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When it started, it was so much easier.
It was simple, good vs evil, us vs them. It was just like those fairytales or comics where the heroes would save the day and make everything okay.
But time never stops and neither does change. It warps her, changing her into something she can still stare at in the mirror and recognize. But time continues on still, pushing her further and further from that truth.
She’s 16 now, staring at the same mirror again.
It’s her. It’s always her. It has to be her.
But nothing is the same, and she can’t find it in herself to stare anymore.
────۶ৎ────
Nothing is the same again and it hurts. Nothing is the same and it heals. Staring at her tear-stained eyes and wide smiles doesn’t feel like anything to her anymore. Her emotions were usually supposed to bubble up to the surface until they suffocated her, but as she stares at her past self, she can't help but feel only the dead weight of them. She supposed, rationally, that it was a good thing, but it just made her feel worse.
She has felt everything before, felt the weight, felt the pain, felt the hot tears stinging her eyes. But as the scenes all start to blur in front of her, she realizes how she has never felt this much… nothing before.
It scares her. But does it scare her more than the memory of feeling everything again? She can’t find it in herself to answer.
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It’s 6am when she felts the rays of light dig into her skull.
She’s horrified but can’t scream or cry or… anything. She just lies there, eyes wide, flashing through the same old memories again and again, knowing each line, each expression by heart. It’s less of encoding them into her memory and more so… obsessive replaying like a purposely broken record.
It won’t stop, she knows she could try to, but there’s not much left in her that would want to.
What would they even call this? A nightmare? A bad dream? Reliving memories?
"But I don't want you to hate me..."
"Me? Hate you? I hope you are kidding."
She closes her eyes when the light outside becomes too much. She can still see the anger flashing in Rena’s eyes as she curls around herself.
────۶ৎ────
It’s always a lot, always too much. But it’s okay. Really.
She’s carried it before, she can do it now.
But this time, it’s not harder. It’s just…
Different. Less familiar. Colder.
It’s hard to feel like she has to embrace that in order to keep the faint bits of solace left.
It’s scary to think of how easy it is to slip away.
It’s scary to think that it will slip away.
It’s scary to think that time continues anyway, forcing her into a form she’ll never recognize again.
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She’s a hero, a failure, a daughter, a fraud, a friend, a liar, a confidant, a murderer, a role model, a traitor.
She’ll carry it all because time never asks if she wants it to continue. Time will march on, ripping pieces of her apart and sewing on new ones. She’ll be kind, she’ll be angry, she’ll be everything in between. And she has no say in the matter.
She’ll continue and continue, because she is Ladybug and has been since the day she was 13.
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”As the rock bears the weather,
not a lot, just forever.”