Chapter Text
“Don’t be mad ok?”
Marinette peered up at Alya from the other side of the table. She frowned around the straw of her milkshake, letting it go with a light pop and sitting back upright.
“Why would I be mad?” she asked, eyes narrowing at the guilty-yet-proud look on her best friend’s face and oh no she did not like that expression one bit. It meant Alya was surprising Marinette with something; something Alya most likely thought she’d like.
“Well I invited Nino here too,” Alya explained, glancing out at the rainy Parisian sky and taking a sip out of her freak-shake (Marinette had tried one once, and the resulting sugar high had made her promise Tikki to never have one again).
When Alya didn’t elaborate, Marinette slumped back in her seat with a relieved sigh. “Oh,” she shrugged. “That’s fine.” And it was. Their Friday Milkshakes were often reserved for just the two of them, checking in on each other, keeping up with the gossip. But exam season was upon them and they were all seeing less and less of each other. Marinette couldn’t blame Alya for wanting to see as much of Nino as she could. They were together after all.
She didn’t factor in that Alya could be lying to her by omission.
The next few minutes were spent caught up in the latest school scandal (Kim deciding to put his flip flops up on the table by Alix’s food which began the start of what now looked to be another Great Prank War) when the bell above the door rang and a rush of cold air swept through the cafe.
Two people, not one, quickly shut the door behind them as they shook off the remnants of the dreadful weather.
Nino and Adrien wiped off the raindrops from their coats, playfully flicking them at each other and laughing the way teenage boys do over things others find completely incomprehensible. Alya waved them over, and Adrien’s eyes met Marinette’s.
He froze.
All at once, Marinette’s afternoon went from mundane to downright unbearable.
Her fingers gripped her milkshake so tightly, she was surprised the glass didn’t shatter. Furious, she tore her gaze away from Adrien towards Alya. “Just Nino, huh?” she hissed between her teeth as the boys approached. “Why would you do this to me?” she meant it to sound more threatening, but instead it came out more like a pathetic whine.
Alya grinned, tapping her nose. “Because I see the way you look at each other. You can cut the sexual tension with a knife. Girl I know all that ‘I hate him’ stuff is for show, you’re fooling nobody.”
A wave of pure, unadulterated outrage stunned Marinette into silence. Sexual tension? SEXUAL TENSION?! As in tension of the SEXUAL variety?!
Marinette wanted to scream. No! No, it wasn’t sexual tension! It wasn’t that at all! It was regular-freaking-tension! It was the tension between two sworn enemies! Sexual tension?! Was Alya insane?!
She didn’t have time to respond, as Nino leaned down to kiss Alya in greeting, sliding his arm around her and flushing when Alya whispered something in his ear. Marinette couldn’t even tease them, she was so rocked by the revelation that Alya thought her and Adrien’s tension was- was-
UGH.
“Is this seat free?” Adrien asked quietly.
Marinette scowled at him. “You think everything is free, might as well take it like you do everything else,” she snapped under her breath, sliding across the booth so she was pressed right up against the window, as far away from Adrien as she could possibly be.
She missed the way his face fell. Wouldn’t have cared if she had seen.
The table fell into the kind of awkward silence only achieved by people trying to pretend that everything was normal and that absolutely nobody present wanted to commit homicide.
Marinette, in all her stubbornness, refused to say one word. She had a few pretty choice ones that were unbecoming of a superhero such as herself, and it was upset Tikki if she were to use them. So, she kept quiet, staring out at the rain instead. Her mood worsened with every moment and whatever waves of anger and betrayal she was giving out must have been felt by everyone at their booth. Especially with Nino, who was trying to make jokes in an increasingly high-pitched, hysterical voice.
“So…this weather sucks huh?” Alya tried, and got the sound of Marinette slurping her straw loudly as a result.
“It kind of sucks, yeah but also doesn’t. Father had to cancel my outdoor photoshoot today, which is why I get to hang out here, which is…good,” Adrien replied, sounding cautious, sounding like he didn’t want to offend. Which was ridiculous. His very existence was an offense to her- at least his alter ego was.
“It’s terrible,” Marinette grunted. “I hate the rain,” she added pointedly, her voice littered with subtext. Alya kicked her under the table, mouthing be nice around her fist, which rested against her chin, effectively blocking her lips from view of the boys.
Marinette wanted to laugh. Be nice? Oh, if only Alya knew they were sharing their booth with a wanted criminal. She was sure she’d be singing a different tune if she’d been able to get the scoop on that hot gossip.
After another painfully long silence, Nino turned to Alya, scratching the back of his head awkwardly. “So,” he drawled out, “you wanna help me pick an ‘shake?”
“Sure!” Alya replied. Before Marinette could even blink, the two of them had disappeared, leaving her and Adrien alone.
Marinette turned and looked out the window again, her back to Adrien. She could just about see his reflection, blurred around the edges as the glass grew foggy. After all, she couldn’t trust him enough to fully turn her back on him, the way he’d done for her.
But then he began tapping his fingernails against the table. Over and over and over again. Marinette grit her teeth, mourning the loss of her milkshake, torn between ordering a new one just so she could throw it over his head, or ordering a freak-shake and to hell with the sugar hangover and Tikki’s wrath. Hell, she’d even go for wine at this point if she wasn’t dead certain Tikki would throw a total fit.
“Oh for the love of,” she grabbed Adrien’s hand to stop him drumming it on the table, ignoring the frisson of…fear? Whatever it was it made her heart jolt painfully and she all but threw Adrien’s hand from hers. “Is everything you do annoying?”
Adrien gave her a patented Chat Noir smirk and oh no, she’d done it. She’d walked into the trap. “I don’t know Princess; it certainly seems to annoy you though. Which is delightful. You’re cute when I can see your flustered blush outside the mask. Did you know it reaches your ears?”
Ok. Forget the milkshake. Marinette wanted to throw the whole glass over Adrien’s stupid head instead- lawsuits and blacklists in the fashion industry be damned.
“What do you want, Adrien? Why are you even here?” She sighed, almost letting her weakness, her exhaustion show. “This place has nothing to steal.”
Adrien frowned, genuinely looking offended. “As if I would steal from the Marrons! They’re the cutest couple in town! They make food! Where’s the harm in that?”
“There’s a harm in stealing from everyone!” she hissed, finally twisting to face him again, gearing up for the same argument they’d had a thousand times before. “It doesn’t matter if you’re stealing from the rich to give to the poor like some wannabe dude-bro Robin Hood, it’s wrong! It’s totally against everything the miraculous stands for.”
“Well maybe the miraculous rules need an upgrade,” Adrien huffed, somehow still sounding calm. But she knew him, the little twitch in his eyebrow, the glint of remorse in his eyes that he’d always kill a second later. He was agitated and Marinette knew it, but she’d long given up trying to win him over.
In fact, she didn’t know why she was even bothering.
“Excuse me,” she commanded, nudging Adrien enough so that he stood up. She caught a flash of surprise on his features when, instead of heading towards Alya like he must’ve thought, she marched for the door instead. Marinette didn’t even hear her friends’ protests, or Adrien’s even smaller one, before she stepped out into the downpour.
As soon as she was out of his presence, Marinette felt the same as she always did after they’d had one of their usual spats. A deep-seated melancholy masked by intense hatred and reproach. The rain was both cleansing and cruel, washing away her awful mood and mocking her.
The universe, she felt, mocked her.
Years ago, when she’d first gotten her kwami, she’d been so excited to meet Chat Noir. She’d been thrilled to meet the person who would be her partner. Crime had risen so much in Paris that the Guardian had decided to release the two most powerful miraculous to help temper it.
The excitement had quickly turned to disappointment, to anger, to a hurt that reached into her bones and found a home there, when she realised that Chat Noir’s way of dealing with crime was to add to it.
He claimed to be a modern Robin Hood; stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. He claimed the wealthy criminals needed to be punished too and, whilst Ladybug agreed with him that all criminals deserved to be locked away, two wrongs didn’t make a right. Chat Noir had argued back that rich people were never held accountable for their actions, so the best way to serve them justice was to take away their precious possessions and sell them, giving the money to the people they exploited.
After a few failed attempts at catching wealthy criminals too, all of them ending in said wealthy people buying their freedom in one way or another, Ladybug had almost, almost been won over to Chat Noir’s side.
But then an accidental robbery-gone-awry/robbery-thwarted-poorly ended up with their pair locked in a closet just as the timers on their miraculous wore out. Their identities were revealed…
And Marinette had been so angered by the sheer hypocrisy of the son of the wealthiest man in Paris claiming to be a modern Robin Hood, that she’d vowed to hate him for all eternity and beyond. To think! She’d once even liked Adrien, once considered him to be a friend, to be- to be-
Well. It didn’t matter what she used to feel. She hated him now and that was that.
End of story.
The second she had enough evidence to put him away, she would. She’d get the miraculous back and give it to someone who wanted to do good, and not cause a little bit of chaos for the fellow rich bastards he kept company with. But now she knew how rich people worked, she had to be clever about it, had to bide her time, had to make sure there was no way Gabriel Agreste could bail out his Golden Child.
Rain continued to fall, goosebumps washed over her skin and her dark hair began sticking to her forehead. Her footfalls were heavy, righteous and determined. She stomped her way through puddles, back to her parents’ bakery where she could at least know some semblance of peace. Perhaps she could distract herself by actually studying for an exam. For once the call towards procrastination wasn’t there. As much as she was upset with Alya, she didn’t want to let loose her anger on her friend via her phone. She knew, deep down, that Alya’s intentions were pure, even if she’d been so far off the mark she might as well have on Jupiter.
Yes. Studying for her test on Monday. Actually getting some rest. She nodded to herself. That would be the best course of action to distract herself. And maybe getting a good night’s sleep for a change.
Her parents were too busy in the bakery to notice her running upstairs to their apartment, thank goodness as she wasn’t in the mood for lectures on how the city was too dangerous to walk home alone in, and so she set her sights on getting dry and getting a good few hours of studying done.
“Are you ok?” Tikki asked a little later, perched on the desk beside Marinette’s laptop with a tiny little knitted blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a giant cookie in her hands.
Marinette let her fingers clack against the keyboard for a few moments more before coming to a stop with a sigh. Running her fingers through her loose hair, she slouched back on her desk chair and stared at the ceiling. “Not really,” she replied in all honesty.
“Meeting Adrien always throws you off,” Tikki nodded gently, nibbling a little more at the cookie before continuing. “I wish you two could put your differences aside and be a team.”
“I wanted to be! He’s the one that wants to go on his ridiculous little fantasies of criminal-heroism!” Marinette waved her arms furiously. “I don’t understand, Tikki, he could be doing so much more. He could be fighting real crime! He could be with m- he could be mi- he could be my partner!” The rejection still stung, even after all of this time. “But he chooses to throw it all away.”
Tikki put the cookie down, a sign she was about to be dead serious, and wiggled towards Marinette’s laptop, careful not to sit on the actual keys.
“Perhaps there’s a way you could fix things? I don’t agree with how Plagg has encouraged this in Chat Noir, though he was always a kwami of chaos, and I definitely don’t approve of Chat’s behaviour. There have been worse miraculous wielders though. Maybe you could get to know Adrien, instead of fighting with Chat all the time. Befriend him.”
Marinette sighed again, turning away to stare at the window.
The thing was, her and Adrien hadn’t gotten off to the best start. Three years ago, when he’d first joined the school, there’d been some silly misunderstanding with some gum and Marinette had thought he was just another bully.
But then a chance meeting in the rain had occurred, and Adrien had offered her umbrella. There had been kindness there, real kindness, and something like vulnerability in his eyes. She’d reminded him of a delicate flower, too shy to open up, too nervous to fully bloom.
A crack of thunder and Marinette had felt something rather like love.
From that moment on, a tentative friendship had been growing. But then fate had struck. She’d met Chat Noir, she’d met her enemy, and her enemy had turned out to be the guy she’d slowly been falling for.
And instead of love, Marinette felt something rather like hate.
She shook her head, shoving down all the confusing emotions the same way she’d done for the past three years. “How can I even go about befriending someone who turned their back on me before our partnership had ever begun?”
“Maybe he regrets it?” Tikki suggested softly. “Otherwise, why would he have bothered showing up to the café today?”
Her phone rang. Alya was facetiming her.
“Girl! I’m so sorry! I didn’t think you’d actually run out like that!” at least Alya had the decency to look guilty.
Marinette gripped the phone lazily, slouching forwards and resting her chin on the desk. “You know how much I don’t like him, Als, why’d you do it?”
Alya huffed, her curls fanned out on what looked like her bed underneath her. “I just think that you two…you know. I don’t know what happened back then, or what Adrien did besides the gum incident so long ago, but since I’ve been with Nino I’ve been hanging out with him a bit more and- ok call me crazy or whatever- and all jokes aside about sexual tension, I honestly think you two would be perfect for each other.”
Almost dropping her phone, Marinette let out an indignant squawk, not unlike the sound a chicken makes when it’s about to spontaneously combust. “You think we’d be WHAT?”
Now that Alya was laughing, the blush spreading across Marinette’s face went from one of embarrassment to fury. “Well come on, it’s so obvious! First, you think he’s gorgeous.”
“He’s a model!” Marinette gaped. “I said he was a model!”
“Yeah, which means you noticed him being all model-y,” Alya’s grin was almost at Cheshire cat levels and it was doing nothing for poor Marinette’s blood pressure. What was with everyone wanting her and Adrien to make amends today? She was so caught up in her sulk-fest, she almost missed Alya carrying on. “Secondly, he’s not a bad guy. He’s actually really kind- and you know how quick I’d be to kick his ass if I thought otherwise. Third, you’re both total and complete dorks. There are loads of other reasons, but I can tell this makes you uncomfortable.”
“It does,” Marinette agreed, lifting herself up if only to nod vigorously. “It really does.”
“Well, I won’t force it,” Alya wrinkled her nose, clearly not liking the idea of letting sleeping dogs lie for a change. Still, she’d grown a lot in terms of pushing boundaries over the past three years. “But I will ask you to maybe just think about hanging out with us sometime? I don’t like you missing out and I especially don’t like being outnumbered by the boys. Boys are smelly, don’t you know?”
The tension lifted off of Marinette as the pair descended into childlike giggles. They ended the call with Marinette begrudgingly promising to try hanging out with them again, as long as Alya didn’t surprise her with any last-minute café surprises.
Truth be told she couldn’t ever see herself being friends with Adrien. At this point, Ladybug and Chat Noir were pretty much sworn enemies. She despised his choices. Chat’s attempts at fighting banter infuriated her. She was certain she hated him, or should hate him. There was no way they could be friends, let alone the thing which Alya had suggested, which Marinette wasn’t even going to dignify by naming, even in her thoughts. It was pure insanity.
But she could make peace with him enough to make their civilian encounters less unbearable, for her friend’s sake, for Tikki’s too.
Yeah… she could do that.
Maybe.
She was going to kill him. She was absolutely going to kill him.
Ladybug ran across the rooftops with murder on her mind and righteousness in her soul. The sky had cleared and the moon shined above her. On the streets below, flashing siren lights illuminated her path towards the gallery.
She’d been asleep for a measly half an hour, had gone to bed far earlier than she usually did, in the vain hope that she would actually wake up feeling refreshed. That had gone to hell when Tikki had woken her up, as a Google alert had popped up in the middle of her game of Kwazy Cupcakes, to let her know that there was a robbery occurring during the middle of an art auction.
Robbing a fancy art show. The exact kind of thing Chat Noir was known for.
Just like that, Marinette’s peaceful night of slumber was left to the sandman.
Of course, she thought as the sounds of her drumming footsteps, her pounding heart and the screams of the sirens pierced her ears, of course he’d ruin everything.
He’d always ruin everything. Why Marinette had ever entertained, even for a moment, the idea of trying to be friendly with him, she’d never understand.
At last the gallery came into view and Ladybug swung down to meet the police at the front, immediately grabbing the second-in-command to assess the situation.
“The guests have been taken hostage,” the officer said glumly, and Ladybug’s eyebrows rose. A layer of frost settled on her organs, weighing her down with cold, numbing disbelief and dread. No. That wasn’t possible. Surely, he wouldn’t stoop so low?
“But Chat Noir has never taken hostages before,” she protested, confused by the thickness of the words on her tongue, how strange it seemed to be defending him. “Something’s not right here. Are we sure it’s Chat?”
“It’s always him at these fancy things,” the officer waved his hand dismissively. “We have negotiators ready and waiting to make contact. For this one, Ladybug, I suggest you stay back and let the professionals handle the negotiations. This is a very delicate situation.”
Ladybug bristled but, before she could make a protest or call him out on his patronising behaviour, the officer was ushered away.
She crossed her arms, tapping her foot like an inactive video game character. This wasn’t right. Chat didn’t do these sorts of things. He used his powers in a way that wasn’t good, but wasn’t entirely evil either! He always stole things to sell on the black market, giving the money to charity or directly to the poor and homeless. He always attacked the treasures of the richest and most corrupt people in the city, but he never took innocents hostages. The gallery was large and most likely filled with people whose only crimes included getting parking tickets or forgetting to brush their teeth one time. Not everyone there could be a criminal Chat wanted to target.
No. As much as Ladybug disapproved of his methods, as much of a hypocrite she believed him to be, she knew him. And he wouldn’t do this.
There was only one thing for it. She would have to sneak in and figure out what was going on herself.
Avoiding the gaze of police and rapidly gathering reporters alike, Ladybug snuck around the side of the building and, once she was sure she was out of sight, swung upwards onto the roof.
Only to run right into Chat Noir. Quite literally.
Unable to stop herself in time, Ladybug crashed into her foe and the pair tumbled to the ground with separate cries of shock.
Chat was the first to recover. “You know,” he grunted, “you could at least take me out to dinner first, my lady.”
Ladybug glared down at him, scrambling backwards until she was upright once more and dusting down the front of her recently upgraded super-suit, as if she was worried about catching a nasty disease Chat Noir was the sole carrier of.
“What are you doing here?” she huffed, “aren’t you meant to be down there”- she pointed down at the ceiling.
Chat Noir blinked at her. “I mean I was a guest sure, but I kind of decided to duck out once the hostage situation started.”
Ladybug didn’t know what to think. On the one hand, a small spark in her (the one she hadn’t been able to kill no matter how hard she tried) grew brighter at the knowledge that she’d been right. On the other hand- “So you weren’t a part of this?”
The look of sheer affront on Chat’s face was something to behold. It caught her off guard, did funny things to her stomach. “It’s a charity auction. I was there goading the other guests with outbids so they’d get all competitive and pay even more money. Do you really think so badly of me that I’d steal from charity? Come on Bugaboo, stealing to give to charity is kind of my whole image!”
“Stop calling me those names!” Ladybug snapped, prodding him in the chest, hating the fact that he’d grown so much taller than her since they’d met when they were fourteen. “And, for the record, I’m not an idiot! I knew you wouldn’t do something like that. But the police sure do! So, ha!” she really didn’t know what point she was trying to make, but she sure was making it.
Continuing on his mission to annoy the ever-loving heck out of her, however, Chat Noir smiled fondly. “Ah, Ladybug, so you do have a soft spot for me. Defending my honour.”
“I wouldn’t defend you or your fake honour if my life depended on it,” she growled stomping away, the wind whipping up her hair in a dramatic fashion and she preened at the idea of looking so glamourous and cool for a change, before she tripped over her own feet. Blushing, she called over her shoulder. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to stop some criminals, something you should have been doing with me from the very start.”
Chat Noir was on her in an instant, grabbing her arm. “Wait! You can’t go in there! There’re so many bad guys in there and they all have weapons and stuff. You go in there by yourself and it’ll be a cat-astrophe! What about the hostages too?”
“I’ve been in hostage situations before, I know what I’m doing,” she shrugged him off, feeling heavy in his presence and ignoring what it meant. “Just go away Chat, you’re more interested in saving your own skin, riding on some hypocritical Robin-Hood high than actually getting in danger, actually facing up to the real problems this city has, the real reasons we got our miraculous in the first place. Face it, you’re a coward, and that’s fine. Be that way. But stop pretending you actually care about me and let me get on with my job.”
Chat winced and, for the briefest moments, she was worried she’d gone too far, been too harsh. But then a blank coldness settled over his features and he turned away.
“Fine. Whatever. I don’t have to listen to this,” he walked towards the edge of the rooftop and disappeared without another word.
Ladybug felt something catch in her throat. Disappointment twisted in her chest and she sighed. The wind dropped and she bit her lip.
“I hate you,” she whispered to the air where Chat had been, turning away and getting to work. “I do. I really do.”
She found a stairway, quickly taking out the criminal in charge of keeping a lookout and hiding his unconscious body in a cupboard. Sneaking down the stairs, she opened the doors to find herself on the first floor of the gallery, a circular space rather like a colosseum. The first floor she was on acted like a balcony of sorts, making it so you could see the lower floor and the grand glass dome high above them. The ground floor below was the gallery itself, and Ladybug could just about hear the sounds of the thieves below mumbling to each other, the muffled cries of the hostages. She got low onto the ground, creeping towards the railings, keeping an eye out for any more lookouts.
Unfortunately, Ladybug hadn’t looked hard enough. Someone yanked her upwards, back into the shadows, and trapped her in his arms and wrapping a hand around her mouth before she had the chance to say anything.
Before Ladybug could even think about hurling the enemy over her shoulder and breaking his ugly face, a familiar voice whispered in her ear. “Don’t panic it’s me.”
She struggled out of his grip, her mouth open wide. “Chat?” she whispered, “What are you doing here? I thought you’d left?”
“I did,” he whispered back, nervously glancing over her shoulder, around his, and then back down to the ground floor. “But there’s too many of them. I didn’t want you taking them on your own.”
“Oh how noble of you,” she sneered, crossing her arms. “I’ve done this without you before. I can do it again.”
“Look I’m trying to help you out ok?” he sighed, scratching the back of his head sheepishly, “and that’s the thing, I never…I never got it ok? I always knew you helped stop crime but I always took you more as a friendly rival trying to thwart my schemes. My Sheriff Nottingham except you’re the good guy too.”
Ladybug rolled her eyes so hard they almost popped out of her sockets.
“But I never really understood how dangerous it was until I was a civilian in that situation ok? I never got how much you risk by doing this and I… I don’t want you to do it alone. I guess.”
Ladybug pressed her lips together, unsure of what to say, unsure if she should trust him, trust that he now wanted the thing she’d wanted for three whole years, before she’d forced herself not to want it anymore.
She looked away.
“Besides, these guys are stealing from charity, they deserve some justice Chat Noir style!” he added, punching his fist into his opposite palm with a wicked grin. “Come on Ladybug, truce? Just for one night. Then I promise I’ll go back to the old ways of stealing from the corrupt and giving to the poor and annoying you forever and ever and ever. Deal?”
He held out his hand. Ladybug glanced at it, then up to him, up to his eyes. They reminded her of storms, of umbrellas and raindrops. They reminded her of things she’d stopped hoping for.
Her heart jumped.
“Fine” she sighed, holding out a reluctant hand, praying this wasn’t a terrible idea, “For one night only.” She grasped her hand in his, shaking it, ignoring the sudden jolt of electricity shooting up her arm.
“Truce.”