The café was small, empty, in a little nowhere town that had the unfortunate luck of being built in the middle of nowhere; somewhere in a part of England most people never heard of. The café, and the town, wasn’t the type of place you went searching for. Anyone who ended up there, that didn’t already live there, always happened upon it be accident. Usually because they were lost.
The two sole customers in café were most definitely lost. A boy and a girl.
The boy-The young man had dark hair, the iciest blue you could imagine, and a broken look on his handsome face. He sat near the window, on one side of the café, watching the rain poor down. He looked tired, forgotten, and lonely. His name was Tim.
The girl- A teenage girl, still growing into herself, had blue-ish black hair and the deepest, brightest blue eyes imaginable. She said on the other side of the café. A solemn expression on her lovely face. Her eyes sad, and just a bit red. Exhaustion seemed to have set in her bones, and held herself in way soldier who just came home from war did. She was jumpy, scared, and above all looked absolutely heartbroken. Her name was Marinette.
He was from Gotham. She was from Paris. And at that moment, there were no two more lost souls in the world.
The café owner was a kind elderly woman who had taken her tea in back to account inventory; she hadn’t seen any harm in leaving the two kids by themselves for a bit.
Tim had gotten to the café first, and had known the moment the girl had entered.
Marinette noticed the boy sitting, alone, in the quiet café as soon as she walk inside.
Neither had talked to each other. They hadn’t had the energy that day to feign niceties. However, as the rain came down harder, the lights flickered, and Billie Holiday’s Good Morning Heartache played its sweet melody… Something just came over the two.
“Running away,” Marinette asked loud enough so the boy across the café could hear her. He couldn’t have been much older than her, she noticed.
Tim gave her a small bitter smile, “Is it really running away if you don’t have a home to run from? Or if no one cares or notices you’re gone.” He closed his eyes for a moment as wave of emotion hit him. “When does it stop being running away, and starts just being leaving? What about you?”
“I think I’m doing both,” Marinette answered honestly. Her throat dry, and tears burning in her eyes. “Running away from everything, and still doing the right thing by leaving a bad situation.”
Tim nodded. He was in the same boat. “Where you coming from?” Though he figured France from her accent.
“Paris. And you?”
“Gotham.”
“No one waiting for you?” Marinette asked. He shook his head. “Me either. Aren’t we a pair?”
It went quiet. Billie Holiday still filling the silence.
“I lost all my friends to a liar,” Marinette said. “My partner, uh, teammate was five seconds from having sexual harassment charges filed against him. He got… fired. Now I have to do everything by myself.” If Tim noticed her slip, he didn’t say anything. My parents don’t trust me.” She failed to stop Hawkmoth again and again. She failed to keep her friends from falling into Lila’s clutches. She failed her parents with all her lies and excuses of where she was going and where’s been to the point where they couldn’t deal with it. Too scared and weary of what the daughter they no longer recognized had become. They asked her to leave; move out. Then it was Official Marinette had no one. Marinette was lucky her grandma had apartment in the city she never used. Or she’d have been homeless.
