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“What if I told you none of it was accidental?” She starts, taking a sip of her own mocha flavored coffee. Marinette glances at him through the corner of her eye before she turns her attention back to the window and casting her gaze out of the window down into the busy streets of Gotham. It’s dark and the neon lights of the city blink and somehow scream danger in the night. They’re suppose to be taking a break, a quiet thirty minutes to recharge. Secrets between the two of them had recently been revealed and nothing had been talked about yet. Tim doesn’t startle – but he hums to let her know that he’s heard her – a soft, questioning hum edging Marinette on to continue as he stares out the same window.
She does, after another sip, and lets out a sigh. The confession weighs heavily on her chest; it’s her first time feeling like she needs to say something. To let him know that he was fooled by her – and then go their separate ways, because surely he wouldn’t want to be around her. Both thieves or not.
“No one wanted to play with me as a little kid,” and they didn’t. Marinette didn’t make friends very easily. Any that she made, was ran off by Chloe – and everyone else thought she was weird when she’d bring pao cai to school to eat during lunch – and any other traditional foods that weren’t French. The only one who wasn’t scared of her food was Kim – and then Nino, but even Chloe had them scared them. No one wants to be friends with the impossibly small girl who speaks a mixture of three different languages. “And I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since, to make them love me and make it seem effortless.”
His brows furrow – and he’s done so much research on her, from before they met – til he got her to work for him, but somehow he never connected the facts that she had a hard time making friends. She always seemed so loved. “What do you mean?”
She laughs, “Presents, gifts, do things for people they didn’t want to do –” certainly, she’s selfless at times, willing to give up her entire childhood (and doesn’t that just turn the notch up on a slow simmer of anger that lays in her stomach about a childhood she never got to live) to save the world over and over again without as much of a thank you. “—it was the only way to make friends. It was the only way that I mattered to anyone – but then, you dropped in on my balcony in the middle of my argument with Chat Noir – and I knew. I knew that I wouldn’t have to do any of that with you.”
He blinks at her confession; it’s the first time she’s even edged about the fact that she knew he was Stray – after that one night that they had together and a year of chasing her as Lady Jinx and her chasing him as Stray. “So I inspired you?” He jokes, and she laughs, loud and clear and like twinkling bells and he feels himself grin. “You can say that.” She says softly.
“I laid the groundwork, I beat my villain, I decided to go and get the other miraculouses across the world so nothing like Paris could happen again. I moved to Gotham because you, as Stray, was here. Everything was by design.” She admits, “I’m the mastermind.”
He smiles, as she admits that she planned everything from the beginning – and he realises in that moment that he loves her. Loves her like an addict, like a sunflower who turns to the sun and he wonders when she’ll figure out that she’s here by his design too – that even when they weren’t together, their plans slotted together perfectly like a puzzle made just for them by the universe.
She looks at him, finally and blinks at the smile and she breathes out; he knew. He knew the entire time.
“The flyer for being my PA didn’t just fly into your window, Marinette.”
He knows.
He knows, and it’s okay, and he loves her anyways.
She laughs, brightly. “Tim Drake, I believe that you belong to me,” and he grins at her finally, and the weight that’s laid on her chest, finally lets up. She’s confessed and he loves her the same.