14 August 2019

Prompt: Fairy Tale (Trope)

Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug

Character/Pairing: Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng

Rating: T / PG-13 / Teen

Notes: Selkie AU, so TBW. Selkies aren't made for staying, mates. Theirs is a song of farewell.

Let it be dark in this endless caravan

Rocked by lighting, striking metal in the sand

I'm miles from common sense, as welcome as the rain

So close to madness that I even know her name

Lay your lover's hands upon me, let me understand you know

Lay your lover's hand upon me, let me go…

"Lover's Hands" – Alan Doyle

The storms had been bad that year.

They usually were, but they were a bit worse that spring. The town hadn't seen a sunny day in a month. Most ships had stayed moored, unable to navigate the choppy waters. Homes were flooding, and just last week little Rosie McCann had been swept away in a mudslide. Those were bad days for the town.

Luka had known that going out, but there was a reason the townspeople referred to him as Old Mad Luke (even though he was barely twenty and still looked younger). Another wave hit the prow, and he grit his teeth as his ship tilted precariously. He tightened his grip on the wheel and heaved, but another wave sent it spinning from his hands. He gave a shout as the next wave splashed over him, sending him sprawling against the rail.

His lungs burned with the wind and the brine, but he was determined to make port. He could see the town just beyond the break, the lighthouse shining on the cliffs, and knew he was almost home. He heard his crew – three men, the only survivors of the eight he had set out with – screaming from the bow.

"Hold steady!" he called above the roar of the storm. "Hold –!"

Another wave knocked his feet out from under him. The next listed the ship to a dangerous angle, and the one after that swept him over the rail and into the sea.

– V –

He woke up in a cave, wrapped tightly in a blanket as his clothes dried by a fire. The storm still raged outside: he could hear the driving rain echoing against the rock, the crashing waves against the beach. The fire was small but drove away the damp, and the blanket he'd been wrapped in, though small, drove away the chill. His eyes opened, and he froze in bemused wonder at the girl sitting across from him. She was illuminated by the flames, painted warm orangey-red in its glow, but he found it too easy to get lost in the endless black of her eyes. They watched him, wide and unblinking, and he felt he was drowning all over again.

That was the first time Luka met Marinette.

She was awkward and sweet, skittish but kind. She danced around him like he was a predator and she was afraid that any misstep would leave her trapped in his wake. She'd found him on the rocks, she said. He was unconscious, washed up from the storm, and she had brought him here because the weather was turning again and she'd been afraid she wouldn't make it to town before the skies opened. She'd started the fire and set his clothes to dry so he wouldn't get sick. She'd given him the blanket for the same reason.

She had salt fish in her pack, and they ate as they waited out the storm. She lived nearby, she claimed, though he had never seen her in town. Her family was reclusive, she said. He told her he'd been born to a family of fishermen on the docks. His father had been claimed by the sea when he was just a lad, and his mother had gone mad not long after. She struck out to sea one day, and neither he nor his sister had seen her since. They heard tales, though. It was said Anarka Couffaine now sailed under the moniker Captain Hardrock, though he refused to tell her where the name came from. (She could only imagine. She was of the sea, just like everyone in their small town, and stories of the fierce pirate who scuttled her enemies' ships and bodies on the rocks had reached every port.)

She turned her back as he dressed, and when he was finished he stepped up to her and draped her blanket – more of a shawl, really – across her shoulders. It was soft, and warm, and she shivered as he ran his hands down her arms along the fabric.

"Thank you, Ma-Ma-Marinette," he said, mimicking the way she had stumbled over her own name during their introductions.

"You're very welcome," she whispered as she turned. She raised her head to meet his gaze, and he was lost. He brought a hand up to brush against her cheek, back to get lost in her hair, and neither were sure who leaned in first. All Luka knew was that he would have been happy to stay in that cave with her, but the storm was weakening and it was a long walk back to town. His sister was awaiting his return.

Marinette walked him home, and he kissed her again when they reached his door. He watched her walk away, her shawl shielding her from the light rain, and realized he'd lost his heart when he was lost at sea.

– V –

The next time he saw her was at the market. The weather had finally broken, and the streets were filled with people eager to just be out. He was there for supplies, the Liberty still needing repairs after his last foolhardy run, when he turned and she was there. Her shawl was wrapped around her shoulders tightly, covering her freckled skin from the sun. In the sun, her hair glinted blue like midnight waters. Her eyes – so black in the cave – were a cooler blue, an icy current that pulled you down.

They spent the afternoon walking along the stalls. He bought her lunch at the pub, where he was pulled into an impromptu seisiún with Ivan and Rose. Marinette watched from their table, laughing in delight as Rose's high voice rang out over the crowd. She sang a local fare about mermaids and a sailor losing his heart, which led to another about Mary Mac, which led to another about seven drunken nights, and then the one she'd written about the town cat, and on and on. The next song ended, and before he could be pulled into another he leapt over to her, high on the energy pulsing through the pub. He kissed her in front of the town, drank the joy from her lips, and as she wrapped her arms around him he thought she tasted like the sea, like freedom, like home.

– V –

His sister loved her. Juleka didn't love anyone (except Rose, and sometimes Ivan).

He loved her. It didn't take him long to realize that, amidst walks along the rocks by the sea and moonlit dances on rain-slicked streets. She fit in his life, like a piece to a puzzle he hadn't realized he'd been missing. They were barely halfway through summer before he asked her – begged her – to marry him. He knelt on the grass by the lighthouse, a ring studded with a simple pearl held up to her, and his breath caught as he waited for an answer. Her eyes darted towards the sea below, an uncertainty lingering in their depths, but when she nodded any hesitance disappeared.

He jumped to his feet and pulled her close, and as he kissed her her shawl fell from her shoulders. She shivered in his arms when it did, but thinking she was merely cold he held her tighter. He lifted her and spun them around, the shawl forgotten by their feet, their laughter carried away on an ocean breeze.

– V –

Her wedding present was a locked chest, ornately decorated with a swirling tide. He was confused when she pressed it into his hands, but she just smiled.

"It's my heart," she said cryptically. She leaned over the box to press a kiss to his lips. "Keep it safe."

He vowed he always would.

– V –

And they were happy, for a time. As they grew closer. As their family grew. First Juleka left to live with Rose, and then Marinette got pregnant. And then, a year later, pregnant again. The years flew by like gulls on the wind, and they were happy.

He thought they were happy.

But it happened, on cloudy days. Her eyes would drift out the window, her gaze lingering a bit too long on the sea. He'd sing her a song as they danced beneath the stars, and she'd hum along with a melancholy that cracked the heart. She'd shiver in the dead of summer, and no shawl, coat, nor blanket seemed able to chase away the chill. She would take their children down to the rocks, where the seals would play on the warmer days, and they'd be gone for hours as she told the wains tale after tale. Every time they came back she was a little more distant than before, and every time he feared the next would be the last.

"I love you," he whispered fiercely one night. They lay in their bed, tangled in the other, but while his eyes were tracing the constellation of freckles dusting her skin her eyes stayed on the shimmer of the sea just beyond the window.

"I love you," she said, and he believed the words, but he felt in his bones there was something she loved more.

– V –

He had forgotten about the chest.

He had locked it away, as she had asked him, and as the years passed he had simply…forgot.

Until he returned from sea one day and found it on the kitchen table, unlocked and unassuming and empty. His daughter sat at the table, drawing, while his son banged away on the bodhrán Ivan had given him for his fifth birthday.

"Where's your Mama, Celia?" he asked, ruffling her dark hair.

"Gone," she said, as if Marinette wasn't supposed to be anyway else.

And she was.

She was gone.

– V –

Juleka and Rose moved back home, to help with the children. No one ever saw Marinette again. The children still played by the sea, on the days the seals came up. If there was a dark gray seal with endless eyes that came closer to them than the others, no one ever said anything. If there were days when Luka would walk along the beach and see the same seal, if it seemed to follow him as he made his way back to the Liberty, he never noticed.

– V –

Because Marinette loved Luka. She loved their children.

There was just…something else she loved, too. Not more. Not necessarily.

But when her son had knocked the chest to the floor as he reached for his birthday present, when the hinges hit the stone and cracked and her old shawl had spilled out, she remembered.

Marinette loved Luka.

Her shawl wrapped as tightly as a second skin around her shoulders as she made the walk to the rocks where the seals would play felt like one of his hugs. The barking of the seals, a low song beckoning her ever closer, felt like his voice singing just for her in the private moments. The water lapping at her ankles felt like coming home.

And Marinette loved Luka.

She did.

She just…