True Love?

Chapter 4

Marinette reaches her house and uses the side entrance to avoid her parents. Once she makes it to her room, she takes off her shirt and inspects the wound again. She quickly takes out extra fabric she has lying around and makes herself a bandage of sorts to bind her gash. She grabs a first aid kit from her dresser drawer. Since becoming Ladybug, she keeps a full first aid kit just for cases like this. Grabbing some anti-infection ointment, she dresses her wound, and just in time too.

"Marinette!" her mom calls. "Someone is here to see you!"

"Okay, mom! One minute!" Marinette calls down. She quickly puts her shirt back on as Tikki takes all the photos of Adrien off the walls. Marinette goes downstairs slowly so as not expose her injury. She sees Adrien talking to her parents. Adrien notices her and waves.

"Hey, Marinette!" he says.

"Hey, Adrien!" she replies. "Mom, dad, Adrien and I are going to work on our class project."

"Okay, honey. Have fun!" her mom says. Marinette leads Adrien upstairs to her room, taking it slowly but not too slow to give away her injury. She sits in her desk chair and Adrien pulls up another chair beside her.

"So, I was thinking that we can blend a few different elements into the costumes," Marinette says bringing out her sketch pad so Adrien can see. "We can use a bunch of different accessories and colors from previous things that I have around here to make the costumes parts of a pair. Uh, if that is okay with you, that is." Adrien smiles and nods.

"I agree. That is a great idea!" he says. "Costumes as a matching pair would be so cool." Marinette sighs in relief and smiles at Adrien. From a corner of the room that Adrien can't see, Tikki gives Marinette a smile. "Before we get into that though, I wanted to ask you about something I saw earlier." Marinette braces herself for Adrien to reveal that he knows she is Ladybug. "Were you talking to your purse on the bridge earlier?" Marinette inwardly breathes a sigh of relief. That, she could explain away with an excuse.

"Talking to my purse?" Marinette repeats. "I mean, I guess that could be true. Sometimes when I'm flustered or stressed, I talk to myself and psych myself into or out of different things. I was probably trying to remember where I put my prototypes for parts of the costume ideas." Marinette tries to smile convincingly but Adrien doesn't fully believe her. There were too many signs that pointed towards Marinette being Ladybug. She is always late to class, going to the bathroom when an Akuma appears during school, acting weird when asked about Ladybug, and now this new development of talking to her purse. Plus, Marinette even looks like Ladybug without a mask.

"Okay. That sounds fair enough," he replies. He would have rather told her that he didn't believe her, but he needed a way to catch her in case he was wrong. If he was wrong, he would be revealing himself to someone that wasn't his partner and he didn't want to put his friend in danger.

"Was that all you wanted to ask me?" Marinette asks. Adrien nods. Marinette shoots a glance up at Tikki who looks really relieved at how the conversation went down. Marinette looks back at Adrien. "Do you want to work on a sketch of your costume?"

"Sure," Adrien says with a smile.

"Perfect!" Marinette says. She reaches over to grab some paper from the back of her desk and winces, holding her side. She gives Adrien the paper and a pencil, and starts to sketch out her costume, still holding her side. Adrien looks at her with concern.

"Marinette?" he asks. "Are you okay?" He goes to place his hand on her side, but she swats it away.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. Just a minor injury from falling down the stairs," she says a little too quickly. Adrien just looks at her completely unconvinced.

"Marinette," he says. "What happened? I know it is not from falling down the stairs. That kind of wince equates to more than a fall, even if the fall was down a flight of stairs." Marinette pales and doesn't say anything. Her thoughts are racing as she tries to come up with an excuse.

"Uh, don't worry about it. Let's just get back to our assignment." She finally says. She turns back to her paper and drops her hand from her side. As she sketches, her face focuses more and more on her task. Adrien nods and goes back to his sketching. Pretty soon they both have really cool costume ideas sketched out. They look at the time and Adrien realizes that he has to go. Marinette walks Adrien to the door where his bodyguard is waiting. They say their goodbyes and Adrien leaves. Marinette runs back up to her room holding her side. "Tikki, that was way too close. What if he finds out who I am? That would put him in way too much danger! I can't... I don't... Tikki, what do I do?" Marinette panics.

"Just breathe Marinette," Tikki says. "Everything will be okay."