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"Marinette, are you all right?" Tikki called out.
The girl in question had been standing in the shower for the past thirty minutes, and her kwami was concerned because Marinette usually took less time to finish whatever she had to do in the bathroom.
Marinette didn't hear her.
She was too unnerved by everything.
The way she was feeling— it was so hard to articulate, but she felt like everything was wrong . Like something was out of order, or misplaced, or maybe there was just something wrong with her.
The world kept moving in its natural way, and water droplets fell onto her skin effortlessly; people continued living their lives, the moon was full, and everything was normal and fine .
But how could she live in this false sense of normalcy when—
("You're not staying?" Marinette was confused. Just what exactly was she getting into?
Bunnyx shrugs. "Let's say I gotta stand ready to jump back into time and try something else, in case you fail. Mwah!"
Dread was starting to pile up in the pit of her stomach.)
She took a deep breath. She couldn't go through this again. She could not fall apart again.
("It was our love that did this to the world, m'lady.")
She hiccupped, before determinedly yanking on her hair.
It was in the past now. In fact, it wasn't even in the past, it never actually happened technically, so how on earth could she—
"Marinette?" Tikki phased through the bathroom door.
She blinked. "Tikki?" she responded.
"I was just checking on you." The kwami floated, staying by the other side of the shower curtain.
Marinette smiles. "Thanks Tikki, I think I got a little lost in my thoughts."
The kwami hummed and seemed to take that as a decent answer, exiting and leaving Marinette back to her own devices.
Probably assuming that Marinette was going to continue her shower.
Which… she probably should have started on, but honestly speaking, she hadn't even put anything in her hair yet. She wasn't actually.. showering at all. Just standing under the water.
She only stepped into the shower for the purposes of feeling something; the heat, to be exact. The sting. It was one of the few things that kept her going in this unfair world.
It made her feel present. A lot more so than usual.
Though, her spacing out and not hearing Tikki's calls earlier probably didn't help her case.
Everything was still unnerving.
Her parents acted normal; Alya, Nino, and Adrien acted normal; her classmates acted normal; Chat acted normal.
Everything was so normal and it made Marinette feel sick to her stomach.
Because how could everything be so… fine? How could the sky be so blue and how could Paris be filled with all these people? How was the world still turning?
It was unfair.
Unfair how everything and everyone seemed fine.
And it made sense. It made sense that everything was fine because nothing that she saw ever actually happened now. She prevented that timeline from ever occurring so why was it even freaking her out?
Not that she was freaked out.
Maybe she was.
No, no way.
What freaked her out the most was Chat Noir, which was both surprising and unsurprising.
Seeing the way he grinned, the way he moved and gestured, the way he talked with such expression and vibrant tones, everything about him was so unsettling.
And it wasn't his fault.
It was and never will be his fault. It will always be her fault for having messed up originally.
Marinette nearly cried when she saw Chat Noir on his solo patrol the day after she 'saved' Chat Blanc.
She feels like she did nothing. She feels like it amounted to nothing. All she did was mess up in several stupid ways and all she did after that was just fixing her original mess-up. She, in getting rid of that entire timeline, technically got rid of Chat Blanc/Noir, and that was so difficult to think about.
Because yes, she knows that that was just an alternate version of her partner who ended up getting akumatized, but knowing that it was her love for him— their love for each other that ultimately resulted in his doom…
The fact she could have prevented having to delete his very existence by just keeping her distance and not being such an idiotic fool haunted her.
And, of course, she never talked about this with anyone— even Tikki, because it just felt so stupid. It felt stupid that she was getting upset over an alternate timeline that ceased to exist and an alternate version of her partner that would hopefully never exist.
And besides, there was no one she could talk to about this besides Tikki or Chat.
All she could do is let it eat away at her.
All she could do is acknowledge that she saw the moon it its deformed state, she saw the vast waters that rose above buildings, and she saw him and his dismal state.
And it was her fault.