Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Everyone had a soulmate.

That’s what his mother had told him, just before she disappeared.

The string that bound you to your soulmate appeared when you truly noticed them for the first time. It would fade after the first realisation, but you would always know it was there. It didn’t make sense to Adrien, but his mother had said it, so it had to be true.

He understood the day Stoneheart came back. He understood when he watched Ladybug denounce Hawkmoth, and stand up for Paris. A red string looped gently around his wrist, stretching to hers, glowing brightly before disappearing. 

Ladybug had not matched his enthusiasm, sadly telling him she couldn’t feel the connection that he did. And so he set out with a new resolve. 

To make his Lady truly see him.

Marinette’s string first appeared on the steps of the school in the rain. She watched the string fade as Adrien got into the car and practically skipped home. 

She hadn’t told anyone, her most precious secret clutched carefully to her chest. 

It hurt to turn down Chat Noir, really. He was a good friend. Maybe if Adrien had turned out to be just like her first impression of him seemed, then her string would have connected her to her partner.

She didn’t doubt that she was his string. 

But that didn’t mean he had to be hers.

Plenty of people had worked out that way. Max’s string connected to Kim, who had two, he’d excitedly claimed, one that linked to Max, and another to Ondine. It was possible for your connection to have another, and maybe not even have a string to you. 

She’d told him as such, the last time they met, and he had seemed happier when they left.

Now if only she could confess to hers.

For the personification of Luck, Marinette was truly unlucky.

Everytime she tried, something went wrong. An akuma attack, forgetting to sign her name, mixing up letters.

And still, as far as she knew anyway, Adrien had not connected with her. 

She knew it was a possibility that she wasn’t his connection. But she still had hope.

And then Lila came back, claiming that she and Adrien were fated. That he had told her they were linked, all the way back on her first day.

Adrien later admitted to Marinette, that he was fated to someone, but not Lila, not to anyone he knew.

(And that crushed her only a little)

But he never publicly rejected her, and soon she was hanging off of his arm as if she had always belonged there.

And then she lost her friends, too.

In a last ditch attempt, she went to Alya and Adrien, desperate to still believe that her friends would believe her.

She tried to tell Alya that Adrien was her string.

Honestly, Marinette? Your jealousy is getting out of control.

She tried to tell Adrien that Lila had threatened her.

Marinette, you’re taking this too seriously. They’re just a few little lies, it’s okay. Lila wouldn’t threaten you, I’m sure you just misunderstood.

She gets home from school that afternoon, and calls upon her string.

It doesn’t glow the way it used to.

Ladybug sat alone on the Eiffel Tower, her solo patrol finished early. It had been three weeks. Three weeks since she lost her last lifeline to her friends. Three weeks since her string grew dull and flat.

“Lucky charm” She softly calls into the night, and a spotted pair of shears, sharp and sleek, appear in her hands.

She calls on her string one last time, watching the thread stretch across to the Agreste Manor.

She readied the shears, and breathed deeply.

And then she cut.

The string fades to black and falls out of the sky, fading before it hits the ground.

Ladybug smiles, and swings for home, her heart feeling light and free.

Adrien wakes up suddenly, his heart feeling icy and heavy in a way he cannot explain. 

Chapter Text

It takes Kagami three weeks to catch Adrien before he slips out after fencing practice. He’s been down and despondent, absentmindedly running a hand over his wrist whenever they’ve had a break.

“What’s wrong, Adrien?”

It takes him a second to look her in the eye, longer still to respond.

“I lost my string.” He mumbles, and Kagami’s mind flat-lines.

What?

It’s impossible, she thinks, because Marinette was his string clear as day, even if the sour-faced brunette that hung off him claimed him as hers. She knows a string can break, she knows because her mother told her the first (and last) time she asked about her father and learned of how he was found in another’s arms. Her mother’s string had grown dull and then snapped, and she had never opened her heart up enough to anyone else to forge a new one, scorned by the hurt.

“Did something happen between you and Marinette?” She asks, when the silence has dragged on for too long. She expects Adrien to wilt still further, before stammering out some explanation. 

She doesn’t expect his eyes to widen in shock, nor his head to tilt in confusion.

“Marinette? What does she have to do with my string?”

“She is, or was, your string.” Kagami’s eyebrows furrow when Adrien lets out a short burst of laughter, not quite mocking.

“Marinette is just a friend!”

“Then who was it?” She asks, pushing down the confusion for a later time.

Later comes that evening, sitting at her desk and trying to shift through what she has learned.

His string had been Ladybug, as it happened. He had woken up with a start and called on it only to see it wither and die in front of him. She could not understand it, and had opted to offer what little comfort she could, and his stance was a little straighter by the time they left.

She absent-mindedly navigated to his school’s site, onto their most recent class picture, thoughts moving towards Marinette. She owed the girl several apologies. Mind made up to approach the bakery the following day, she scanned her eyes over the photo. Then again, and once more to make sure she was not seeing things.

Marinette was not in the photo.

 Kagami didn’t understand why it bothered her so much - it was reasonable to believe that the girl had been absent that day, and yet something about it seemed so wrong - the thought stayed planted in her mind until she stood outside the bakery doors.

When her mother tells her she has a guest, Marinette almost doesn’t believe her.

Three weeks ago, the Monday after she cut her string, she placed a note on Mme. Bustier’s desk and moved to the back row. 

She got a few confused looks, but nothing more. Not until her , anyway.

“Oh, Marinette! That’s so sweet of you, moving toward the back like that, for me! It doesn’t quite make up for all your awful texts, but I appreciate it!”

Never-mind she never had Lila’s number. Never-mind that her classmates no longer had hers.

She tries her best to tune out the mutinous mutterings, as Mme. Bustier unfolds her note. She raises her eyes to Marinette at the back, and she nods in return. She will not change her mind.

The new election for Class Representative is announced at lunch.

Lila won the following day.

It quickly became a routine. Arrive early, stay at the back, leave only after everyone else has already left, sneak through the back doors and slip around to the bakery. She stops using her locker after the first time someone slips an open paint bottle perched precariously inside, and never leaves her bag. Just in case.

So yes, it shocks her when her mother calls up, simple warmth in her voice, that she has a guest asking for her.

She treads down to the bakery, almost expecting Adrien of all people, and locks eyes with Kagami.

She’s come to apologize, she says, (which is confusing, as Marinette can’t think of what she’s apologizing for) and asks if they can speak privately.

Kagami waits quietly as Marinette processes her request. She’s wondering if perhaps she should have called in advance when Marinette nods and motions for her to follow.  They’re barer than she expected, a half-full pull-down schedule hanging on one wall and school and design ideas pinned haphazardly around her desk and pin boards.

She relays her conversation with Adrien to Marinette, noting how her eyebrows furrow as she mentions both his cut string and the person it had tied to.

“I’d thought it was you at first, but then Adrien had told me he wasn’t fated to anyone I knew, so I’d assumed it was another model.” Marinette explains at her quirked brow, and laughs when Kagami tells her she had believed Marinette to be his string.

“No, no,” She shakes her head, smiling ruefully, “He had been my string, sure, but recent events… darkened it, and there was no point carrying around dead weight. So I broke it a few weeks ago.” She shrugs, but there’s a pain in her eyes when she does.

Kagami then, slowly, carefully, brings up the photo. Asks about the recent events.

Marinette’s shoulders slump. And she tells Kagami everything. Of Rossi’s arrival, her first threats, and how they had eventually come to fruition. She explains how she usually sneaks around the school to avoid her classmates these days, with Rossi’s iron grip controlling their every move. She explains Adrien’s response - She can understand it, to an extent, but he just couldn’t see how badly she had been hurting. How that had been what had killed her string.

The photo had been another example of how Rossi controlled the classroom. Marinette had been at school that day, as it turned out. But she had been ambushed, by an Alix and a Kim, on her way out of the classroom door, and trapped inside a janitor’s closet. By the time she got free, she had not only missed the photo, but Alya, prompted by Lila’s apparent ‘concern’, had convinced Mme. Bustier that Marinette had intentionally skipped out on the class photo due to not wanting to be anywhere near the Italian girl. Loud cries and simpering classmates had turned into harsh glares and quiet snickers as Mme. Bustier had loudly admonished the girl for her worsening attitude, and had excluded her from class activities for the remainder of the semester, with a threat of it being extended the rest of the year if she did not apologize to the class.

Marinette is close to tears by the time she finishes, and while Kagami is not particularly adept at comfort, and new to friendships outside of her mother’s connections, she is still human, and she can feel a twinge in her chest at the sight.

Kagami leaves far later than she’s supposed to, but by the time she does so, Marinette is smiling again, and Kagami leaves with a box of pastries, Marinette’s number, and a burning desire to tear into Lila Rossi.

She gets an opportunity a mere week later.

Chapter Text

They’d been waiting, just outside the classroom door. Alix holds an arms out, and for one so small she’s strong, strong enough to push back against Marinette’s boosted strength from her Miraculous. Marinette is pushed right back into the classroom, her phone dropping to the ground screen-down. 

Lila is crying again, and Marinette catches flashes … awful words … go back to Italy …

Sabrina steps forward, and with a vindictive smirk, brings one heeled shoe down hard onto her phone. Then again. And again. Kim steps in her way when she tries to step back.

Alya starts yelling. They know what she did, supposedly, they know all about the disgusting words and comments she told Lila, how she was a stain on French resources, and she should just go back to Italy where she belonged.

“That’s..  That’s not even my number!” She insists, when they shove screenshots, so poorly and obviously edited, why can’t they see it,   into her face, but they either don’t listen or just dismiss it right away, and they continue to yell, until a louder, easily recognizable voice cuts through the cacophony.

Kagami, donned in her fencing uniform, pushes her way through the crowd, disdain painted clear on her face. She stands between Marinette and the class and points a threatening finger at Lila.

“Why would Marinette, herself of half-Chinese descent, mock someone who was not French?” Her words are clipped, and dry, and Lila blanches for a moment before evidently deciding to try and coerce Kagami to her side.

“Oh! You’re Adrien’s teammate right? You know, I know Yuko Arai, we trained together as children and I helped her win at the Summer Olympics! If you needed any pointers, I’d be happy to-”

“Yuko Arai is 46 years of age, and last won the Summer Olympics in 2000, longer than you and I have been alive. Do not try and tempt me with your lies.”

Lila frowns, false tears already springing to her eyes as the class turns in unison to this new threat.

Kagami is protective, defensive, and responds to each insult with barb and cutting words.

Marinette can only stare as someone defends her for the first time in months, and as Kagami scoffs and grabs her hand, pulling her protectively to her side, away from the mob, through the school and into a waiting car, Marinette leans against her side.

And feels a familiar, yet new, warmth loop around her wrist.

Four months pass, and Kagami and Marinette only grow closer. She smiles more often, and one month in, with the support of Kagami, her parents and surprisingly Adrien (perhaps threatened at foil-point until he understood the severity of the situation, although naturally, Kagami knows nothing about that, not at all), Marinette transfers into her academy, and the bakery upgrades their security cameras.

Kagami is given the Dragon Miraculous two months in by Chat Noir, who nervously chuckles and backs away when she dispatches of the akumatized object with her sword.

Three months in, fourteen Akumas after she first wields the dragon, Ladybug hands her the dragon to defeat an Akuma who can control the winds, using her own Wind form to disguise herself and snatch the Akuma’s purple wristband and tear it in half.

When the fight is over, she holds out the Miraculous for Ladybug to take. Ladybug stops for a moment, considering, and takes her free hand, placing it over the Miraculous, and pushing her hands back.

“You have long since proven yourself, Kagami Tsurugi. The Dragon is yours to keep.”

She holds the Miraculous to her heart, and swears to never let Paris down. Ladybug’s eyes soften, and she nods in approval. 

And that brings her to today, staring in absolute horror as Marinette is thrown back by the Akuma she just charged at.

To protect her!

Ladybug and Chat Noir hadn’t yet arrived to deal with the Akuma, a shop clerk who had been humiliated by her supervisor, and it was poor timing that she and Marinette had been caught in the store. Kagami had been torn between protecting Marinette and protecting her identity when the Akuma turned towards them, the coward supervisor huddling behind their backs.

Before Kagami could think at all of what to do, Marinette had grabbed a knocked-down clothes rail, and charged towards the Akuma.

“Leave her alone!”

“Marinette!”

She turns, picking herself up off the floor and smiles warmly at Kagami.

“It’s ok! Run, ma dragonne , I’ll protect you!”

It’s luck that Chat shows up just at that time, whispering for Kagami to run and transform, that he will take Marinette to safety. Kagami runs a knocked down partition and transforms, ignoring a tingling warmth on her wrist in her desire to defeat the Akuma.

Ladybug shows up shortly after, to find Kagami crouched next to the Akuma, purple name badge in hand. She leaves as soon as the Cure is cast, and Chat brings her to Marinette, out of breath and red in the face. 

It takes her until that night to realise that Marinette had called her her dragon. She jolts up in bed, Marinette’s name on her lips, and watches an unfamiliar red loop around her wrist and stretch off into the night. 

She doesn’t stop to hesitate, transforming and running out into the night. She lands quietly on Marinette’s balcony, peering into the window to see her arguing quietly, yet animatedly with a red, spotted Kwami.

“ Mochiron…” She whispers under her breath.

She taps on the window, placing a hand against the glass when Marinette whirls around in shock.

She taps her wrist, the red thread glowing brilliantly, and watches Marinette’s eyes follow the trail. 

When she enters, and their hands link together, the string glows a blinding white, and moves up their arms in unison, settling on their hearts.

There are still problems on the horizon, but as Kagami releases her transformation and presses her forehead to her dear fated, all she can feel is content.