Average time elapsed between the marking and the discovery of the soulmate's identity:
One hour or less: 55%
One day or less: 27%
One month or less: 9%
One year or less: 5.5%
More than one year: 2.5%
Soulmate never discovered: 1%
- Soul mates statistics based on a study by the ICOPR
###
"You called, my lady?" Chat Noir said as he landed on one of the beams of the Eiffel Tower. "It's a little early for patrol."
He was so busy trying to be suave that he nearly missed the look on her face. Nearly. Her paleness was striking.
"Is something wrong?" he asked, hurrying to her and crouching by her side.
From up close, her distress was blatant. She was looking at her hands, jaw clenched, shoulders hunched. He did not remember ever seeing her like that and it worried him all the more.
"I'm in trouble," she announced, still staring into the distance. She closed her left hand over her left one and squeezed. "I'm in trouble and I don't know what to do."
Adrien's stomach twisted. He leaned closer.
"Can I help?" he asked. "What's going on?"
Ladybug took a deep breath, bracing herself, then she turned to him.
"Chat, do you have a soul mark?"
The question caught him unaware. He had not expected it, not from her. He could have gone forever without hearing it, too, not when it was said with the utmost seriousness, in a voice that ever so slightly quivered. As an idle question, it would have been fine, but there was no mistaking the edge in her tone, the tension in her whole frame.
He wished he could unhear it.
She had a soulmate.
It was not him.
He forced himself to smile and replied in his kindest, softest voice.
"No. No. Not yet." - And now he never would. He could not picture his soulmate being anyone but her. - "Do you?"
She groaned and ran her hands over her face.
"Apparently."
He bit the tip of his tongue so the sharp pain would distract him from the dull, crushing hollowness he felt.
"And you don't know who it is," he guessed.
Strange how this was exactly the conversation he had avoided with Marinette a few hours earlier. There was a lot to be said about that timing. It led to two possible conclusions. One of them, Adrien could not entertain. He had promised Ladybug he would respect her secrets and never try to discover her civilian identity. The other… It would have been 'unexpected'. That was the term. But Marinette would make a good soulmate. She was brave and she was kind and Adrien was fond of her. Silver linings.
"No," Ladybug replied. "But that's not the problem. Well, it's part of the problem, but it's not the horribly dangerous part."
He frowned.
"Horribly dangerous?"
"It's a mask !" his partner exclaimed. "My mark. It's a red domino mask right on my hand! There is someone out there wandering with my MASK on their skin. Worse. There is someone out there who figured out who I am, and I don't know who !"
Chat Noir paled. It was bad. It was awful . Not that he thought Hawk Moth was secretly prowling soulmate matching services looking for mask-shaped mark, but people talked about those things. 'Say, do you know anyone with a symbol that looks like a red mask? My neighbor's kid can't find her partner'. 'That girl's mark is the coolest thing!'. 'Who gets a carnival mask, anyway?'. There would be gossip. Well-meaning acquaintances would spread the word.
The young heroes did not know how close Hawk Moth was. They had no idea what social circles he was a part of. For all they knew, he routinely bought his bread from Marinette's parents and had lunch at the Grand Paris.
He sucked his lips in.
"I happen to know someone who got her mark today," he announced, looking up at the moon. "Now, I haven't seen it, but I hear it's red and on her right hand."
"What? "
"I don't know anything else. I went to see that play about us, at the Françoise Dupont school. The Ladyblog posted an article about it?"
Ladybug stared at him. She was holding her breath.
"Anyway, you know that girl. Marinette Dupain-Cheng. The one who had a date with the Evillustrator, remember? You told me she was cute. I thought you were playing matchmaker."
His partner blinked, then scoffed and started laughing.
"I don't think it's Marinette," she retorted, shaking her head as if the notion was ridiculous. Maybe it was. Maybe it was downright impossible. "She would have told me about it already. She has my email."
" I don't have your email!"
"You have a magical communicator to call me with, Chat Noir. And she needed a way to warn me if the Evillustrator showed up earlier than expected."
"Point." - Adrien sighed. - "So you don't know, and we need to find your soulmate." - That sounded too nervous. He tried to smile and reassure her. - "I'm sure whoever it is will be careful. I mean, a soulmate would never harm you. You would be everything to them. And if they recognized you, they will know how delicate things are. Also, they would have to be smart and resourceful, you know, to fit you. I'm sure they can handle this."
Ladybug bit her lower lip, staring at him with what looked distinctly like wet eyes. She blinked and it was gone.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Chat Noir brushed her hair away from her face.
"So. Getting the word out is… out. No specialized websites, no asking around. I assume you've tried the 'nudging the mark' thing?"
"If I nudge the mark any more, I will carve a hole through my hand," she muttered. "My mother says he's probably sleeping and that I should wait until tomorrow. WHO GETS THEIR SOUL MARK AND GOES TO SLEEP?"
Despite the seriousness of the situation and his broken heart, Adrien chuckled.
She relaxed a little.
Her partner leaned closer.
"Maybe it's too early for the mark to transmit sensations," he told her. "Internet told me it took days."
"Maybe. There's another explanation. Two, actually."
"Two?"
"Explanation one: he has not noticed the mark yet."
Chat Noir nodded.
"Explanation two," Ladybug continued. "He does not have one."
That startled him.
"It's on your hand. Isn't it a handshake mark?"
"It could be," she replied. " Or someone could have grabbed the back of my hand like this " - She closed her left hand on her right, pressing her index against the side of her palm. - "And my fingers would have been turned away from him. And if I did not touch him, then he would not have a mark, would he?"
That scenario was entirely too likely. Maybe that was how you ended up with a black butterfly on the side of your hand but no soulmate.
Adrien did not know how to counter that theory, so he moved to detective work.
"It would be someone who could recognize you," he said. "Maybe someone you rescued. Maybe a big fan, like the Ladyblog girl."
"I've been thinking about it for hours and no one stands out," Ladybug replied. She sighed. "I hate this. It wasn't meant to happen like this. I always thought it would be-"
She slammed her mouth shut, shifting away with a guilty expression.
Chat Noir gave her an inquisitive look and pretended nothing was awkward at all.
A moment went by. She did not finish her sentence. So he did it for her.
"Adrien Agreste?"
He was not blind. He remembered Volpina and the fake Adrien dangling above them. He remembered Ladybug's distress. She tended to put her whole heart into protecting everyone , but there had been something different there. It had not just been her heart she had put into it, but also her whole soul and some of her common sense.
While she would have surrendered her Miraculous to protect innocents, it would have been as a last resort and the danger that fake Adrien had been nowhere near severe enough to warrant such a sacrifice. Not from someone who had caught Chloé mid-flight on her first day on the job.
And she was flustered around 'Adrien', wasn't she? She froze, she blushed, she stammered. He had not imagined that. Even Plagg had remarked on it.
The look on her face confirmed his suspicions. She paled, she blushed, she blanched, she gaped, she turned a little green. She also slipped off their beam and nearly plummeted down to her death. Chat caught her as she fell and pulled her up, arms wrapped around her waist. He helped her sit next to him and did not let go.
"How did you know ?" she exclaimed.
He grinned.
"I know you."
She grumbled and made a face (or twenty). She huffed. She sulked. All the while, he felt like holding her closer. His heart was melting and spreading warmth from his chest to his toes.
She ended up taking a shaky breath.
"I thought about it over and over again and it could only be two people. A-Adrien, because I, well. You said it."
I did not say it , Chat Noir thought. He would have preferred to hear it.
Ladybug squared her shoulders, straightening up to give herself a composure.
"Adrien," she repeated, "and you. Because you are my partner. Because you are my friend. Because you are Ladybug's other half, and because you know me."
She had not freed herself from his embrace. He had to fight hard not to pull her closer. The two boys she would have wanted as a soulmate happened to be him.
"You know," she mused, "we never touched ."
He wrinkled his nose, looking down at the hand he had put on her hip.
She twisted to turn to him and raised a hand.
"Without gloves, I mean. Never."
Adrien stared at her fingers, at the armored fabric that kept her fingertips well away from his skin. A second later, he was pulling on the fabric of his armor and running a clawed finger against his palm. Clearly, Plagg understood his intent, because that part of his suit vanished in a flash of yellow and black, leaving his skin bare up to his forearm.
"Want to try?" he said, extending his hand.
Ladybug gaped, tapping his palm with a gloved finger to confirm that he had willed his armor away. Then she looked at her own hand and tentatively pulled on the tip of her gloved index. The armor vanished in a pink glimmer, leaving her fingertip exposed.
She hesitated.
He breathed in.
It took a minute for her to reach for his hand. Her finger hovered above his palm but she caught herself right before touching him. She jerked her hand away before lowering it once again to press her fingertip to his wrist.
If she marked him, it would be easy for him to conceal it. He would only have to wear a watch.
They waited. They braced themselves. Ladybug lifted her finger.
Adrien's skin was unmarked.
The boy sniffed then he chuckled, faking a levity that had deserted him and was not likely to come back.
"Oh well. We knew it would be touch-and-go."
His lady did not even scoff.
The lady.
"I suppose I'll have to wait and see," she said with fake nonchalance.
Chat Noir wished his arm was still around her. She was steeling herself, building walls around her anxiety. If he had been touching her, he would have been able to slip through all of that. He could have hugged her. From the outside, there was nothing he could do.
He still reached for her, trying to put a hand on her shoulder, but she jumped to her feet and smiled. Her glove repaired itself.
"Come on," she said. "Patrol is waiting!"
###
The tree was surrounded with yellow warning signs and yellow tape wrapped around metallic rods that were themselves planted on the lawn of the park. Its trunk was circled by a band of red paint. It was dead, it was dead and rotting and would be cut down soon.
"Cataclysm," Chat Noir said, pressing his palm against the decaying wood.
###
With a whopping 67% of all soul marks, the hand is the most common (and most logical) location. Out of those, more than half are handshake marks. They are such a common occurrence that fashion wove itself around them. Walk into any clothing store and you will find a variety of garments meant to accommodate your handshake mark, though not always with the same purpose.
On one hand - pun intended - designers have come up with windowed gloves that will openly display your handshake mark. Some stores (such as Mark Of Fashion) even offer customizable arm warmers and gloves, allowing you to pick the colors that best match your symbol.
Other brands have taken a resolutely different approach. Instead of showcasing marks, they offer ways to conceal them. The iconic Gabriel brand has no less than five separate lines of gloves that will allow you to cover up your mark with style. The 'Crimson Rose' line, their luxury brand, offers a selection of stunning embroidered designs most often see on the hands of superstars such as Grace Ouillette and Stella spotlight. Should you need more casual yet beautiful accessories, look up 'Lacewing'. The business wear niche is filled by the 'Morpho' line, while the sportsmen can turn to the 'Dragontail' line. Teenagers are not forgotten: the 'Spring Azure' line - the most popular of all five - offers a wide selection of mark-concealing accessories available for children as young as ten!
- Le Monde de la Mode, January 2009
###
"They are so pretty ," Rose exclaimed when she saw the fingerless gloves Marinette had spent her Sunday sewing and embroidering.
"Yes!" Mylène added, taking a closer look at the floral pattern. "You could sell those. You should sell those. Most of those you see in stores are not that nice!"
Marinette smiled at the compliments, grateful to see her classmates focus on her designs and not on the mark hidden underneath. She had walked into the schoolyard more apprehensive than the first time she had faced an Akuma, which was saying a lot.
Apparently, Instructions had been given. While more of her classmates had hurried to greet her than usual, none had even asked to see her soul mark. The most direct of them were otherwise occupied. Kim was trying to get away from the hold Nino had on his shoulders and from a lengthy explanation on the difference between Flac and MP3s. Chloé and Lila were arguing in a corner (Alya had grinned and made a v of victory when Marinette had noticed that fight). You could hear echoes from afar.
"By the way," Lila cooed, "can you even lift your arms with all that bling ?"
"Bling?" Chloé snapped back, raising a wrist covered in enough gold bracelets to win a weightlifting competition. " Bling? This is haute-joaillerie from Gabriel's, I'll let you know. But you couldn't tell, it's not like you could afford that. Oh, and your bracelets are so cute ! Did your baby brother make them for you?"
Marinette tried to tune them out.
"Thank you so much," she told her friends. "
"You should make more. I'd buy one," Rose exclaimed, even though she had no mark to hide. "I'd buy two. You could make a matching set for me and Juleka, right?"
"Of course! You don't even need to pay me. But doesn't Juleka make her own clothes?"
The blonde panicked.
"No no noooo," she whispered, pulling Marinette away. "You don't get it! It's for a gift ."
"Oh! Oh, I see. Well then we can go get the materials together. What about we go this afternoon?"
"That would be perfect! Thank you, Marinette!"
"Don't-"
The young designer went silent when Adrien ran into the schoolyard, frantically looking around then breathing in relief. He thought he was late. He seemed pleasantly surprised to have arrived before the bell.
He spotted them.
"Hi, Rose! Hi, Marinette," he greeted them. "How are you?"
Her heart skipped a beat. The next one was painful. She forced herself to smile and stuttered a 'f-fine' while Rose, oblivious, started chattering. Marinette blanked out and only started to pay attention to the conversation when Rose grabbed her hand and showed her glove to Adrien with a deafening 'yes, look!'.
"Wow!" the model exclaimed. "I knew they'd be amazing but that's even better than what I imagined. You need to show them to Nathalie."
"I-I, uh, planned to," Marinette replied, vaguely remembering Adrien had sent her an email to remind her of those internship openings.
She had not given it much thought. She had focused on her gloves and tried hard to think about nothing at all . Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw her finger brush against Chat Noir's skin and the unfairness of it all hit her square in the gut.
She had also pinched and poked her mark so often her skin was scratched. Her soulmate had never reacted.
"She'll probably be there to pick me up this afternoon," her crush pointed out. "I'll-"
"Neat gloves," Kim cut in, joining them.
He managed to softly slip next to rose and nearly elbow Adrien out of the way in the same motion. Nino arrived a split second later. The rest of the class followed: Alix first, then Mylène and Ivan, with Juleka and Nathanaël right behind them. Chloé and Lila were gone, though Marinette had not seen them leaving.
"Thanks!" she replied to Kim's compliment, though she knew Kim. She braced for the worst.
"Say, is it a cock?" her classmate blurted out.
She had not braced herself enough.
"Kim!" several of her friends snapped as she gaped.
He blinked.
"What? It would be a good reason to hide it!" he explained, which got him another round of exasperated 'Kim's.
Marinette spluttered.
Alix rolled her eyes.
"He's really into cocks," she stated. "Comes from being a chicken."
Everyone went utterly silent.
Alix smirked at Kim, whose eyes were growing wider and wider as he processed the insult. When he was just about to snap out of it, the skater burst out laughing and ran away.
"COME BACK HERE SO I CAN KICK YOUR ASS!" Kim yelled, chasing her.
She was already halfway up the stairs to their classroom. By the time he got there, she was back into the yard, having dashed to the opposite stairs and jumped down.
"Someday, he will kill her," Nino remarked.
"Nah," Alya retorted. "He'll never be fast enough."
"What if he has more stamina?"
"Have you even met Alix?"
"You're not wrong."
"I'm never wrong," the blogger pointed out.
"Oh? Want me to-"
Adrien slipped between the two of them.
"So how was your Sunday?" he asked, with one hand on Alya's shoulder and the other on Nino's.
They just scowled at each other through him. He sighed and pushed them towards the stairs.
"Come on," he said. "Class is about to start."
The pair sighed but followed him, as did the rest of the class.
Marinette closed the march.
She idly pushed a finger under her glove as she walked and started rubbing her mark again. She was still doing it ten minutes later, after sitting down and taking her tablet out of her bag. Adrien was trying to mitigate the ongoing war between Nino and Alya. It had nothing to do with Kim and Alix, they all knew it. Nino was paying the price for 'improving' his girlfriend's screenplay with the 'Defeat of Hawk Moth' scene.
Marinette was digging her nail into her mark when her phone buzzed. She checked it, frowning, as her parents would not have texted her during class and her friends were too busy to do so.
She had received an anonymous text message. It contained a single word.
"Stop."
###
