It's over. Numbly Marinette shifted on her bed. It's over.
The kwamis were gone. She was alone, no blur of red rushing to the daily stack of cookies on her bed. No chatter in her ear while sketched. They had left, just disappeared after the fight to meet their new holders. The new Chat Noir and the new Ladybug where they'd all go on great adventures and defeat new villains. They didn't say goodbye, didn't say why they were leaving, they just left.
While she and Chat, her Chat would be stuck here with no idea of who the other was, just blindly reaching out and hoping for the best. She didn't want to tell him who she was before but now, now things have changed and if they had left them a bit of time she would have told him, but they didn't, the time came to an end, and as her fairytale crashed around her and when the clock rang midnight she could only hope her prince would find her one way or another.
So she wakes up the next day, applies concealer to hide the bruises on her skin, practices her smile for hours in front of the mirror, fake a laugh and when the make-up disappears, we'll be able to see the bags under her eyes, we'll spot purple and blue, they'll bloom on her cheeks like bruises on peaches and we'll finally see all roaring emotions that fills her eyes.
She likes it that way, they should see the wounds she bares, the muscles she earned through blood, sweat and tears, the emotional scars she bears to save her city, because Alya can't film everything and some stories makes her shudder and its funny because she used to love superheroes when she was smaller and she desperately wanted to be one, but now as she sees herself in the mirror she just wants to be a little girl again.
She worries for Chat, from what she knows his life at home just isn't great, and having a missing mother, an absent father and a cold caretaker can't be good for anybody. She knows all this since they are partners, friends, even soulmates and she cries for the boy, no, for the man she loves knowing that none of her love can reach him anymore , and she cries for her confident whose soul lived in the wind and who loved freedom more than his life.
And she cries for herself the courageous girl who was bursting with ideas and filled with emotions and that wasn't scared to show them. She cries because she knows she'll never be able to be to be that girl again.
When she waltzes at midnight on her balcony with only the shadows as her partner she swear she hears a wail much like her own and she knows it's Chat (for she would recognize his voice anywhere) but she doesn't have a red suit or a yoyo to swing from one point to another.
So she laments and promises to herself to find him, and if a tear slips down her cheek there is nobody to mention it. Not anymore.