Red Strings And Markers

o n e

He looked down at his arm, noticing that the green ink had disappeared from his forearm. He was hoping, praying, that maybe he would get a response before Plagg were to notice.

"Adrien, you're not expecting a reply, are you?"

This made the blonde's shoulders jump and he quickly pulled down his sleeve, shaking his head. "Of course not! I was just checking that I didn't get anything!" Adrien Agreste chuckled nervously.

The black cat kwami narrowed his eyes at the boy, humming suspiciously before going back to his piece of camembert.

An invisible red thread connects two people who are destined to be together from the moment they are born. This string can be stretched or tangled, but it can never break. Despite the time, the place, and despite the circumstances, the string will never break.

As the gods tied these red strings to the pinkies of everyone, they were given a special form of communication - once the mates grow to be the age of fifteen, the soul mates are brought even closer together through the power of being able to talk to each other through marking their skin.

As for Ladybug and Chat Noir, they were destined to meet and become partners to fight akuma crimes in Paris, therefore a red string was predetermined with the true identities of Ladybug and Chat Noir. But fate had other plans and decided that they could not know each other's true identities, their kwami's have set rules for their communication.

"You know better; you can't send any messages once the new day starts." Plagg says, munching on some cheese as Adrien got prepared for school.

"There's a patrol tonight, so after patrol, you can talk to each other if you want." Tikki mentioned before she went into Marinette's purse to head downstairs.

Marinette listened to her parents the day of her fifteenth birthday as she was told of the new form of communication. Her mother showed her by picking up a pen and writing a small love note on her forearm and her father showed his forearm, and lo and behold, the same message was being written on his.

"Who knows, you could be lucky. Your soul mate could be close to you, or the two of you could be far apart. Whatever the case may be, the two of you will be destined to meet, despite whatever circumstance."

Marinette was thrilled - she was hoping to run upstairs to her room that night and draw all over her arm to determine who and where her soul mate was, but as soon as she was about to, Tikki stopped her.

"Tikki? What's the matter?" Tikki remained silent as she floated in front of Marinette.

The two of them just recently had joined forces a couple months ago and she already met Chat Noir. Marinette wondered as her kwami stood before her before her features dropped into disbelief.

"No... Tikki, please, don't tell me that... Don't tell me that Chat Noir is who my red strings are tied to!"

Tikki hesitated to respond before she nodded and Marinette gave an exasperated sigh. "I'm sorry Marinette." Tikki quickly started. "B-But there is more than just one string of fate! I was destined to be paired up with you, so we have a string between us too! Just like Chat Noir has a string with his kwami too! Red strings doesn't necessarily mean that you will fall in love, it's just that you two were destined to meet!"

Marinette tried to imagine herself trying to fall in love with Chat Noir - the flirty, handsome, pun loving cat - she quickly shook her head.

"No." She told herself as she headed to school that day. "The only person I would love to have my red strings tied to would be -"

"Adrien!" Her friend, Nino, called his friend who was coming out of his car. There he was, the blond boy who looked like an angel, the popular model, the one whose pictures she had all over his room, the one that she wanted her red strings to be tied to.