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She had brought pastries to patrol.
His stomach writhed at the thought of calories, but he took one just to please her.
She picked a Danish, so he took the apple tart.
It was the first time he had seen her eat, he realized.
It was odd to see her bite into the pastry. It was silly of him, he knew, but he had never considered that she had to eat. He had never even begun to entertain the idea that she may succumb to the needs of the commonwealth (like him)
She had always seemed so ethereal a creature, it was odd to humanize her after so many long years of goddess-worthy worship.
She was always the one with the plan. The one with the power to cleanse the world of all evil (even if he had the power, he would probably fail). She had always seemed so wise, it was as though always she knew what to do and when to do it so good could prevail. Everything about her plans was perfect. Everything about her was perfect.
He was not. He could never be. He was destruction; He was the chaos she fought so hard to be rid of, disguised as her partner so she would have no choice but to accept it.
She took another bite of the sweet.
He didn’t know what to think. He had stopped eating months ago. He couldn’t remember the last time he had a full meal. He told his friends it was for modelling. He had told Ladybug he had almost passed out all those times because of pressure and stress in his civilian life. It was a half-truth, that one. He had pressure, all of it self-induced. It was not, however, isolated to his Agreste persona. He pressured himself into starvation because he just wanted to be like her. He just wanted to be ethereal, powerful, wise, perfect.
She caught him staring. He covered it up easily with a pick-up line.
That was something he was perfect at. Cover-ups. Lies. He always lied. It was instinct by then. Maybe, he often thought, he was almost built for this job in the sense nobody would ever catch on. His default by then was to make some sort of stupid excuse. It did not matter if they knew he was lying; He was a powerful enough public figure that anyone would seldom dare question his word.
He was a liar, He was chaos. Evil.
He could never be good.
Not like her.
Maybe, though, he could try to be, if not a partner, a sidekick.
She finished off the pastry with a final bite and stared at him with an odd expression on her face. He realized with embarrassment that he had yet to touch the tart.
I’m not hungry right now, M’Lady. Too focused on your beauty.
But he did not deserve it.
He did not deserve to stand in a soggy puddle if it was next to the pedestal she stood upon.
She poked him on the nose. The lingering touch burned him, and he fought the urge to scratch away any remnants of her that remained on the skin.
It felt like her finger held so much more power than his entire being it was swallowing him alive.
I’m heading off to go to bed. School night, y’know. Get some rest, Kitty Cat.
She needed sleep.
Slowly, he started to realize she was human.
But it did not matter what she was. A human, a goddess, a 5, 000-year-old ladybug.
For he would never be any of that.
He was nothing. He was destruction. Plague. Death. He was turmoil and lawlessness.
He was a monster.