CROSSOVER AUs| You can’t fix a broken heart, her grandmother told when Marinette was young and had ask why the older woman why she never remarried.
“You can forgive here,” Gina Dupain had pointed to her head. “And you can tell yourself every day that you forgive him, that all is well. And maybe you do. Maybe not right away, like you tell people but eventually… you do. You move on. You find some kind of peace. But that doesn’t mean your heart’s forgotten. Especially during the worst of it, when it’ll remind you every day just how much you’re still hurting.”
The silver haired woman had look so dejected, so cynical compared to her usual chipper, charming self that it left the little girl stunned.
“Until one day, it doesn’t,” Gina continued. “And yet, your heart’s not the same. You’re not the same. No matter what you tell yourself. Sometimes, you’d swear it’s just a giant scar on your heart. Because at least that means it’s healed; beaten up, bruised, and permanently disfigured but healed. Other days when you think too hard about it, and you are walking through memory lane; you can just barely admit the truth. That you can still feel every jagged edge, sharp angle still there from a shattered heart. And once on a very blue moon, you admit to yourself the truth; you can’t fix a broken heart. It’ll always be broken. Love has consequences.”
She looked Marinette deep in the eyes, “The trick is learning to live with it. Learning that a broken heart doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.”
“Broken… but still good,” Marinette quoted Lilo and Stitch.
Her grandmother beamed, “One of the hardest things is the world, sweetie, is to not let that broken heart stop you. You can cry. You can be angry. You can vengeance on the entire world. As long as you never let it stop you from living.”
“And loving?” Marinette asked. “You learned to love again.”
There was a pause. A thoughtful look. And then a sigh, as Gina finally answered, “No, I never fell in love again. I could never trust the same as I did before. Never managed to figure out how to love with all of my heart like I used to when I was young. And it always felt wrong not you; but that’s just me. I learned to love myself, though. And that is the greatest thing you can ever learn. Love yourself.”
Marinette had been nine-years-old at the time and hadn’t quite understood what her grandmother had been talking about. But she never forgot, the cold look on her grandmother’s face and the sorrow in her eyes.
It was only years later, when the biggest liar to ever walk the planet proved that not all villains are easily defeated, when her friends had all turned their backs on her, when the boy who she swore she was going to marry someday was more of a cowardly frog than a prince, when even her parents bought the fabrication of Marinette being a bully, a thief, a jealous liar that Marinette finally understood. Because not only had her heart been broken, but it had been shattered.
Marinette couldn’t even go to Fu as the man had used the last of his power in a fight against Hawkmoth because Chat Noir never showed up and Fu refused to give out Miraculous to people Marinette didn’t trust so the turtle had to fight. They had won but Marinette swore she’d never forgive Chat Noir for not showing up and costing a good man his life, and Marinette her mentor.
Master Fu’s last act had to strip Chat Noir of his ring and name Marinette the new guardian. Before he faded, he warned Marinette that some people weren’t worth fighting for. Sometimes, a hero’s first priority has to be to save themselves.
However, even then, Marinette had refused to give up. She kept trying to get her friends to listen, even when they made it clear they weren’t her friends anymore. Most didn’t reply to the texts anymore. And the ones that did, Alya mostly, ridiculed her; scorned Marinette’s very existence.
