IF ONLY. marichat | ✔️

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A/N: comment what you think, vote if it's swaggy

-barcelony

Chapter One: Just a Stupid Cat

Big ugly sobs pour out of Marinette onto all of Paris. It's been three months since the painstaking day that she found out Adrien and Kagami are together. What hurts the most is how easy it is to compare herself to the girl and all the similarities they have. Where do they contrast? Kagami's confident, strong, and, apparently, Adrien's type. 

France is even prettier at night; the moonlight gleaming on the water, the lights of the night owls sparkling across the city, stars glowing in the purple hazed sky. This made it all bearable. Knowing that when she's at her lowest point, the night view could put her at ease. The calm that overtook her as she howled out her pain was probably the only reason she was able to continue functioning, these visits on her balcony. Color her pathetic.

Fake smiles have become her specialty, learning to mask her emotions to Alya, her parents, and her classmates. Ironic considering she already wore a mask to protect the citizens of Paris. Marinette would never admit this aloud, but she's fallen into a depression doing the same mundane things while watching her golden haired heartbreaker dally around with her doppelgänger. Honestly, the only one who understands how pitiful she's become is her kwami, Tikki. 

"It's going to get easier," she reminds her.

"I know," Marinette lets out a dry laugh, wiping her puffy eyes.

Tikki tells her this all the time, unsure how to comfort her. Marinette wishes it was easier. More than anything, she'd like for the glass ripping her heart into pieces to go away. She wishes that every time she pictured Kagami and Adrien together the agony didn't pulverize her insides. 

But it did.

Tikki flies into Marinette's room, quickly muttering Incoming, finding a place to hide. Marinette, too caught up in her anguish, doesn't pick up on her kwami's sly movements. She might as well be inebriated, the way she let herself lose control to the hurt burning deep within her. The reason for Tikki's disappearance becomes evident when a black suited heroine sits perched on her balcony. 

"What troubles you, m'lady?"

Her shoulders sag. "Everything."

"Really? Your entire life is a catastrophe?"

Marinette rolls her eyes dramatically. 

For a moment, she was ready to vent out her frustrations but she should've known that a silly cat wasn't the one to go to. Yes, the idea of laying all of that sorrow and distress onto a complete stranger sounded appealing, but she wouldn't be made a laughingstock in the process. She was a mess as it was, he didn't get the right to worsen the wounds. She turns towards the exit, her first foot down the ladder.

"Hey, hey, hey," Chat Noir says, following her.

"What?" She snaps, tears threatening to return.

"I-I-I-"

"What's that, cat got your tongue?" 

Taking a crack at the cat, oddly made her feel better. 

"Oh, that's how it is? You're stealing my thing?"

A smirk tugs on the corners of her mouth. 

A real smile, she hadn't done that since...

"Yeah, I do it better."