Lost in your Arms

Her

(A/N) You ever write something and realize you hate it when it's over? Not like sad that it's over but just how...bland it is. (Don't worry, this is not the end just yet!) I don't know. Maybe it's just a writer's mentality thinking their works are never quite as good as they are made out to be.

"If you could go back and do it all over again, would you?" she found herself asking one night as they leaned against the balcony of someone's house late at night.

They attended a party of a friend's, both deciding that the talking got too loud. Paris was quiet at the time of night, the lights did not seem quite as bright.

"I don't think I would." he thought of his mother's kind voice and gentle touch. "I find myself to be the blame of her death but a part of me knows that I could not be farther from the truth."

She swallowed, struggling to find the words. They drank a little bit of alcohol that they both snuck into the bowl of supposed punch. Their hands lingered far too close to each other.

"I would have told myself to be more confident and open." she told more to herself than him.

He turned to face her fully now, brushing back a strand of her loose dark hair. She looked beautiful standing there with the faint golden glow from the house behind them.

He leaned in finding her doing the same. It was only a brush of their lips when they kissed yet it sent both of their cheeks on fire.

"I like you just the way you are."

Awaking from a distant memory was far sweeter than the one he lived now. When he and Marinette were just shy of their seventeenth birthdays, they kissed underneath the summer sky.

Back then it seemed so much simpler. Now it was only a distant memory, almost as if it were a dream altogether.

His mother sat beside him, reloading her pistol silently as they drove back to his shared apartment. They actually stopped to drop her off at a hotel first.

"Where were you all these years?" he dared to ask.

Luka was still wearing his dress and ridiculously long heels, arms wrapped around himself as Marinette offered him a makeup wipe. The police had come and locked the mansion from the outside thanks to the blonde woman who identified as Emilie Agreste.

Locking away all of the famously known global crime syndicates made the news that night late while others slept. Newspapers frantically typed out the news and several parts around the world celebrated.

Adrien did feel like he belonged to partake in such frivolous activities.

"I couldn't." she replied simply. "I did it to keep you safe, chaton."

"How?"

Emilie sighed deeply. "Others were out to get me, knowing my weakness was my family. More specifically, you."

"What about dad?" he knew it was not the best idea to have the discussion of his lonely childhood in a rented car surrounded by a group of people. "Did you ever love him?"

She waited a while before responding. "I did."

"But you left us. Left me." he could hear his voice breaking.

Her eyes seemed to have lost that signature shine. "I had to keep you safe, chaton. If anything happened to you—I could never live with myself."

Marinette gripped Adrien's hand comfortingly. "You were a successful actress. How did you find the time to be hunted by those types of people?"