Love is Timeless (Time After Time)

Third (Final) Sequence

X: All I Hoped Was Impossible

She comes back as if nothing has happened, in the midst of a battle she had longed left behind and yet mockingly has come back to her as if it is her present. Which it is. It is her present, it is her battle now, it is her reality.

Marinette has come back feeling older, wearier, torn apart, but time has made it as if nothing she went through has happened.

As if she hasn't loved and lost Emilie and Gabriel. As if she doesn't know what has happened to Emilie since her disappearance. As if she can't comprehend what has become of the Gabriel she knew, into who he is now.

They had been her heaven and she had fallen so, so hard. She should never have let herself.

She doesn't pay much attention to the battle itself. She focuses on her anger, on her pain –she attacks the akumatized villain with a rage she doesn't outwardly show, but can feel fraught within her small body, unable to cope with the sudden loss. She doesn't even notice Cat Noir arrive to support her or the worried look he sends her.

All she knows is that she really hadn't wanted to come back after all.

Marinette uses her Lucky Charm and finds a way to destroy the akuma, freeing the unfortunate victim from Hawk Moth's –from Gabriel's spell. Before fleeing immediately to preserve her identity, she stands there lost in her memories and in her grief. Cat Noir hesitantly strolls closer, but she looks up and stares at him.

He looks taken aback and she knows every inch of her grief and pain is painted on her face and glaring out from her eyes.

"I need to be left alone," she gasps out.

And she turns from him and finally runs. She runs and runs until she doesn't know where she is, until she's lost, until she's all alone and can collapse to her knees and sob out everything. Everything she's ever felt, all the love she had for her angels, the shock of the realization of Gabriel, the confusion of what had happened...

Marinette doesn't know what to do or where to go now.

Slumped against the earthy grass, all she can do now is let the tears escape her eyes and into the soil, letting the earth absorb her pain.

After how long time passed, she numbly pushes herself up and stumbles to her feet. She heads back home in a daze and heads to her room, where she passes out into a daze and loses herself in memories in the night.

The morning dawns bright and early and she's still not ready.

She doesn't think she'll ever be.

Right now, Marinette feels empty and alone. The two people she'd loved most are gone, one she has no idea what happened to and the other has become this cold, uncaring statue of a man.

...A man that has apparently been her antithesis all along.

What has happened to Gabriel? Where is her beloved quiet but content visionary? This person she once knew is not the same –when she first met him here and when she first met him in the past, it's like the two are two separate, different people and she has no idea when and why that schism happened.

She just knows she's all alone.

"Marinette? It's going to be time for school soon," she hears her mother worriedly call from behind her door.

It's funny how once in the past, she'd wondered why Hawk Moth was doing all this for. Now she ironically, sorrowfully wonders it again, this time with an emptiness and a mocking irony that tells her nothing.