The Melody of Silence
"Fools" said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you."
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence
Trigger Warnings: Unhealthy sexual relationship, self-hatred, and depression.
Thirteen. Thirteen kisses. A baker's dozen, a winding stream of pecks and smacks and nibbles and breathless locks that leave them disheveled in the shadowed nooks of the Liberty.
There are the tender kisses. Heated ones. Playful. Longing. Taunting, teasing. Mentally catalogued by duration, passion, intent, location.
She's listed them all; run through every permutation while tabulating them using an abstruse algebra.
The count starts with the one that they share before actually stepping foot on the deck, while Anarka coaxes the landlubbers onboard. They were fashionably late, an indulgence that Adrien deserves after a decade-and-a-half of punishing schedules, ones that still govern his life. Indulgence and sweetly innocent defiance in his own way is wholesome and it sets off fireworks, cascading shivers and metal sparks sloughing off her bones, tingling under the skin of her bare forearms as their lips meet in a chaste peck on the threshold.
Kiss number two has her toes curling because it's lingering and slow, his eyes drifting shut though she's attending to Luka's expression. The one where there is no expression, as if he doesn't or can't feel anything, as if it's beyond him to experience anything outside of the frustration that, when she lies, was the one thing that tore them apart.
Is she ever honest with herself?
Number four is a good kiss.
Adrien's lips are slightly smeared from the eclairs that she had brought, slaved over with her face flushed from the heat as she loaded her pastries onto rack after rack until she had the perfect collection.
Stacks of them lay out on the snack table that Anarka set up for them. So many were left at home. Even the smallest imperfection meant that a pastry had to be discarded. Eventually, after four dozen rejections, the pile in their fridge and donations to the homeless, and "reduced rate bargain display" all full for the day and beyond, her father stopped her, easing the sloppy piping bag from her hands and wetting the hem of his apron to clear the smudges of chocolate and flour from her cheeks, before encircling her waist with his arms.
The glaze is important, of course, she knows as she watches Kim slam down an eclair whole, barely bothering to chew. Before it goes down the hatch, its sheeny surface glistens in the starlight and moonshine and ambient haze that radiates from the city, setting the deck awash in an eerie faux-perpetual twilight that seems like it will never end.
Those are the worst kisses.
All of them – the ones where he folds his arms around her waist, evoking the memory of Tom Dupain, and lingers. A chin to the crown of her head, then lips, then stagnation, held there as if time has frozen and nothing but his jaw moves in speech or laughter.
Knots form in her stomach, twisting with sea-sickness, the gentle lapping of fetid water against the sides cascading through her mind. In the black shadow cast by the Liberty, eddies and mini-vortexes seem to fade in and out of existence between her feet, dangling off the side, kicking absently as if she could actually reach the water, get her feet wet, soak her shoes.
Her forehead sinks to the cool support rungs that fence off the deck. Savouring the shock leads goose-flesh to prickle just like kisses three, seven, and eight – lips to the base of a neck, right at the juncture of the vertebrae.
They're mangled now, all the eclairs. Everything that hasn't been consumed by this point is a mess, chocolate glaze smearing other pastries, sticky with smudged finger marks, and sloppy, melting in the early summer heat that leaves her sweaty, clothes caught up and clinging.
Kiss thirteen is happening at this very moment, time stretching out, his mouth lingering there at the crown of her head with his arms around her waist, making her think about her papa and those few blissful instances of safety and perfection when there was no more Ladybug - only the indulgence of thought squeezed out of her until she was an empty piping bag, nothing left to give, nothing left to create.
Rose is cooing, hands clasped as she looks on with her girlfriend at the happy couple
Kagami is smiling. Has learnt how to smile, and it's beautiful in ways that Marinette doesn't think that the other girl understands.
That's one of the reasons that Fu selected her. A good guardian, one better than him, should want to nurture – see the best and know how to coax it forth, recognize the fertile ground, seed, water, enrich, and make it grow. That's all on the Guardian.
And Kagami's blossomed.
No other girl in the world could prove so well-suited to the dragon miraculous: thunder in the spring rain. As guardian, Marinette had made the right choice - another plan concocted so expertly with her team – Alya and Nino, whom she learnt only a month ago also knew her identity, just like Luka. Alya didn't keep secrets from him. Effortless to stage an illusion of Seiryu scooping up Kagami and her boyfriend from an akuma battle.
Acid and laughter are in her throat, like she has a choice, like she could pitch over the side of the boat and loose either one, just vomiting them up to watch the vast stretch of water carry it all away.
It's almost a good feeling.
That's the nice thing about water, even polluted. Maybe that's why her boyfriend adores its music; he goes with the flow, just like the currents.
With Alya locked with Nino in yet another gyrating, intimate dance on the main deck and Luka performing just as much as Adrien, there's no one to come see her. No one sees or cares to see, and she knows that's fair, can recognize the little tapestry of fate that's woven around her throat.
Only one person knows how deep the searing ache is, how she wants to dive off the edge of the Liberty into the frothing waters beneath her feet and just sink so that all that battery acid can be diluted in her distended stomach, pressed out of her lungs, and that's the beauty of the music of the spheres that Luka has lauded – the music of silence. Planets rolling. Ancient. Slow. Inexorable
"Hello, Marinette. I wished to see if you were... well." Crushed smile on kissed-bruised lips warring with fluttering sympathy in her downcast eyes, Kagami stands there.
Kagami has always been destabilized, on the back-foot, in social situations. It would be so easy to kick the legs out from under her, and Marinette longs for that, yearns for it like a child, wide-eyed and waiting for that one special present under the tree. It's right there.
"That's very sweet of you, Kagami." she says instead. Water. Nurture. Make grow.
"You would do, and have done, no less," Kagami assures, straightening her blouse and licking those bruised lips so they glisten even as she puts her hands to the guardrail and looks out at the sea of lights playing on the river's surface. "I pay my debts."
"You don't have to do that, you know. You don't owe me anything." Marinette shrugs, disliking the random swirls of water at her feet. Froth foams and bubbles. "We're even."
Kagami nods, but does not look at her. "Yet friendships have taught me something. It is not all... transactions and rational benefits weighed against costs. Sometimes, it is merely something that you have received freely, and returned freely."
"That sounds like the same thing. It's still give and take." The deck is firm under her rear. Her legs kick more violently, slapping against the sides of the Liberty.
"Not so." Kagami shakes her head, stance setting wider as if she's preparing, at any moment, to feint to the side, while she rests beside Marinette. "It's give and be given."
"That sounds nice." A tingle, starting at her fingertips, just under the nails, creeps into her palms, now clenched to the deck. It's like the static electricity before a storm that frizzed Ladybug's hair. "You should be happy, then."
Kagami's nod is slow, measured. "I am, and... I wanted you to know that."
"Thanks. That's great. I'm glad for you." The only surprise is that she means it. That she has enough left to mean it. Maybe it's all that she has left.
"I do not know if it matters, but other people are happy because of you." Her face angles away, towards the assembled guests that are giving them space over here at the darkened edges of the party.
How much Kagami knows is genuinely a mystery sometimes; the limitations of her understanding cloaked under those opaque features that, as Guardian, she should view as transparent glass, rather than a hazy mire that gets her stuck up.
The soft commingling of a guitar and piano, accompanied by a few tentative voices, picks up in the distance. It's not far, but she hears all of them like an echo and doesn't recognize the song that just seems so small, the music maudlin, tawdry. Featureless intonations of a generic popular melody, indistinguishable from a million others pumped out and mass-produced. Petty.
"It doesn't have anything to do with me." Her spine aches. "Nothing does."
"On the contrary." Kagami picks at something on her jacket's sleeve, and it's only then that Marinette realizes that she feels awkward. Really awkward. Like a girl confessing the truth to her crush. "You encouraged me to seek to rebuild my relationship with Adrien. That was an action that injured you, and aided me. There is no more laudable a gesture."
"I would have thought you'd mean foolish."
Looking down at her calloused palm as if lost in the contemplation of the creases, Kagami shakes her head. "Adrien has taught me – is teaching me that there is a method to foolishness." She looks up. "Did you know that in English culture, as with Shakespeare or the motif of the ship of fools, folly was complimentary, rather than antithetical, to wisdom? It is an... intriguing concept that I am exploring, and that too is thanks to you."
There's something genuinely sweet about that, even if it's conveyed with the emotional detachment of a university lecturer, trying to coax life out of a listless student and failing because she only understands but doesn't feel, and the students don't feel enough to understand.
Who's worse off, and does it matter when it's pointless to both of them?
"I think that I heard something about that." Chat Noir is on her mind. Her fellow heroes by the dozen. Professionalism. "The fool is ... a mockery of society. A satire."
Looking up from the waters to the dark and hazy sky, Kagami drums her fingers. The scene is like a painting or perfectly-timed snapshot - wistful and beautiful and enough to shock Marinette into a little gasp because for all that she'd tried to nurture in her teammate, she'd never imagined all the potential and possibility that drips from the melting ice in that soft gaze.
"While deceptive at times, folly speaks truths that reserved wisdom cannot, and since we last spoke, I have seen how those two sources of truth are ... vital if one wishes to understand the world and the people in it. Had you not been so generous, I would not have had the chance to see such things."
"Is this really all about a boy?" It's not about a boy. She knows that, but wants it to be just that, praying that Kagami will give her that outlet as her nails dig into her palms. "That seems so petty. Is that all that you came over here to talk about?"
"In part, but it is more about you. I wished to thank you for your efforts – your ... willingness to sacrifice what I could not and your suffering that, I think, goes beyond that."
"I didn't." She feels that old, familiar churn in her stomach as she watches light reflecting off Kagami's cool olive skin, and her feet jerk on a nervous impulse, clattering against the side of the Liberty, echoing hard. Harder. "In the end, I was selfish. Am selfish. Just- just a selfish bitch."
Brow arched keenly but not cruelly, Kagami braces her arms, willowy pillars. "I was unaware that you had found the courage to tell him."
"People can surprise you."
Kagami makes that worse by agreeing. "Yes. They can. Oftentimes I find that I am too quick to judge."
"Mature of you to recognize that, if it's true, but I don't think so." Nothing good comes from surprises; only order. Stagnant like the water smells, even as it laps and froths.
"It is. I am not a very deep person." Kagami breathes in slowly, hands sliding closer on the railing. A slow bob of her head, moving in perfect time, almost seems a rejoinder to the gentle guitar strains and familiar chords and gentle laughter in the distance, the same frequency with opposite amplitude. Destructive interference. "I do not judge wisely, as was the case when we met. You were an afterthought. A score-keeper. You are far more than that, and may be too quick to judge yourself. "
"Was that what you thought of me during the scavenger hunt, then?"
Kagami looks confused, as if the question is one that she had never thought to ask herself, or just forgotten. "I thought of you as someone who could be my friend because you were kind and sweet and skilled, then as duplicitous and self-serving, and then that you were all these things. Perhaps we all are in measures and turns. People are very... complex. It is up to us to choose what we are willing to see and what we are willing to become – what we embrace."
"I don't think that we have that choice." While she speaks, as if they're tied in some unfathomable rhythm, Kagami pins her in place with a deliberate, calculating stare, matched and returned. "There are just layers to people. Things that you shouldn't see or you'll learn what you really are."
A little flutter of her throat is the only tell that Kagami allows Marinette to see. "Is that self-critique?"
"Would you like it to be?"
Kagami blinks, blunted eyelashes that have never been plucked or styled or felt the touch of mascara fluttering. There's something that's always bothered Marinette when she looks at the other girl – like she's looking into a better version of herself, a warped mirror that's twisted away all her flaws. That's why she was so physical, she realizes, so energetic.
"I apologize if I have offended or hurt you." Kagami's hands finally meet on the railing, and the girl herself looks minuscule; not compact and wiry, but just small. "Genuinely, I... I wished to speak with you because I see that you are hurt, and I do not know how to speak of it without probing. Adrien was the only subject I could think to discuss that was not banal and pointless."
"Well, since you don't seem to know me very well, banal and pointless sounds good. You could ask my blood type," Marinette says, examining her cuticles and pushing them down one after the next until they tear and start to bleed, and she wonders, watching the slick blood pooling, how Kagami sees her.
If she's bothered by the sight, her voice doesn't reveal it.
"AB, as we discussed, yes? Or was that just my assumption based on stereotypes?" Stereotypes were all that Kagami had in that day, a wrote series of questions and answers predetermined. "If you wish to engage in small talk, that would suffice. I know nothing of fashion, so cannot discuss it, though I would still listen, if that would make you more comfortable. "
"Why fill the air with pointless small talk?" Elbow to her thigh, Marinette rests her chin in her palm. Suddenly, the water looks nice: Dark, cool, and inviting.
"Because I enjoy talking with you," Kagami continues, seemingly heedless of what's actually going on, what Marinette's been saying. "Even when it is unpleasant, even when it is meaningless, and wish to help you."
"Always straightforward, eh?" Her sneer is towards the water; Kagami may not see it. May not feel it.
"Not always, but often, and you deserve it." The dark ruby-studded choker around Kagami's neck glistens when the girl swipes her thumb across its surface.
That, too, is pointless. "I don't want to talk about straightforward things."
"Then we can talk of meaningless things until you change your mind," Kagami assures.
"I don't think that I'm going to change my mind." Marinette doesn't see her reaction, only feels the goose-flesh pickling up across her arms, the rush of adrenaline that sends her headlong into battle and has every hair standing on end, muscle fibres like bow-strings.
"You don't have to. I will wait all the same."
"But Adrien's waiting for you."
"Let him wait."
"Do you want me to tell you to leave me alone?" She shouldn't savour the way Kagami sucks in a breath trough her teeth. That's a fear that's so easily plucked up and Marinette will prod as long as it takes. "Are you just that socially incompetent?"
While Marinette had hoped and not hoped for a snarl, the bared teeth of a predator cornered,
Kagami just looks at her, unlike any opponent that Marinette has ever seen bearing down on Ryuuko or the Japanese prodigy on the piste, with pity.
"I am, but I also know why my mother drives people away, and I know what that does to a person." Gently, her hand falls to Marinette's shoulder, pinky to the edge of her taut bicep, stiff with tension. Those brown-gold eyes, seen from behind a mask, are beautiful. Warm. Questioning and generous. Adrien must like that he got to see that flowing river of magma underneath all her mother's ice.
"You are not alone, Marinette."
It's in that moment that all the pieces slot into place, just like one of Ladybug's plans, like she's in her costume warm and safe behind a mask that's still plastered to her face as she reciprocates, grins right back, rising up to her feet, tugging herself up using the Liberty's railing. Everything is just so obvious.
Kagami has a pretty smile that only has time to shudder and deform into a flat line, her eyes widening, arm rising just a half-second too slowly because she'd left herself open.
She really had been learning about folly.
Everyone on the deck bursts into action immediately, even Rose who was always the weakest and Adrien, whom she never imagined could be calm and cool like all the heroes after his performance as Aspik that made him hate her.
They're all so coolly efficient as Kagami, pained but ignoring her crooked, dripping-bloody nose, waves off her defenders and Kim and Nino physically restrain Adrien even though they shouldn't. It would be nice to have him let loose, explode, feel something, touch her.
The wind off the Seine, carrying with it the chill of night and the sulphurous odour of garbage passes over the deck and leaves her arms prickling with goosebumps as she watches the scene unfold, calculating movements.
Luka's the one who drags her away, taking her still-clenched fist in hand to use a wet paper towel to wipe the blood from her knuckles before it goes crusty.
"Let's get you cleaned up."
She ignores the offer and just lets him do what he wants. "You said that being honest would solve everything." Maybe that's something that Kagami had actually taught her: just be straightforward when you don't have the strength for minutia.
For a moment, when she fights off the minute tug towards her lips like he had the right, she wants to crush his fingers as he tosses away the bloody paper towel, break his nose. Though his grip slackens, the beatific expression remains steady, flowing. "Look, the truth can hurt, but all that I've ever wanted for and with you is honesty. That's why – that's why I don't really talk all that much. My music. That's how I'm honest with you."
She scoffs, ripping her hand away like the thought of a kiss has already scarred it. "God forbid that I actually want to have a conversation with you like a fucking human being."
"Didn't seem like you were too interested in talking to Kagami." He smiles, completely calm as the diluted blood stains his hands, but it falters when she doesn't laugh or smile, even feebly, even feigned. She doesn't feign anymore. Only the truth.
He pats her hand. "We can talk as long as you want, Melody."
The assurance only sickens her, ratchets up that quivering tightness in her belly, as he loops an arm around her shoulders and she allow him to cut off the burgeoning argument, leading her below decks while the party disperses.
She likes to think of Adrien, sitting alongside his girlfriend and using tissues to staunch the flow of blood from her nose, fussing and soulful as Kagami rolls her eyes, not even caring as the blood drips down to stain her blouse and Alya tries to get her to go to the hospital because she's going to need to get her nose set.
She likes to think that he's watching her in the way that she imagined he would, late at night when green-eyed jealousy flashed through her mind in those lingering moments between consciousness and sleep.
Luka's not going to talk to her, she knows as they wind their way past the piles of junk, a lifetime's worth of mess just left out for anyone to trip over.
They never really talk, and sometimes that's a good thing.
Later that night - minutes or hours, she's stopped counting; they all feel the same. - he's quiet even when stripping off her shirt, his lips to her quivering stomach when the winding rubber band grows taut, frays, and her hands fold around his head to hold him there so she can't see his eyes. In the darkness, with the shutters letting in a few shaky splashes of light that cascade over his back, a gleam of orange-red almost allows her to see blond as she tosses her head against the tatty pillows on his bed and her eyes snap shut so she can't see. The throaty grunt tumbling out of her mouth has him freezing up and then beginning again as if he didn't hear her speak, and she forces herself not to think, not to talk again. There's only enough left to cling on, so tightly that the nothing that's left won't slip through her fingers, right through slick gauntlets.
Love was supposed to make you feel beautiful. That's how Kagami looks. How Alya looks, absorbed and consuming, and her mother as she gazes at her Papa when he's kneeling to hand over a luscious pastry to a small child, his back turned to his wife, and there's never even a glimmer of regret for the life and family she left behind.
She relishes how ugly his touch makes her feel.
Loves it so much that she smiles for him
Soot and ash smear up her thighs and venom dribbles out onto her sternum, and there are still no words.
It's good that there are no words.
Truth.
And silence.
When he's finished, she leaves him to shower, and forces down the sickness, keeps it deep inside her belly so that it will stay there.
Don't let it out.
She can never let anything out.
Author's Notes
I hope that you've appreciated this protracted slice of alienation and isolation.
In case it wasn't clear, Luka, upon learning Marinette's identity and that of Adrien, advised her to disclose herself to Adrien which he would naturally perceive to be another apparent "betrayal" by his Lady, with Viperion, Rena, and Carapace intimately familiar with "the girl behind the mask." You can imagine, then, how he and Kagami reacted given that his lies, most of which pertained to his double life' were, in their view, the cause of their relationship's dissolution.