Work Text:
"Right this way.”
The flight attendant gestures to the right and you find your seat easily. First class as usual, but the destination is unusual for you.
Paris. That quaint little city you grew up in and then terrorized during your teenhood. That embarrassing stint in wanting to be a heroine that you thankfully left behind.
Your stomach is unsettled but you sip the champagne to calm it. As the economy class boards, you find it hard to distract yourself from your thoughts like you usually do. Through the shuffle you can hear a little girl talking to her mother in French, her high voice like a bell.
How old were you exactly when you left Paris to become a model? Sixteen? Seventeen? It’s only been around five years but you feel like they just blinked by. It feels like tomorrow you could still be half in love with Ladybug and head over heels for Adrien. Just another lovestruck teenage girl afraid of not being good enough and drowning in denial. Except you were worse than that. You were a monster. And no amount of apologies could fix that, so you left.
You still keep tabs on them of course, but nothing like you used to. Out of sight, out of mind.You see Ladybug on French blogs, French news outlets. Word of her rarely extends past your home country, despite her national popularity. It’s relieving, in its own way. When you were younger, it made you feel that your reputation was possible to escape from. Now it affirms it.
Although you can’t forget she’s real (the feel of her holding you, the sound of her voice) part of what she meant to you lay in her anonymity. It’s easy to love a mask. It’s harder to pretend you don’t.
You’ve made peace with yourself now, with the types of people you love. You wonder how things might’ve turned out if she never existed, if you’d still hate girls and watch them hungrily anyway. If you’d still try to antagonize girls who gave you confusing feelings, pulling them close or working to make them hate you back.
The last you saw of Adrien was his wedding. You didn’t actually go, of course. You sent some expensive wedding gift you spent too much time picking out and laid in your hotel bathtub with a bottle of wine.
It wasn’t really the kind of wedding for you.
Outdoors, sunlight, the seating surrounded by flowers. Blushing Marinette, in a dress you heard she designed herself. Adrien beaming at her and everyone in the audience in love with their love. You didn’t want to ruin the moment by unintentionally reminding everyone that you bullied the bride when you were younger. As well as probably most of the other guests who attended. Just because Adrien never learned how to hate you doesn’t mean everyone else forgot. Just because you learned how to say sorry doesn’t mean you were ever forgiven.
They looked happy in the photos they posted online. All of them did.
You hate it about yourself but you check on him online every now and again when you think you’re stable enough to handle it. Adrien doesn’t even post pictures of him anymore on his account though, just Marinette and their twin baby girls. You guess Marinette is the one who posts the pictures of him with the babies but she blocked you as soon as everyone got social media and she’ll most likely never unblock you until you die. Which is fine. You deserve it. You wouldn’t really know what to do if she didn’t hate you, honestly.
You don’t hear much from Adrien anymore, what with your busy schedules. By which you mean, if he tries to text you, you come up with some excuse that you’re busy or something. He never seems to get the message though. He still sends you family Christmas cards and you sometimes take a selfie from a model Christmas party with a dozen stickers and then delete it. You text him Merry Christmas and leave him alone most of the year.
You can’t bring yourself to delete the Christmas cards, but you don’t linger on them either.
He’s not the little boy you grew up with anymore, no matter how much you want him to be. He’s got other friends now, who still feel happy in Paris and get along with everyone else like decent upstanding citizens. He deserves people who can fit into his adult life now instead of people from his past. He’s in love and happy and you’d hate yourself for ruining that just because you always wanted someone you can’t ever have. You’ve ruined enough things already. Enough people.
You and Sabrina never made up but you still send her a birthday present every year and she never sends them back. You wonder if she opens them or if they’re just in a storage room collecting dust. It wouldn’t be like you didn’t deserve it. You try to be thoughtful in your gift choosing but it’s hard when you haven’t spoken for so long. You follow each other on social media but she leaves you on read.
Sometimes you wonder why but then, she must have thought the same when the two of you were younger. You were cruel to her in ways that even you don’t completely understand.
Leaving Paris helped you grow up. These days you have to prove yourself and your competency without your father as a shortcut to respect. And after things went wrong with your mother, you had to take care of your career and reputation on your own. You don’t have friends, just colleagues and work associates but you’re fine with that. You don’t really deserve friends and you’re not terrified of being alone like you were when you were a kid.
Everything is different from how you thought it would be, before you left.
When you were fourteen, you thought you’d be married to Adrien by your mid-twenties, designing and taking care of your children while he modeled and inherited the Agreste company. Your mother would have come back into your life, inspired by the second chance of being a grandmother, even getting back with your father in your wildest dreams. Sabrina would help and hangout sometime and you’d have everything you’d ever wanted. Everyone who you lost would come back miraculously, like some sort of reverse tragedy.
But instead, you’re single and a model and a little terrified of going home and seeing the future that you wanted surrounding you, choking you. Instead, you’re entirely alone.
You got an invitation to a party for the Parisian elite once word got around that you’d be back in the city. You wonder if Adrien still attends them. If Marinette is his plus one. Or if he doesn’t go at all and just spends time with his wife and kids on beautiful sunlit picnics in the summer, with all of their friends at their Christmas parties secretly grateful Adrien didn’t invite you.
(He does though. He always invites you and sends you the details and you have to make up some sort of excuse every year because he’s too naive to give up on having you in his life. And you can’t bring yourself to make him.)
You think about sending him an invite as your plus one for old time’s sake. The two of you grew up together in those parties, hiding in corners eating appetizers. Laughing together until your cheeks hurt from grinning so wide. You kept all the girls from harassing him and sweet-talked all the adults for him. And he held your hand and kept you from feeling alone.
But Adrien’s married now.
Even if you just meant it in a platonic way, that wouldn’t make it okay. Even if you just wanted to relive your childhood, that wouldn’t make it okay. Normal people move on. They don’t think about the past like it’s something they can return to. They don’t bother people living perfectly good lives without them.
Does he think of you like this?
At all?
Of all the things you tried to scrub clean when running from your past, he was the one person you could never bring yourself not to care about. Even if it’s just the memory of him, of that little boy who was your first and only friend for so long - you can’t let go of him.
Does he think of you?
Does he ever?
You wake up at arrival. You never realized when you fell asleep.
The flight attendant smiles at you and helps you get your carry-on bags.
Standing at the airplane door, you take a deep breath. Paris. How long it’s been.
And you walk towards the terminal.