A/N: Thank you for all the well wishing. I'm more or less moved in (moving truck comes in a couple days), I'm all healed up from the glass, and the cat is chilling in his new home. Now, my only concern is my car that is still 600 miles away getting fixed and I have no clue how long that will be which worries me because I start a job next week. I'm thankful my mom is able to drive me for now, but I kinda would like my car back.

Two days. That's how long it had been since Adrien had revealed himself, and it was how long Marinette had successfully locked herself in her room.

"You can't keep hiding forever," a concerned Tikki said.

"I'm just trying to wrap my head around this," Marinette countered. "I know what I have to do, but I have this feeling…that Adrien is going to ignore common sense and…"

"Deep inside, you want him to, don't you?"

Marinette shut her eyes to fight against the tears. "I don't have that right."

Tikki yanked her dress strings. This time, Marinette knew it was on purpose.

"Now, see here," she said, leaving the tight laces so she could stand in front of Marinette. "By no doing of your own, you were tossed into this role. But since then, you have overcome every challenge to truly become Lady Noir. If the previous ladies of the house could see you now, they would accept you as one of their own. You are more of a lady than some of the countesses and duchesses out there."

"But I can't be a princess!" Marinette shouted. "That's what I'm saying. What would society say? It's scandal. Do you know what they would say about Adrien and his family, or me and mine?"

"Do you know what their saying already?" Tikki snapped. A fraction of a second too late, she realized what she had said.

But the damage was done. All color drained from Marinette's face. "What are they saying?"

Tikki sighed. "You don't really want to hear—"

"What are they saying?" she demanded.

Tikki looked appropriately abashed. "When Nathaniel came, we got to talk about all the rumors flying around. There are two rumors above all others, and because they're conflicting, they're damaging all their own. The great debate is whose child you're pregnant with: Lord Barbot's or Lord Noir's."

The pain and embarrassment struck her hard, twisting her gut uneasily and squeezing her heart.

"I didn't want to tell you."

"No," Marinette said. "I wanted to know. And now I do."

Tikki gave her a pitying look. "You're better than all that. Nathaniel told me he was countering every one, along with your parents and anyone who knew you well, but you know that people who want to gossip will gossip. Just give it more time, and this will all die down."

"Or it may never," Marinette mumbled.

She didn't know if Tikki heard it and chose to ignore it or didn't catch it at all, but either way, she went back to readjusting the laces on Marinette's dress.

Afterwards, Marinette dismissed Tikki. Reluctantly, she left. When the door shut, Marinette bit her lip hard to keep from crying. Wishing to be distracted, she dug through the drawers of her vanity, only to be greeted with an unwelcome sight at the first drawer she opened.

A little octagonal box sat directly in the middle of the drawer. She stared at it, the ornate gold decorating on the outside. She knew what lay inside, yet she opened the box to reveal the earrings. Good luck, her mother had said. Good luck. Yet, the last time she wore them, it threw her into a mess. Had you asked her days ago, she would have said it was the best thing to happen to her. Now…they were once again a horror. No amount of time was going to make it better, no matter what Mister Fu said.

Snapping the box shut, she chucked it back into the drawer and slammed it shut. A single sob escaped. No matter how fervently she demanded her tears to stay in, they didn't listen. She was so tired of crying, but she couldn't stop.

With a deep breath, she finally pulled herself together. Staring at herself in the mirror, she looked at the red-faced girl staring back at her. Princess. Lady. Baker's daughter. Who even was she? Because she sure didn't know.

She shook her head. She needed to find something else to do. Something to take her mind off everything. With her hands shaking in hesitation, she reached for her door, forcing herself to open it. She didn't know where she would go hide today. All she hoped was that she didn't run into Adrien.

Thankfully, she didn't. Instead, she found herself in front the yellow room. She wondered if anyone was with Princess Alix or if she needed anything or was even awake yet. As quietly as she could, Marinette opened the door. Alix lay unmoving on the bed, a wet cloth across her forehead and her red hair fanned across her pillow. The covers only came up to her waist, but Marinette could see that she was no longer in the dirty, brown maid's dress she had been wearing and instead wore a white nightgown. She was also free of the mud scuffs that were once on her face and hands. Tikki and Alya must have cleaned her up well.

What really caught Marinette's attention, though, was the figure in the chair right by the headboard. The one slouched over on the bed, asleep, large hand outstretched and holding Alix's tiny one.

Marinette shut the door behind her before she walked over to Kim. She was hesitant about waking him but wondered how long he had been there. She put a light hand on his shoulder, which instantly caused him to stir. Clearly, he hadn't been in too deep of a sleep.

He never let go of Alix's hand as he rubbed his tired face with his free hand. He then looked up at the person who woke him. "Hi, Marinette," he groggily greeted.

"How long have you been here?"

He grunted. "All night, however long ago that was."

"A while," Marinette informed. "Has she woken yet?"

The happiness in his expression was marred with pain. "She did. Last night, after the healer left. She was just awake long enough to drink some herbal tea before falling back asleep. She wasn't lucid, really."

Marinette could hear the unspoken statement. "She didn't recognize you, then?"

Kim shook his head.

"Yet, you still noticed her immediately when she came through the door." Marinette said, perching carefully on the edge of the bed.

"She hasn't changed much," Kim said, reaching up for a lock of her hair. "She has a distinct color. Almost pink in the right light. And she's still a tiny thing. Makes us such an odd pair."

Marinette took in Kim's expression: soft and raw. A stark contrast to his usual confident smirk and mischievous glint in his eye, all thanks to the girl lying unconscious in bed. "Adrien said that you were from France," she began. "That you grew up as a squire, training to be a knight in the royal court, all while forging a friendship with the princess. But, then he stopped there, saying it wasn't his right to say." She looked back at Kim, who had turned away from Alix to look at her. "May I pry and ask what happened? How you came here?"

Kim's smile was bitter. "Long story."

"Not like we don't have time."

Kim took a moment to mull it over. "I'm the youngest of four brothers. Obviously, this means I'm not going to take over as a duke any time soon. My father was proud, wanting to train his sons at home to become knights, but I was a bit of a troublemaker. I knew I had nothing to lose, so I loved pulling pranks on my older brothers if only to spite them. My father grew tired of my antics and simply gave up on me. He sent me off to the castle to train there. Apparently, the king owed him a favor, so my father rid me from his hands.

"That's when I met Alix. I'll maintain she started our rivalry by mocking me, then I pulled a prank on her to get revenge. After that, we were self-proclaimed enemies. However, after a while, we realized we both shared a strong dislike of the royal advisor. Slowly, we became comrades of sorts, only to become inseparable a couple years after that. And that was the problem. Her father didn't like that she was spending so much time with me. It was too suggestive for a princess to be so often alone and unsupervised with me. He was right to believe it improper; I'll admit that. Alix would often have to convince her father that there was no remotely suggestive relationship between us, and her father believed it. Until she came of age at sixteen.

"We were caught in the middle of a prank. A particularly deserving culprit, but hiding together in a storage room so as not to get caught was likely not our best thought-out plan. The royal adviser caught us then turned us in to her father. He lied, rolling it on thick about how we were caught in the middle of…well, what her father was worried about. Finally, he suggested that I be beheaded for taking the princesses chastity and she be disowned from the throne.

"Alix tried to argue with her father, but he wasn't hearing much of it. I had to step up and defend her. I defended her purity, her words, her actions, all while discrediting mine. Finally, in the end, I told him that I would leave the kingdom and never return; that he could discredit me from my family line, strip me of my knighthood, and banish me from the entire kingdom."

"And he took that?"

Kim shook his head. "Jalil, his son, was there by his side, as always. He knew of Alix and my misadventures, but he also knew me well enough to fight for me against the royal advisor. As it turned out, our little prank had caught the advisor in the middle of a lie, one that turned against him very quickly. I didn't understand what precisely had been asked or expected of him, but next thing I know, the royal advisor was banished, disowned and discredited. Which only left me.

"The king didn't punish his daughter, nor did he ruin me the way I had suggested, but he didn't want me in the castle any longer. He sent me on a two-year traveling mission, and I accepted that gracefully. I had already learned the hard way when not to push my luck."

"But you didn't want to leave her," Marinette observed, hearing the longing in Kim's voice. "You cared for her too much."

"Far more than I had right to," he shamefully admitted. "And Alix wasn't happy that I was leaving, either. We promised to write, but that was the best I could do. A year in, the letters stopped coming. I wasn't nervous until after three months of unanswered letters. Four months before I was scheduled to return, we caught wind of the war that was growing worse by the day. My traveling group and I hurried back, only to be greeted with an un-welcoming committee.

"Most of my comrades were killed, but I made it out, thankfully. I was on the run for three months before I made it to Paris. I hid out for a while, formulating a plan to get back to Alix, to get in contact with her. I ended up going to war for Paris with the intention of sneaking off and getting to the castle again. I had told the crew my intentions, and they were all for it. The plan became get as far into the battlefield as possible."

"It never happened, though, did it," Marinette asked.

"No. No, it didn't."

Marinette cringed in pity. Looking down at his hand intertwined with Alix's…it was clear that they were close. Very close. And if Kim's actions since Alix was brought in were any indication, Kim cared for her deeply. Maybe, if he as lucky, she even returned those feelings.

"May I ask one last question?"

Kim nodded.

"How did you meet Adrien?"

He took a deep breath, rubbing he eyes before looking back up at Marinette. "Adrien and I crossed paths on my last-ditch effort to get to France. We spent the night stuck in a ditch waiting for the cross-fire to slow. Not much to do than to talk and burn time." Kim looked up to Marinette. "He talked about you. Told me he was graced to witness one last act of selflessness before he went to war. Told me of a beautiful girl that he was determined to find after the war ended."

Marinette's eyes widened in surprise. "What?"

Kim nodded. "I didn't know he was the Prince of Paris when he told me. Thought he was just another soldier. I joked around, saying I better be invited to his wedding, which he told me there would never be. He seemed really depressed about it, so I let it go." A sparkle glinted in Kim's eye. It didn't last long, but it was undeniably there. "Imagine my surprise when he brought you home that day. His father wanted him to marry the Princess of France in order to stop the war. Instead, he brings home the girl that made him smile when hell had broken loose on the battlefield."

Marinette was at a loss for words. Tears glimmered in her eyes, but it was as though she was too shocked to shed them.

Kim's expression softened so severely he didn't even look like the rugged knight he was. "Nino told me Adrien finally revealed himself to you, but just as we both knew it would, it backfired on him. So I'm going to say this: for both of your sakes, reconcile. Because…" His expression crumpled as he turned to face Alix again. "You never know what will happen after the last parting of ways."

One after another, tears dripped down Marinette's cheeks. She wiped them away, along with her fears. She had to face Adrien, for better or worse, to clear the air between them. Because if Adrien was the one lying there, if they never had the opportunity, it would haunt her.

"Before I go," she said, calling Kim's attention again, "can I get you anything? Anything at all?"

He shook his head. "I'm fine, thank you."

With a smile that she didn't quite feel but knew that he needed, she patted his shoulder in support before leaving him and his friend alone.