Trahison

✺Epilogue✺

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I stared out over Paris, watching from my isolated view in my room. It's been ten years now. Ten years since the love of my life was ripped away from me by my own hands. Ten years of guilt, mourning and anger. Moving on was never going to be an option for me, and it never will be. She was the only one, and she always would be.

"Adrien?"

She was there for me though. She, who had been a witness that night. She would never understand the true feeling, but our mother died two years ago. So I guess she had right. She and I partly shared the same blood, the same feelings. Perhaps that was why we stuck together.

I blinked slowly, eyelashes hazy lines at the top of my eyesight. Taking an agonisingly long breath, I braced myself to talk. Every word that came out of my mouth would remind me of her. So I spoke little. Only nods and shakes seemed adequate to me.

So I turned my head around, but not fully. Only to show half of my face to her, to make sure she sees my acceptance. "Yes, I'm ready."

I could practically sense her slight fidget of uncomfortableness behind me. She knew exactly what she was asking when she said my name in that particular tone. It's been the same. It's always the same question, replied with the same answer. And even though she knew that, she would still feel the burning tension building up in the silence around me, and end up mindlessly shifting her hands in minute actions.

I stood and walked over to her, keeping my head down as to not meet her gaze. She knew all my gestures and expressions and mimicked me. She knew that the pain that I felt was of nothing that she could imagine. So she only bowed her neck slightly, and kept close to me as we exited through the Agréste mansion.

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I smile sadly, my eyes closed in grief.

"Hey Marinette." I murmured, my hands softly brushing the petals of the bluebells as I settled them down in front of her. "I brought flowers." My breaths came out as clouds of mist in the air, the frozen weather biting at any skin that was left open to the cold atmosphere. "I hope you like them. They remind me of your eyes. Blue like the ocean, cerulean like the endless plains of sky."

"Things have been strange without you. Paris has dimmed. The light from the sun doesn't seem to shine as brightly as before. You were my light. But now I live shrouded in darkness." I gulped, feeling a cold lump rising up my throat.

"Paris misses its superhero. Your friends miss you. Your family misses you. I miss you. You always put yourself before me, but I could never see that. I've been so blind, for so long. You were always there to save my heart from the depths of despair.

"We never got to properly interact behind the mask. You never found out who I was. I loved you, but only gained yours too late. Why does the world have to be so unfair Marinette? Why did you leave me? Why did I do what I did? Why was it, that none of Paris ever got a chance to know who was truly saving their city before she disappeared? Before she left them? Before she died with unanswered questions in her absence? Before she told the boy she loved what she really felt? You never said goodbye Marinette. No one knows. No one knows who you truly are. No one knows the girl beneath the mask. Not even Alya." I said, my breath shuddering with each intake of breath. Warm tears stung at my eyes and I felt the emotion that I had pent up being released slowly.

"Too late. Too little time. How is it, that I never knew? Why could I never have figured it out earlier?"

"I love you Marinette. With or without the mask."

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