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“There’s a package for you, dear.”
Marinette’s not one to believe in accidents anymore. Maybe it’s growing up, maybe just years of Tikki whispering in her ear about fate. Maybe the inevitability of a rainy day and harsh words that broke something almost like a love. Life is a train heading somewhere without breaks, towards a pre-written destiny of generations.
This, however, has to be an accident. This package, this royal blue box stamped with a seal that Marinette knows all too well. “Happy Graduation!” it reads. And then “Love from Spain! XOXO!” in the flowing cursive of Chloe Bourgeois.
A wreath of flowers. “Mixed Zinnia” the gold card attached informs. “It means in memory of an absent friend. Since you’re bound to ask.”
She signed it simply “B.” For Bourgeois, she supposes. Or her once-striped alter-ego.
Marinette hangs it on her door and watches it wilt over the weeks. She thinks of their shared absent friend, already away on some mountain. Adrien out of reach again. It hurts. She supposes that might’ve been the point
______
A confession: it’s easy, too easy, for Marinette to sink into college life. To hide from everything but her classes and everyone but her roommate and to hope that no one looks at her and sees the blue eyes of Ladybug.
It takes a push, first from her design teacher and then from Nino, to even take a look at the name “Gabriel Agreste” and the word “internship.” It takes a wrench of her heart to shove them together.
But, when she walks out of his office and into that big elevator with a promise of a future in her field, it is anything but easy. It feels right, though.
And, a Facebook status and a few weeks later, she receives another package. Same blue, similar note:
“Congrats on the Internship! See you at the Fall Collection Showcase! XOXO!”
Sixteen bells of Ireland (Good Luck, the card reads) and twelve daisies (I’ll Never Tell). Marinette puts them in a vase. They live a little longer this time.
______
The breakup with Nino comes with the fall weather. It doesn’t hurt, not really. Not more than the dull ache Marinette’s had in her chest ever since they put up that statue of the defeat of Hawkmoth.
It’s the same week as the Fall Showcase, the same week Chloe Bourgeois comes back into town -- a rush of blonde hair and money. The rumor is she’s dating some stock market broker from America and the scent of it trails her all the way into Marinette’s cubicle. She holds a white poppy.
“Sorry about the breakup,” Chloe says.
Marinette smiles. “White poppy.”
“What?”
“Consolation.”
Chloe tosses her hair but her eyes are kind. “Figures you’d figure it out,” she grumbles, then smiles. “Us bugs gotta stick together. I’m just trying to make sure not everything falls apart.”
Marinette laughs. “Thanks for the support. And the statue.”
“Yeah,” Chloe responds. “Loose ends, you know?”
Marinette looks at the design on her desk, flowered fabric in white plaits. “Yeah,” she says. “I do.”
A confession: fate and flowers, at least for her, are sometimes synonyms.