In All But Name (A Soulmate AU)

II

Tante Annette visited sparingly, but whenever she did, it was guaranteed that she dropped life-changing bombshells, but this time what she came with was not news but the creeping realization of just how scary the Soul Mark system could be.

Annette had a particularly busy life ever since she moved to Rome when Marinette was nine. But the second Marinette expressed her serious love of fashion, Annette gave her her work email so they could message back and forth and Marinette could get inside scoops on the Italian fashion industry.

It was a surprise when Annette showed up right before Marinette's sixteenth birthday, laden with expensive gifts from Italy, her hair dyed purple and five kilograms heavier from wine bloat.

"Yoo-hoo!" Annette greeted from the front door of the bakery, her red-framed glasses down the middle of her nose, her hair darkest at the top and practically lilac at the bottom, bags of gifts hanging off her arm and a hastily packed suitcase at her feet.

Marinette dropped the pan she was cleaning and rushed to give her a hug. Sabine and Tom came out of the kitchen, wiping their hands, wearing matching frowns of confusion.

"Anne, you didn't tell us you were coming," Sabine greeted uneasily. "And what have you done to your hair?"

Annette started stroking Marinette's head. "Surprise! I'm overdue for a visit and figured the best time would be to stop by my favorite niece's sixteenth birthday."

"I'm your only niece, tante," Marinette laughed.

"Yes, you are, and this why I've brought you this! Happy birthday!" Annette dropped several of the gift bags to take out a brochure from her bag. "You're old enough to leave home, I presume."

It was a brochure and an application for a fashion student internship for Annette's company where she could learn first-hand from several seamstresses and tailors who worked for the biggest names that were showed here in Paris Fashion Week.

Annette pulled her back to get a good look at her. "Look at you, you're practically a woman now. Have you found your boy yet?"

Embarrassment burned her cheeks as she thought of turning down Nathanaël, Chat's joking flirting and Adrien, beautiful, unattainable Adrien. "No, tante."

"Careful, if you don't find him around now then you never will," Annette said with a forced, hollow laugh.

Marinette forced her own nervous laugh, tugging down the sleeve of her right arm, covering Félix.

"Back to the matter at hand, what do you say to this opportunity? You can start in the summer so you can have that in your experience when you start admitting applications for universities next year," Annette added.

"Really? Maman, can I?"

Sabine jabbed her thumb to the back of the shop. "Anne, can we talk?"

Tom continued about his business in the kitchen once Sabine and Annette left. Marinette rushed up the stairs to the spot in the stairwell where everything echoed up and kept an ear out for their conversation. It wasn't that Marinette wanted to go — she would love to but she was holding out for internship under Gabriel Agreste — but she also couldn't go. Her answer would have been different a year ago, but now she was Ladybug, Paris needed her.

"What's going on with you?" Sabine whispered. "You don't answer me for months then you show up out of the blue and ask to take Marinette?"

"For a summer. Kids spend summers with relatives all the time."

"Yes, but you never mentioned this before, or even asked. You haven't seen her in three years."

"And now I want to make up for lost time."

"What is this really about?"

"I just told you."

"Annette!"

"What?"

"Would you just tell me?"

They squabbled over Marinette for a good minute until Annette declared, "My applications for adoption both here and in Italy have been turned down."

"Oh, Annie..."

"I missed my chance having my own kids, now I'm too old to even consider it with any guy who'll have me, and no one wants to give me a kid and all my friends in the office have been married for ages, are getting married or turn up every other day with rings on their fingers or telling us all about how they met their One on a midnight jog and —" Annette stopped and sobbed loudly.

"But what happened to Armando? Weren't you two going strong?"

"We were, just like I was with Cesare, René, Guion and Michel. It's all fine and I start getting attached then some cunt ten to fifteen years younger than me waltzes in with his name on her arm and they drop me and all our time together for her!" Annette practically shouted, voice heavy and shaking with sobs. "I give up, I spent all my life working and trying to have a good social life and each time I think I'm getting closer to that perfect family life you slipped and fell in, it all goes to shit."

"Annie, it can't be that bad."

"What would you know? You found Tom the minute you turned eighteen, you didn't have to wait, date, search and try everyone with his name then give up and try others and fail with them too," Annette sobbed. "It's not fair, why does a stupid mark on my skin get to ruin my life?"

Marinette had heard enough, she crawled the rest of the way up the stairs to her room and settled into her bed. Staring at the ceiling, at the paper cranes and stars she had hung up there long before Ladybug, she sighed heavily. "Tikki?"

Tikki flew out from her spot by the bed. "What is it?"

"You're magic and old. What do you know about this?" Marinette asked, offering her hand.

Tikki curiously took hold of her hand and checked the Soul Mark. "It's an old part of this universe's magic, first started appearing in lands that had alphabets and then, as civilization grew, they would appear to everyone, everywhere."

"Did the Ladybug before me find her One?"

Tikki set Marinette's hand down without an answer. That, in itself, was answer.

She turned on her side and tried to sleep but couldn't stop seeing that name on the inside of her wrist. There were so many things Marinette wanted from this world, she wanted to succeed, to get praise and recognition for her effort and work, to see it in shops and on people, and she wanted to see Paris and it's citizens safe and happy. What she didn't want was to end up like Annette.

She wouldn't. She surely couldn't. Could she?

Adrien instantly filled her thoughts again, and she fell asleep to scenarios in which she had his name in full, a plain black ADRIEN AGRESTE printed on her skin and woke up twice as depressed as she was before.