Chapter Text
Ladybug held onto him by his collar, his thin frame surprisingly lightweight for his height. She could feel her nails digging into the palm of her hand from how tight she held him.
“I’ve waited this for a long time, Hawk Moth,” she said, spitting out his name with venom. “You make me sick, you son of a bitch.” He struggled for breath beneath her grip, and grasped her wrist weakly with both hands. Ladybug curled her fist tighter around the collar of his suit. The blood pumped in her ears. She willed herself not to tremble as she held him up before her.
“You don’t know anything about me or what I’m doing, you nasty insect,” he growled under his breath. “Give me that miraculous now or there will be hell to pay.”
“You’re kidding yourself. I can’t believe you have the nerve to say that to me when I have you up here like this. Don’t you ever give up?” she whispered, cautiously keeping him at arm’s length. His fingers reached weakly for her earrings.
She felt powerful. Adrenaline raced through her, tingling at her fingertips. She had him right where she had always wanted him, and now, knowing who he was, his defeat was going to go so much smoother.
“Hand over your miraculous now, Hawk Moth, or shall I say, Gabriel Agreste?”
At that moment she heard footsteps and turned. There stood Chat Noir, but something felt … different about him. There was something wrong and while she couldn’t put her finger on it, a sense of impending trouble tugged at her heart.
“What are you doing?” he screamed from where he stood. His face flashed with anger, and Ladybug felt a hint of raw fear crawl up her throat. His feline eyes were pinpoints, far from the dilated, warm look they normally took on. He looked so desperate- They had waited for this moment for so long. What was he talking about? Before she could even begin to say her partner’s name, he interrupted her. “Let my father go.”
Your father? She felt her stomach drop, but she kept her grip tight around the man’s neck. Her eyes flashed back to him briefly. Hawk Moth’s eyes were different, she could have sworn, becoming softer, even, for a moment, but that was gone almost immediately, and with a crushing realization, she felt his foot in her side. The cobblestone road of the narrow alley rushed up to her face before she could throw her hands in front of her, and she felt her face dig into the stone. She winced as she stood up, moving as quickly as she could without looking defeated.
“Wait- Chat, please, we’ve been waiting for this for so long,” she tried to mask her disappointment. “We’ve been waiting for this, I was trying to get his miraculous back so we could finally have some peace! So that Paris would be safe, and we could move on. So you and I could move on.”
She pushed herself off the ground with one hand and shakily straightened herself, brushing her hair away from her mask. There was no return to her call, but rather, she was greeted with silence in the alleyway. She felt significantly emptier than she had a few minutes ago. Adrien? All this time it was him? The blonde boy in her class… his handsome face and soft light hair and … was it really the charismatic cat she’d taken for a lovesick fool this whole time? She shook her head as if to rid herself of those thoughts. She needed to find him immediately and right now it didn’t matter who he was. Time felt slowed. This was seriously not happening right now- not to her. This had to have been some kind of dream. Maybe, she thought with a crushing blow to her spirit, she was akumatized right now and just wasn’t in the mental space to comprehend it. Her thoughts swirled around in her head.
“Milady!”
Oh thank goodness, she thought with relief at the sound of Adrien’s voice, looking up towards the roof of the quaint apartment building before her; but what she saw was not what she wanted. There he stood, and yes it was absolutely him -- but this time, his suit gleamed with white in the light of the moon. This was not her chaton, she thought with despair, bending her knees and twirling her yoyo in front of her, creating a divide between them. She bit at her bottom lip. This wasn’t Adrien either.
Before she could breathe, he was already in front of her, swinging his baton at her side.
“No!” she blurted out before she could stop herself, matching him in combat. She hit him over and over with a combination of moves harder than she ever had before, kicking and punching as fast as she could, but he returned every move, and with more force. She grunted as his ankle made contact with her shoulder. He was a good fighter, she thought, taking herself back a few steps. This was making it harder and harder to match him, let alone defeat him. She glanced at his ring, his miraculous- it glowed with the obvious signature magenta of the akuma. Ladybug kept her shield up, backing away slowly, trying to buy herself time to think. She had to get that ring off of his delicate claws? No akumatized villain, let alone herself, had ever accomplished that. She wheezed as another blow from his baton made contact with her ribs. This was making itself out to be a lot more difficult than she anticipated, and a crushing realization dawned on her. All that time they spent fighting together had only made him that much stronger. He caught on every move she had and matched it because he always knew what was coming; this had made them so much stronger as a team, but as rivals it made him powerful and completely ruthless.
Before she could stop him he was up in her face again, and with a swift, forceful push to both her shoulders she collapsed to the ground. She reached behind her with both her hands and shuffled back, only for him to kick her to the cobblestone walk. She felt the blow draw the breath from her body and laid motionless beneath his foot on her chest bone.
“Please…” she wheezed, struggling to get his foot off of her with her other arm. She couldn’t wait now. “Lucky charm!”
She shouted it with all she had left in her as she laid beneath his foot, feeling utterly desperate. She’d given it all she had- there had to be something, anything to help her. Ladybug squeezed her eyes shut. A few seconds passed, and nothing came. Nothing was deposited in her hands. She opened her eyes, and blinked, staring at her empty palms. Fuck.
“Ha! What good was that, bugginette,” he said between gritted teeth, the nickname coming out as a harsh mockery of what once was. The air in her chest felt hot and constricted. Her brain felt completely scattered. Without her lucky charm, Ladybug was utterly useless. The harshness of the situation felt especially painful as she laid there under his foot. She bit her bottom lip, feeling tears rush to her eyes before she could stop them. She was out of options. The wonderful lady luck was out of options and she was going to lose.
“Adrien…” she whispered, trying to pry him off of her with both hands now. “I’m not Adrien, I’m Chat Blanc!” he hissed at her through his teeth. The tears streamed down her face, feeling hot against her cheeks. She felt her hands go clammy.
“Adrien please,” she said again, this time more firm. “I … I promise if you just… get off of me… we can talk about this.”
She choked through her sentences, coughing up the words one at a time. His gaze was cold and intense, staring deep into her eyes, unafraid. The crushing realization that she was losing her friend and partner lingered in the back of her mind now more than ever. She kept crying as she talked, making her speech feel jumbled. She felt so desperate. Her fingers clawed at his ankle and she tried to ignore the fact that she was trembling.
“I want to talk about this with you,” she whispered, feeling weaker by the second. “I love you so much. I never wanted to hurt you. This is just another obstacle we have to get over. We always get over all of the stuff that gets in the way.” she paused and inhaled, using one gloved hand to wipe the tears from her heavy eyes. “We’re Ladybug and Chat Noir, remember? You’re my partner and we’re a team. I love you. Please don’t let this be what becomes of us.”
“You never loved me,” he replied, his voice flat. She watched his eyes flicker for a moment. “If you loved me you wouldn’t have done that to me.”
His breathing became steadily more erratic. “You just wanted to use me to get to him. You didn’t care if I was Adrien or not because it didn’t even stop you from going through with it. You’re in this for you. Not for me. I regret everything.”
Her face fell and her voice broke.
“You know that’s not true,” she said. Before she could finish, he interrupted her.
“Cataclysm.” he mumbled, in the same flat tone. Ladybug fought back a scream from rising up her throat. His hand swirled with inky black, crawling up his arm like a snake.
“Goodbye, Lady Luck,” he whispered, resting himself on one knee, with the other foot poised over her chest bone. He raised a claw to her face and she felt the cool breeze of the cataclysm rush up her skin. A breath barely escaped her lips. She squeezed her eyes shut and took a shaky, slow breath in. One last chance to make this right.
“Adrien,” she sighed, her voice soft with defeat. She placed her hand on his cheek and he lifted his cataclysm away from her briefly in surprise. “I know you don’t want to do this. Listen to your heart. Not your head. You do that all the time anyways, remember?” Her lips parted in a small smile, and his eyes widened a little at the sight of it. “Chat always wears his heart on his sleeve, remember?”
Now, she thought, anchoring herself firmly with both hands onto his shoulders. He yelped in surprise as she brought both legs beneath her and with a swift, fluid movement, kicked his body behind her, his cataclysm crashing into the ground behind her and crumbling the sidewalk.
“Yes!” she couldn’t help but exclaim aloud. Using as much of her momentum as she could, she sprung onto him from behind, ripping the baton from his hands before he had the chance to tighten his grip around it. He looked at his empty palm in shock and turned to her to spring forward but by the time he managed to do so, the baton was in two pieces over her knee. The akuma fluttered out, glistening purple in the moonlight, and she caught it with her yoyo in one fluid exchange. Her breathing was heavy.
“Miraculous ladybug!” she whispered. The phrase felt particularly weighted on her tongue today. In front of her, the suit he wore faded from white to its signature black, from his toes and up through the ears. They flickered as they darkened and his green eyes returned to their warm roundness, his pupils shrinking a little when he saw her standing there, bloodied and bruised. His face fell and his head leaned forward in concern. He extended a hand towards her.
“Milady, what-”
Before he could finish, she had already sprung into his arms, choking out a sob. She pulled him close, the warmness of his skin against her cheek feeling familiar. Like home. Her fingers found their way up his back through his soft hair. She was lost for words. His eyes were wide with shock but he stayed quiet, instead carefully placing both of his arms around her shoulders. Ladybug could not stop the tears from rolling down her face, her smile glowing with relief. Chat Noir stood quietly where he was, looking equally as confused as a moment ago. He brought one hand to her face, strumming her earring with his clawed thumb.
“Ladybug,” he said under his breath, his face hot from embarrassment from her being this close to him. “Your miraculous is blinking. You’d better get going or that thing’s going to detransform you.”
She looked up at him wordlessly for a moment before pulling him closer. Chat felt his shoulders rise up in surprise as she wrapped both arms around him. Before he had the chance to push her away, bits of her spotted costume began to fall from her, loose scales of red and black. She let it happen.
“Marinette?”