"I forgive you." The words tumbled from her lips, unbound by anything, and yet she'd never expected the blond to drop to her knees or to cry. It had been years since they'd really talked and then, only then did they fight. They never really saw eye to eye and sometimes emotions could get quite messy.
"M-Marinette." She sobbed, broken down by feelings that not even she could understand; they came on strong, pushing her to her knees and drawing a reserve of tears that she'd tried to hold back and push down for years.
Marinette finally dropped to join her, wrapping her arms around her and pulling her close, "Th-There." The words were more croaked than anything. She wasn't sure what came over her, not when she wrapped her arms tighter around Chloe and just bawled.
She saw so many mistakes in her head, choices that she made the wrong turn, choices that had to have hurt the blond, and this new sort of humility choked it all out of her. Marinette wasn't entirely sure where all of this had came from in her heart, but all of the signs pointed towards forgiveness, picking up the pieces, and finally moving on.
Her mistakes though fell through her mind, slipped through her fingers like glass, and yet that wasn't the whole reason that she was crying. Holding a sobbing Chloe who for once wasn't checking or fixing her makeup, was too much of a mess to check it for now, and feeling such life altering relief fall upon her left her almost weak kneed. She doubted that she could stand back up anyway.
Forgiveness was like nothing else, and yet Marinette had never expected this tidal wave of emotion, this situation to break two grown or hopefully considered grown women down into a sobbing, hunched up mess on the floor.
Marinette had no idea what Adrien thought when he found them like that, choking out their last sobs, too exhausted to attempt much else. He'd asked them a question that neither could answer coherently, and yet he was just gentle enough to pull them on to their feet and help them find somewhere else to take a nap and restore their sense of calm.
She'd never expected three words to shake and change so much, but Marinette should have known. Marinette had watched Adrien pick up forgiveness for his father, stumble through it every step of the way, and she'd watched as Adrien slowly but surely immersed himself in prayer, something that he'd admitted to not having done in a long time.
Just, every step of his had made her so proud and being pulled into faith, not unwilling, just surprisingly, had changed something, and all that she could think of was Chloe, Adrien's childhood best friend and Marinette's enemy for so long now.
When she'd decided to give it a try, to test her own will, and to grow further and deeper in faith, she'd never expected the kind of relief to flow through her that did or the kind of regret that pooled and tumbled out. A regret that she couldn't really seem to shake. She should have done more, been more, but Marinette couldn't erase the past, just pick up her pencil and start building a future for herself that hopefully, she'd never want to take an eraser towards.
'One day, I'll be as strong as Adrien is.' Through every struggle, her long time boyfriend had seemed to prevail, had worked hard past them, and to see him grow had stunned her heart and made her come much, much closer to believing.
Marinette knew without a doubt that she loved him, and in its own way, she'd count this as her first 'real' sacrifice towards their future on a level that wasn't regularly saving Paris anyway.