In Another Life

It had been two months since Marinette decided that it was time to scrub Adrien Agreste out of her heart. She was 16 now, and she couldn't deny the fact that her crush was going nowhere. It was the hardest two months of her life, but she managed to throw her Adrien fever into the trash like it never existed. In fact, when she was Ladybug, she never thought about Adrien. He was never around to have his cupid shoot arrows at her. It was more of a forced movement that started slowly but gradually moved faster. She emptied her room of every picture with him in it, she put every magazine with him in it through a shredder, and stopped writing about him in her diary. It took all of her might to reject Alya's offer to set up a study group with Adrien and Nino, and that's when even Alya knew that it was time.

"We weren't meant to be," Marinette said during a sleepover two weeks into the process. "I just wish I would have realized it sooner. He'd never like a clumsy inept girl like me."

"Marinette, don't drag yourself down. Adrien isn't the only guy in the world. Plus, look how gorgeous you are. I'm pretty sure there's other guys just dying to be with you," Alya told her best friend. Marinette immediately thought in Chat Noir and how he still hadn't given up on her. But Chat Noir wasn't Adrien, and he could never awake the same intense feelings that she felt for Adrien. She wasn't going to force herself to like somebody just because they held affection towards her. Adrien didn't do that, and she was glad that he didn't.

"But those guys aren't Adrien," she muttered as she pressed the side of her face on her pillow.

"Then why are you giving up on him?"

"It's time, Alya. It's been too long."

"You know how you can't force yourself to like somebody?" Alya said. Marinette thought in Chat again.

"Yeah," Marinette lazily replied.

"Well it's going to be even harder to force yourself to forget about somebody."

"Thanks for the support, Negative Nancy."

"Girl, I'm just being Realistic Rachel. Mari, you know you can always count on me for anything though."

"I know, Alya," Marinette smiled at her. She smirked," Hah. Realistic Rachel." From then, went the hardest weeks of Marinette's life, but she managed to pull through.

Chat knew what he saw. It wasn't his heart looking through his eyes. His brain wasn't creating images. His miraculous hadn't damaged his brain. He was jumping back home, and from the corner of his eyes, he saw it.

Ladybug detransformed into Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

More like Marinette Du Pain is too hard for his heart right now.

He couldn't process the fact that the girl of his dreams had been right next to him for the longest time. Since the beginning. Chat eventually arrived home and detransformed.

"It's her, Plagg. Marinette is Ladybug," Adrien sat on his bed and smiled. He laid back and stared at the ceiling. He couldn't stop smiling, and it was beginning to hurt his face.

"Now that I think about it, it was pretty obvious," Plagg told him.

"It was not, Plagg. There was no way to tell," Adrien argued.

"Stop lying to yourself," Plagg laughed.

"It doesn't matter anymore. I know it's her. I know that Marinette is my dream girl."

"Isn't Ladybug your dream girl?"

"Marinette isn't Ladybug. Ladybug is Marinette. Marinette is amazing with or without her costume on, and that's who I fell for."

"Didn't Marinette also fall for you?"

"I… You're right. Wait," Adrien's eyes widened in realization. "If Marinette had a crush on me, that means Ladybug had always liked me." Adrien smiled at the thought and contently drifted off to sleep.

The next morning at school, it had been the two month mark. Marinette smiled without being a wreck when Adrien turned around to smile at her. She didn't freak out when she sent him a good morning message. She didn't turn completely red when he put his hand on her shoulder. No matter how much she would have loved this attention two months ago, it didn't affect as much anymore. Sure, her heart sometimes skipped an extra beat or two and she felt her face warm up, but her mind kept telling her no.

Marinette decided that it was better for her to let Adrien go from her heart. She decided it was better for her to start concentrating more on school. She wanted to concentrate more to be Ladybug. Hawkmoth wasn't stopping anytime soon and neither was she.

It wasn't difficult to see Adrien's increased interest in Marinette. How he would constantly turn around when he had a chance, bring her sewing supplies he found 'lying around', and every morning, there'd be a good morning message. All of this occurred within a week, and it was driving Marinette insane.

Saturday morning came, and without fail, she received a good morning text. Marinette bit her nails as she stared at her screen that eventually shut off from the lack of activity. All the activity was going on in her mind. She groaned and shoved her face in her pillows. It's like Adrien didn't want her to forget him.

But she had. It was too late. Her heart no longer felt heavy, her face was never an unnatural color, she never felt disgust whenever Chloe would cling on to him, and he no longer was in her thoughts all of the time. She felt liberated now that she now longer felt an ache when she looked at Adrien, knowing that he would never be hers. She didn't know why Adrien was suddenly being so friendly, and she didn't want to know.

Two weeks had passed, and there hadn't been an akuma on the run for three weeks. Hawkmoth was especially silent until he akumatized a tourist who's girlfriend had rejected their proposal. Chat and Ladybug's best guess was that there was nobody to akumatize or Hawkmoth is tending to some civilian duties.

Promising to give him his miraculous if the man gave Chat the engagement ring, the tourist handed it over without thinking. Chat immediately tossed it Ladybug who crushed it and undid all of the damages. After their usual fist bump, they agreed to meet up that night for a patrol that was much needed. During the quiet two weeks, they had had four night patrols a week and Chat had spent most of the time observing her and not the streets of Paris.

It was 9 and they almost reached the end of their patrol. Like every other patrol, they both sat down to look at the moon on a random building. They usually never said anything and just had the occasional pun or pick up line with Ladybug's groaning.

"Ladybug," Chat softly said as he looked at the side of her face. She was concentrating on the moon and didn't bother to turn to him.

"Hm?"

"Do you… like anyone?" he asked. He wasn't expecting an answer.

"I used to. Not too long ago." His heart sunk. He felt his head go cold and his chest felt heavy. His eyes started to hurt. He looked at the moon. It was a Waning Gibbous.

"Oh. May I know who?"

"No."

"Why did you stop liking them?"

"I decided that it was time to forget him. He was taking up a lot of space in my mind, and I wasn't taking any in his."

"How do you know that you didn't?"

"I know."

"What," Chat paused for a moment to look at her again," what if they started liking you? Would you start liking them back again?"

"In another life. I've spent enough time chasing after him in this one," she turned to look at him and gave a weak smile. He somehow managed to give her a smile back. After they looked at the moon for a bit longer, they parted ways and went home.

Marinette had no text messages from Adrien the next morning.