Earthquake

Epilogue - No earthquakes are scary to us, when we're together

Three weeks has passed from the Hawk Moth's "defeat". Happy news were officially announced to the public three days later, but the villain's identity was concealed. The same day, most of the Paris inhabitants, probably called by Alya, walked through the city's street making a parade in their honor. Marinette was feeling guilty while seeing their engagement, knowing that she did almost nothing and if not for their foreign friends, nothing would go as planned, but she couldn't go telling the Miraculous secrets, so she was only gritting her teeth and smiling happily to every person walking by. At the beginning of the second week, she and Cat Noir announced suspension of their activities until some bigger problems will occur. The time has come to abandon protecting the city and take care of their own family.

Once again, having a rich and popular boyfriend paid off, because, thanks to this, they could transport Lou to the closest facility, in which he was about to spend the next months and heal from his obsession, without unnecessary witnesses. The boy was more than willing to cooperate and it really made everyone happy. Clearly, healing for his sister was the best motivation. Despite that their parents didn't get the permission to visit, yet, they weren't wasting time, scavenging every corner in the search for their son's things hidden everywhere and putting them in a free room.

Marinette for a couple of hours was telling everyone what she got to know while being under Akuma's influence and listening how the heroes were using her discovery to cleanse the Hawk Moth's hideout from the shadows and losing only to the final boss, that was herself.

'I always knew that you're amazingly strong,' Adrien summed up the story, massaging his stomach as if he was reminding a shadow of a pain that he received from her. 'But it was horrifying how easily you beat us all.'

In the middle of the second week, Félicite managed to make a gate to the other dimension and because of this they had to say their goodbyes to their guests, however they promised to meet again, someday. Don't forget that they agreed to go for a victory ice-cream.

Paul, as he resigned from the army, decided to try in the modeling career and was employed in Gabriel's firm with arms wide open, what ended in a lot of emotional tears. After all, it's not every day that you get a job from your idol, that you were admiring from birth. As far as they knew, he was perfect, and his knowledge of clothes and everything related to the company and fashion shows led to him being quickly transferred to the marketing team.

Just when they thought life was getting back on track and they started worrying about falling behind in school again, they got the biggest shock they've ever experienced in the last year. The day started as usual. She woke Félice up, who was asking with big eyes for pancakes with chocolate, so, not bothering to change into anything more dressy than a short T-shirt, Marinette went downstairs to the kitchen and greeted her father, mother and Chloe, who was sitting at the dinner table. Just after crouching to pick a frying pan out of the cupboard, she noticed that something was wrong.

'Chloe?'

She jumped on her feet, forgetting that she's leaning with her head inside a cupboard, which resulted in a spectacular bruise on the back of the head and then a slightly less pleasant slide on the wet tiles, that resulted in a not so gentle landing a couple of meters further just under the stairs, from which Adrien was just walking down. The boy stopped suddenly, seeing the unexpected obstacle, and then shot forwards to help her up.

'What happened?' he asked. 'You haven't had morning accidents like this lately.'

'I have hallucinations,' she mumbled, rubbing her eyes. 'I had to be sleeping too little, because of catching up to school,' she laughed under her nose. 'I thought that I saw Chloe on the couch.'

'What?' the blond lifted his head up, quickly guiding his sight to the right place and then backed up a step while pulling her closer. 'I think I do too. Maybe we should get back to bed?'