In a scenario where Adrien has openly rejected Marinette for Ladybug and Ladybug has likewise openly rejected Chat Noir for Adrien, and then the reveal comes a long time later (giving Adrien time to develop confusing feelings for Mari and Ladybug to do likewise with Chat). Cue an EXTREMELY bittersweet reveal.

I just REALLY wanted to write an angsty love letter. I'm feeling romantic and evil today ok sue me.


Ma Chérie


Ma chérie,

I never knew how many things there were to love until I met you. (Though of course I didn't realize until yesterday that I met you twice).

Take, for instance:

The way you kick your legs when you sit on the edge of a building, toying with the idea of jumping off. (The way you tap your leg incessantly under your desk as you write without realizing you're jostling the chair in front of you.) The way you're never afraid to tell me when to shut up. (The way you're so afraid I'll stop talking to you that you can barely speak.) The spark of a sudden solution to a complex problem when it strikes you all at once, such a raw and powerful force that I can see it breaking over you like a wave. (The spark of artistic inspiration as it wells up from some beautiful place inside you that I want desperately to visit, flinting into fire.) That you know you're beautiful and yet still manage to blush whenever I remind you. (That your shy, gentle nature precludes the idea that you could be as beautiful as I always insist.) The way you make me feel when we're alone. (The way you make me feel like I'm not alone.)

The way you think you don't love me. (The way you think you do.)

I know. I know that you must be thinking what I'm thinking. Must be trying to force all the puzzle pieces into a coherent picture, and like me, you're probably coming up short a few pieces. I know I'm sure as hell coming up short here.

I told you I loved you, but since I didn't know who you were under that mask you told me that I couldn't possibly love you with the intensity I described. (You thought you loved me, but since you didn't know that my carefully structured life was a disguise in its own right, I never believed that you did.) And you said it with such conviction that for awhile you almost had me fooled. Almost made me believe I could never truly love you unless I saw every angle of you that there was to see-until I'd been introduced to every last corner you carved in your heart when you drew that dotted line between you and yourself.

Dotted. Haha...

(Then, oh and then... then you made me believe it was possible to fall in love twice.)

Now that I know the truth, it's obvious that neither of us were ever in love with either of us. At least, not really.

On this side of the truth, it's amazing how fully I can see what we were, how we failed, how we thrived. The enormity of what we were doing. The triviality of it. This whole time when we were falling in love it was with little pieces of each other. Like the individual leaves of an autumn tree, these moments we've shared together were always from the same tree, yet never to fall all at once.

From the start, what I thought were sunrays were only glimpses in the dark, thin rays of ultraviolet flashing out from the deep in the blackest of ocean trenches. I saw the light and I wanted what I saw. I didn't know what it was; never knew what it meant or where it came from or what it would cost me to capture it. But I wanted it badly. I wanted you. (Then I wanted you too, and wasn't that just the icing on the cake?)

Same as the fish in the deep, when I followed the light it was to my downfall.

So yes, maybe you were right all along, my lady, when you shot down my declaration of love not by saying you didn't love me back but by denying the existence of my love in the first place. It stung, then, and I wanted to hate you for it. But I couldn't, and I know know you were were onto something. Maybe when I said I loved you I was talking about a mere piece of you. (And maybe when I thought I'd fallen in love with someone new, it was only with another piece.) But in the end what does it matter? Even now with the biggest secret out in the open, there are still more pieces left of you that I've yet to meet. Old memories you've yet to divulge, secret hobbies you've yet to trust me with, obscure interests you've yet to unveil, hidden fears you're too scared to share... There will always be pieces of you I've yet to meet. It's the human condition. We compartmentalize. We live in pieces. For some of us, like you and I, this fractured state of being is vital to our survival. Hell, I know it's the only way that I survive.

If that's the case, if the both of us are puzzles and all this time we've been gluing each other together... If that's the case, my lady (my princess) then when will it be enough? At what point do the pieces stop looking like pieces and start looking like a person? Are you complete yet? Have I seen enough of your heart yet to convince you that I love you? Is my love real now that I know how the pieces connect?

(There will always be pieces of me you've yet to meet too, princess. But if you like, I could start introducing you to some of them.)

I've told you before and you've never believed me, but I need you to believe, now. Believe that I love you.

(Because then, and only then, could I believe that you love me back.)

~Forever yours.


...

In case you didn't follow the abstract style, the plain text is Adrien addressing Ladybug and the parenthetical italics are for when he switches to addressing Marinette. He's not dumb enough to use both those names in the same written letter, but he knows Marinette is smart enough to catch his meaning. Poor Adrien, such a hopeless sap. Ever since that canon love poem I've been nursing a headcanon that he writes a lot or really sappy and purple poetic prose. Adrien reminds me a LOT of myself and for me, whenever I have a huge confrontation to have with my SO it's so much easier for me (as a writer) to write down everything I have to say, to make sure it all gets said. Adrien would TOTALLY do this.