Scars DISCONTINUED.

9

Adrian was devastated. He was sitting in his room staring at his open palm with his other hand covering his mouth. Master Fu's words still rang through his ears, "Marinette won't remember being Ladybug. She will remember akumas that affected Marinette, but not akumas that affected Ladybug. For example, she'll remember teaming up with you to help take down Evilistrator, but she won't remember unakumatizing him." Adrian was shaking, he could hear the slight rattling of the earrings shaking around in the box.

Master Fu told him to keep them. Said that maybe Marinette will want to help once she's better. Adrian shouldn't feel as guilty as he does, he knows he shouldn't. But he sat there and did nothing as Marinette asked Master Fu to erase all of her memories of being Ladybug. When he asked why Marinette had said that she wanted to start over she hadn't answered him. She didn't expect Tikki to ever make her way into her life again, but she also wanted them to tell Tikki that she truly did love her.

"You wanna go visit her kid? You know she still remembers you, or well, she might not remember you two dating since you got together from transforming and stuff but it's still worth a shot." Plagg says quietly. They had opened the box and put the earrings on so that they could tell Tikki. When Tikki came out of the earrings she was yelling for Marinette to stop. When she looked around, thick tears blurred her vision. "She returned me, didn't she?" The kwami had asked. Adrian's silence spoke volumes.

"Yeah. She's probably waiting for me to visit." And with that, Adrian stood up and jumped out his window, his transformation finishing just before he would've become a bug on a windshield, and he started leaping across the Parisian sky. It was beautiful. Maybe there was one good to this.

Now he had a second chance to show Marinette the beauty that surrounds her. And the beauty that fills her.

Adrian doesn't knock on her window, he forgets to, he doesn't mean to be impolite, but bad habits don't die fast. As he looked around the room, he didn't see Marinette. So he sat down on her bed and waited. And waited. And then he waited some more. When she did come back, she was surprised to see the leather clad cat sleeping in her bed. She grabbed her clothes and went back to the bathroom to change before tiptoeing back up to her room.

"Chat Noir?" She asked quietly, poking him and stirring himself wake from his light slumber. "Hmm? Princess! How do you feel?" He asks sleepily, rubbing the crud out of his eyes as quick as possible to be awake for her. He hadn't shut his eyes since she went missing. He felt as if it was his fault, he was the last person to see her after all. Adrian took a moment to wonder if she remembered that before sitting up and quietly looking at her.

"I'm fine, my feet hurt and I sprained both my ankles somehow, but the doctors said since I'm pretty healthy I should heal soon enough. They think I fell a lot because I don't remember much." Marinette's voice was quiet and soft, not happy but not sad either. It was comfortable. "Well, what do you remember?" Adrian was terrified to ask. What he was even more scared of was her answer. "I remember running around the city before school. I remember having a hard time remembering to eat. I remember helping you with some akumas and I remember getting hurt when trying to help you. I remember that you visited me a lot, I remember finding you one time outside of the bakery and bringing you inside.

"I remember you and Luka glaring at each other when you thought I wasn't looking. I remember you coming here after bad battles so that I could doctor you up. And I remember this," she listed quietly before taking his hand and looking up at him. "I know that you didn't leave Paris when I was gone," Adrain's heart dropped as she said this, her eyes staring at their intertwined hands. "And that's okay, you couldn't risk anyone getting akumatized if you had left. I get it, I don't know why," Marinette had looked up at him, but her eyebrows began to furrow as she squinted. "But I understand. I'm proud of you."

Adrian's chest ached, he didn't know whether he should feel ecstatic or horrible. Marinette, his sweet sweet Princess, he didn't know what to do or say. So he sobbed. He didn't mean to start crying, he really didn't, but the moment he started he just couldn't stop. He wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his head in her shoulder and wept. "I'm sorry Princess, I'm so so so very sorry." He cried into her. Marinette wrapped her arms around him and lead them over to her chaise.

She played with his hair, a braid here, a braid there, little things that felt familiar after Chat had calmed down from crying. It took him a while, a LONG while, but eventually he did stop crying. He sighed into Marinette and held her tighter. He...he had another chance. Marinette gave up being Ladybug for some reason, okay he would let her have that. But Adrian was going to use this chance. "Princess?" His usually silk-like voice croaked out.

"Yes Kitty?" She liked the way that name sounded rolling off her tongue. "Do you remember leaving?" He asked hesitantly. One beat of silence. Two beats. Chat froze up in her arms, afraid he'd overstepped and that she'd block herself in. Marinette was only trying to gather her thoughts and remember however. "I...I think I do. I was mad, my best friend Adrian had caused a scene in class...he was mad? He got really protective I think when he saw that I had an akuma sitting on me. I got mad because the akuma hadn't done anything, everyone was safe while it was with me I think.

"I think I got kicked out of class, and then you found me after you found out I guess and I snapped? I...I told you that I don't feel...anything...sometimes," Marinette explained slowly a lot of her more recent memories involving Adrian and Chat were fuzzy. Something itched in the back of her mind to find out why. Chat sat up before she could really think about it, he looked into her eyes and quietly asked, "Are you okay to explain?"

Was she okay to explain? She...she didn't know. Why didn't she know? She should know. It's a simple question. Something inside of her chest told her that she was supposed to help people, that she was supposed to be brave for everyone. Why? If she did everything for everyone, then where would she be? Who would she be?

She knew she was beginning to have a panic attack, she could feel her muscles tensing and her jaw tightening. Her tongue becoming a thick heavy sponge in her mouth while her eyes watered up with tears. She felt another itch, a different itch to the one before. This itch lit up quietly on small places on her sides, her thighs,  her back. Her forearms. Very very lightly on her forearms, almost like tiny little accidents.

They weren't accidents.

Marinette wanted to claw at them, scratch them and drive away the itch. It wasn't welcome here, she didn't WANT it here. Her discomfort didn't last for long however, as Chat decided that it was Marinette's turn to be able to cry. He pulled her close and rocked her back and forth, whispering sweet words of as close to understanding as he could get. And for the first time for both in a while, some longer than others, they both shared a sweet sleep.

Sabine even managed to grab a picture of the two a very short time after they fell asleep. She left the plate of cookies on her daughter's desk and draped a blanket of the two. "Keep my girl safe, I'll do my part the best I can, but I feel that you'll have a greater part to play in her life than I ever will again." Sabine whispered quietly to the sleeping leather-clad teen and then quietly disappeared back down the trapdoor.

Paris was quiet and forgiving, and that's all that Chat could ask for that night.

A/N: hey peoples, I know it's been a while, I'm sorry. I plan to update some more the next following month or two but I can't promise much. However, I want to ask you all, do you want me to go more in depth of Marinette's lapses of "lack of emotion" so to say or would you rather me not get too far into it? I only ask because I know that if I start writing more about it I'll end up coming out with a MEGA CHAPTER that basically either centers around Marinette having one of these "episodes" or her explaining it to someone. It's up to you all but it will definitely have a larger part to play in this edition of the story, I hope you are all staying safe and sleeping well, goodnight (it's four past midnight for me where I'm at soooo)