Chapter Text
Chloe: Where did you go? You just disappeared.
Kagami stared at the text message and signed under her breath. What could she say? How could she tell this woman that she was in Charles de Gaulle airport, watching her Fiancé tell the woman he loved that he couldn’t see her again.
Kagami had been wrong. It was Marinette, not Ladybug. It was Marinette, the girl from the day Kagami had akumatised, the girl that Adrien had insisted was ‘just a friend’. It was the girl he had gazed at during the party, the girl he had danced with while Kagami looked on.
“I’m marrying Kagami…...” Adrien said in a trained monotone while his Father glared at his son with angry eyes. “I’m sorry” he continued. Kagami could make out a loud voice on the other end demanding answers, which made Adrien wince.
Gabriel lowered his head with a scowl, and Adrien hung up after a final apology.
“You see, son. This is how we take responsibility. Real men don’t run away from their promises. Give me your phone”
Adrien obeyed and Gabriel went through his contacts, methodically deleting every number that wasn’t him, Natalie or Kagami. After he was satisfied, he turned the phone off and gave it to Natalie.
“I will give you back your privileges when we return from Japan” he said.
Kagami expected Adrien to rebel against this, to shout that he wasn’t a teenager anymore. But Adrien stayed quiet, as he had the whole day, only speaking when his Father asked him to.
It scared Kagami. He was like a robot waiting for a command. She wished she could ask him what was wrong, why he wasn’t standing up to Gabriel, but the two of them had been under constant surveillance since their awkward reunion.
“Could I please go to the Toilet, Father?” Adrien asked in the style of an obedient schoolboy.
“Be quick. Our flight leaves in 10 minutes” Gabriel replied.
She looked to her own phone, confronted again by the text from Chloe. It wasn’t much better than her other messages, mostly from her Grandmother, calling her a degenerate and a whore. There was a small collection of voice messages from her Father, that she had only manged to listen to the first two.
She could remember very clearly the last time her Father had been this angry at her. She had come in last at a fencing tournament. Her Father had been oddly quiet the whole journey back, but once he closed the front door, he screamed at Kagami forcefully. Then he beat her. It had been one of the most terrifying experiences of her life.
She had been seven years old.
She’d cried so hard that she thought she had gotten rid of all of the water in her body. That had just made her Father angrier. He said that if he had had a son instead, he wouldn’t have to deal with all of this crying shit.
That day had been the last time Kagami had ever cried.
She didn’t want to go to Japan. Her stomach clenched every time she thought of it. Her family, who had opted out of the wedding in France, were there. Once their flight landed, her Father wouldn’t be a disembodied voice anymore. He’d be a real man, with real hands.
“Natalie, fetch Adrien. He is taking too long” Gabriel said, with the smallest hint of impatience creeping into his tenor.
But leaving was so hard. Her family weren’t just fencing champions, they were tycoons. They were powerful.
And against her better judgement, and even though they hurt her, she still loved them.
Kagami: I’m a coward.
-
Marinette struggled to feel any air filling her lungs as Adrien abruptly disconnected. Her mouth was agape in shock as Alya got to her feet, and began to pace around the room while her friend remained frozen.
“This doesn’t make any sense. There’s something wrong” the dark-skinned girl declared.
Marinette finally found the capacity to lay down. It had been so a long journey of a day, with so many moments of panic, relief and then heartbreak that she could barely cope anymore. She just wanted to feel calm again.
“There’s something fishy here” Alya said, but Marinette wasn’t concentrating. Her focus was instead drawn to a spark of movement coming from a pile of dirty laundry. Tikki’s black eyes peaked out from the folds of clothing, glaring at Marinette desperately.
“Alya, could you leave me alone. Please?” she asked.
“Girl” Alya protectively placed her hands on the girl’s shoulders. “I am going to get to the bottom of this, even if I have to call every fashion magazine in Paris”
Marinette thanked her and quickly escorted her out of the apartment. Tikki jumped out of her hiding spot as soon as she could.
“Chat Noir is trying to contact you” she said.
“Ok. Ok. Ok.” Marinette said, trying to calm her nerves. “Tikki, Spots on!”
After half a minute, Chat Noir’s dishevelled face appeared on the communicator.
“I haven’t got much time.” He talked rapidly, not pausing at all. “I need you to find a girl called Marinette Dupain-Cheng. ‘Dupain’ like bread, then C-H-E………”
“I know her” Ladybug interrupted. On the other end of the call, she heard a bell ring, then the sound of an announcer calling for first class boarding to…. Ladybug didn’t catch the name of the city.
“Are you at the airport?” she asked. Was Adrien leaving already? She could feel panic rising in her throat.
“I need you to tell Marinette that I love her very much, and I’m going to come back for her and I’m going to find a way out of this……….” He was cut off by a forceful knocking from in front of him.
“Adrien?” a voice demanded.
“I have to go now. Just tell her, please.”
“Are you ok?” Ladybug asked.
The knocking grew louder, and the voice, which belonged to a woman, was more and more fraught. Chat Noir assured her that he was coming out, before whispering to the communicator.
“I know who Hawkmoth is”