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I've lost count of how many nights I've woken up feeling like I couldn't breathe. Feeling like my body can’t get enough oxygen quickly enough. Every so often I find myself becoming increasingly short of breath over a long period of time, as if my brain was unable to command my lungs to start the ventilation process. Once in a blue moon the feeling strikes while I’m at rest. Once in a blue moon. Blue.
It came like a tsunami. The first time I met him was like a foreshock, settling in my heart like an earthquake does in the depths of the sea. Silent. So silent. But powerful enough to destroy a whole city. It shook my dreams, inadvertently starting to curse them as nightmares, just as the unusual behavior of the sea before a tsunami starts. Images of his blue eyes staring at me, of the world ending a long time ago, began to experience a change in meaning. I just didn’t know what it meant at the time. I knew it was part of the trauma, and Adrien knew that. But they kept happening, over and over. Always of him, never the same dream twice, but the exact same feeling in each and every one of them.
The pressure in my chest was not caused by his hand on my throat. No. It’s caused by the way the place felt when I first and last saw him, as if the atmosphere had somehow impregnated my body, becoming an uninvited guest that made it its home with no intention of leaving anytime soon. His hand on my throat holds me still, making it impossible to see anything other than his blue eyes. Blue. You can’t scream. You just can’t. You can’t move. You wish you could move, but you just can’t. And all your body is able to do is try to breathe. Adrien had learnt to know the meaning behind the way that I breathe. He knows when I’m heavily breathing on purpose so that he wakes me up from the blindness of my nightmares. He knows my nightmares have to do with him. He knows they break me everytime and I know it breaks him too.
I wish they wouldn’t break him. I wish he didn’t have to go through it every night with me. I wish he didn’t have to witness how I’m unable to recognize him immediately upon waking up. How I refuse to look him in the eye when he calls me by my name. And how incredibly painful it is to fear him, even if just for a second, knowing that the man that’s sleeping in the same bed as I am, right next to me, is the reason the world once ended.
It changes you. It really does. Slowly turning your mind into thoughts you wish weren’t yours. Adrien never asks what I’m thinking. Not because he doesn't care, certainly not because he doesn't care. He just knows that I'm not ready and I can’t help but worry that deep down it’s because he already knows.
The thing about my nightmares is that they're not just a product of my imagination and I’ve come to believe for a while that that’s the reason I can’t make them stop. My nightmares are a product of an anomaly or transmutation my mind created of what we both lived, as if it somehow had its own metamorphosis process that results in him. They belong to memories created by an event that was real, that happened.
It's hard to wake up from a nightmare where you weren't even asleep to begin with.
We had our moments before we made the first conscious decision about what was going to happen. Moments of screaming at each other, in which we shouted and shouted, ‘please, listen to me’ without allowing ourselves to actually do it, on the verge of desperation trying so hard to understand the other but holding with all our being our need to first be understood.
“You’re not listening to me, Adrien! You don’t understand.”
“You don’t think I know that?! Damn right I don’t understand! And, my God, Mari, I wish I did. You have no idea what I would give to swap my mind with yours, even for a second just so that I could give you a moment of peace, a moment where you didn’t have to fear God-knows-what. Mari, I’m trying. But I don’t know what to do. Please tell me what to do. Because I can’t—”
And then it happened.
“Talk to me.”
“It’s killing me, Adrien. I don’t know what to do.”
“Can I be honest with you?”
“Always.”
“I think you do know, love. I think that whatever you believe is the reason the nightmares keep happening, it's too hurtful for you to admit and to carry on your own. But I can see it's hurting you so much, Bug, and I can’t go on pretending like it doesn’t.”
“Adrien...”
“I respect you, love. I’ve always respected your choices and I need you to know that we’re together in this... even if we’re not.”
“Please don’t say that…”
“What do you need, Mari?”
“Please, don’t make me say it...”
“Love, look at me. My love for you is not fragile. I know what you need and I’d be lying if I say it doesn’t hurt. But Mari, I can’t let you live like this just because of me. So I need to hear you say it. I need you to hear yourself saying it. What do you need?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I know, love. I am too.”
“I need us to take some time apart. I need to know if it is because of us.”
I can’t recall watching him leave. I just knew that he was gone by the morning, when the painfully cold air in the room woke me up and the warmth of his body, of his whole being, was no longer there with me. He didn’t kiss me. He didn’t say goodbye. And I can understand now why he didn’t. We didn’t speak to each other for five months, no matter how badly I needed to, no matter how miserable I was feeling for the fact that the nightmares had barely stopped. It wasn’t because of him, of us. It wasn’t because of Hawkmoth, because Gabriel Agreste was gone, and taking him to the grave, so was he. Chat Blanc was once a result of an unfortunate event. The ghost of a cataclysm that was never meant to be made. But right now, the memory was alive because of me, as I was incapable of letting it go.
I spent those five months numbing the pain, trying so hard to understand the meaning of my nightmares. Were they my fear of it happening again? A predisposition of my mind? An unfinished business? No— no, they weren't. For how could it be all of the above if the whole circumstances were different?
Every so often I found myself lying on the bedroom floor, feeling how my teardrops travel from the corner of my eyes to the valleys of my ears, hoping that the cold of the floor tiles could wake me up just enough to find an answer. I picture myself on the roof of a building while a flooded city lies beneath. And as much as it scares me, I feel the need to go back, relying completely on what my mind remembers.
I know it's not real. None of it is real.
Then what about it is?
Adrien was not akumatized, nor could he be anymore. The world hasn’t ended and yet we’ve known who we are for almost three years. We lived the same scenario when Hawkmoth died. Just the three of us. Just him, his son and I. But Hawkmoth no longer existed, because the last time it happened we both died. And this time, he did and I—
“—didn’t.”
My eyes flung open as the idea was slowly starting to settle in my head.
Hawkmoth died and I didn’t.
Gabriel Agreste, Adrien’s father and the only person he had left, died and I didn’t.
And then it hit me, all at once, the shocking realization that was the truth. Hawkmoth and I had died because Adrien never made a choice— because it wasn’t in his heart to choose. And so as the end of the world happened, an incessant reminder kept hidden in the back of my mind, of that one decision that could have never been made.
And history— history repeated itself.
Adrien didn’t get to choose between his father and I, because Hawkmoth died before he knew and it was all because of me.
The pounding of my heart resonated loudly in my ears, deafening me from any source of noise inside the room, as the choking sensation began to invade my body like a crashing wave against the shore. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. And I wanted to scream, so loudly, that the feeling of an elephant foot pressing on my chest kept tightening as I was unable to do it. I closed my eyes.
C’mon, Marinette. Breathe.
Eyes. Blue. Hawkmoth. Blue.
Please, breathe.
“This is all your fault”.
Breathe. One. Two. Three. Fou— Fuck.
“You did this to me”.
One. Two. Three. One. One. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I knew that the worst that could happen was that I was going to faint, but I felt it in my guts as if I were dying. I couldn’t feel Tikki. I didn’t feel her stroking my cheek, asking me to look at her. Begging me to breathe. I didn’t feel her rushing through the window, leaving me alone in a stuttering mess of tears and unhealed wounds in my heart. All I could feel was his bright blue eyes looking at me. And guilt.
Guilt.
Chat Blanc wasn’t my fear, he was my guilt.
The guilt of not being able to save his father, the guilt of feeling relieved when everything was over, not knowing that the man who died was leaving his son behind. But most importantly, the guilt of not being able to let him choose.
My hands traveled through my body in a failed attempt to feel what was real, unconsciously settling themselves where my heart is, as the painful realization hit me. My mind immediately thought of Adrien. Of the way he used to feel, desperately trying to focus on something, anything that was familiar. I thought of the sound of his voice, so calm, so tranquil. Blue. I thought of the sound of his heartbeats, thinking back to those moments when my head rested on his bare chest and my fingertips wandered through it as if they were tracing an invisible map. Blue. I thought of the way he laughed and the redness of his cheeks when he cried. I thought of all the times he said I love you and all the times I said it back.
“Where is she?”
“In the bedroom— Adrien, please hurry.”
I thought of the way he looked at me when I told him what I needed, the hurt in his eyes when I saw him in the streets two months after we broke up. And then I saw him. White. Blue. Dark.
“I’m sorry.”
But he wasn’t listening, for he wasn’t really there.
“I didn’t mean to.”
There was that pressure in my chest again, and I started to breathe heavily, hoping that wherever he was, he could feel me. Adrien had learnt to know the meaning behind the way that I breathe.
“You did this to me, Marinette.”
“Please, forgive me. Please.”
My eyes flung open in a desperate attempt to make it stop, and just as I did I watched Adrien rushing into the room with a look of concern, standing right in front of me.
I broke down.
“Mari, wh—”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry—I’m so sorry, Chat.” Chat. His name left my mouth as if it had life on it’s own, almost imperceptible, as an inaudible whisper. I hadn’t called him by that name for a very long time.
“Hey, it’s okay. Marinette, it’s okay.”
“No, it's not. It's not. I need you to know— I need you to know that I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t kn—”
“I didn’t know he was your dad. He was your dad, Adrien. He was your dad and I felt relieved that he was gone. Oh God, I felt relieved that he was gone. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“M’lady—”
“You never got to choose. You never got to choose because of me, because he died and I didn’t. I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t save him, Adrien and you didn’t get to choose—”
“Marinette, choose what? I don’t understand—”
“Between your father and me. I would’ve understood if you had chosen him when we found out. You had every right in the world to make your choice and I took that away from you because I couldn’t save him.” And I had tried, my God I had tried. “I couldn’t save him and Adrien, I told you I felt like I could finally breathe once he was gone and you were standing right there, hearing me say all these horrible, horrible things about him—”
“M’lady, stop—”
“No, no, no. I’m so sorry—”
“M’lady—”
“I was so unfair to you and I blamed you for something you had absolutely no control of and I let you go, I let us go—”
“Marinette, look at me.”
“And the nightmares, Adrien. The nightmares. I was wrong, I was so wrong. This is all my fault, I’m so sorry, I’m so so—”
I stopped breathing in a second, unable to say another word, as the feeling of calmness came crashing through my system and all those thoughts that were eating my heart slowly started vanishing away. His lips barely brushed mine but that’s all it took for me to feel him, in every nerve in my body, in every inch of my soul. Home. He felt like home. I couldn’t move, not just yet, and he wholeheartedly waited. He kissed me like he’d never kissed me before. So soft yet fierce, and so understandable, making sure that I could feel in every brush of his lips with mine the unspoken words he so desperately was trying to say. I’m here. I’m right here.
The pressure in my chest evanescenced until I finally surrendered, and just as lightly, relinquishing a hidden breath of air, kissed him back. We melted into each other, in each touch, in each tear. I no longer knew who those tears belonged to, but they became one. And he held me, steadying the uneasiness of my soul until I realized just how fiercely he loved me and just how much I loved him back. He broke apart slowly, cupping my cheeks between his hands, pressing his forehead against mine and taking his time to look at me, making sure that I was looking right back. I was. I always was.
“This is not your fault.”
He breathed out, triggering a choking sob out of my mouth, immediately closing my eyes as a reflex because I couldn’t bear to look at him anymore. I couldn’t. Not with the way he was looking at me, so desperately trying to make me understand. He was trembling, struggling to speak, but he did not let go. He didn’t know the power he held by saying those words. He didn’t know how each time he repeated them he was pulling a knife out of my chest. He wasn’t taking the guilt away but he gave me hope, hope that it eventually will, and to me, that was more than enough.
“This is not your fault. Or mine. Or anyone else’s but his. I loved my father, I still love him and miss him everyday, despite all the awful things he did. But he made his choice, and for the first time in my life, so did I and I chose me.”
I felt my hands traveling to his chest, settling in his heart and slowly, as I hiccuped against his shirt, I hugged him. So tightly. He was crying with me, holding as hard as he could to not break in front of me but his voice gave him away, as a silent crack escaped from his lips while he rested his cheek on the side of my head.
“Marinette, you’re the greatest part of me. This is not your fault, M’lady, it’ll never be.”
I pressed my lips to his shirt and as I started to look at him, my hands found his cheeks. I traced the trauma in his eyes with my fingertips, the wetness of his face and the loss in his trembling lips. “I’m so sorry, Chat.” And I meant it. Not just for the decision we had made, not just for the guilt my body created during all those months, but for everything this man, the kindest soul, had gone and was going through. And he— he understood. He kissed my forehead as I held him tighter, realizing how harder than we thought this was going to be. Once in a blue moon the feeling would strike back, but he had me and I had him, and that’s all it mattered.
“We’re going to be okay,” he whispered.
And I knew, for the first time in a long time, that we were going to be.