At the end of the night, he walked her home. They both knew it was a good idea for her to get home, but neither of them wanted their evening together to come to an end. It was just past 23h30 when they got to the side door that led to the Dupain-Cheng apartment.
She took the rest of the container of chocolates from her bag and gave it to him. He was shocked just how many she'd made, and the fact that they were for him made his heart feel like it was soaring. "Can I kiss your forehead?" His request was hesitant, but the smile on her face grew.
"Of course, my knight," she agreed before closing her eyes. He appreciated her closing them, thanking the small amount of luck he had that she understood his need for privacy. He stepped in front of her and was struck by just how happy she looked.
Her head was turned up slightly and the smile on her face practically spread from ear to ear. She stood in eager anticipation and he removed one of the ear loops of his mask. He gave her a soft, familiar kiss on the forehead, one that she hadn't realized she'd been missing since she'd last experienced it in July.
He put his mask back on and stepped to her side, putting his hand back into hers and squeezing it softly, granting permission for her to open her eyes so that she could get inside, out of the cold air.
"I'll see you soon?" His voice dripped with an unspoken question, practically pleading for her to agree to see him again, despite him working with the villain.
"I'll do my best," she assured. She took out her keys and unlocked the front door. She walked through and wished, more than anything, that she could've turned around to say bye to him, but she knew it would be a bad idea. Like the past few hours, she looked at the blanket in the bag instead.
Marinette went up to her room with a soft blush across her cheeks. She couldn't help how happy she'd felt from the hours of spending time with Chat Noir, even if it was different than it used to be. She was having fun, she couldn't help it. There was a small niggling at the back of her mind as she thought about their evening together.
'It was our love that did this to the world.' Those words played again in her brain and she wondered if it was true. Was Chat Blanc really because of their love? Or did it stem from something more. If what he'd said that night was true, did Chat really get akumatized because of Marinette?
Marinette? Or Ladybug? Or, was it because of the circumstances surrounding it? Did Hawk Moth in that reality find out Chat's identity while he was dating her? Did the two of them dating cause 'his dad' to like Marinette less? She found herself wishing, for the first time since Chat Blanc's defeat, that she could remember more.
She didn't know if remembering would do her any good, though. Even if Chat Blanc didn't actually have anything to do with Marinette, what good would that even do? She had wanted to tell him about his akumatization for years, but she'd constantly talked herself out of it. A decision she'd since come to regret.
She understood that even if Ladybug had told Chat about it, he still wouldn't be able to talk to Marinette about it. She recalled back to when she'd found the underwater Ladybug that had crumbled to pieces. Ladybug was stepping toward where the Cataclysm had come from, right? What about that Hawk Moth?
She tried, again and again, to remember if Hawk Moth was stepping toward the same area as Ladybug. If Hawk Moth really was Chat's dad, Marinette supposed the discovery would be as good of a reason as any for her minou to get akumatized. Why wouldn't he have been akumatized when he'd learned in this timeline, though?
He said her name. She was Ladybug and he'd said Marinette. That had to be one of the important differences between the timelines. This time, when he'd lost Ladybug, he'd still had Marinette. That time, he had lost both of them at once, somehow. She wondered what could have caused the discovery.
She also wondered what that Marinette knew. Did she know her partner's identity? If that Marinette had heard Chat refer to the villain as his dad, would she be able to do anything about it? That thought process was starting to grow unsettling, so she opted to try not to think about it any further.
When she got home, her parents were already asleep, abiding by their usual 22h00 bedtime. She went up to her room, not hungry after having her fill of popcorn at the movie. She took the blanket out of the bag and removed the tags before tossing it over her bed, excited to use it to keep her bed and heart warm.
She got into bed, tired from how much she'd been walking around with him. As she laid there, she did her best not to overthink their evening together. She didn't mean to consciously notice the smaller details about him. While she couldn't look at him more than a few peripheral glances, she felt like she still managed to learn a lot about him.
His hair was long, long enough at least that she'd seen him push it out of his face a few times while they walked around. Whenever he did, she caught a glimpse of his arm, covered in a warm-looking sweatshirt. It didn't look bulky, but she supposed she couldn't have been certain about the fabric without looking more at the details.
She recognized his scent, beyond the camembert that she suspected was caused by Plagg. Well, she thought that she recognized it. It was familiar, at least. Like it was a smell that she'd experienced hundreds of times, but there wasn't anything she could remember to specifically place it. Overall, it smelled nice, distracting from the camembert.
His voice, she recalled, was deeper. It didn't sound like the partner she was used to, but she was surprised how much it suited him. She wondered, as she fell asleep, what it would have sounded like if Adrien had replicated this pitch when he voiced Chat Noir in the movie.
