Chapter Text
She dreamed about him sometimes. And when she woke up, blood as cold as that world she found him in, she had to remind herself the difference. She went back and stopped it from happening. He wasn’t real. How many timelines he existed in, she didn’t know. She didn’t want to. In her head she named the differences: Chat Blanc’s eyes were piercing blue, Chat Noir’s were green and lively and crinkled with comfort. Chat Blanc’s skin was too pale, too cold, whereas Chat Noir’s skin was a warm beige. And Chat Blanc really looked unnatural; white suit and white teeth grinning at her. Tikki would perch on her as she murmured these affirmations to herself. Although Marinette hadn’t specifically told her sweet little friend she had panic attacks, she knew Tikki had some idea that she calmed herself with reminders of what was true, to not focus on the bad stuff that happened or could happen. She tried to focus on good things that were happening, hanging with Alya and her girlfriends, her blossoming sewing career and her family’s support. She was dating Adrien now, and she was truly happy. Most days.
She considered telling Alya, but there was never a right time. She already felt like she totally burdened her with her Ladybug secret and hiding as Rena Rouge and Furtive, the stress of figuring out Hawkmoth’s identity and recovering the lost miraculous. Telling her the world was destroyed? She could barely believe it herself, and then she remembered the feeling of touching her own dead body frozen in a scream, and watching it crumble, and feeling the ashen dust on her fingers…
She talk to Alix, at least the adult version of Alix who saw it all happen, but she’d given her the heavy duty of staying permanently in the burrow until Hawkmoth was defeated. She usually only saw Alix in world-ending situations that depended on the Rabbit Miraculous, God how many times was she supposed to save the world from ending? For once she just wanted to be a normal girl, with a normal teenage life.
For now, it would just be her little tiny secret.