolting for the door.
Screw this day. She was ready to ask for leave and wallow at home with a tub of ice cream.
And then, as though he could read her thoughts, Adrien turned a calculating eye in her direction. Instinctively, the woman shrunk back and closer toward the door.
“I need you to do something for me.”
As subtly as she could, she took another step back.
“What do you want?”
Another step, but his eyes were like a hawk’s, and she froze under their scrutiny.
“There’s a maintenance closet down the hall. The door has a code, 985280. Go inside there as conspicuously as you can, close the door behind you, and lift up the mat on the floor. There’s a false bottom, and inside is a rectangular metal box. I need you to get that box and bring it to me.”
Marinette looked back and forth between both of his bright green eyes, unable to decide which one to focus on as her heart pounded. Just a few more steps and she would be home free.
“Why can’t you do it?”
Another step.
“Because no one out there can see me.”
Another step.
“Why don’t you just go back the way you came?” she argued, nodding toward the vent in the ceiling.
Another step.
“The vent system ends here. I miscalculated their reach,” he answered, taking a step forward.
Terrified, she stopped, her heart racing in her chest.
Perhaps this was her way out. But her curiosity was beginning to get the better of her.
Boldly, Marinette asked: “What makes you think I won’t tell everyone you’re here once I walk out that door?”
His expression was serious, but there was a hint of amusement behind his eyes as they narrowed at her. For a second, he didn’t say anything, just looked her over from head to toe.
“Because you’re dying to know. Because your life is so boring, that right now, you’d rather help me, scared as you are, than go back to your job and act like none of this ever happened.”
A spark of anger lit inside her, and, emboldened, she took a pointed step closer to the door. The man followed suit.
“You could just be crazy. How do I know you’re not some lunatic who stopped taking your meds?
“You don’t.”
For a few seconds, neither of them said anything. She considered his words, the insanity of the whole situation, and then:
“Once I do this for you, I never want to see you again.”
Adrien Agreste grinned widely.
“You’ll never have to see me again unless you want to.”
With only a slight bit of hesitation, Marinette took the last two or three steps towards the door, barely taking her eyes off of him as she unlocked it, then slipped out quietly into the hall. As it closed slowly behind her, the last thing she could see in the sliver of light before it shut was the piercing green of his eyes. Finally on her own, she took a deep breath and turned around to face the empty corridor.
Exhaling, Marinette whispered quietly to herself: “I must be out of my mind.”
A look about her told her the coast was clear- a fact for which she was grateful, and not just for reasons of vanity. There was a voice in the back of her head that was telling her to high-tail it for the door, disappear under a blanket at home, and wake up in the morning under the belief this whole weird incident never happened.
But the other voice….
It was quieter, subtler, but somehow stronger, and it told her to make every single step she took toward the maintenance closet. It loomed at the end of the hall, it’s door illuminated almost forebodingly in it’s dark little niche. Marinette found that, the closer she got, the harder and harder it became to tear her eyes away from its overpowering presence, and instead watched, unblinking, as it seemed to grow in size the further she stepped. At last, it was right in front of her. With one hand, she reached out and cautiously slid her fingers over its cold, metallic surface. She didn’t know if she was expecting to be shocked, or for someone to suddenly appear behind her and scare her out of her wits, but it was rather an anticlimactic moment- just the inanimate door and her.
The keypad above the handle caught her attention then, gleaming briefly as it reflected the light overhead.
Strange. For a maintenance closet to have this kind of lock on the door , she thought to herself, but reached out for it anyway. What was the code he said? Punching in the numbers, 985280 , she was mildly surprised when it quietly beeped, a tiny green light blinking somewhere near the top. She grabbed the handle and pulled it down, the clang of the heavy lock nearly echoing in her head. The door gave under Marinette’s pull, arcing slowly open.
Her first view of the interior was rather disappointing. There were some shelves with various cleaning products, a mop and bucket, a broom. It was all pretty ordinary. If she had not been told about the mat and false bottom, she would never have suspected, but as it was, her vision immediately shifted downwards, a rather conspicuous looking rubber mat the center of its focus.
It was almost like her arm had a will of its own as it reached out in front of her. She watched, detached, while one corner of the mat curled upward under her fingers, then gave as they peeled back. Under the mat, though, she couldn’t see anything that clearly indicated an opening in the floor. It was a concrete bottom, with some cracks running through, a tiny little chip in one place-
Marinette narrowed her eyes, ducking lower for a better inspection. Curious, she dug a finger into the chip, and nearly startled when part of it flicked upward like a latch, exposing a tiny metallic ring underneath. She hooked it in her grip and pulled, then marvelled as the floor slid upward silently, the trapdoor connected by hidden hinges. And there, in the bowels of the floor, sat a rectangular metal box. With a quick glance around, she reached in and grabbed the box, bringing it into herself like a mother with her infant, and replaced the door and the mat as quietly as she could. Once out in the hall, Marinette turned the door handle and didn’t let go until she was sure it was closed completely.
When she turned around, though, she was no longer the only one there.
“Hey, Mari, what you got there?”
His head was cocked nonchalantly to the side, his expression relaxed, but there was something piercing about his deep black eyes and the way they bored into hers.
Theo Barbeau- a person who had only been working there for a matter of weeks. He had always been civil enough, but never really friendly, and mostly kept to himself, working long hours, and sometimes seemingly not going home at all. He never talked to anyone outside of work, or made any attempts to interact with anyone in the office outside of normal pleasantries. It was odd for him to be interested enough to strike up a conversation, but the fact that he also was seemingly completely dismissive of her state of dress made Marinette’s figurative hackles stand on end. Besides, there was something very unsettling about his whole aura.
Still, she needed to find a way out of the situation as quickly as possible.
“Just... just throwing out some junk,” she lied, refusing to meet his eyes, and maintaining her own focus on the floor somewhere off to the side of and behind him. “Excuse me.”
But when she tried to step around him, an arm came out to stop her. Marinette, taken aback, looked up in surprise. A smile that both was too wide and failed to reach his eyes confronted her.
“Please,” he said, reaching down ostensibly to relieve her arms of their burden, “allow me to help.”
“No, really, it’s no trouble. I’ve got it.”
She resisted his attempts, but he pulled a little harder, the smile on his face falling slightly. Over his shoulder, she could see, a slight ways down the hall, the door to the women’s restroom crack open. But then he shifted in the struggle, and her view was blocked. The harder Marinette pulled, the more he fought against her, no matter how many times she tried to convince him she didn’t want or need his help. Then, all at once he let go, and she was falling backwards on the floor, box still held tightly in her grip.
Confused, the woman looked up, only to see Theo staring straight ahead, both of his hands raised as though in surrender. It took her a few seconds to realize Adrien Agreste was standing behind him, close enough that he was practically pressing up against the other man.
“Agreste,” Theo muttered, eyes not even moving, though he appeared to know exactly who was there.
Wait... they know each other?
Theo gave a low, dark chuckle.
“You could say that,” he said, and Marinette realized she had spoken the thought out loud. “What are you doing here, Agreste?”
Instead of answering, Adrien seemed to close in a little more, causing Theo to flinch.
“Let’s take this somewhere else,” he instructed, then looked to the woman on the floor and motioned his head to the side.
Obediently, she scrambled up, box protectively cradled in her arms, and began walking down the hall. When she looked back, Marinette could see that, somehow, Adrien was leading Theo down the hall, and the latter still had not lowered his hands. She was passing in front of the women’s restroom again when she heard Adrien simply say, “here.”
Without question, Marinette pushed the door open again, cursing the unlucky room at the same time, in addition to her entire existence. The two men followed behind until she was standing at the far wall, watching them from a distance.
“Set the box down and lock the door.”
She only hesitated a second, then moved to do as told, putting the metal container on the floor by the sink and heading toward the door. The door locked, Marinette turned to observe the oddity in front of her. Both men stood close to the stalls at the further end of the room, the pink tones of paint on them clashing with Theo’s navy blue suit. Fluorescent lighting did nothing for either of their appearances, washing out their complexions, and turning Theo’s deep brown hair into an ashy color. Adrien’s sunny blond hair almost looked white.
“What are you doing here, Agreste?” Theo asked again, a sneer audible in his voice.
“Beating you to the party,” the other man answered. “Like always.”
Theo scoffed.
“Looks like you’ve had a little inside help,” he responded, nodding inconspicuously to Marinette as she stood there, lost.
“She doesn’t know anything,” Adrien bit back. “She just hit an unlucky streak today.”
The way Theo smirked at her sent a shiver down Marinette’s spine.
“She’s seen enough. I can’t let her go after this, you know that.”
Unconsciously, the dark-haired woman backed away, bumping up against the door. Yet even from the other side of the space, she could hear the way Adrien practically growled at Theo’s words. His eyes were on her, but they were burning with something frightening she couldn’t identify.
“Leave her alone,” he gritted out, and in the next moment, there was a flurry of movement.
Theo suddenly threw his head back, connecting with Adrien’s nose. Stunned for only a second, he nonetheless lost whatever hold he had over the other man, who was turning around swiftly, poised to deliver a punch. It was then that Marinette saw the gun in Adrien’s hands.
Shocked and unable to do anything, she watched as he blocked the swing with an upraised arm, only to quickly slam his forehead into Theo’s face. The struck man stumbled back a step before reaching out and grabbing onto Adrien’s arm. They ended up in a locked struggle, Theo clenching Adrien’s wrist and slamming his hand against the wall in an effort to get him to drop his gun, and the other man using his free hand to grip Theo’s face and push him away.
Then, suddenly: “The box!”
At the sound of Adrien’s shout, Marinette found herself flying at the cursed thing, only to end up caught in Theo’s sights as he spun, furious eyes blazing at her. Then the gun fell to the floor as she pulled the box into her hands, and both men dropped to the ground, fighting each other for a chance to snatch the weapon. Alarmed, she retreated until her back hit the wall.
Theo seemed to get a good hit on Adrien, stunning him briefly, and frantically rose up on his knees, about to crawl toward the gun, which had slid a few feet away in the scuffle. But before he could reach it, two hands came down on the back of his head, backed by the full weight of Adrien’s body, and knocked him out cold.
The heaving blond man collapsed on his back, nose swollen and bleeding, a few cuts on his cheekbones and lip. Theo lay, motionless, on his stomach on the bathroom tile, gun less than a foot from his outstretched hand. Suddenly coming to herself, Marinette shimmied over and kicked it away, box still clutched tightly to her chest.
A groan reached her ears. She looked up and saw Adrien turn over painfully, rise up on his knees, and attempt to stand. Dismayed, the noirette hurried over to his side and did her best with one available arm to help him. When he was finally upright, his entire oppressive weight leaning on her small frame, Marinette staggered a little, and he grimaced.
“Here,” she said without ceremony, then held the box out to him.
He watched her, frowning, before shaking his head and closing his eyes, then releasing a breath. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought his exhale seemed relieved.
“You hold onto it.”
Marinette felt the burden of his weight slowly diminishing until he was only using one hand on her shoulder to support himself. Then it, too, was removed. Confused, she simply looked on as he carefully walked over to the sink, climbed up, and reached an arm into the vent he had so serendipitously fallen out of. When he extracted his limb again, it was dragging a small black sack, not unlike a backpack, which he opened once he climbed down off the counter. From the bag, he pulled out a roll of gray duct tape, then knelt next to Theo’s form and began taping his legs together at the ankles, his arms together behind his back at the wrists.
It took quite a bit of visible effort, but, once standing again, he hauled the slightly shorter man’s body up and tossed it over his shoulder (with no small amount of strain), then walked over to one of the stalls and plopped him down on the toilet seat. As a last measure, he placed some tape of the man’s mouth, and, walking out of the stall, held the door closed behind him.
“You mind?” he asked breathlessly, turning to Marinette with an expectant look.
She looked at him, wide-eyed and disbelieving for a second, shaking her head at the way this day was turning out.
“There’s no way I’m not fired after this,” she muttered, then set the box down on the sink and passed through the stall door. Closing it behind her, she locked the latch and turned to face the unconscious man. His head was slumped forward, but his body was leaning back and to the side. The words he said about not letting her go rang through her mind, sending a cold heat all over her body.
Who was he? Who were they ? And for that matter, what had she gotten herself into?
The raven-haired woman swallowed and, taking a breath, ducked underneath the door to find a waiting Adrien leaning against the sink, arms crossed. There was a moment of silence.
“What’s your name?” he finally asked.
“Mari-” she began to answer, then thought better of it. “Ariadne,” she decided, hoping he wouldn’t notice her hesitation.
Adrien only nodded.
“We have to go.”
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew this was coming, but it struck her like a bolt of lightning, anyway.
She couldn’t help it: she grumbled, “I should have skipped the coffee this morning.”
For the first time since Marinette met him, what, an hour or less before? Adrien laughed a little. He turned, grabbed the box from the counter, and faced her again.
“Come on,” he said, holding the box out to me.
She took it tentatively.
“Can I look inside?”
He didn’t even blink as he answered, “No.”
She mulled that over for a moment.
“Why do you want me to hold it then?” she questioned, holding his eyes with her own, hoping they would show her the truth.
“Because I trust you.”
It didn’t make sense to her, but she nodded anyway. Inevitably, her attention was drawn down to the box again. As she wondered if this was how Pandora felt when Epimetheus entrusted the box to her care, an arm came up to rest around her shoulders.
“You ready?”
Marinette’s head flew up of its own volition. She locked gazes with the man beside her, whose face was suddenly so close to her own.
Was she ready? There were so many implications in that question. Was she ready to leave this place behind? Step into an unknown world, probably endanger her life? Was she ready to go off with this stranger, someone she didn’t know, and place herself at his mercy and whim?
The woman swallowed.
No. No, she wasn’t ready.
But that wasn’t what she said.
“Yes.”
Adrien slung the backpack over his shoulders without a word and grabbed Marinette’s hand. With a cautious look into the hall, he slowly pulled the door open and led her behind him until they reached the maintenance closet once again. After he punched in the code and opened the door, he shoved her inside and shut it behind them.
Marinette couldn’t help but narrow her eyes in his direction as he crouched on the ground. Why were they here? There was no other way out than the way they came in. She was about to voice this very thought when she noticed he was opening the false bottom in the floor again. The empty cavity where the box previously sat appeared.
“There’s nothing else in there,” she blurted.
He only looked up at her for a moment before smirking in amusement and fiddling with the small chamber, but what he was doing, she couldn’t tell. His head was blocking her view, and there was little space in the room for her to step back. After a few minutes, there was a rattling sound, and the metal container disappeared somewhere to the side, leaving a gaping hole. The man on the ground looked up at her, self-satisfied look on his face.
“You were saying?”
There was nothing to do but gape as he rose to full height and took off the backpack, dropping it down the hole. A second or two later, Marinette heard a thud.
She could finally see it, relatively speaking. The opening was rectangular, and though not too large, it looked big enough to fit a human being. There was even an affixed ladder leading down. To say that she was incredulous would be an understatement. While she was standing there, taking it in, Adrien held a hand out to the side as though indicating the hatch.
“Ladies first.”
Marinette’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head as she looked from the hole to him. Part of her wondered if she wasn’t making the biggest mistake she ever had and shouldn’t just leave the room and go back to the life she knew. The other part of her wondered what would happen to her if I stuck around long enough to find out what Theo meant by “can’t let her go.”
“What’s the matter, princess? Scared?”
Marinette bristled at his condescending tone, but it only seemed to amuse him more. Perhaps he didn’t know (or perhaps he actually did) that there was never a better way to coerce her into something than to suggest she couldn’t do it.
Defiant, she took a step forward and shoved the box into his arms.
“Don’t call me princess,” she said, then slid carefully into the opening, grabbing onto the ladder with both hands and stepping down one rung at a time until even her head was below the latch. Then she paused and did her best to look below and around her in an effort to determine just how far down the hatch went. It was difficult to tell in the dimness of the recess, but it didn’t seem too far. Maybe twenty feet. Maybe ten.
Ten feet... I’ll bet I could make that .
“Come on, princess,” she could hear Adrien goading from above. “We don’t have all day.”
Marinette looked back up and realized just how much higher he seemed from where she was standing. It was like he was a Titan, and she was a tiny mortal at his mercy.
She narrowed her eyes in his direction.
“I told you. Don’t call me princess.”
Then, without warning, she hopped back slightly from the rung she was standing on, both hands wrapped loosely on either pole for stability, and plunged the last several feet down. For a moment, Marinette was reminded of that time when she was five and jumped off the roof. It felt like she was almost flying.
But really, she was falling.
“Ariadne!”
She could hear his shout reverberate along the cold, hard walls, just before she landed in a clumsy, slightly painful, heap. Her feet touched the ground first, but the momentum from her descent was too great, and her legs immediately crumpled beneath her, causing her to fall onto her backside and leaving her flat on the floor.
It took a few seconds, but her eyes began to adjust to the darkness. The hatch ended in a corridor of sorts, though where it went, Marinette could neither see nor guess. She lay there briefly, blinking and reflexively reaching for her ankle (which, she was pretty sure she had sprained in the landing) before raising her upper half into a crouched position and attempting to stand.
As she scooted away from the ladder and began to enter the corridor, there was a little scuffling noise up above, the sound of metal grating on concrete and then against metal, and then a sort of whooshing that preceded the appearance of Adrien on the ground. He suddenly emerged from the hole Marinette had just jumped through, landing in a much more poised crouch than her graceless jumble, box in arm.
All at once he was turning to face her and stepping closer, eyes scanning over her rapidly. She could only stare back, though he didn’t seem to notice.
“You ok?” he finally asked, apparently satisfied there was nothing bleeding or broken.
“Fine,” she managed.
Finally, his eyes met hers, and she realized her vision had mostly adjusted to the light.
“Good.”
His tone belied the word, but he shoved the box into her arms anyway, then turned away from her and grabbed the backpack from its spot on the floor. When he rose again, there was a small flashlight in his hand, and he swung the pack back over his shoulders before switching on the light and handing it to her.
“Be right back.”
With that, he climbed up the ladder and slowly disappeared from view. There was the sound of metal and concrete grating against each other again, and then the bit of light shining down from above was extinguished. Not many seconds later, his form reappeared, illuminated by the torch in Marinette’s hand.
She watched as he jumped off the last few rungs, then grabbed the torch from her as he passed her by and headed in the direction of the tunnel.
“Let’s go.”
The tunnel seemed to last for a few kilometers, sometimes turning suddenly in a different direction, often curving in a meandering, disorienting twist that she lost track of fairly quickly. They passed most of the way in relative silence, though there were some awkward exchanges when she would trip, or he would ask if she was ok, and then the silence would fall again.
There was a moment when, tired of carrying the box, Marinette positioned it on top of her head and held it in place with both hands. Adrien snickered beside her.
“Did you learn that in etiquette class, princess?”
Exasperated, she stopped. As if alerted by her lack of footsteps, he paused as well, turning and pointing the torch in Marinette’s direction. It’s light momentarily blinded her and completely obstructed him from her view.
“Need a break?”
“Why do you keep doing that?” she asked.
“What?”
“Calling me princess. I told you to stop. It’s irritating, not to mention a little childish.”
“It’s quite fitting.”
The noirette groaned, bringing the box down from her head and letting it hang in her tired arms.
“Just... don’t talk to me anymore, ok? Once we’re out of here, I genuinely hope I never hear your voice again.”
Fed up with the conversation (not the mention the situation), she resumed walking, not even bothering to check whether he followed behind. Sure enough, after a few seconds, the bouncing of the light on the floor and the sound of footsteps reached her ears.
“But you are one, you know. I don’t mean it as an insult, even though I do find it kind of funny how worked up you get over it.”
Marinette frowned, but didn’t respond, and kept walking. His steps continued.
“It’s your name. Ariadne. The princess who helps Theseus defeat the Minotaur, and then gets abandoned on an island. Don’t you know anything about Greek mythology? It’d be pretty weird if you were named after a famous character and didn’t even know who they were.”
“I know who she is,” she finally interjected, still refusing to look back. “I just never identified with her.”
For a moment, the only noise came from the shuffling of feet on the ground.
“Then... who?” Adrien asked from somewhere behind her.
Marinette sighed, vision not really focusing on the space ahead, but lost somewhere in another dimension.
Finally, she answered, “Icarus. He tried so hard to fly, only to fall.”
He didn’t ask her anything more after that.
At long last, the tunnel took a sharp turn, then ended in a rusted metal door. Adrien ambled up beside her, gripped the knob in one hand, and shifted against it with all his weight. The old lock groaned in resistance, then snapped, too brittle from disuse to withstand much pressure. It took some tugging, but the door eventually opened with a grating sound until it could open no more, probably because of rusty hinges.
Low light began to filter through the narrow crack, along with an unpleasant smell.
“What is this place?” Marinette asked even as Adrien was squeezing through the partial opening. “Where are we?”
His entire body had made it to the other side, but his head poked back through, and he grinned.
“Somewhere I know you’re going to love.”
With that, he was gone again, and, scrunching her nose, Marinette hugged the box as tightly to her chest as she could and began trying to worm her way through.