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Alix has kind of always known she’s aromantic. Even before she knew the word aromantic — girls talked about crushes, she didn’t feel the way they did about anyone. Everyone trying to set up Marinette and Adrien — sure, and Marinette is into it and into him.
So being aromantic was never a question. She’s one of the lucky ones — there are so many others that identify with it that constantly question.
And she can’t afford too many close relationships, anyways. She knows that one day she’ll have to pick up the mantle of Bunnix, and that seems fairly lonely — no company except the weird tiny rabbit-pet-power source. She’s not exactly looking forward to it, contradictory to her reaction at first, but it seems like a job with a lot of pressure once she thinks about it a little more.
It’s not like she has a lot of them anyways. A lot of people don’t really understand her, her lack of femininity (she couldn’t care less about how people perceive her — most choose girl, but if someone chose boy it wouldn’t matter either), her lack of romance — you know what, she isn’t missing anything.
She’s whole without all the things society claims she should have.
She sometimes wishes she had close friends, but most people already have someone who’s closer, and it’s hard to worm her way under those dynamics and find her way into them. The closest friendship she has is with Nathaniel, perhaps, and that is merely circumstantial — they’re both in the same place at the same time fairly often, so it just makes sense to be friends. They banter, they chat, but really they’re just doing two separate things in the same place. And when Marc and Nathaniel get together after a bit of dancing around each other, she’s left lonely again.
Just because she’s always known doesn’t mean that it still doesn’t get lonely to be so.
The “girl squad” each have their own relationships, too. And when Kim has a girlfriend, Max is left behind too, and that makes them band together a little bit.
It’s the insistence that romance is the most important kind of relationship that leads to them forming an alliance — Max doesn’t identify as aromantic, he’s more of the opposite of her. And there’s a kind of solidarity in that too.
So sometimes they ask her what she and Max are doing, and she replies that they’re allies in the fight against society’s insistence on romance.
They all laugh, but Alix thinks that it isn’t quite mocking. Or at least, it isn’t intended to be. She’s out, and they accept her but they don’t quite understand.
She gets why they don’t understand. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating, or isolating.
Even the part of her that whispers perhaps isolation is for the best after learning her fate as Bunnix can’t assuage her loneliness.
And somewhere with Max and herself, their alliance shifts to a queerplatonic relationship with a discussion — it’s not an unwelcome shift, but perhaps she’s the slightest bit afraid of hurting him. She hasn’t been drawn to the concept before — it felt like some sort of pale imitation romance that other aromantic people used to let society believe that they were normal. But it’s a different sort of sensation. It doesn’t feel too much different, but by calling it something different it feels like their dynamic is intrinsically different. Their relationship isn’t a professional alliance anymore, it’s more personal than that.
She doesn’t mind. It doesn’t feel like she thought it would, it isn’t what she thought it was. And it feels like a kind of rebellion, too, a kind of relationship inherently revolutionary for what it is. Because of its difference. Because of how it defies what they want her to be.
Alix has never been one for conformity, after all.
A couple people ask, sometimes. Max responds that they aren’t dating — they’re friends, and also Alix is aromantic. He never clarifies why, and one day she asks why.
He clarifies that it’s because he’s asexual, not aromantic, and he doesn’t see any reason for his attraction to be split. It just Is, though if he did find the model useful he’d identify as aromantic.
“Same,” she comments, “but also not.”
He nods. “Because you don’t feel the need to split it from aromantic, and I don’t need to split it from asexual.”
She offers a fist for him to bump. He does it, but he seems a little confused by the gesture at first.
She’s honestly surprised that he decided to fight alongside her in the first place — Max has never struck her as someone who would fight society, but expectations and first impressions aren’t law, and she doesn’t see every part. She doesn’t need to see every part of him, just like he doesn’t need to see every part of her.
Revolution is hard, and takes time, especially societal revolution. Revolution against the government brews slowly, too — she knows plenty about the heroes and villains of the French Revolution, of the false savior Napoleon, of the victim of misogyny Marie Antoinette, of so many more through her history courses in school and some of her own knowledge, accumulated over time.
But societal revolution, well — France is still undergoing metamorphosis. It takes even longer for a society to change, and sometimes the people will actively resist a change in society. After all, there are some selfish people that only care so long as the changes benefit them, and they’re not willing to fight for anyone else. But there are so many things worth fighting for, and Alix’s quiet rebellion is just one way.
She wishes she could be louder. She wishes she could fight harder. But she speaks softly, posts on social media, keeps dressing without a care, dyes her hair pink and styles it asymmetrically — some of her methods are more blatant than others, but she’s a rebel and she will never regret being such.
And there are all sorts of ways to fight. She fights just by being herself — she could do so much more, and she will. There is so much to fight for. But she’s still young, she still has plenty of time to fight. To be exactly what she’s always wanted.
When asked about her ambitions, she names a myriad of things — tattoo artist, pro skater, psychologist — but none of them are true ambitions. What she really wants to be is a force for change, a storm, a whirlwind. That’s not what she is now (some think that, perhaps, but that isn’t her) but she fully plans on realizing her dreams, one step away from conforming at a time.