The drop of blood on her finger felt like a reminder.

And Marinette had to wonder if Damian was staring at the needle now, verifying endlessly his promise that this wasn’t a dream. Because, looking down at the stationary point of red on the tip of her finger, held aloft in perfect coagulated suspense, Marinette wanted to believe that reality sometimes lived up to her dreams. That while heroism didn’t need a reward (seeing Paris reknit itself every time she shouted “de-evilize!” was more than enough) sometimes people got what they wished for and not just what they deserved. That what she’d done earlier against Unaloner and Hawkmoth, what she’d done standing against every akuma, meant something to whatever higher force of good arranged things that she got the miraculous gift of existing in the same world as Damian.

Part of her had to wonder what he’d done to deserve the gift of existing in the same universe as her, since obviously she’d be making sure whatever it was he got a properly improper reward for it. But Damian would tell her that when he was ready, the same way she’d tell him about Ladybug when she was ready. It wouldn’t change much, because Damian wasn’t interested in Ladybug. He wanted the ordinary baker girl, part and parcel.

Marinette didn’t know how she knew, she just did. Just as certainly as she knew that if he wanted all of her, he was going to get it. Including the parts of her she let shine as Ladybug, but were always a part of her as a person. Of course, she was also going to get all the parts of Damian, including the slightly more solid ones. Yes, she was going to get those parts repeatedly, as many times as it took for him to pay off the gift of her parts, or for her to pay off the gift of his until they lost count of the ledger and had to start over and over and over again.

A girl could spend a lifetime trying to balance those accounts, if she were lucky. And Marinette had always been bad at numbers, so it might take her a little longer than a lifetime to figure it out.

Marinette inhaled, feeling herself rise with the uplifting exhilaration of this victory, the contented strain of the fight, the exuberant lust of their separation, the clean satisfaction of her existence in this moment.

In the anticipation. In the certainty.

Damian was waiting, there was no doubt. Marinette felt more than just physical need, because there was more than just a physical need in her. All she’d had to do was give herself space to find it. She felt certain of this connection. Certain of him. All that remained was anticipation of his presence, his hands, his mouth, him in sharp lines and edges all pressed against her curves until there was no distinction where the lines began and crossed and ended.

Marinette exhaled, letting go of everything else.

Everything except that certainty.

Her mind felt calmer than it had in a long, long time. And, yes, Marinette knew her frenetic flittering distracted state would be back eventually. It was just the nature of the beast, you couldn’t shackle the runaway trains of thought that slowly gained steam every time she started spiraling into her thoughts. It made life difficult at times. Because she could flip from one thing to another so seamlessly she almost didn’t notice it happening until she was lost. But sometimes all the rails merged together and those trains linked up into a singular point of focus.

And when that happened, Marinette’s brain felt like a glacier. Silent and still, but moving all the while. Inexorably carving a pathway, a frozen river that nothing, no stray thought or doubt or ramble could stop. Slowly chugging, building steam until she became unstoppable and inevitable as she raced toward her destiny. Because she wasn’t trying to juggle three or four different things at once or fighting off intrusions from ideas that skipped in and out. She was just present, completely immersed in one thing.

Even her intrusions were helping her now, working with her mind. It was less a dissonant pounding and more a harmonious chorus, every thread woven together in a tight knit so fine it was almost seamless. Like the stitching she did with her favorite needle, the one Damian had unwittingly grabbed in his determination to prove his existence, the one most designers wouldn't touch because it was so dangerously fine they simply preferred machine work. But while the stitches might be almost too small to spot, Marinette knew powerful things came in tiny packages. And she didn't mind making something just for herself, putting a signature woven of delicate threads onto her designs.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Making her mark in invisible ways like the mark Damian had left on her neck, on her mouth, on her. Invisible or not it would be with her forever.

The threads of her thought were each individually tiny, but woven together they were strong enough to support her decision. She knew precisely what she wanted. She was entirely immersed in it, no stray threads in sight.

And as for the one thing they knotted up to? It was tempting to say Damian, but Marinette knew that wasn’t really true. It was also tempting to call it the sweetness of victory, but she’d set that aside with her breath. No, she was immersed in herself.

Her body’s anticipation. Her emotions, her feelings, herself. From toe to tip and back again, every piece of her.

Just the plain old baker girl’s heart, wholly committed.

So, because choices required actions and Marinette knew exactly what she planned to do she made her first movement as a new woman. Like being born and reborn, a switch from the Marinette-that-was to the Marinette-who-is, this new girl so uniquely certain of her wanting. She let her finger move, barely, hardly, almost imperceptibly, to the point of being just enough for gravity to work. It was drawing her down. To where Damian was.

The drop of blood rolled off her fingertip. Marinette caught it with a curl of her hand, basking in the way the light speckled off the red shell like the dots on a certain familiar bug. She let it sit in her palm for a moment before tilting her wrist and allowing it to keep traveling down. To where it chose to be. To who it chose to be with. It hit the rooftop and just kept sinking, vanishing into the crushed rocks that made up the flowerbeds. It might have just been her imagination but the roses seemed to be a little more distinctly red, like the wings of a ladybug, as the droplet faded away.

If she believed in magic, she might wonder if it could fall through the roof and down into the room below, all the way to a needle somewhere beneath. Marinette, of course, had promised she’d only believe in something as miraculous as magic if she saw it with her own eyes. So if, if, she believed in magic she’d probably be smiling right now.

The smile on her face was creeping, slowly growing as she slipped through the door and traversed the stairwell before navigating the hallways (throwing an amused look at the janitor's closet) until she was just outside the photoshoot room. And then she was inside, staying at the edge of vision as she swung through the empty space until she found herself staring at an unremarkable, ordinary door.

In the background Marinette registered Dick noticing her and Kory stopping him before he could wave her over. She let go of the image, it wasn’t important right now.

No, just the door was. It was, after all, just a plain old door. The door handle was very ordinary. Nondescript and easy to overlook. The kind you might find on the door to a corner bakery with a plain, ordinary, baker girl inside. There was nothing miraculous about it. Absolutely nothing memorable. A lot like her earrings, actually. By themselves, not interesting. But with one phrase… one turn of the knob… the world would become miraculous.

Her smile was across her entire face now, having split over the bounds of her mouth and worked its way up to her eyes. It was like the flooding of a river, rising above and carving new lines across her as the joy flowed across her in a steadily quickening current that led through the door. A waterfall, the flow buoyed her onward, a flip in her stomach as she reached for the handle, like looking over the edge and being caught in the moment before the water started to fall. Like the closer she got the faster the water went, drawing her into a current that ended somewhere just beyond sight. Just behind the ordinary door.

Any other waterfall and that flip would be fear, but then Marinette had already fallen hadn’t she?

And she already knew what was at the bottom. Not rocks.

So it wasn’t a surprise when she saw him.

Inspecting the needle, holding it aloft in the soft light that reflected off the blood, looking away, it was just the back of him. A line across the shoulders that was far, far broader and more angular than it had any right to be into a shoulder that rotated perfectly as he carefully placed the needle down among her other sewing implements. It still looked like the exact right size for her fingers (she would be verifying later, but that was for later).

And when he turned, she could feel the water washing over him too because his disciplined face broke into a half-smirk-half-genuine-smile that could only come from the same miraculous place hers did. Washing away his own doubts, fears, and everything except the reflection of her eyes in his eyes.

And then there was a significant and lengthy exchange of communication done using mouths. Some of it was even vocal. And a small part of what was vocal was also verbal. And some of those verbals were complete, adult, sentences.

But not many.

Because some things words are incapable of expressing.

Some things are just too miraculous.