Chapter Text
The first time Adrien met Marinette, she jumped to a conclusion.
This time she was jumping to her death.
The hissing wind whipped through Adrien's hair, sending his light jacket in a whirlwind around his chest. He struggled to see between his eyelashes, the strong force of air threatening again to send him down onto the busy unsuspecting Parisians below them.
His feet pushed past the wind one step at a time. “Marinette!”
She stood at the edge of the Palais Garnier, her small feet just inches away from a fate that would send her spiraling down past the statues and the luminescent engraved lightposts that would be the showcase to her end below.
Her hair was down, and thrashing in the wind. Her body whispered surrender, but grew stiff in response to his voice.
She slowly spun around. “Adrien?” He had seen her eyes grow wide and sparkle with some kind of expressed excitement whenever he walked into their classroom. He had witnessed her pink cheeks redden into roses, and her sweet delicate smile grow like a tender blossom whenever she attempted to talk to him.
But this time, Marinette’s eyes remained dark, shadowed by black circles underneath. Her cheeks were horribly pale, and her mouth did not greet him with a smile.
“Adrien, what are you doing here.” She phrased it as a disappointed rhetorical statement rather than a true inquisition, but he answered anyway.
“It was Alya. She told me she was worried about you but couldn’t help you. She said I might be able to do something, even if no one else could.”
Marinette seemed to be caught off guard by her friend's name.
“I always knew you were having a hard time after your parents died. No one should have to go through that.”
Adrien took a step closer to her. She stepped closer to the edge.
He stopped dead in his tracks, and tried to pour more sincerity into his voice. “Marinette, I understand what it is like to lose someone. Please, I really do.”
Her eyes turned forlorn. “No, this time you really don't,” she spoke with a longing, as if she wished he really did know.
He clenched his jaw as various uncertain things to say to her whirled around in his mind. “Marinette, I just need you to understand! I-”
She shook her head, her loose hair whipping at her neck and face. Then her features changed from pitiful to a limp resignation. She turned and before he could take another step, whispered just loud enough for me to hear her over the wind. “You don’t have a clue, Adrien. You never have, and you never will.”
And with those final words, Marinette Dupain-Cheng jumped.