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“Hey, have you ever thought about how weird it must be for kwamis to sit in our heads and listen to us talk and think and stuff?”
“Nah. Why d’you figure?”
Marinette shrugs. “It just feels like it should be weird.”
It’s a lovely night, really. The sparse clouds up in the sky float across it like sponges, soaking up the darkness for just a little bit and leaving squeaky-clean stars behind. The city is quiet, almost unnaturally so, even for a midnight in February – or maybe it’s just that Marinette has forgotten to hear them. Here, up on the roof, under the glowing half moon, it’s like they’re off in their own little world that nobody else can enter.
These patrol/lookout nights are precious to her in a way she can’t really describe; however, she knows it’s definitely about the company. The time they spend together off-duty is also nice, she wouldn’t swap out time spent with her bestie in the whole world for anything, but there’s something extra that comes with the costumes. A burst of confidence, maybe. The feeling that suffuses her every time: She can do anything.
She can jump over the Eiffel tower with a runup, she can keep her balance while running across a thin barrier fence, she can throw a car and Alya can catch it. Not that she wants to do those things, of course. But it’s cool to know she can do anything she wants to do.
Well. Almost. Almost.
Alya crosses her legs and nudges Marinette with an elbow. “Is there anything you’re afraid to say, eh, Marinette?”
“No.” Wait. She was too final, too quick on the draw, there. “No, I’m. I just think it’s weird, okay? Leave me alone.” And that – that was worse. She groans and falls back, now spread-eagled on the roof shingles.
“Well, I think there are far weirder things to do with kwamis, personally,” says Alya, and whirls her red-and-black yo-yo slowly. “Like how I can make any object in the world, but I can’t decide which one beforehand. Or how you can grab onto something and turn it to dust in a heartbeat. That’s weird. That’s the sort of thing I’d never have imagined before.”
“But you could imagine small gremlins that listen in on your conversations and follow you everywhere?”
Alya laughs. “Of course I can. I have two little sisters.”
Sitting up again, Marinette takes out the cat’s staff and frowns at it. When Adrien publicly renounced being a hero five years ago, after they defeated Hawk Moth and he decided he needed to get his life in order again, to rebuild the ruins his father had left behind – there had been no question of who should get the ring. And then, Alya said no, and there was a question again, until Alya gave her the answer. “Give me the earrings,” she said then. “You can be my kitty.”
And because Marinette had – and still has – all the mental fortitude of wet paper when it comes to Alya calling her by cute nicknames, she’d agreed. They became Scarabella and Lady Noire, crime fighting duo extraordinaire. A gorgeous and funny and good-hearted young woman, and her sopping wet helpless alley cat of an excuse for a partner.
Because Marinette’s confidence as Lady Noire can carry her through battles with monsters, and through saving civilians, and through the end of the world, but it can’t allow her to compare herself to Alya.
“But… you know what I mean, right?” she mumbles.
“I guess. It doesn’t really worry me, though. They have to be with us all the time anyway, so if they’re on the inside or on the outside doesn’t matter. Tikki still has to see me in the shower.”
Marinette rams her face into her knees to get her imagination to stop working.
“Hey, Marinette,” says Alya, “what’s up? You can just tell Plagg to look away. You do tell him to look away, right?”
“Ywwh,” says Marinette, muffled by her own thighs. “Bwt thwt’s nwt wt.”
She doesn’t see Alya smile, but she knows that’s what happening. Alya always smiles at times like this, when there’s nothing to worry about except her spiralling best-friend-who-is-nothing-else-no-siree, they’re just gals being pals. And Alya doesn’t know what the spiral is about, but she still always puts her arm over Marinette’s shoulders – oh, here it comes – and whispers to her that it’ll be okay, and that ‘you can tell me anything, you know that, right?’
But that doesn’t happen this time. Instead, the arm just stays there. And Alya only speaks an eternity later, saying: “I’ve actually got something to tell you.”
Marinette looks up at her. Takes in her smiling face (that guess had been accurate, same as the arm), her golden-brown eyes, her rounded cheeks, her precious little nose. “… What?”
“It’s kinda personal, though. Are you sure the kwamis should hear?”
“Stop making fun of me, Alya.”
“All right, all right.” She lets go, and sits back a little. “But you know Tikki loves you, right? Same as Plagg. And I love you, too. You can tell us anything, you know that, right?” There we go, thinks Marinette. It was just backed up in a humour stoppage.
Love. That annoying word that can mean a thousand things. Marinette loves her parents, and she loves her friends. She loves baking, and designing, and crafts, and music; she loves Jagged Stone and Clara Nightingale and Kitty Section. She loves the feeling of a light rain drizzling across the rooftops, and she loves the heavier rains when they pummel her umbrella or the roof she’s safe under.
She loves video games and she loves sports. She loves being a superhero, and feeling in control. She loves to travel and see new places. She loves seeing things her friends make. In a general, sort of nebulous way, she loves Paris, and the people in it – that’s just part of being a superhero.
And she loves Alya. As a friend, as a superhero partner, as the author of the Ladyblog (now restyled to favour Lady Noire), as someone who always took an interest in her and still hasn’t stopped doing so. But also, in a girlfriend kind of way. In a wife kind of way. In a grovel-at-her-feet, praise-her-every-day kind of way. She wants to make clothes for Alya, and bake her chouquettes, and to kneel across her body to apply makeup to her face, before smothering her with a kiss, like in that picture. In fact, she wants to smother her with kisses every day, until she’s out of breath and has to pull away, gasping, to look at the makeup she’s just smudged all over Alya’s face, and then love her even more, because even if she looks a complete mess, Alya can never not be beautiful.
It did take Marinette a while to realise. She was hung up on other things, worried about life, worried about school, worried about boys – and wow, had that ever been a trip the wrong way down a one way street. She was worried about Hawk Moth and bullies at school, back then. And then, she saw Alya as a superhero – as Scarabella – and everything in her head burned for a moment, and then the ash sank into the soil and fertilised it, and a new forest grew.
She has to admit it, though it shames her a little, that the outfit was part of it. Her fashion designer brain saw it and went: Coattails! Coattails, coattails, coattails, what a wonderful thing, I need to make some designs with coattails, they fall so beautifully over her – oh. Oh . And then it was all over for Marinette. She’s still not over it: the red and black work super well against Alya’s skin and hair; the colouring of the jacket suggests a sleeveless top and long, fingerless gloves; the headband and the mask leave a cute little triangle above her eyes and nose that creases in the most beautiful little way when she furrows her brows.
But also, there’s just – Alya’s confidence, which is always there, but gets focused inwards when she’s transformed. Her bravery and kindness, which Marinette feels every day they’re together. Her inventiveness, her humour, her diligence and devotion to everything she does. How good of a friend she’s always been. The curve of her lips...
“Marinette?” says Alya, raising an eyebrow. “You’re… staring at me.”
“Oh! Sorry.”
“That’s all right. I know I’m quite a piece to behold.” Alya, cheekily preening herself, throws her hair behind her back, a haughty (but still beautiful) look on her face.
“Yeah, you are,” replies Marinette, in a way that she intended to be playful, as a joke between friends-because-that’s-totally-what-I-think-of-us-as, but as the words come out she realises they don’t sound like that at all. They sound like that perfume advertisement. Radiant. Carefree. Dreamy. To correct her mistake, she adds “You’re the most gorgeous person I’ve ever seen,” and tries to make it sound sarcastic. But she fails miserably. As Alya’s expression changes in front of her eyes, she feels she might just blackout.
“Um… Marinette… do you really think so?” says Alya, turning towards her.
Marinette burns again. The forest in her head catches fire, and her cheeks grow painfully hot, and she pulls her arms over her head and turns away and says “Sorry! I’m so sorry!”
But in spite of Marinette’s terrors, the tone of Alya’s voice, the look on her face, she imagined that Alya sounded some kind of hopeful. Pleased.
“… Is this what you felt weird talking about?” Marinette feels Alya’s hand land on her shoulder. Her heart starts beating up a storm, pumping liquid into her brain to put out the flames. “Hey – don’t act up, okay? It’s fine if you wanna talk about it, okay? But don’t bottle it up. Okay, kitty?”
The paper grows wet and breaks. The fire still rages. But Marinette can’t not respond. “Yeah,” she says, still not looking up. “I’m sorry. I just… I love you, okay? And I’ve loved you for a while. But I know we’re just friends. And I – I don’t want to ruin that. I… I love you. And you’re not obligated to do anything about it, so just… don’t worry about it. Okay?” And the fire in her head keeps raging.
“Obligated?”
“Mmh…” says Marinette, unable to open her mouth.
She feels Alya move a little closer, and the hand on her shoulder pull a little, as though Alya wants her to turn around. And she does, because she is just a sopping wet helpless alley cat next to the prettiest person on the planet.
Alya is smiling, in a way Marinette can’t interpret. Her hand remains on the same shoulder. “Marinette,” she says, “you’re absolutely clueless, you know that, right?”
“Huh?”
“Because why on earth would I feel obligated to do this?” And she puts her other hand on the back of Marinette’s head, and pulls her closer, and lands a soppinger wettinger kiss square on Marinette’s mouth.
It’s only there for a couple of seconds, but when Alya pulls away, Marinette feels as though the stars have shifted and the seasons have changed and a century has passed, and the two of them just didn’t change at all. She feels as though there’s snow on her head, and autumn leaves on her feet.
Alya looks at her with those big, wonderful, transfixing eyes, and she laughs. “You’re absolutely hopeless. And here I’ve gone for years thinking you just didn’t like girls.”
“Why would you think that?” says Marinette, almost affronted.
“Well, it’s got a lot to do with the two boys you were head over heels for all through middle school… and all the blazing hot girls you hung around every day and didn’t even look twice at.”
Ouch . Those years were bad. She didn’t even learn until recently that Aurore and Mireille were actually fighting over her before Aurore got akumatised into Stormy Weather that first time, and that the weather girl contest just nudged her over the edge she was already teetering on. They were dating each other now, happily so. And the boys had both moved on from Marinette in time, because she was so indecisive about them, and she didn’t realise why she was indecisive until, well. Alya.
“Seriously,” Alya continues, “I’ve been trying to send you hints for ages and hoping you’d pick up on them, and here you’re just folding yourself into napkins not to tell me you feel the same way? I’m sorry, it’s not really funny, I don’t mean to laugh at you. But it is really funny.”
“Hey.” She folds her arms. “If I’m clueless for not noticing, aren’t you also clueless for not picking up on my stuff?”
“Nah. I’m a little clueless, I’ll admit, but only with you. You’ve been clueless about romance your whole life.”
Much though she wants to, Marinette can’t argue the point. So she settles on just sticking her tongue out.
“So, what got you hot on me, then, Maid Marian?” says Alya, clearly not done.
“Look, I don’t wanna talk about this in public…”
“We’re alone up here.” Alya lays down sideways on the shingles and props up her head with an arm. “We can be as embarrassing as we want. Oh, talking about embarrassing, wanna hear how I fell in love with you?” She sounds excited like a schoolgirl.
“No!” Marinette pulls her knees up to her chest and gives Alya a stern look. “I’m fine just kissing.”
Another bark of laughter. “Don’t worry, girl, I’m definitely getting to that. But I got into you because of your kitty outfit. It hugs your figure like meow.”
“Plagg! Claws off!” She lets the little kwami fall into her cupped hands. “Plagg, please, can you go away for a little bit? Alya is bothering me and I need to go deal with her.”
“Hey, I’m not the one who’s embarrassed,” says Plagg. “Maybe you should go away and I can talk to her.”
“No, don’t do that. It’s you I wanna kiss, Mar.”
And Marinette falls back down on the roof, groaning. “You guys are impossible,” she says. And then, something in the sky catches her eye as a clouds moves away to reveal it. It looks like a streak of turquoise and white, straight like an arrow, placed smack in the middle of the darkness of space.
Maybe her expression changes enough that the other two take notice, because they also move their gazes up to the green arrow. “Whoa,” says Alya. “Cool!”
“What is it?”
“I read about it last week, but I forgot. It’s a comet! It’s only ever been seen by humans once before, and after this, it’s going to be gone forever.”
“Eh.” Plagg sounds like he’d be more interested in drying paint. “I saw it the first time, fifty thousand years ago. Bo-ring.”
Alya lies down on the roof next to Marinette, and grabs her hand. They watch the arrow together as it sails its unimaginable journey through space, all alone, waiting for the day it just crumbles and is no more.
“It’s kinda sad,” says Marinette. “That we’ll be the last ones to see it.”
“I don’t think so.” Alya puts her head on the side and looks at Marinette. “I think it’s kinda romantic that we got to figure out we’re into each other under a comet that will never ever come back. That’s way more magical than a meteor shower.” A sigh. “And then it’ll sail away, and spread our love story all over the solar system.”
“But isn’t it sad that it’ll never see people again? That it’s going to burn up and die somewhere in the middle of space, forgotten?”
Alya smiles. “We’ll never forget. Right?”
The fire in Marinette’s brain is completely out now. It took out a lot of trees, but the forest still stands. And while her cheeks are still burning, she feels that’s got to be a good thing.
“I’m going to sew you a coat like you’re wearing now,” she says.
“Ooh, do you want to make me your fashion model?”
“That. And some other things.”
“I’m all ears,” says Alya. And she pushes herself off the roof and lifts her head above Marinette’s. “But,” she says, “I believe we have some kissing to get back to.”
And she plants her lips on Marinette’s, and the night passes them by in leaps and bounds.