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“Do you think Oblivio broke my superpowers?” Ladybug inspected the thick red and black beaded bracelet, knees tucked up to her chin and back pressed hard against the car’s polished body.
He snorted. “I’d be concerned if you got something obvious.”
For an amnesiac, Ladybug was a fast learner. There was no reason for that to shock Chat Noir, of course — Ladybug was an unstoppable force.
Though unstoppable wasn’t immune to setbacks.
Oblivio played dirty. He had leapt onto a lorry upturned behind Ladybug. While she was stooped over, fiddling with her lucky charmed sticky note, Oblivio cackled, and shot her.
Chat Noir jumped forward before he could even call her name. He may have not been quick enough to push her out of the way, but he was quick enough to stop her collapsing right below Oblivio. She fell limply into his arms, eyes rolled back. He was too busy hoisting her over his shoulder and carrying her to a rooftop to make sure he wasn’t hyperventilating.
Which he was. A detransformed, amnesiac Ladybug woke up to Chat Noir doubled over in front of her and panting with tears.
Ladybug revealed her identity in the most unexpected way. She approached the hunched over stranger in a catsuit, put a dainty hand on his back, and asked if he was okay. And he looked up without a second thought, tears pricking his eyes, to Marinette Dupain-Cheng.
He had done all he could to not throw his arms around her. She was safe , she was awake — but she didn’t even know his name, and although he wasn’t too familiar with first impressions, he guessed an unanticipated hug wouldn’t make a great one.
She had questions. A lot of them. Some he couldn’t answer, some he didn’t want to — where do kwamis come from? being the former, and what happens if you know my identity? being the latter. She collected the data she needed and came to an unwavering decision — she would help him take down Oblivio, no matter what.
“We’re a team, right? We’re meant to be together,” she had said. He had to turn his eyes to the skyline so his foolish heart didn’t give him away.
He peered around the car. Oblivio was at the end of the street, firing up at chimneys, litter bins, restaurant windows — anywhere, Chat Noir realised, where he might be hiding with Ladybug.
“I believe in you, My Lady,” he said, eyes trained on a lamp post Oblivio blasted out of shape. “You’re the smartest girl I know.”
She spluttered. “Don’t say things like that while I’m concentrating.”
He cracked a smile, and pulled himself back behind the car. “Why? Can’t resist my a-purr-mations?”
Ladybug didn’t jerk away when he leaned in. He wouldn’t kiss her — not unless she said he could — but he did revel in the flush creeping up her cheeks. He could almost feel its heat on his skin.
This would ruin him, he already knew. Every time Marinette would so much as stutter, Adrien would forever remember her Ladybug rouge.
“You aren’t helping,” she murmured.
“Aren’t I?”
“Let me do my work.”
“This never usually bothers you.”
“I usually don’t have amnesia.”
It wasn’t a wishful thought — Ladybug flicked her eyes down to his lips, stared at them for a moment, and gulped.
Perhaps Chat Noir would have kissed her then, if she’d only sat still long enough. But she rose to her feet, and, bending her knees to stay hidden behind the car, assessed their enemy.
“Of course!” she exclaimed. “We bunch the bracelet up”—she demonstrated by balling it up in her hands and tying a knot—“and — see how it’s the same size as where he’s shooting from? I’ll stand to the side, throw it to you, and you hit it in using your stick!” She grinned, clutching the balled up, polka-dotted bracelet.
He was sure of two things: Marinette was the most amazing woman on earth, and his stomach hurt with how bad he wanted to kiss her.
“This isn’t too far fetched, right?” she asked, and dropped her smile. “I wish I knew how our regular plans were...”
“No! This is perfect, I swear.” He clasped her hand around the bracelet. “You’re just incredible. You lost your memories and you’re already coming up with plans that’ll save everyone.”
She looked at their joined fingers and blushed. Chat Noir wasn’t sure whether it was right for him to do these sorts of things, or not. Ladybug wasn’t afraid to put him in his place when he went too far, but he supposed an amnesiac wouldn’t want to seem rude in front of a stranger — to her, they only met an hour ago.
But she didn’t even try to move her hands away. “Say, Chat Noir?”
“Yeah?”
“Are we… you know…” She glanced away playfully. “We’re dating, aren’t we?”
His eyebrows shot up.
He could’ve said yes. Looking at her blush, wondering how hot it would be on his lips, feeling the want in her fingers as she clasped his — Chat Noir could have lied, could have said yes, and spent fifteen minutes living his dream come true. He considered it, but only for a second.
He couldn’t deceive his lady like that.
Pulling his hands out of hers, he sighed. “We aren’t. I’m sorry I made you think we were.”
She deflated against the car. “Oh.”
He watched her from the corner of his eye. “I am in love with you, though,” he said. “I guess you should know that.”
“Oh?” she pressed. “And… I really don’t feel the same?”
He shook his head, shoulders hunched.
"Wow." She looked down at the bracelet. "I must have really bad standards."
He chuckled. Maybe he shouldn't have, especially since with her memories, she would have never let him, but Chat Noir reached out and stroked her cheek. “I guess memories make things complicated.”
He didn’t think to move his hand, not even when she froze — breath hitched and eyes wide — and when he did think to move it, she leaned into his touch. Ladybug let go of the bracelet to cup the back of his hand, and looked up at him with a little sigh.
Staying like that would have been perfect. His hand on her blushing cheek and a love unspoken, yet so obvious, between them.
“Ladybug, Chat Noir, we know you’re here somewhere.”
She jumped away from him, scrambling to her feet and peeking out of the car windows to the other side of the street.
“He’s getting closer!” she cried. “We won’t be able to defeat him if he’s right in front of us!”
She had a point. Her lucky charm would only work if they were above Oblivio — on the ground, he was already four feet taller than them.
He took hold of her wrist. “Just follow me, I know the area.”
Together, they stood up straight. Oblivio zeroed in on them immediately, bounding up to them with large, inhuman steps that crossed half a car each stride.
Then, with Ladybug in tow, Chat Noir ran in the opposite direction.
He almost forget to let go of her once she matched his pace — partly because he loved how his fingers wrapped so easily around her, but mostly because Marinette despised running laps in P.E. Tikki charged her with stamina good enough to not only keep up with him, but take out her yo-yo and spin it at the same time.
It was a generic Ladybug trick. But it was different now that he knew it was Marinette.
Two vans parallel parked on either side of the street caught Chat Noir’s attention.
“The left,” he told her. “I’ll take the right.”
She nodded, eyebrows furrowed, and threw her yo-yo towards the side-view mirror, and hauled herself up. He had an eye on her while he took his position, watching her squat down with the balled up bracelet in hand and her mouth pressed into a determined line. Seeing her then, Chat Noir could’ve believed the amnesia was all a farce. The only evidence he had was having watched Oblivio hit her, and the fact she thought she was in love with him.
His heart tightened just a bit.
Oblivio raced down the street, flinging cars and and lamp posts out of the way with long, drawling blasts. He was getting closer.
Ladybug shot to her feet. “Now!”
As soon as the bracelet hurtled towards him, Chat Noir swung back his stick, and smacked the beads with flawless aim. They flew, without even a millimetre of mistake, into Oblivio’s blaster, lodged in comfortably and choking every shot he tried to make.
Chat Noir could do the rest with his eyes closed. He jumped off the van, summoned his cataclysm, and brushed it against Oblivio’s hand. The contraption fell to pieces.
And even though she never remembered doing it, Ladybug purified the akuma perfectly. He could only stand back and watch, bracelet in hand, as she stripped the butterfly of its evil like an expert — like herself without amnesia.
He came up to her with the bracelet. “You still have one more thing.”
Ladybug took it, and passed it around her hands. “So, when I throw this,” she said, “I’ll forget everything from today?”
He nodded. Tried not to think about sitting with her behind a polished red car with his hand on her cheek and her lips close to his.
She scrunched up the bracelet. “Okay. Then… I want to do something.”
Chat Noir was about to step back and let her complete the last thing she’d remember, until Ladybug stepped closer. She kept the beads in her fist when she rose to her tiptoes, and even when she closed her eyes, even when she crossed a distance that she’d been maintaining for months, it still hadn’t sunk in.
It was when it was over that he realised.
She stopped kissing him too soon, but he was too numb to pull her back. All he had was the aftertaste of her mouth and the smell of her perfume fogging up his brain.
And he wanted more. He wanted to kiss her until he was dizzy — not numb — until her lips pulsed so hard she’d still remember his mouth after she threw her lucky charm.
Gently, she rested her forehead on his. “I hope I fall in love with you someday.”
Numb. So numb. He didn’t even feel the words fall off his tongue. “I love you so much.”
But the words were true. The truest he said that day.
She slipped out of his embrace, and brought the bracelet to the surface of her palm. “ Miraculous Ladybug!”