[Friction]

Second law of friction:

Friction is independent of the area of contact, so long as there is at least one area of contact.

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The streak of good fortune that had graced the city of Paris in December (only one akuma so far this month!) ended abruptly at four in the morning on Thursday, when a delivery driver for a 24-hour pizza place got fed up with the overnight customers. Sleep-deprived Marinette threw her phone across the room when the alert went off at 4:15am and swung away to end it as quickly as possible. So sleepy was she that she forgot what had happened between Chat and Ladybug the night before, less than seven hours ago. That is, until the cat himself swooped in to snatch her out of the way of a stampede of reanimated pepperoni pigs.

"Lovebug," he greeted cordially, and she convulsed in his arms with the sudden remembrance of it all. Unable to keep his hold on his flailing partner, Chat finally just dropped her. A ghost of a smile dusted his cheeks while she righted herself. "You good?"

"Fine. Fine! Just... tired?" Oh god. Oh man. That wasn't a dream; that had happened. She had kissed him yesterday and in return he had tried to meld their bodies together and it was really good andㅡ "Incoming!"

They split up to avoid the cackling deliveryman.

But no matter how far or how fast she ran, Marinette could not outrun that kissㅡnor the array of toppling dominoes that it set into motion like so many tipping skyscrapers in her emotional cityscape.

As Saturday dawned, the young adult made her way out onto the terrace above her attic bedroom. With her morning coffee in one hand and a down blanket wrapped around her shoulders, she was more akin in posture to a child than the eighteen year old that she was. Like an enchanted-to-life marshmallow she slunk across the tile to shake some of the frozen morning dew from the leaves of her wilted garden. Tikki was currently poking her head out from under the blanket, near Mari's collarbone. The little kwami had weathered the death throes of Marinette's platonic feelings toward Chat Noir for three days now, ever since the night they were reunited, and sensed the coming end of Mari's internal storm.

"Everything's going to be okay, Marinette." More okay than you could ever know, Tikki thought as loudly as she could, nestling herself into her friend's collarbone.

"I don't see how!" Marinette entreated, giving up on freeing her plants from the layer of ice crystals as her teeth clacked together and as a shiver passed over her. The hot coffee helped. She should really go back inside, but the biting air was helping to clear her mind. "I…" The problem wasn't that she was in love with Chat. On its own, she could probably handle that, regardless of its difficulties. She bit her lip hard, squeezing her eyes shut as she admitted her real quandary for the first time. "I'm in love with two people! I'm a horrible person," she added in a harsh whisper.

Tikki frowned. "You're not horrible," she admonished. "You're human." If only Marinette knew how not-horrible she was. If anything, this development made her the purest soul on this young green planet.

"I just don't know what to do."

Marinette bunched the blanket up underneath her and sat on the mosaic bench by the wall, leaning back to observe a plane as it left its white trail across the rippled oceanic sky. The weak winter storm that had been circling northern France had at last given up and gone south. By the beginning of the next week, what little snow had gathered would likely be gone.

"It's probably time to give up on Adrien," she admitted softly, "if I'm being realistic. He's never seen me that way and probably never will. But I still have feelings for himㅡfeelings I can't simply switch off because I've fallen in love with someone else. That's not… fair. To Chat," she clarified. "If Chat and I were ever toㅡ But we can't!" she interrupted herself with a burst of energy.

Tikki nodded patiently. She'd been morose for days over the fact that she must let Marinette wade through this dreary swamp alone. And she had to; any advice she offered would be tainted by her knowledge of Chat's identity, which was not her business to divulge.

"Chat and I could never date or be together orㅡor anything!" Marinette pressed, almost like she was trying to convince herself.

"But you love him."

Tikki let it slip before she could help herself. Well, it was true! Besides, the worst possible thing right now would be for Marinette to pull away from Chat Noir. They needed each other, regardless of the complications. Oh, screw it. Plagg was right about not interfering, but then, when had that ever stopped them before? Besides, she owed Marinette something to make up for not being able to tell her that Chat was Adrien. The girl needed a push.

"You love him," Tikki pressed, weaponizing Marinette's own confession.

Marinette closed her eyes to the blue sky, letting a deep breath in and out before replying.

This week had been a roller coaster; first she lost Tikki and then all that stuff with Chat. (You mean kissing him, she reminded herself with a slap. That stuff.) Then afterward he had been nothing short of ruthless with his flirting. Not overdoing it or being rude or anything like that, just ruthless. Like it was his god given right to say things that made her blush down to her toes. Last night after their joint patrol he had followed her away from their last stop (the tower, as always before) even after she said goodbye, and kissed her hand gently on the ground below before she could get a word in edgewise.

Her heart had sunk then as she realized she couldn't go on not addressing what had happened between them on that roof a few nights ago. Sure, he hadn't exactly been tackling her for kisses since then, but she could see it in his wide, dilated eyes as he brought her knuckles to his lips. The only thing he was waiting for was an invitation: one she wasn't sure she could give.

Chat, she had begun delicately. We can't… She floundered for the words. We can't be this way. I thought you understood that. It was her fault, she realized. She had led him to the water only to tell him he couldn't drink.

Chat straightened, then, but still didn't let go of her hand. I understand just fine, he told her, an odd airy quality tainting his voice. I know we can't date like normal people. I know I can't take you out to dinner or surprise you with flowers at your house or anything like that. But I can't go back to a time before that kiss either, Ladybug.

It was only when he released her hand that she realized how much she had been leaning on itㅡnot physically, but emotionally. Without it she was weightless. Some of that must have shown on her face, because Chat cocked his head at her, ears twitching in curiosity as he finished his tantalizing thought.

Can you?

Slouching even further into her blanket tomb on the bench, Marinette took three more extra deep breaths before answering Tikki.

"Yes," she mumbled. "I love him." As the confirmation left her mouth she pulled her blanket up over her head, burying herself and the kwami inside, only faint squiggles of light leaking through the seams. "I don't even know him. I don't know anything about him. How can I love him?"

"That isn't true," Tikki said softly, her face glowing pink where the tiny stripes of light hit her. "Just because you don't know the intimate details of his life doesn't mean you don't know him. You've been with him at some of the most trying and decisive moments of his life, and he with you. In some ways you know each other better than anyone else in the world. And..." Tikki gulped, wondering if she was going too far. What would Plagg say? "And you know him better than you know Adrien."

Marinette was quiet for a long minute, as she considered Tikki's careful choice of words. Sure, she knew the intimate details of Adrien's life. But did that really hold a candle to the deep, unshakeable camaraderie she had crafted with Chat through years of friendship? Finally she said, "I think you're right about that." She knew Chat better.

Tikki breathed a sigh of relief. A few days ago, a comment like that would have made Marinette's head explode. It seemed she was at last moving past denial toward acceptance. "So what are you going to do?"

The answer was a desperate whimper and a strained, "I don't know."

Ever the patient friend, Tikki patted Marinette's collarbone. "What do you want to do?" she amended.

To Tikki's surprise, Marinette flushed deeply and averted her gaze. "I want to kiss Chat again," she pouted. "But, it just seems insane to pursue anything with him when we can never get past a certain point. There's a roadblock at the end of our masks. A dead end."

Reaching up to push the blanket off Marinette's head and bathe the duo once again in morning sunlight, Tikki took Marinette's cheeks in her hands, staring her down with compassion. "I can't tell you what to do, cheri. Sometimes there is no right answer. So, at the risk of sounding cliche, just follow your heart. Remember, rivers follow the path of least resistance for a reason. Do what comes naturally and you'll end up happy."

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Do what comes naturally and you'll end up happy.

Those words rattled like seeds through Marinette's bones all weekend, taking root and sprouting. So on Sunday evening when she saw Adrien, she did what felt natural without even thinking. On any other day she would have waved timidly and hurried away as fast as her feet would carry her. But today wasn't any other day. Something had changed within her this week, for better or worse, and therefore she did something new.

She'd just been to see a movie with Alya, Rose, and Juleka, and they were all walking back along the Rue de la Roquette together as far as they could before they had to split off toward their respective homes. Down the quiet road they laughed and joked and generally made fun of each other over how handsome the male lead was. They could hardly remember the plot and action (which was basic, anyway) since the main actor had ripped off his shirt halfway through the movie and never put it back on.

"I dunno," Juleka blushed when it was her turn to be ruthlessly teased. "I actually thought the actress was prettier."

Marinette pulled up short, tilting her head at Juleka, who was now hiding unsuccessfully beneath her hair. But before she could push the subject, Alya squealed.

"I almost forgot!" She dug through her purse until she came up with her chunky Nikon camera, eyes on the other side of the road. "I wanna take a picture of the LadyNoir statue before all the snow melts off. I wanted to use my nice camera for this one. I'll be quick, I promise. Come on, guys!"

The other three could only shrug and follow their driven journalistic friend as she sprinted across the road between light cycles. Marinette had to admit, the towering statue looked picturesque in the wide open square, a light dusting of snow frozen in Ladybug's carved hair, falling into the collar of Chat Noir's suit where he crouched below her and piling in sparkly tufts on his shoulders. The four friends lingered on the sidewalk a ways away while Alya shifted back and forth, trying to decide how best to frame it in her lens. As she shifted more and more to the right, going for the dramatic angle, she pulled her camera away and swore.

"What?" Marinette asked.

"There's someone sitting underneath it. I wonder if he'd move if I asked him? Just for a minute…"

Marinette skipped over to Alya, and as she did she saw him, a figure sitting on the ground at the far right side of the statue, slumped against the enormous engraved base beneath Chat Noir.

"Hey!" Alya called, waving, and the boy looked over. "Oh shit," she whispered, pulling a face.

Marinette pulled a face too, but hers was less shock and more sympathy. "It's... Adrien?"

Her feet started walking before she'd even decided to go over there. Adrien watched her coming with blank curiosity, slipping a bookmark into the book he'd been reading. Gulping, Marinette afforded a glance over her shoulder to her friends. None had followed her to the statue. They were all doing extremely poor jobs of pretending to be carrying on a conversation at the sidewalk, instead of eavesdropping, which was definitely what they were really doing.

"Hey Marinette."

She bit her lip, hating the way his voice sent shivers down her legs that had nothing to do with the cold. "What are you doing out here all alone?" She peered down at him with a gentle frown. "It's freezing." There was something forlorn about this that she couldn't quite put her finger on. Sure, Adrien enjoyed solitude; that much she had gathered from the amount of time he spent alone. But something about this… Maybe it was the slouch in his shoulders, or the circles under his eyes, or maybe it was just because she loved him. Whatever it was, it drove her to intervene.

Adrien cracked a weak smile, waving his paperback book at her. "Oh, you know," he joked, "just chilling."

The compassion dropped out of Marinette like bricks through cellophane. "Oh my god bye."

She hadn't even gotten a fraction of an inch away before Adrien shot up, grabbing her arm. "Wait, wait!" he laughed. "I'm sorry, that was terrible."

"It was," she deadpanned, eyeing his book, half expecting the title on the spine to be Bad Puns 101 by Chat Noir. It wasn't; it was a graphic novel called Watchmen, its cover adorned by a smiley face spattered with a single drop of blood. Wow. Good taste. " Alright," she beckoned, "let's go, Pagliacci." She drank in his gobsmacked look when she referenced the book he'd been reading.

"Um… where?"

Marinette was already halfway back to the sidewalk, and turned back to him. "Do you have anywhere better to be?"

Adrien glanced up at the statue, then gathered up his messenger bag and caught up with Marinette. "No. I suppose not."

"Then let's go," she repeated.

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Juleka split off first a few streets later, Rose left soon after, and when Alya turned away toward her own family's apartment, it finally dawned on Adrien that Marinette was taking him home with her. He didn't know what to say about this development, so he said nothing. They walked in an almost-comfortable silence, punctuated every few minutes when Marinette remembered another quote from Watchmen and found a way to weasel it into casual conversation. He snickered at her Rorschach impression, feeling miles away from his problems.

When she and the others had walked by he'd been on the verge of tears. After yet another fight with his father, he had stormed off set in the middle of a shoot, effectively ruining the Agreste partnership with the model he'd been working with, and cutting one more stress fracture between he and his father. He hadn't meant to let his father get to him like that, but he was already in such a precarious place because of this week's developments with Ladybug. He was so scared of pushing her too fast, or not pushing her enough, or that he'd wake up and realize their kiss had been a fever dream. He couldn't concentrate on anything else. He couldn't think, he couldn't sleep; there was nothing he wanted more than to kiss her again, every day forever and ever. But it was Ladybug's move. She knew what he wanted. It was down to her now to decide whether she wanted a relationship like the one he was offering her.

A partial relationship, he had thought to himself under the statue, letting his head fall back so he could glare up at the formidable figure of Chat Noir. They could never have the completeness that other couples enjoyed, and he knew that. Whatever they might have together would be fractured and broken until the day they revealed themselves to each other. Could he blame her for not wanting that? No. In fact, he should never have pursued her in the first place for precisely that reason. He wanted her to be happy, not… stuck in hell with him.

That's where he was when Marinette found him; stuck in hell.

Now that Marinette was here distracting him, he was awash in sweet relief from the pressure for the first time this week. She was so nice, and her kindness radiated around her in a warm sphere that he was grateful to find himself inside. It offered a distraction from his agony over Ladybug, and he accepted it with wide open arms.

Until Marinette pushed open the door to the bakery. When he caught sight of the interior, nerves gripped Adrien's throat tight.

"Hi Maman, hi Papa!" Marinette flitted between her father (who was struggling to fluff a christmas tree) and her mother (who was standing on a wobbly table in the center of the store trying to hang tinsel from the ceiling tiles) and kissed them each on the cheek. "I brought home a friend to help decorate the bakery. You remember Adrien, right?" She said this in a strained way, as if willing her parents not to embarrass her.

Adrien waved from the doorway, feeling insanely out of place in the face of an intimate family tradition. He was intruding. Why was he here? This was a private family moment that he had just burst in on and he had no business imposing on them likeㅡ

"Great!" Tom beamed, moving to tower over Adrien. If Adrien was tall, Tom Dupain was a behemoth. He placed a massive arm behind his back to steer him in out of the cold, giving him no time to back out of this. "We could really use another person to help string the lights, if you know what I mean." Tom nudged Adrien, using his eyes to point at his wife and daughter. His very short wife and daughter.

"I'll have you know I can string them just fine," Sabine shot back, and in her agitation at being called out she stepped backward off the table. Adrien lunged, getting his weight under her just before she hit the ground, and together they fell in a heap on the hardwood floor. "Alright then," Sabine said breathlessly as Marinette and Tom helped her and Adrien to their feet. "You can string the lights, Adrien."

"Good reflexes," Marinette noted as her father began to pile string after string of lights into Adrien's open arms. "You don't mind, do you? Helping, I mean. I realize I kind of interrupted your solitude."

"I don't mind at all!" He shifted his arms as the lights tried to unravel toward the ground, an incredulous idea occurring to him. Did Marinette think he liked being alone? "Really," he emphasized. "I was super lonely," he added, only loud enough for Marinette to hear, then followed Tom away toward the windows to receive direction on how to hang these confounded tangled things.

Soon he had forgotten why he was ever nervous about being here in the first place. The Dupain-Chengs gave him no room to feel uncomfortableㅡrather, they made him feel like he was one of the family. Maybe that was why Alya came over here almost every day. These people were so warm and welcoming. They spent an hour laughing over the faint sound of radio carols coming from the kitchen in the back, and Adrien soon gave up politely refusing the fancy aromatic pastries they pestered him to taste. Screw his model diet. He was on the exit road out of that career anyway, if today's debacle was any indication, and there was no way over his dead body he was missing out on free homemade pastries.

When Sabine dug the ornament box out of a storage closet and handed it straight to Adrien, he went starry-eyed, like he'd been handed the keys to the city. All his life, the Christmas tree in the front hall of the Agreste mansion had been done up professionally by a sought-after interior decorator. He was used to itㅡto the pristine, cookie cutter look of the thing. He was also used to the famous Christmas tree downtown, and the fancy picturesque ones at various high-class holiday events thrown by one colleague or another of his father's. He opened the cardboard box and reached inside, carefully extracting a pink ornament made of construction paper, with a young school picture of Marinette's glued on one side and the year 2006 written on the back in poor handwriting, under a small crayon drawing of a mistletoe.

A cursory glance at the rest of the box's contents told him that this Christmas tree was going to look nothing like the ones he was familiar with.

"You decorate your tree with these?" he fawned as Marinette left her parents behind the counter (where they were helping a late night customer) and appeared at his left shoulder.

"I know," Marinette groaned. "It's lame and so embarrassing. My parents kept all the ornaments I ever made as a kid."

"Lame? Lame?" Adrien dug through the box, smiling like an idiot. "This is the cutest thing I've ever seen!" he exclaimed. He took a moment to explain about the Christmas tree in his house, and she pulled a look of absolute disgusted shock. "What? What's wrong?"

"You mean to tell me that you've never decorated a tree before?"

Adrien dropped the ornament he was holding back into the box that was now resting on the table behind him, and moved a hand shyly to the back of his neck, feeling oddly exposed by the answer's implications. "Well…" He didn't feel like sugarcoating it, the way he normally would. Not with her. "No."

"Adrien…" A sad look of wistful longing washed over her face for a moment, before simmering back down into kindness and amusement, sending a little electric jolt through Adrien's chest nonetheless. The way Marinette wore her heart on her sleeve never ceased to thrill and amaze him. He was insanely jealous of that. "Care to place the first ornament, then?" She leaned past him to fish one out, then blushed as she looked down at it and saw which one she had blindly chosen.

Adrien accepted it before she could grow too flustered. The ornament was an old ceramic heart, imprinted with a single baby footprint and threaded at the top with a red ribbon.

He cleared his throat self-consciously and donned an overly serious expression, putting on a great big show of dramatically choosing a branch on which to hang his very first ornament. Finally he settled on one in the middle of the tree, directly between them. He adjusted it so the baby footprint faced out toward the bakery.

And then his playful charade collapsed.

Unable to stop himself, he ran his thumb over the footprint, amazed that someone so delicate and small could grow into someone as strong and beautiful as Marinette, and simultaneously giddy at finding himself privy to such an intimate detail of her life. It struck him that he was closer in this moment to Marinette than he might ever be to Ladybug. That unbidden thought threatened to unravel him, and he realized he'd been lingering on the moment perhaps a bit too long. He turned his gaze back to Marinette, releasing the ornament, but wasn't quite able to recapture the jokey nature of the exchange. All he managed was a shy, fond smile.

The girl in front of him returned the smile with abandon, positively glittering with joy.

Click. Flash.

They both jumped to life, turning toward the sound of a camera shutter.

"Gotta document your first ever Christmas tree!" Tom explained, airing out the fresh polaroid that printed from his old-fashioned camera, then turned around to snap a picture of Sabine, who had climbed back onto the table in an attempt to even out Adrien's mediocre tinsel hanging skills.

An hour or so later the four of them sat with mugs of chamomile tea around the table nearest the decorated tree, chatting amiably in the glow of the string lights. Adrien focused on the heat of his tea, thunderstruck at how easily he fit in here with them, more so than with his own father, his own family. He wasn't even jealous; he just yearned for a slice of this happiness. Looking across the table where Marinette was squirming as her father told various stories relating to the year each ornament was made, he thought to himself that he needed to be damn careful or he was going to fall in love with this girl.

He slammed the rest of his tea, sidestepping the idea that he might already be past the point of no return.

When he thanked them and announced that he had to leave, Tom and Sabine made themselves suspiciously scarce. Marinette watched them disappear into the kitchen with red tinting her cheeks, then turned to Adrien and rolled her eyes. "I'll walk you out."

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Out in the rising wind, Marinette wracked her brain for a casual way to end this casual evening. How did platonic friends usually say goodbye to one another? How did she usually say goodbye to Alya? She couldn't remember! Before she could work herself into a panic, Adrien did the work for her by throwing his arms around her shoulders, crushing her in a dense bear hug.

"Thank you so much, Marinette," he said into her hair. "Your family is so nice and friendly and I just… I needed this."

Marinette had to physically restrain herself from sighing like a lovelorn fool, and instead placed her hands lightly at his back, returning the hug. "Glad to have helped." He said he was lonely, she remembered.

He let go of her then, leaning on that nervous tick of hisㅡone hand on the back of his neck as he smiled down at her uncertainly. It was such a different smile from the ones in his ads, the confident, suave ones. This one was imperfect and shy and real and the one she fell in love with in the first place.

"Adrien, I…" (love you.) "Can we be friends?" she blurted instead. "I want to be friends." Adrien's face fell, and she knew what he must be thinking. "I know we're friends already," she answered, "but we've never been close and it's kinda my fault cause I was always intimidated by you because of, you know, because I kiiinda maybe had a little bit of a crush on you," she squeaked, in absolute disbelief that she was still talking. "But I'm past it," she lied. "I'm actually sort of dating someone now," she admitted, "and I'd really like to be better friends with you. If that's okay."

Adrien was dead. Totally dead. What could he say? Should he pretend he didn't know? Was there a social protocol for this kind of situation? "I'd love that," he managed, smothering the jealous twinge that arose as he considered Marinette's faceless boyfriend. He wasn't allowed to be jealous! He was sort of dating someone too! Or at least… trying to. Desperately trying.

She opened her mouth to reply, but it was lost in a distant loud crash. She sighed. "Akuma?"

Adrien nodded. "Akuma. Suppose I better hurry home so I don't get caught in the crossfire, huh?"

Marinette agreed vehemently. "Good idea. Bye, Adrien. See you at school tomorrow." She watched him hustle away down the street for a second, then rushed upstairs to transform, duly ignoring her parents' sneaky, omnipotent stares.

When she arrived on the scene, Chat Noir was already there, giving the akuma a run for its money across the rooftops. When she caught up to him, he greeted her with a dashing bow and a lilting, "Missed you, lovebug," before delving into work mode. "I think his roommate let his fish die?" Chat observed, pointing at the screaming hostage that the akuma had tucked under one arm, and then they both had to dodge a hostile wave of salt water.

"Careful, chaton, I hear cats don't like water."

"They don't," he shot back with a manic grin, "but they love catching fish," and he redoubled his offense with a flair that was excessive, even for him. Yet after a few unsuccessful tries, the akuma managed to sweep them away under a wave, and escaped before they had resurfaced, the water cascading off the rooftop onto the balconies below, drowning plants and melting the last leftover snow.

"Great," Adrien laughed, shaking the icy water from his hair. "Don't remember asking for a catbath."

Ladybug wrinkled her nose at him. "You're sure in a good mood," she noticed. "What's with you?"

Adrien looked up, surprised that Ladybug had noticed the shift between his usual show of good naturedness and the actual glee he was feeling after his night in the pleasant warmth of Marinette's bakery. "Oh, I uh…" Guilt leaked into his voice a little as he remembered his slightly impure feelings toward the girl. "I think I made a new friend tonight."

"That's funny," Ladybug replied, squeezing the water out of her own loose hair. "Me too." And before Adrien could whip out his baton to follow the akuma north, she tugged him off the edge of the roof, down onto the dark balcony below them, where she shoved him against the side of the apartment building and stood on her toes to kiss him.

His reaction was instant. He sighed, melting into her and threading both hands through her dripping hair, tilting her head back as his tongue made friends with her bottom lipㅡ

ㅡand was left hanging as she pulled away, a positively devilish look in her sapphire eyes. He blinked down at her, his vision clouded with desire. "So that's how it's gonna be, huh?"

Ladybug only whistled nonchalantly, leaping onto the railing as she prepared to zip away. "Come on, panthère, we've got a fish to fry." With that, she left him there.

The fish pun went so far over Adrien's head that he couldn't have caught it even with a fly fishing plane. He'd blown a fuse at the casually dropped nickname and hadn't heard anything that came after.

Panthère?

An upgrade?!

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The next morning Marinette lay awake in bed at 5:30am, far earlier than she ever normally awoke, staring at her phone. Specifically, staring at the latest post on the Ladyblog, which had been posted at 7:12pm the night before and had since garnered 550,000 likes; it was well on its way to blowing Alya's video interview with Ladybug out of the water as the blog's most famous post. Even as she watched the numbers were growing, as were the comments.

She scrolled up from the comments section (filled with Ladybug, Chat Noir, and Adrien fans alike) to look at the picture again. It really was a stunning photograph, even when she set aside her feelings for Adrien and Chat and her bias as Ladybug to look at it from a place of pure artistic critique. It looked like something from a calendar. In the portrait-oriented picture, the sky was tinged with deep purple and gold and pink above, reflecting like glitter on the famous statue of Ladybug and Chat Noir in the little white patches of snow that adorned it. But the photo did not revolve around the statue; rather, Alya had focused the lens on Adrien and Marinette, he sitting at the base of the statue looking up at her, and she standing in front of him looking down. Their bodies took up a relatively tiny amount of space in the picture, practically drowned by the enormity of the statue. And yet, their presence was demanding. Their stanceㅡand its incredibly subtle reflection of the statue above themㅡwas not lost on Marinette, nor any of the other thousands of commenters. In fact it was largely why the photo had garnered such wild attention in so short a time.

Marinette sighed, shoving down the painful feelings the photo had managed to dredge up out of the sewers of her soul. She really thought she'd made progress last night. A decision. But she knew now that this was going to be extremely, exceedingly hard on her.

A quiet knock tore her from her thoughts.

"Marinette?" Tom whispered, peeking inside. "Are you awake yet?"

She shoved her phone under her pillow, sitting up. "Morning Papa. Oh, waffles!" A grin split her face in half as Tom finished climbing into her room with a big fat plate of fresh cooked waffles. "Breakfast in bed? What's the occasion?" she teased. "Did I do something to warrant this?"

Her dad only beamed, settling next to his daughter on the bed. "I wanted to show you the picture from last night," he said, reaching into his apron pocket.

"Picture?" she squeaked. Man, that traveled fast. How had he already seen it? But her mind went blank as he handed her the polaroid he'd taken the night before. Oh, she realized. That picture.

Looking at it, she flushed like mad. This one was even worse than the one Alya had taken. The christmas tree rose in the middle of the photo, up out of sight, and on both sides Adrien and Marinette looked warmly into each other's eyes, the glow of the christmas lights reflecting deep within. The single ceramic heart hung between them with a keen sort of purpose to it. No wonder her dad had taken a picture. It was such a "polaroid moment" it was almost sickening.

"He's dreamy," Tom said, leaning over the photograph with her.

Marinette snatched it out of his sight. "Papa!"

"Just saying," Tom observed. "This would make for a nice Christmas card, don't you think?"

"Papa!"

"Enjoy your waffles, Marinette!"

But as her dad left, Marinette set her waffles aside for Tikki to pick at, then trudged across her room toward the corkboard above her desk. She'd long since taken down the pictures of Adrien, almost a year ago now. So maybe it was taking a step backwards when she pulled a thumbtack and placed her dad's polaroid there in the center, surrounded by a dozen pictures of herself and Alya. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. She didn't know if she was moving backwards or forwards or if she was careening toward some unknowable, imminent disaster.

Wherever she was going, at least she was moving. She was so tired of standing still.

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Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain.

Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up."

Man bursts into tears. Says, "But doctor...I am Pagliacci."

ㅡAlan Moore, author of Watchmen