Dreams Come True

Chapter 13, Heading Out

Marinette's POV:

She didn't know what the time was when she finally decided to go into her room.

Although she had regained the ability to move her body, she still hadn't been able to remove the fixed stun on her face.

She walked over to her bed, and suddenly realised that Nino and Alya were likely looking for her; wondering where the hell she was. Unsettled, she selected one of her purses, also the same blue and silver as her dress, and strung it over her shoulder, putting her phone away into it as Tikki-looking very concerned-flew in as well, and walked out of her room.

Her parents were in the living room area of her house, sitting on the sofa.

Marinette snuck past them quietly and made it to the front door without being noticed.

When she stepped out into the night, the cold breeze swept over her, and she regretted leaving behind a jacket, but deciding she was already too late, didn't bother to retrieve it before she set off down the road, heading to the movies. Alya and Nino wouldn't have waited for that long, they'll probably already be there, waiting, she decided.

When she got to the bridge by the river, she thought she could just make out a black shadow on the edge of the cliff out of the corner of her eye.

Turning back to face it, she could no longer see the figure, so she dismissed it, and kept walking, looking down at the ground in front of her, still thinking about Chat Noir; how he'd hugged her; how he'd said that he loved her.

'I love you, Marinette.'

'I love you, Marinette.'

'I love you, Marinette...'

She looked up as she felt the ground underneath her change to stone, and slope upwards, as she stepped onto the bridge. She looked up to the place where she thought she'd seen someone standing.

It was empty.

She walked over to it, and leaned on the railings at the bridge's border.

The river was louder than it normally was, like it had been unsettled.

Strange.

She leaned further over the railing, on her tip-toes, leaning to see what was directly underneath her.

It was entrancing somehow, the water rushing towards her, in a steady rhythm. Luring, somehow.

She looked up to the black, cloudless sky, littered with stars, endless constellations, enthralling her. Somehow, they were sad, as if they'd lost something; the angels themselves had lost something. She felt a strange aura of sadness envelope her; loss and despair.

The stars themselves were sad.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

She looked around her, at the silent road, on the footpaths, at the shadows cast by the trees, anywhere out of reach of the piercing lights that were spread out at irregular intervals along the sides of the roads.

Then she looked down, at the riverbed, at the water above it, raging and roaring, sweeping past her, then at the land on the sides of the river, then she looked into the water itself, into its deep and dappled blue depths.

And just below the surface of the water, was a black figure, barely visible with the water surrounding it.

And before Marinette could think, she was running onto the side of the bridge, and dived straight into the cold depths of the water.