MiraculElse #15: It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time...

by DFC

(Timeline: Two days after the Season 3 finales.)

Chapter 1: Sounding the Alarms

Tikki hovered back and forth near the ceiling of Marinette Dupain-Cheng's room, watching her young friend lying below her, consumed with worry about her mental state.

This is bad. This is really, really bad, she fretted. Marinette is putting up a decent front for her parents, hiding away just how badly she's hurting inside. Her friends probably wouldn't be able to tell right away, either... if she had let any of them get close to her these last few days.

The poor dear, Tikki sighed. I don't know if Adrien really is responding to Kagami that way, now that Kagami's made her intentions clear... they certainly _looked_ cozy, but Adrien is kind of complicated in a lot of ways. I don't know if anything other than a shotgun could pry his heart away completely from loving Ladybug.

But right now, Marinette is just inconsolable. She's sure that she's lost any chance at Adrien. She's drowning under the weight of her responsibilities, old and new, Tikki mused. She'll have a lot more time to devote to other things if she's not throwing her heart and soul at Adrien, that's for sure... but that's if she doesn't just snap at some point.

And if she can't handle it... if she breaks down... who could we turn to next?

I just pray that things settle down for a little while, that we don't have any more major shocks to her system. She needs a break so she can figure out how to even approach this situation. Any of the situations she's in now!

Tikki landed on the desk, hiding away in her favorite cubbyhole on Marinette's desk, content with knowing that this evening had been quieter than those before it. The phone calls checking on her had slowed down, Marinette had turned the ringer off on her cell so as to not acknowledge texts or callers, and she was spending this early evening lying in her bed, sulking and trying to blot the whole world out.

Tonight... maybe we can all get some rest.

With many millennia of experience behind her, as the first Kwami to be manifested, Tikki prided herself on being a tiny fountain of wisdom and knowledge. She had seen it all at one time or another, and very little in this world could surprise her any more.

But sometimes even an ancient and wise Kwami can forget one of the fundamental rules of the universe.

When normality begins to crumble, it can happen fast, and before one can get their bearings...

...almost anything can happen.

For her part, Marinette wouldn't have been sure that she'd have classified what she was doing as sulking, exactly. A lot of other words came to her mind first.

Like agonizing. That was a good one. Replaying the last three days in their entirety in her head, over and over, no details spared... that qualified. What had happened with Hawkmoth and Mayura... the helplessness of watching so many important things slipping away from her.

The slow inevitability of watching Kagami and Adrien together, seeing how close their bond was becoming, knowing that she felt compelled to step aside and do what was best for both of her friends...

Friend. That was a word she'd be getting used to... as if she hadn't already. For better and worse.

Seething. That was another accurate word for her current state! In her heart, she knew that she'd had more than her fair share of chances to win Adrien's heart. To declare her love for him. To just tell him how she felt and at least play her cards on the table. To know that she'd tried and failed, rather than wanting to try but being too scared, again and again.

But that didn't make it any easier to watch Kagami - her new FRIEND! Someone she had been learning to trust! Someone who sensed how deep Marinette's feelings really ran! - just slide in, wait for the right opportunity, and lean in with a kiss and steal his heart away.

So effortlessly.

Ooooooohhh. Marinette's hands clenched toward becoming two fists, before she made herself uncurl them. What I could do to that girl right now...

STOP it! Marinette yelled at herself, abruptly. She did nothing wrong and you know it.

She sighed, curling into a little ball. I have no idea how to move forward from this. None.

Well... maybe not NONE, she considered. There is a certain someone who's been there for me when I needed him lately.

Someone who's... well... been very, very patient with me. Because he played HIS cards and didn't hesitate. He told me that I'm the melody in his head, the muse behind his music, and someone he'd like to be a whole lot closer to... if that's something that I would want.

Rolling on her back, Marinette stared at the ceiling.

Well... do I?

Would it be so horrible to spend time with someone who _does_ notice me? Who does want to be with me?

Her phone sat in her hand, taunting her with its easy accessibility as she powered it up. Go ahead, it seemed to say to her. Make a call.

Change your life.

Take control.

Be brave.

Slowly, her finger swiped across its screen and unlocked it...

"Marinette?"

The voice of her mother calling her from downstairs distracted her. She shut her phone off again and went to her door. "Yeah?" she replied.

"There's someone at the door for you... one of your friends," Sabine yelled. "I think that you'll want to see her."

Her? wondered Marinette, taking the stairs one at a time. Alya, probably. Maybe Juleka, finding out just what it is I'm up to with her brother?

Another flight down, another set of possibilities. I think Rose noticed just how down I felt the other day. She's more perceptive than she seems. What am I going to tell her, if she's who's waiting for me and wants to talk?

It's _probably_ Alya, she reasoned. I don't usually go too long without talking with her, and I have, I guess.

Let's see if she... her thoughts trailed off as she reached the door. She opened it... and her jaw dropped.

"You!"

Kagami Tsurugi stood very still in the cool evening air. She was trying not to shiver, holding control over herself through force of will.

A wave of emotions slammed into Marinette's skull; rage and curiosity and revulsion and sadness all at once.

You have got a LOT of nerve coming here, Kagami! thought Marinette. Confronting me like this like we can still be friends.

Stealing my boyfriend and stomping my heart flat and deciding to... what? Say you're SORRY? Explain why you... you...

No.

No, I am not going to be petty about this. I'm not going to yell at her because _I_ was a fool who couldn't open her mouth. He WASN'T my boyfriend. I know THAT for sure.

I'm going to hear her out. I'm going to _make myself_ hear her out. I'm not ready to be near Adrien again yet, but she hasn't done anything wrong. And if she is here to try to salvage our friendship... I guess I owe her that much, to let her try.

If...

...

Why isn't she saying anything?

"Um... hi, Kagami?" Marinette said, very quietly. "What's on your... mind?"

Is she shivering? Marinette wondered. It's really not that cold out tonight. Is she... shaking?

That's not good.

She looked a little closer. She's been crying! Marinette realized.

"Kagami... is something wrong?" asked Marinette, the situation drawing out her natural protective streak.

At Marinette's question, Kagami's resolve broke in part. A fresh tear ran down her right cheek, and her knees began to wobble, to the point where Marinette wondered if she'd have to catch her.

"Boys... boys are stupid," Kagami declared.

Sabine looked up, startled, as four feet came running through the kitchen and headed for the stairs.

"Is everything all right?" she called as the girls dashed by, her daughter pulling her friend behind her. "Marinette?"

"Emergency girl meeting!" Marinette shouted down the stairs. "We've got this, thanks!"

Marinette paced back and forth across her bedroom floor, considering her unexpected visitor with a troubled mind. This is... I've never seen Kagami like this, she worried. What in the world did Adrien DO? DID he do something?

Should I call in the other girls? Alya, Juleka, Rose, Alix, Mylène?

No... not yet. They know Adrien but they barely know Kagami. She's not close to a lot of people besides Adrien, and... me, I guess. I need to do this one-on-one.

"Kagami..." she began, in a low voice. "Did something happen between you and Adrien? I don't get it. The two of you looked so comfortable together these last few days... and I was sure that..."

"Nothing is happening between Adrien and I any more. That's the problem," Kagami stammered. "It was happening, I was so happy, and then... he shut it all off like he'd flipped a light switch."

"What?" gasped Marinette.

In a flash, she was on her knees, facing Kagami. Comforting her new friend was suddenly more important than any other of her worries. "Hey," she whispered. "I'm here, okay? I'm not... I'm not letting you leave until we figure this out."

"I shouldn't be here," Kagami muttered. "Not after I... I..."

"Followed your heart?" asked Marinette. "Is that a crime?"

Kagami stared back, a bit astonished.

"Look," Marinette said, her eyes lowering. "I am not going to pretend that I'm not struggling with what I... thought was happening. What was happening, it sounds like, and now it's not! What happened? Did one of you do something?"

"I don't know. I don't know!" she half-sobbed. "We were getting so close. He seemed happy. I know I was! We were spending all our time together, we were cuddly, we were... um..."

"You can say it," sighed Marinette.

"We were kissing quite a bit... and it sure felt to me like he meant it. Everything felt so natural, so right! I mean... I've never had a boyfriend before... but it felt like I had one now," Kagami continued. "And then he started being distant with me, all at once. I asked him if something was wrong... and he broke down right in front of me."

"Adrien did that?"

"He just said 'I can't do this,' over and over. 'I'm so sorry, I can't do this.' I couldn't believe he was saying it, so I begged him... 'why not?' And he lowered his head and he told me about 'the girl that he loves.'"

The explosion in Marinette's brain would've caused a localized earthquake, somewhere around 4.7 on the Richter scale, had her skull not contained it somehow.

"He said WHAT?!"

Kagami stared straight ahead, not noticing right away that Marinette's mood had shifted from concern to confused horror. "He said that there is a girl that he's in love with. Someone who has had his heart for a very long time. He thought that he could separate those feelings, start over, try to be a boyfriend and give me what I wanted... but he just couldn't. He can't tell his own heart what it really, really wants."

"You have to be wrong about this. You have to be wrong about this, Kagami!" Marinette muttered, growing increasingly agitated.

"Why? What's wrong?" Kagami asked, catching her mood.

"Because he said the exact same thing to me! The girl that he loves! He told me that the girl that he loves thinks he tells too many jokes. And I thought I knew for sure that she was you!"

Kagami shook her head, befuddled. "I've never said anything like that to him! I like his sense of humor," she replied.

"I do, too, when he shows it... and that isn't nearly often enough. I don't get it," declared Marinette. "It doesn't make sense! This means one of two things..."

Marinette paced back and forth, her mental wheels spinning quickly. "Either there's some mystery girl out there... someone who's so close to Adrien that he jokes all the time around her, he's deeply in love with her, he can't love anyone but her, but he's never mentioned her to anyone else! I've never heard him talk about another girl like that by name. Nino hasn't, or he would've told Alya and Alya would've told me for sure."

"Marinette..." Kagami interrupted, softly.

"Or he's playing both of us! He's decided that he's going to string both of us along and... I don't know, be some kind of junior playboy or something? What would he get out of that? Some kind of twisted thrill?" Marinette ranted.

"Marinette," Kagami repeated. "I know who it is. He told me who it is."

That brought Marinette to a screeching halt. "He... did?" she gasped. "It... is it someone we know? It... can't be me. It just can't! If it was me... I don't think you'd be here right now. I'd be the last person that you'd want to-"

"No, it's not you. I kind of wish it was," Kagami consoled her. "I know how much you've wanted him."

"Who, then?"

Kagami's voice quivered slightly.

"It's Ladybug."

This explosion in Marinette's brain could have taken the entire south of France off the world map, had Marinette's skull not been adequate to the task of containment.

"Marinette?" asked Kagami, looking very worried. She waved her hand in front of Marinette's vacant eyes, but no one was home right now.

I...

It...

It's not possible...

Inch by inch, Marinette's consciousness clawed its way back to the foreground. She stared helplessly at Kagami, the tables suddenly turned, her friend now concerned for her well-being.

Adrien loves me.

Adrien Agreste LOVES ME.

Or... well... he loves Ladybug. I'm Ladybug. But he's never made the connection between the two of us, so... does that carry over?

At all?

I'd be a damned liar if I said that this didn't have me tingling all over. But the more I that think about it...

If Adrien was Chat Noir... then, maybe, this would make a lot more sense, her reasoning centers argued. Someone I've saved Paris with again and again, someone who's saved my life and I've saved his, someone I see all the time as Ladybug. That's something to build off of.

I mean, I don't necessarily WANT Chat to be deep in love with me... as deep as he thinks he is, at least...

That flipped a mental switch. "Don't necessarily?" Isn't it just "don't?"

STOP IT, Marinette! Get back on track. Her brain registered Kagami's presence and what it meant, that she needed to get back to the real world shortly.

This is awkward, Marinette thought. I can't... ORDER him to love Kagami. Or me! Or anyone else. That's his decision.

But this is so FRUSTRATING because...

Her eyes unglazed, just a bit, searching Kagami's face.

She really is sincere about him. I know I am! He does care for both of us, in his own way; that's obvious. Either one of us would be so good for him. And he's smart enough that he ought to understand that!

He devastated me when he said what he did in the car that day, and I know that he saw it. So why would he do that AGAIN to someone else that he's close to? Far CLOSER to?

And how can he not understand that starting-and-stopping is as cruel as it gets, even if he doesn't mean it to be that way?

"Marinette?" repeated Kagami. "What happened?"

If this was Chat Noir saying that he was in love with me... AGAIN... I could at least understand it better. We spend lots of time side-by-side. We know a lot about each other; probably more than we should. We're partners; we have a real bond, even if it's not _that_ kind of bond.

But ADRIEN? I see him as Ladybug maybe once a month, at the most!

Crushing is one thing. I know all about how intense THAT can be. But he's going to tell us - the girl who spends five days a week beaming her love into the back of his skull, and the girl he's gotten so much closer to these last few months - that this superhero is his one true love? I've saved him a few times from Hawkmoth, but I save a lot of people. Nobody else reacts like that!

I flirt with him and I blush at him and I make eyes at him as Ladybug. Of course I do, because I'm ME. But is he really shallow enough to be SO IN LOVE with a girl that he barely even knows?

We both got rain-checked... for my OTHER SELF? For what has to be a... celebrity crush, or a daydream?

Oh, HELL no.

"Marinette!" gasped Kagami, her hands on Marinette's shoulders, wondering if shaking her gently would do more harm than good. "Are you all right? Should I get your parents?"

"N-no," Marinette replied, shaking herself out of her stream of thought. "Don't. We... we are going to take care of this ourselves, Kagami. Or, should I say... Ryuko."

"WHAT?" Kagami recoiled, visibly shocked. "Marinette, wait! I know that I let my secret slip out when I shouldn't have... but how do you know that?"

"Kagami... there's a new sheriff in town. The rules have changed. And there's something that you really ought to know..."

She caught Tikki in the background, watching her warily, and made her mind up before Tikki could find some way to intervene.

"Spots on!"

Next time:

* Executive decisions.

* "How can you be afraid of anything at all?"

* "May the best girl win... if she wants to."

* The club is now in session.

* "Did she just... do that?"