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In truth, she doesn’t know why she came here—probably to give him, or herself, one last chance. Even with the way Felix acted at school, the way he snapped at his new classmates, and especially the way he was rude to her when Marinette tried to talk to him, she still can’t completely write him off after she’s been waiting to meet him all her life. Judging by his nasty attitude, it wouldn’t matter to him in the slightest, but Marinette can’t shake the feeling of guilt, as if she had unwittingly stolen something intimate and precious from him, and his loss burns in her chest like an open wound.
Marinette remembers the first time her mother explained to her what these words, written in beautiful handwriting on her wrist, meant. She remembers how she was inspired by the thought of her soulmate, a person created especially for her, who will be capable of boundless love for her, no matter what and in spite of everything. She remembers how many times she tried to imagine a situation in which these words could be said to her, although why a stranger would demand something from her at the first meeting was always a mystery.
Only two weeks ago this mystery was finally solved.
She has to admit that on that day, in the rush of the battle, she didn’t immediately realize that something important had happened. After having dealt with the Akuma, she is momentarily distracted, staring in surprise at the blond, who looks around in confusion as Hawk Moth’s magic recedes—she doesn’t realize what were the first words he said to her while being akumatized. After all, she doesn’t quite understand yet that this isn’t her friend, and that it’s her first meeting with this particular person.
“Adrien?” Ladybug asks doubtfully, looking closely at the young man who finally focuses his gaze on her—she isn’t sure how to call him because he looks exactly like her friend, but at the same time, he doesn’t. He is dressed and combed completely differently, and he doesn’t radiate this special pleasant lightness, which the model usually possesses in almost any situation.
“This is Felix, Adrien’s cousin from London,” Chat Noir explains as he lands next to her. “Hey Felix, I can take you back to your uncle’s house,” he offers softly, taking the initiative he usually cedes to his partner in such situations, and she can hear some particularly warm understanding in his voice, as if he wants to protect their new acquaintance. Maybe Chat managed to look into Gabriel’s house and found out what happened there to cause an Akuma? she wonders.
“I let him take advantage of my emotions, then...” Felix concludes, muttering under his breath, as if trying to gather his thoughts in an unfamiliar situation in which he suddenly finds himself. “Fine,” he grumbles, either to Chat or to the situation in general, but the hero takes this as agreement, because he salutes Ladybug, scoops Felix up into his arms and disappears from her view.
Only after detransforming at home and sitting down to sew to distract herself from the strange restless sensations that haunted her after the battle with the new Akuma, Marinette suddenly turns attention to her wrist, clear of the words that used to be there. She doesn’t have to wonder for long about where her soulmark has gone, because the words that she knew so well since childhood, and which were told to her by her friend’s akumatized cousin just an hour ago, immediately emerge in her memory.
And yes, she realizes with perfect clarity, as if the puzzle that she had been trying to solve for many years had suddenly finally come together for her—this was their first meeting; and of course the Akuma had the need to demand something from Ladybug, and all the years of thinking about suitable circumstances for her words suddenly comes to crystal clarity, because Marinette has finally met her soulmate!
The only problem is that… while she met him, he didn’t meet her!
Because the guy who said the words from her wrist at their first meeting, trying to take Ladybug’s Miraculus away, like all the victims of Hawk Moth, now doesn’t remember what happened to him in the Akuma state… which means he doesn’t know that she is his soulmate...
Marinette sits at her desk in a stupor, trying to convince herself that it’s not him, because how could fate play a trick on her so cruelly? After all, Felix doesn’t even live in Paris, but only came to visit Adrien, and now he will leave without knowing that he met her! But all her attempts to mentally change reality are useless, because the words on her wrist melted into nothingness, as happens with those who have already met their match, and this means that there can be no mistake...
The next week passes in torment and doubt, because Felix has left, and Adrien comes to school as if nothing had happened, and she doesn’t know what to do, or whether to do anything at all. But a week later, her teacher brings a new student to class, and Adrien introduces him to everyone as his cousin, who temporarily moved to Paris and transferred to study at their school.
And it’s Felix.
Marinette’s heart seems to stop in her chest when she sees him again. Could it be that he returned for her? she thinks, unable to stop her hands from shaking.
But her restless enthusiasm doesn’t last long, because at the very first break, when her classmates try to get to know the new guy better, Felix, who had previously been sullen and distant, rather rudely brushes off everyone who approaches him. And Marinette, anticipating that she shouldn’t be doing it, seeing how aggressive he is with everyone, still tries to greet him as well.
“Mind your own business, miss Dupain-Cheng,” he snaps when she introduces herself and asks why he decided to move to Paris. “I’m definitely not here to socialize.”
And yes, looking back, he was right, because if she were nothing to him—which she was in his eyes—Marinette had no right to ask him personal questions. But then again, she simply couldn’t restrain herself, naively believing that he would suddenly smile and tell her that he had come for her...
This is how the whole next week passes.
Despite the fact that Adrien is trying to convince everyone that something bad just happened to his cousin and that’s why he’s behaving this way at the moment, and asks to give Felix another chance, every day Marinette loses hope more and more. She convinces herself that her soulmate is a rude, antisocial person, and maybe it was a gift from fate that he doesn’t know that she is his soulmate and wouldn’t be able to find her even if he tries.
And yet…
Marinette sighs and looks at the gates of the Agreste mansion.
And yet, she is here, at the very first invitation of her friend, because in spite of everything there is still some hope glimmering in her that… Marinette isn’t sure what exactly she hopes for by coming here, she only knows that she can’t let him go yet.
She presses the button and is answered by Natalie’s familiar voice. “Adrian in his room,” the secretary says in her usual reserved, stern tone when she meets Marinette at the door. “I’m sure you remember where it is.”
Marinette nods politely and climbs the stairs, heading towards Adrien’s room, but slows down when she hears voices coming from the slightly open door.
“Calm down, Felix,” her friend says in a soft, patient tone, interrupting the outburst of words, most of which she was too far away to hear.
“How exactly am I supposed to do it, Adrien?!” Felix yells back, more panic than anger in his voice, and Marinette has no doubt that it’s his voice, because although they have only known each other for a week and he rarely speaks, for some reason she feels like she would never confuse the sound of his voice with anyone else. “How can I calm down in such a situation?!”
“I’ve been waiting to meet her all my life, do you realize?! All my life!” He goes on, oblivious to the fact that his soulmate stopped dead on the other side of the door. “And now my words disappeared, and that means I did meet her! I met her while I was akumatized, and do you know what that means, Adrien?!” He pauses, but his cousin stays silent, probably just letting Felix to speak out. “It means that she could be absolutely any girl who came across me on the street while I wasn’t aware of my actions! That’s what it means! And my return to Paris to find her was pointless, because I don’t have the slightest clue where to even start!”
There is so much pain in his voice that Marinette doesn’t immediately even fully realize their meaning, namely, that he returned to find her! His soulmate is so important to him that Felix changed the city, and even the country of residence, in order to find the girl he had been waiting to meet all his life.
Almost weightless from how airy her body suddenly became, Marinette thinks that this is probably the reason why he is so angry at everyone... and she realizes that she can no longer keep it a secret from him. She can barely feel her legs when she walks into Adrien’s room, and both guys immediately turn to face her.
In her peripheral vision, she sees Felix crossing his arms protectively over his chest, but she can’t look at him, not yet. Her hands are shaking again, but that doesn’t lessen her resolve.
“Can I talk to your cousin for a few minutes, alone?” Marinette asks her friend, and her voice doesn’t even seem to tremble, as if her body had switched to using some kind of backup mode, otherwise she would have already lost consciousness from both excitement and anxiety.
Adrien frowns and glances briefly at Felix, but then he seems to force himself to smile at her. “Of course, Marinette,” he replies, and she thinks there’s nervousness in his soft voice, as if he’s afraid to leave his cousin in such a vulnerable state alone with someone. And isn’t this a revelation in itself, that all this time while Felix was pushing new acquaintances away, it was in self-defense, and only his cousin fully understood this? “Call me if you need me, guys, I’ll be nearby,” he promises before leaving, casting one last glance at Felix, to whom, Marinette thinks, these words are actually addressed.
When she finally turns to him, Felix looks at her carefully, his entire appearance defensive: his eyes are narrowed, his body is slightly tilted back, as if to increase the distance between him and the intruder, his arms are crossed on his chest as an additional barrier. “What do you want?” He asks in a tone bordering on rudeness, but she can still hear the vulnerable note in his voice.
“I... that is...” she begins, realizing that saying it out loud is much more difficult than she just thought it would be, and her determination suddenly evaporates somewhere as soon as she is left alone with him. “Those were my... my words... that is... yours… they were your words...”
Felix frowns, clearly not understanding her confused explanation, and continues to silently stare at her.
Marinette closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, in and out, trying to calm down, then pushes back the sleeve of her blouse, exposing her wrist, and extends her hand with clean, unmarked skin to him, hoping that without words he will understand her better.
Felix is still frowning, but looks carefully at her hand, then at her face, which probably now looks as open and vulnerable as she feels. His gaze falls on her hand again and Felix’s face suddenly lights up with realization, and it no longer looks like the face of a gloomy, unsociable person. Instead, Felix looks as if he has suddenly become ten years younger, and his wide eyes reflect the wonder of a child who beheld a miracle.
He raises his eyes to hers and Marinette feels as if the world around her explodes with colorful lights, shimmering and dissolving in them, as if she flies up into the night sky full of fireworks and soars in it.
She heard about it from friends before—about how it feels when your soulmate looks into your eyes for the first time with the full awareness of your connection—but wow... to hear about it and actually feel it... she can’t even compare her expectations with what she’s experiencing now, so indescribable, almost transcendental her sensations are...
Felix continues to look at her intently, as if he sees right through her, reaching her soul—and at some level it’s probably true—but it also feels like he caught her with his gaze, afraid to let her go, afraid that if he blinks, she will disappear. His body begins to move in her direction, slowly, as if avoiding sudden movements that could scare her away.
Finally, he stands right in front of her and his hand reaches to take her wrist, the same one on which “Just give it to me” was written only recently, and gently, with tenderness, holds it.
“I... I’m sorry...” he exhales, his eyes jumping between hers there and back, and she can see in them a real fear that she will never forgive him, although Marinette doesn’t even know what exactly she is supposed to forgive him for. “I didn’t know... I was so scared… I thought I had lost you forever. I’m sorry that I was rude to you…”
Oh, this, Marinette thinks, absolutely no longer blaming his behavior on him, not after she heard this heartbreaking speech about how he longed to find her. She shakes her head, “Its... I’m... I know you didn’t mean it...” she mutters under her breath. “I... I accidentally heard what you said to Adrien just now...” she admits, dropping her gaze, because even though she’s glad she overheard their conversation, she still feels bad about it.
Felix’s hand squeezes her wrist a little harder, not to the point of pain, but more noticeably, and Marinette looks up to understand his reaction.
He looks at her differently, some mixture of doubt, suspicion, vulnerability and that sincere fear again. “You didn’t just come up with it because you heard that I was looking for my soulmate, did you?” He says with restraint, and Marinette would probably be offended by his assumption, and maybe even angry at him for it, except…
Except she sees how even more vulnerable he looks, how he presses her wrist to his chest instead of shooting her... if he really suspected her of lying, he would have already pushed her away.
And she understands.
She understands that he is simply scared, that he missed the moment that was supposed to give him clarity and now he just wants to be sure. Marinette imagines how he suddenly noticed that his words disappeared from his wrist somewhere after Ladybug destroyed the Akuma that infected him. She imagines how he must have panicked because he didn’t remember the moment when someone told him his words...
His words!
Marinette feels as if air is returning to her lungs, which she didn’t even notice disappearing from there when Felix began to look at her with fear—she never wants to make him doubt her again, never wants to see him so hurt and vulnerable because of her—and now she knows how to calm his fear and restore his confidence and that feeling of miracle that shone in his eyes before.
“Catch me first,” she says simply, knowing that for any other person these words would have no meaning, but for Felix they would mean the world, because those were the first words Ladybug said to his akumatized self, who was trying to take away her earrings, which means that Felix should have seen these words on his wrist all his life.
His face immediately changes, and seems even more open, soft, it seems to simply shine with happiness, which doesn’t add up at all with how Felix was in class these days.
This expression doesn’t remain on his face for long though, replaced by a focused, attentive gaze, as if searching for something in her eyes, calculating some complex equation. Marinette doesn’t understand what he’s looking for, because there’s not the slightest hint of hostility on Felix’s face, which means he still believes her—he must realize that only his soulmate could know the words that are no longer even written on his hand.
And then he opens his mouth and says words that stop her breathing again, but not in a good way. “You are Ladybug,” Felix states firmly, as if this is an already solved riddle and he has no doubt at all about the correctness of his conclusion.
“W-what? Why?!” Marinette babbles, weakly trying to snatch her wrist from his hand—to run away and regroup is her first natural reaction, while her brain frantically tries to come up with arguments to dissuade him.
God, she’s only known him for a week, and yes, he’s her soulmate, but she doesn't know that she’s ready to trust him with her biggest secret just like that!
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of that right away,” Felix says, looking into her eyes with frightening intensity, “But the only girl I would try to catch while I was akumatized is Ladybug.”
And that says it all, doesn’t it?
At least Marinette can’t come up with a single excuse to refute his logic.
While she is experiencing an internal stupor, because after the “run” reaction, her body suddenly decided to go into the “freeze” phase, confusing the order of actions, Felix continues to gently stroke her wrist with his finger, which he never let go, although in her panic Marinette didn’t even notice when he started doing it.
“You don’t have to run from me anymore,” he says softly, snapping her out of her stupor. “Because you are mine. Mine to love, mine to protect, mine to keep your secrets.”
And Marinette suddenly knows that she doesn’t need any other assurances and promises, because she heard with what pain Felix spoke about her when he thought that he would never find her; she saw how lost he looked at school, even if she only realized it in retrospect after learning the reason for his rude, defensive behavior; she remembers how open and vulnerable he was just now when she showed him her wrist.
And even now, he looks at her as something unique and priceless, he holds her so carefully, as if he had already taken upon himself the obligation to protect her, which he probably did, and maybe even long before meeting her.
And she knows that she has nothing to fear, and that the risk of giving herself away was justified, and that she has finally found her person, the one who was created especially for her, who is capable of boundless love for her, and now they just need a little time to let this love flare up properly.
Marinette finally relaxes and allows the corners of her lips to lift into a smile, which Felix immediately returns.
“Hey guys,” Adrien calls, opening the door slightly and looking into the room. “Did you.. um.. have enough time?”
Marinette smiles wider, continuing to look into the eyes of her soulmate, who also doesn’t take his eyes off her, his gaze sparkling with happiness.
Time, she thinks, now they have as much time as they want.