Composure (A Miraculous Ladybug Fanfiction)

🕧 Can't Let it Get to Me 🕧

Sunday's natural light shone into the dark room through a round window high up on the wall. Innocent butterflies took flight, filling the room like white confetti.

"Dark wings, rise!"

A masked man stepped into the beautiful rays, contaminating their purity. He had a new trick up his sleeve, and the effects of it would befall the very next person to speak of their precious heroes.

Tick tock, tick tock.

A perplexed bluenette sat on her bed, legs crossed and mind focused intently on a discombobulating difference. The digital display of her phone read one time, but her pocket watch portrayed another. Four minutes it had been since she had started comparing the two. Marinette's eyes flickered from one to the other.

After the fifth minute materialized on the screen, her gaze met ten in the past on the stopwatch. She blinked several times, dumbfounded. Ten minutes back? That can't be right... She rubbed her eyes and stared widely through the transparent glass at the hands on the timepiece. The seconds ticked by, continuing as if nothing had happened.

It'd been a whole week since her little interview with Alya, and her friend had taken the time to create a checklist of the possible Ladybugs based off of the data she had.

"It could be anyone in Paris!" the ombré had exclaimed that Friday after school as they walked down the front steps of Collège Françoise Dupont. "But she said I'd know immediately when her best friend finds out, so obviously this 'best friend' is who I have to find first."

"I guess." Marinette had sighed, fisting the timepiece in her pocket. Should I turn it back?

"That's it. I'm erasing this list. You're helping me make a new one of everyone I know." She had grabbed the bluenette by the hand and dragged her the rest of the way to the bakery.

Her mother's voice resonated up through the floorboards to greet her ears. "Marinette! Could you please be a dear and come downstairs?"

"Okay, I'll be right there!" Marinette shoved the enigma in her pocket and dared to jump all of the stairs from her bed and straight to the bottom floor of her room. She stuck the landing, finally, and wide triumph spread across her lips as she rose out of a crouch.

However, she couldn't say the same about her leap from the edge of the trap-door opening. Her feet slipped on the edge of the bottom step, sending her off balance and crashing her head into the bookshelf. She rebounded and landed on her bum. The hardcover-bound pages toppled off their wooden perches only to bounce with painful thumps onto her scalp, and mere milliseconds had passed before she was buried in a pile of books.

"Do you need help?" her father asked. He stood by the railing, holding a tray of croissants. Tantalizing scents of sugar and the sweetness of bread filled the air.

It was clear she did, but she decided to handle it on her own. "No thanks, Papa, I got this!" she replied with an air of determination before mumbling, "Or at least I think I do." Marinette moved a hand to rest on her forehead, and she began to push herself off the ground. Her socked feet found no traction on the floor, and soon she was scrambling to get a hold onto something, anything. The bookshelf seemed adequate (although it sent a few more books on a nosedive), and she bared a sheepish smile, holding up a finger. Wait a moment. Give me like five tries to get this right.

Her father watched awkwardly as she picked up all the books and slowly put them back in place.

The last one found its way onto the shelf, guided by her hand. "Okay, I'm..."  She looked down after catching a glance of light out of the corner of her eye. "...done."