Love is Timeless (Time After Time)

Second Sequence

VI: The Minor Fall and the Major Lift

She feels warm and safe, covered on both sides, encased in arms of softness and hard strength. Emilie's breath ghosts across her forehead while Gabriel's lips touches the back of her head over and over like light butterfly touches. Pressed up against her with their arms around her, they easily entangle them with her, with each other, until they're all one single unit and cannot think to where one of them ends and where any of them had begun.

She shouldn't have gotten so attached to them, but she had and she adores them so much that sometimes she can't breathe or feel anything but adulation for her angels.

Her body has healed and she lives with them still. Marinette has even ventured out into the city, which is the same and yet not. Some things are new to her but have been gone by the time she will be born. Her family isn't there (she couldn't help look), and stays away from then on, to stave out the heartache and homesickness.

Emilie mumbles something in her sleep and Marinette keeps still.

She thinks now, to how long she has been there, since she's been with them –a year. It's amazing to find that in her recovery and then settling in, she has already been in the past for a year and has already grown comfortable where she is and with her current situation.

The city is peaceful and there are no akuma or Hawk Moth to terrorize anyone. She's sad that she hasn't been able to see Tikki or talk to her, but although she misses her companion, the weight of the world seems to have slid off of her shoulders.

Emilie shifts again and mumbles some more, and she hears Gabriel sigh behind her.

"Marinette, you think loudly, mon bijou," he murmurs, already moving to slide off the bed. She carefully leaves Emilie's arms, while the older woman hums in her sleep and then adorably moves to sprawl all over their bed, taking it all up with her limbs askew.

She and Gabriel share an amused look before they leave together. They move to his atelier, where she sits by him as he idly putters around his main work desk.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asks, and she thinks about it.

"I was just thinking about how long I've been here, about Emilie...you," she answers honestly, but doesn't relate to him her conflicting emotions, her worries, or how utterly peaceful she is around them now (even as she is afraid of how attached she is).

He gives her a considerable look but does not push her. Instead, he reaches for a book in one of his drawers.

"You know how I design for Emilie a lot, yes?" he asks, and she nods because she does know. She admittedly is even a bit jealous and tries not to be, but she so wants Gabriel (her idol, her friend, her lover) to think of her and find her an inspiration, a muse for him.

Gabriel smiles softly and opens his book. "I couldn't think of anything when I went to try to design a dress," she tries not to feel the disappointment, much less show it, "but I thought of something else."

That makes her sit up straighter, curious and even hopeful, and he shows her the page he's flipped to. Her gasp is loud, and she was unable to have kept it back in the first place.

"Mon bijou...my beautiful, beautiful jewel..." he murmurs, and she stares at the sketch, awed. "I thought it fitting I design jewelry after you –you, whom is Emilie and I's sky of stars, who draws us in with your bright light...I hope you adore them."

She is given the book and stares with trembling vulnerability at the parure Gabriel has designed in honor of her. The extravagant pattern of stars are edged out around the triangular shapes that make the necklace, diamond crystals somehow shining even in a black and white sketch. The earrings are as pointed and starlike, and the accompanying tiara makes her draw a deep breath.