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aidanchaser · 1 year ago

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Sometimes I think I write fic just to make cute headers.

Anyway, I also wrote chapter 3 today. Can you tell I'm avoiding grading?

Song fic based around The Butterfly Effect by FJØRA

Read chapters 1-3 on Ao3 here. Read Chapter One: Verse One on tumblr here. Read Chapter Two: Chorus on tumblr here

Read chapter three on tumblr below:

the butterfly effect when you open up your soul “Yes, Alya, I’m awake, I swear,” Marinette says into her phone as she tumbles out of bed. “I’ll be right downstairs.”

It isn’t Marinette’s fault that Vision Violette akumatized Alya’s sisters last night and a short babysitting sleepover turned into another all-night battle on the streets of Paris. She doesn’t know how Alya has the energy to be on time, but maybe Alya is still riding the high of being a hero for the first time. She certainly seemed to enjoy herself as Rena Rouge.

“You can’t tell her,” Tikki says, as if she is reading Marinette’s mind.

Marinette mumbles an agreement around her toothbrush. She can’t tell Alya that she is Ladybug, as much as she might want to. Alya is her best friend, after surviving a few misunderstandings, and they can share their superheroics, but they just can’t tell each other that they share their superheroics.

Marinette spits her toothpaste into her sink. “But once we defeat Vision, I can tell her.”

Everything will be easier then. Whenever that day comes. Marinette can tell Alya that she’s been Ladybug the entire time. She and Chaton Chique can share their identities with each other and the three of them can be the best of friends.

And maybe, if Marinette is strong enough and brave enough to take down Vision Violette, she’ll be strong enough and brave enough to confess her love to Adrien Agreste.

She swipes the wrapped gift from her desk as she hurries downstairs.

Alya is waiting in the bakery’s cafe with a raised eyebrow. “Hair?” she says.

Marinette drops her bag and Adrien’s gift and dashes back upstairs to comb her hair. She is about to tie it back into two pigtails, but the elastic goes flying out of her hand and behind her bed. She digs through her desk drawer for another.

“Marinette, you’re going to be late!” Tikki sings.

Hastily, Marinette takes her one remaining elastic and pulls her hair up into a bun, but that’s worse. That’s the old Marinette. With a pained groan, she loops the elastic around her wrist and rushes back downstairs. At least her hair is neat. She’ll bum an extra hair tie off of Alya or Mylène.

She hurries back downstairs and grabs her bag off the floor as she hurtles towards the door.

“Forgetting something?” Alya asks.

Marinette panics and runs her head to toe check—hair, face, teeth, shirt, pants, shoes, bag, phone—then she turns and sees the gift in Alya’s hands. She let’s out a startled scream and takes it back before running out the door.

She won’t be late today. She can’t be late today.

Today, she has to be brave.

the butterfly effect so long gone from the world “Adrien, this isn’t what our powers were made for,” Nooroo whines.

But Adrien ignores him. He fumbles through the drawer of his bedside table for a clean shirt. He’s moved his daily essentials as close to his bed as possible. Steps are a limited resource, and he has less and less by the day.

“Don’t go to school today,” Nooroo begs. “Stay home and rest. If you stop, maybe there’s a chance to recover.”

Adrien is foolish for getting himself into this, but he isn’t stupid enough to believe Nooroo. His mother used the peacock once and it still killed her. It may have taken fourteen years, and Adrien thinks he’ll be lucky to get fourteen weeks at the rate he is going, but he doesn’t care.

“I just have to get the miraculous from Ladybug and Chaton Chique,” he says, and pins the butterfly brooch and the peacock brooch inside his shirt. The gems disguise themselves into solid silver crests. “Once I do that, none of this will matter.”

“It does matter,” Nooroo insists. “You can recreate the world a dozen times, but the fingerprints of the old world will linger.”

Adrien’s phone rings before Nooroo’s words can settle into his ears.

“Yeah, Chlo, I’m ready,” he says as he picks up the phone. “Be right there.”

It hurts to stand, but he does it anyway. Mentally, he counts out his route: seven steps to his bedroom door, fifteen down to the foyer, eight to the front door and five to the door of Chloé’s car. Then time to sit, rest, recover, before he has to walk into school.

“I believe in you,” Duusu says in a voice that splits the difference between unreasonably naive and downright patronizing, before disappearing into his pocket.

Adrien takes a deep breath and begins the trek downstairs.

Chloé kisses him on each cheek and helps him into the car without question. If she’s noticed his slow movements or his hesitation between standing and sitting, she hasn’t said anything. He finds it a bit odd. Polite is not a word he usually associates with Chloé, but he wonders if Vision’s tendency to target people who have been hurt by Chloé’s selfishness has given her cause for self-reflection. It would be nice to know that Vision has done some good for others, even if he hasn’t managed to do any good for Adrien.

“Adrien,” she gushes, as she falls against him in the back seat of the car, “you will not believe how exhausted I am—utterly exhausted.”

“Oh?” he says, knowing it can’t compare to his exhaustion. Not only is he worn down from the fractured peacock miraculous, he’d been out late last night trying one more time to get the ladybug and cat miraculous. He’d thought a multiplication power would be the thing to finally overwhelm Ladybug; he’d been proven wrong.

“Just look at these bags under my eyes!”

“I don’t see anything there.”

“Well, obviously you don’t see anything. Do you think I would dare leave the house without concealer?”

Adrien can certainly relate, but he isn’t as eager to lament about his exhaustion as Chloé is. “Did you stay up late finishing Ms. Mendeleiev’s physics assignment?”

“What? God, no. Sabrina’s doing that for me.”

“Chloé, you can’t keep asking Sabrina to do your homework for you.”

“I have way more important things to do than homework,” she says with a roll of her eyes.

“Organizing your shoe collection is not important.”

“Not like that! Like—” Chloé hesitates, then leans against the car door. “Like, you know, important stuff,” she mumbles.

Adrien fidgets with the pair of rings around his finger. He doesn’t press. He’s got enough of his own secrets that he can allow Chloé to keep a few, too.

let the light wash over Marinette keeps her eyes on her shoes as they climb the steps of the school’s entrance. Her hair is a curtain, shielding her from the world around her. Her initial determination has condensed into a writhing mess of anxiety in the pit of her stomach.

Like butterflies.

Alya nudges her with an elbow. “I think that’s him.”

Marinette glances at the car pulling up. It’s Chloé’s car; she’s had the plates memorized for years. But sometimes he comes to school with Chloé, something she finds horribly unfair.

Though even Marinette has to admit, Chloé has been better since Adrien started going to school with them. Or maybe it’s only that Chloé has someone else to entertain her, someone who isn’t Marinette.

Chloé exits the car first, and her heart pounds in anticipation. Then Chloé turns and Adrien steps out of the car. Marinette immediately notices the way Adrien takes Chloé’s hand. Her breath catches in her throat and she buries the gift behind her back.

Alya tries to shove her forward, but Marinette balks.

“He’s holding hands with Chloé—Chloé of all people,” she hisses.

But they aren’t holding hands. Once the start walking up the steps, Adrien’s hands are on the strap of his messenger bag and Chloé is waving to Sabrina.

“You finished that psychic assignment or whatever, right?” Chloé calls loudly, unconcerned that a teacher might hear that she is cheating on her work.

Sabrina, waiting dutifully at the bottom of the stairs, tilts her head in confusion. “Er—you mean physics?”

“Oh, whatever it is, you know what I mean,” Chloé snaps and holds her hand out for the paper.

Adrien smiles at Nino, casually knocks his fist against his friend’s, then looks up to where Marinette and Alya are standing.

Something in his smile shifts—warms—relaxes.

let the sun come closer There’s something different about Marinette today. It takes Adrien a moment to realize that her hair is down.

He likes it. He doesn’t love it—he loves when he can see all of her face—but he likes it. It’s different. It feels freer, more confident.

Marinette tucks one side behind her ear and his heart stutters in his chest.

Maybe he does love it.

He hardly notices the ache in his muscles as he climbs the steps to the school. Soon, he and Marinette are on equal footing.

She stammers something at him, but he doesn’t quite hear it. He’s too busy staring at the way her lips move, at the way her eyes light up when she talks, at the blush coloring her cheeks.

Then she presses something into his hands. The paper is soft and crinkles beneath his fingers. He peels back the wrapping to find a denim jacket, hand embroidered along the lapels with a jade and pink floral design, much like the lucky charm tucked away in his pocket.

Chloé appears at his elbow and her sneer cuts through the haze that had shrouded Marinette’s stammered words.

“Denim?” she laughs. “What year is it?”

“Chloé,” he says in a low but sharp voice, and she shuts her mouth, but her upper lip stays curled in disgust.

“It’s nice and thoughtful, or whatever, I guess,” she grunts, as if it pains her to be tiniest bit considerate. Still, she mutters just under her breath, “But it’s still from Dupain-Cheng.”

“Thank you,” Adrien says to Marinette, though he can’t think for the life of him what he’s done to deserve this gift.

She smiles and his knees go weak—though he thinks that has more to do with how long he’s been standing than it does with her smile.

Marinette catches him, and it’s like lightning in his veins. It hurts where her fingers press into his but his heart pounds with a renewed vigor he hasn’t felt in years.

“Are you alright?” she asks.

He manages a smile. “I’ve never been better.”

colors take their form

#ml fic

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