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“And, you’re positive this is the right one, absolutely, one-hundred and ten percent sure?” Luka asks, squinting to try to see where she’s written out the delicate calligraphy in Crayola marker.
The design’s small, barely an inch, and high enough on her hip that it’s covered completely by the band of her underwear.
Marinette huffs, wiggling her butt and trying to get comfortable. The porcelain underneath her is frigid, biting against her bare thighs. Around them, the atmosphere is weird, strangely sterile, and she’s left feeling more like she’s in a doctor’s office than the Liberty’s small bathroom. “I told you, I asked my mom, and double-checked with my uncle, they both said this was the right character.”
She doesn’t bring up how Master Fu had been the one to show her in the first place. Excited to have someone to teach. Eager to share every bit of their culture Marinette had missed out on thanks to the pressure her mom had felt to assimilate. He’s gone now, and Luka never knew him.
There’s no point bringing up a ghost who never left behind any trace.
A person who doesn’t even remember her.
“Hey,” Luka says, putting his hands up in defense, “I just don’t want to be the reason you get stuck with something stupid written on your hip for the next decade.”
You wouldn’t be, Marinette wants to say—this is my choice, it would be my fault, not yours. But, she doesn’t, because she knows that saying as much would do nothing to prevent Luka from feeling guilty. “That’s why I didn’t ask Google, I asked two native mandarin speakers, and they both said this was the right character. You can relax.”
“Well, I can’t argue with verified sources.”
“Nope,” Marinette says, popping the p. “But what you can do is finish getting everything ready.”
“So bossy.” Luka laughs, balancing precariously on the stool he’d somehow managed to jam in front of where she’s seated on the sink, he reaches past her to slide open the mirror behind her head.
She doesn’t bother to dignify that with an answer: she is bossy, it’s part of her charm. Instead, she watches transfixed as Luka places the cotton swabs and alcohol next to where the tape and twine are laid out on the counter.
Anxiously, Marinette twirls the bottle of India ink in her hand. Because it’s one thing to ask your kinda-almost-not-really-boyfriend to give you a tattoo, it’s another to be sitting on the sink in his mother’s bathroom watching him run a sewing needle through a lighter. Her mom will absolutely kill her if she ever finds out.
But, Marinette thinks, if she’s old enough to fight akumas, to die for Paris—and she has died—she’s old enough to do something stupidly rebellious.
Besides, she already checked with Tikki, who confirmed what she already knew damningly overeager. Connections between spirits and their chosen humans form fast. Change is to be expected after two years of being a patron of creation.
Blood poisoning isn’t something she has to worry about. Rejection, either. As long as she’s wearing the miraculous, her body will adapt, will welcome change. One of Tikki’s gifts, something small—other—and definitely more than most fifteen-year-olds have when they decide to give themselves a stick and poke.
(Most, because Chat’s worn his miraculous just as long as her.)
“How do you feel?”
Marinette almost misses Luka’s question, too busy watching him loop thread around the needle. It’s the thump that grabs her attention, the sound of her bag hitting the floor from its place on the other side of the room.
“Nervous.” She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t. “Yet excited.”
“That’s good. I’d be worried if you weren’t.” He holds his hand out for the ink, gently prying it from her fingers when she makes no move to give it to him. She’s too busy trying to tune out Tikki’s excitement, so strong she can feel it through her earrings. “It’s going to hurt, but you’re not going to bleed.”
“I’m not worried about the pain.”
Luka gives her a measured look, the one that always makes Marinette feel like he’s seeing right through her.
For a moment, he just stares, like he’s debating something. He settles on shaking his head. “No, I know you’re not.” Marinette wants to ask what he means by that. How he knows she’s not scared of pain, but the words get stuck in her throat when Luka starts taping everything together. “You know, there’s a chance you’re not going to have this forever.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Luka admits. He pulls the band of her underwear down to rest lower on her hip, hesitating long enough that she knows he’s giving her an out. She appreciates it, more for the gesture than the action; she’d rather not deal with the anticipation that’s steadily building up alongside the strange intimacy between them.
When it’s clear that he’s not going to do anything until Marinette gives the okay, she drenches a cotton ball in alcohol and pushes it into his hand. “Why’s that?”
“Well,” Luka starts, wiping down the area in carefully measured swipes. His finger never strays past the five inch radius around the design. “The ink might not set right, and, even if it does, stick and pokes fade faster than regular tattoos. If you want to keep it, you’re going to have to get it touched up. Besides,” Luka says, throwing away the cotton ball and grabbing his makeshift tattoo needle. “You can always choose to get rid of it.”
Marinette’s breath catches in her throat, Luka doesn’t sound like he’s just talking about her future tattoo. While she’s suspected that Luka’s known who she is for some time. Definitely, since she broke down on him during the utter disaster that was Hearthunter first and Miracle Queen second. But, Luka’s always been careful to never outwardly let on that he knows.
She… definitely has to address that at some point. When she can think rationally, and her thoughts aren’t an anxious mess of, ‘oh my God I’m doing this’, mixed in with the tangle of excited ‘oh my God I’m choosing to do this!’
Because, the thing is, lately—since she became Ladybug, and especially since she became the Guardian—Marinette’s felt like her future’s been chosen for her. She hates feeling like all the decisions in her life have been taken out of her hands. All she wants is just the ability to do something to herself, for herself.
So, she’ll shelve the interrogation for later. Sometime in the near future. Just—not now.
Tapping a finger against the top of Luka’s head, she musters as much confidence as she can into her voice. “I want it, for now, though.”
Luka nods, trusting her ability to know herself and what she wants.
The needle doesn’t hurt nearly as much as the watered-down disinfectant he drags across her skin to clean away the extra ink. It feels more like taking a hot shower with sunburn than it does getting stung by a bee. She feels outrageously lied to by the Internet forums she stalked for weeks after Luka showed her the first stick and poke he did.
It’s easy to zone out as Luka works. To get lost in the dull ache as her skin is pierced, over and over again. He doesn’t say anything, and neither does she for the next hour, maybe longer. Her head’s fuzzy by the time Luka stretches and whispers, “Alright, all done.”
There, written into her skin, in the exact same place where her yo-yo rests, is the character for creation.