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verfound · 3 years

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WIPWed: Festering Folder Edition: Unsolicited Advice

Ok so I misjudged how many there were/how many could be answered together, soooo this is the last one for today! @mintaka14 wanted to know about "Unsolicited Advice", which...I really need to finish up oh man. 😂

I think I started this last October? Maybe September? I shared a bit of it back then. It's focusing on Anarka and Marinette. Marinette has recently broken up with Adrien and is struggling with the breakup (or more why she dated him in the first place, how they broke up, and how she had treated Luka during/since). She finds herself at the Trocadéro, struggling to find some inspiration, when Anarka finds her. Marinette's been avoiding the Liberty, and Anarka for the most part knows why, so they have a heart-to-heart over how First Loves are sometimes just Stepping Stones, how a First Love doesn't have to be the Last Love, and Have I Ever Told You About Boarding School? (The angst is lessened by Anarka telling her about how she met Jagged at boarding school, how they dropped out/ran away together, how Jagged was her first Big Love, but how ultimately loving Jagged made her realize her real Big/True Love is freedom.)

I don't think I've shared this particular conversation before, or if I did I think it was only a SSS of it...

I had this all queued up and ready to go, the snippet selected, when you got me working on it again and Dammit Min here have some more of what I posted Sunday.

“I’m sorry,” she said, closing the sketchbook and setting it down beside her. She sighed and laid her hands on her knees, flexing her fingers in a way she’d seen Luka do when he had too much nervous energy and no guitar to relieve it with. “I…I’ve been kind of a wreck lately.”

“Understandable,” the Captain said with a nod. “These things take time, lass. Broken hearts don’t heal overnight. Anyone who’d expect that of ye clearly never had a heart themselves.”

“…what’s that say about me, then, if I expected it of myself?” she asked quietly. The Captain chuckled and offered her the drink again. She shook her head in a polite refusal.

“It says ye’re human,” she said, shrugging as she took a swig. “It says ye want to be through it. He was yer first, aye?”

Marinette wondered what it said about her that all she could do was shrug. The Captain leveled her with a knowing look, and she hung her head before picking at the cuffs of her capris.

“He was yer first,” the Captain said. Marinette looked up, frowning as her eyes roamed over the plaza before them. It was a beautiful day. A normal day. She hated that she didn’t feel very normal.

“He was…what was expected,” Marinette finally said. When the Captain raised a bushy eyebrow over her red glasses, Marinette sighed and toed the steps before her. “Did you know, when he first joined our class, I didn’t like him? I didn’t even know him. All I knew was that he was Chloé’s friend, and that was enough to know I wouldn’t like him. But then…then he was nice to me, and I…I got so stupid over one kind gesture. I didn’t even know him, but I was convinced I was in love with him.”

“The heart be funny that way, sometimes,” the Captain chuckled. Marinette pursed her lips and shook her head.

“I still didn’t know him when we started dating, not really,” she sighed. “It’s like…it’s like there was the Adrien in my head, the one I was convinced was perfect and I was destined to be with, but then there was…Adrien. And Adrien wasn’t as perfect as I had always made him out to be. He wasn’t real.”

“And there be the rub,” the Captain said. Marinette sighed, nodding.

“There’s the rub,” she agreed. “Adrien wasmy first big crush, but…can I honestly call him my first love? I don’t know if I ever actually loved him. Not like I love…”

She stopped, her mouth snapping shut with a click of her teeth. The Captain’s eyebrow lifted again, and Marinette’s grip tightened on her knees. The Captain looked back out over the Trocadéro and finished her drink. When the bottle was empty, she leaned forward and hung it between her knees, spinning it idly by the mouth for something to busy her hands with.

It was something Marinette couldn’t help but notice, the way the older woman couldn’t seem to sit still even while being still. The way excess energy seemed to thrum through her like a plucked string, constantly moving and going and being. It was something Luka shared with her – something Marinette shared with her. It was also something she had never noticed in Adrien, who was so used to rules and keeping his place and had never been filled to bursting with a creative desire so strong you just had to get it out or you’d explode.

She wondered if that was her answer, right there. If you were supposed to fit with your Person, why had she never fit with Adrien?

“First loves be tricky like that,” the Captain finally said, tapping the glass bottle against the stone steps. The sound reminded Marinette of her bangles, the clicking of her rings, of wind chimes glinting in the sun as they moved with the breeze. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, pulling it into her lungs and holding it there until it burned. “Me first was a useless lagabout. Still. Gave me two wonderful bairns, so he can’t be all bad.”

Marinette started at that, her eyes popping open as she turned back towards the Captain. The Captain’s eyes were crinkling around the edges with her smile, distant and warm as she looked out over the milling crowd. She knew about…of course she did. When the Captain had finally come clean with Luka, after that akuma had forced the truth from her…Marinette had been the first person Luka had gone to. But even then, the Captain had always played those cards so close to her chest. She never spoke about Luka and Juleka’s father, not if she had any choice in it. He was part of her past, and the Captain had always been more focused on moving forward.

Marinette said nothing. She didn’t know what she could say. For her part, the Captain just tapped a slow, tinkling beat on the glass bottle with her rings. The silence continued to stretch, but there was nothing uncomfortable about it. The Captain would talk when she was ready, just as she knew Marinette would.

“It’s funny, when ye’re young,” she finally said, her fingers still tapping at the bottle like she was picking at old strings. “Ye think in such strict, narrow ways. Life be in black and whites, and ye can’t imagine it being any other way ‘til one day…it is. Ye think ye be meant fer one person. That one person be yer fate, yer destiny, and no one else will possibly compare. Could possibly take that place.”

A group of kids ran by, screaming and laughing as they disrupted a group of pigeons. She expected M. Ramier to yell at them – to see a purple butterfly flapping its way across the sky – but he just laughed and offered more crumbs to the little girl with the yellow shorts. She ran over to the spot where the pigeons were regathering, tossing the crumbs out for them and giggling as they cooed.

“But a heart’s a big place, Marinette,” the Captain said, smiling as a breeze blew through her hair. She closed her eyes and breathed it in, her fingers stilling on the bottle. “Bigger an’ stronger than ye could ever dream. Big as the sea, lass. There’s room enough fer a world o’ love there.”

Marinette swallowed and looked back at her knees. Her heart didn’t feel very big right now. It felt…fragile.

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