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Alix detransformed and hurled her pocket watch against the nearest pillow, wondering if accidentally smashing it again would solve all her problems.
“What's wrong?” Fluff asked, zooming round in front of her.
“I almost died, that's what!” Alix sat down, still shaken. “It's never been that close before. Seriously, just... why did Ladybug give me this miraculous anyway? Why me?”
Fluff didn't respond – she had a hand up to her head, looking dizzy. Alix pulled a carrot out of her pocket and handed it to her. The poor kwami, she must have been exhausted.
“Never mind, just rest,” Alix said. “You've got it worse than me.”
Fluff simply nodded, then curled up with the carrot in the palm of Alix's hand. Looked like she was going to be out for a while. Made sense – that whole ordeal had been a lot of stress.
In any case, Alix did not want to be left alone with her morbid thoughts right now, and there was only one other person she could vent at about superpowered nonsense without giving away her identity. She stood up and grabbed her hoverboard. Time to go see a certain bug.
-
Marinette seemed to be having a rather calm evening when she opened her front door – already in pyjamas, a mug of tea in hand. It was refreshing to see her like this, her normal, grown-up, 2025 self, as opposed to the young kid who’d had to face off Chat Blanc just now, or 10 years ago. At least this Marinette had a lot more life experience. So much better at handling things.
“Hey Alix,” she said, yawning. “What's up?”
Alix pushed past into the room, closed the door, then pulled the watch out of her pocket and held it up. “Marinette. Why did you give this to me?”
Marinette blinked in a stunned silence. “I... I told you why when I gave it to you!”
“Yeah but I don't remember. I was too excited at being given a miraculous to bother listening to what you were saying.”
Marinette grinned. “How typical of you! But I'm happy to repeat myself – I gave you the bunny miraculous because your future self had already proved to be an excellent hero, worthy of having these powers. It's a self-fulfilling loop. Does that answer your question?”
“Pffff, no.” Alix dropped her hoveboard on the ground and crossed her arms. “You've said that I'm a ‘last resort' and that these powers are ‘too dangerous and strong to be wielded by the wrong person'. But what makes me in particular the right person? Surely you can't have just given this to me only because my older self told you to or whatever.”
Over a decade of being Ladybug had turned Marinette wise beyond her years. She took a slow sip of her tea before speaking. “Alix, what's really troubling you? Are you having doubts about your suitability to be Bunnyx?”
“I... I don't know.” The pocket watched felt extra heavy in her hand, a reminder of the huge responsibility she held. “Do you remember Chat Blanc?”
“Of course I do.”
“Yeah, well that just happened. I just went back and sorted it out. There was a disturbance in the timestream and...”
Marinette nodded. “Yes, yes, I remember that perfectly. You saved us all from the apocalypse that would have been.”
“It's not the first time,” Alix said. “I've prevented the apocalypse about 200 times already. But this was the first time I nearly died!”
“Whoa, really?”
“Yes! My path was almost diverted onto the bad timeline, I was literally dematerializing right there in the timestream! I thought I was a goner.”
Marinette chuckled. “Good thing I'm always there to save the day then, huh?”
“There have been times where you haven't.”
“Like when?”
Alix took a deep breath. How to tell Marinette the hundreds of bad timelines she had already had to fix, with no one knowing anything? How many times she had watched everyone she cared about dying in all the most terrible ways? How could she explain that feeling, having to remain beyond the flow of time and witness everything from the outside, only pulling the strings and interfering when nothing else could possibly be done? And if her job was done right, then no one else would ever know how close they had been to death, no one knew how she had saved them over and over...
“Let's just say you really don't want to know,” Alix settled on. “Viperion is one lucky bugger. He only sees some possible loops within a localized five-minute time window. I see all possibilities, through all of time, everywhere. Even freakin' Aspik barely saw a fraction of what I could if I bothered to look. But that particular string in the timeline is a mess, so I'm not going there.”
Marinette blushed. “You know about what happened with Aspik? The twenty thousand... whatever number it was...”
“Of course I know! It's impossible to ignore a timey-wimey knot that big. And if I had interfered at any point it would have made it a whole lot worse, trust me on that. Sometimes the only outcomes are bad ones.”
There had been plenty of bad outcomes already. When first getting this miraculous, all Alix could see were opportunities everywhere. Prevent disasters! Solve everyone's problems! Turn the world into a utopia!
But there were only so many ways things could work out. Messing with anything too much only ever had bad consequences. No wonder this power was a last resort... it was reserved for when the world had gone so bad that only bending the fabric of spacetime itself could save it. And there had been many times Alix had stood in the timestream, watching a tragedy play out through the portal in front of her with tears streaming down her face, knowing there was nothing she could do to change it without making it even worse.
And worst of all, knowing she was destined to be alone with this knowledge.
Marinette gave her an encouraging smile. “Fine. You want to know the truth about why I gave you this miraculous? It's because you're the only person I know who can handle it.”
“Ah yes. Out of all the people on the planet, you pick the weird pink-haired brat from your class. Very anime of you.”
“Oh come on! You're always so tough and brave. Remember Rose? She's a wonderful sweetheart, but she wouldn't last a day with the powers you have. None of us would. You see the worst of the worst and still come out of it kicking. Not many people could do that. Most people care far too much.”
“And you think I don't care?”
Marinette winced. “Sorry, I put that badly...”
“It still hurts to see all those bad timelines, you know,” Alix said, trying not to let despair get the better of her. She never spoke about this stuff out loud. “It hurts to see you all dying and in pain and knowing I'm the only one who can stop it, and if I mess up then the whole universe is messed up... At every point the timestream is hanging by a thread and that thread is me! I'm all alone! And none of you even know!”
Marinette was nodding, barely even surprised. “Another reason I picked you. Out of everyone, you tend to do the best more... solitary. I’m not going to sugar-coat it. Being the hero of time is a tough, lonely job, and you are both those things.”
Tough, lonely... Yeah, that, she definitely was. Hard as steel from all the effort she had gone to, to make everyone take her seriously back when she was too tiny to even hit most people's chest level. Lonely from how her friends had drifted off, her own brother gone off the rocks from conspiracy theories, never really fitting into the Girl Squad the way everyone else had, even Nathaniel deciding he had someone better to spend time with than his old best friend in a dusty museum...
“Is that why I do this job?” she asked. “Because no one else would be willing to take the pain alone, forever?”
“Yes. You are the loneliest hero, Bunnyx.”
It was true. Always on the outside of the timestream, watching, being the one responsible for making sure everyone else got their happy ending. Maybe tossing in a few flower petals for good measure.
Marinette put a hand on her shoulder. “But you still have Fluff.”
Fluff...
The little kwami was still dozing in one of Alix's many coat pockets. It was true that Fluff was always with her, at least. Unlike with the other heroes, Ladybug had given the bunny miraculous to Alix to keep for good. No need to return it at the end of the mission. Bunnyx had to be available even if Ladybug herself had been incapacitated. Ergo, Fluff was always around.
But still...
“Fluff is immortal,” Alix said, not even knowing how to explain what a huge difference it made. “I'm... I'm still human at the end of it all. I can step outside the normal flow of time but it still affects me. I still age, no matter what. Someday time is going to run out for me. I won't have made the most of my dumb unhappy life because it'll have been spent fixing everyone else's. But Fluff has all the time in the world, and she'll just move onto the next bunny miraculous holder, and the next, and the next...”
“You can still make the most of your life when you're not Bunnyx!” Marinette said. “You've still got plenty of time when you're being Alix, right? Just your normal self?”
“No. Because...” She blinked furious tears out of her eyes. “I've seen how I die... Or at least, how I'll die if something doesn't change it. And it's soon, and it's unpleasant, and I’ve tried so hard to figure a way out of it but I can't... and I thought I was going to die today, extra early, I thought I'd failed spectacularly and somehow accelerated my death, but I'm still here for now and there's really a clock ticking down to my untimely death and despite all my powers I can't do anything about it!”
Marinette didn't hesitate a second before putting down her tea and wrapping Alix in a hug.
It was impossible to stop the tears rolling. She had never told anyone before about her upcoming death – she could never burden anyone with that knowledge. Not to mention, everyone was so superficial and distant these days that they probably didn't even want to hear it. Only Fluff knew, and while Fluff was wonderful to talk about the timey-wimey things with, mortality was a subject that the kwami simply couldn't handle. Having been alive for billions of years, it must have been alien to hear of someone else's existence vanishing after only twenty-six.
At least there was Marinette. Marinette knew her identity, knew her troubles, and knew how it felt to be a superhero. All that pressure... Ladybug had to deal with it on a daily basis.
And Marinette was mortal. Just like Alix. She understood that terrifying notion of your entire life just ending in a blink.
“I know it's easier said than done, but don't think about it.” Marinette stood back to look at her. “I'll sort it out. I'll find a way to change it. Or at least make it less unpleasant.”
“Uh...” Alix winced. “There's no way to make it less painful than it's going to be...”
“Then I'll stop it altogether! I know your powers lend you to being solitary, but you're my friend, okay? I will always try to save you. I'll find a way, like I always do.”
It was true that there had been times when Ladybug had seen a solution that Bunnyx didn't. Even back as young Ladybug, good old “Minibug", she had come up with a plan to stop Timetagger when Bunnyx was starting to think she had failed.
Maybe... maybe Marinette was right. Maybe there was a way for Alix to avoid coming to a sticky end.
“And even if I can't save you,” Marinette continued, “even if being Bunnyx absolutely sucks, we'll make being Alix absolutely rock. Alright? I know we haven't talked much recently, and I guess you haven't heard from the squad or the old class much, but I'll organize something. You deserve better than to be dropped like a hot potato just for trying to put friendship first. I'll always be your friend. And I'm sorry for not being a better one.”
Alix wiped her eyes. “Yo, you're an awesome friend, don't worry. And thanks.”
“Any time.”
Something moved in her coat pocket – the next second Fluff had popped out, looking a little disoriented. “When am I? And where?”
The poor thing. In a way, being immortal must be even worse. There was never an end in sight, no matter how far along things got, no matter how time caught up with everything and everyone else. For all the bad timelines Alix had seen, Fluff had seen trillions more. No wonder she was a little crazy. Being the kwami of time had to be the loneliest fate of them all.
But then again... all kwamis were immortal. And it had been a while since Fluff had talked to another kwami.
“Is Tikki around?” Alix asked. “Fluff, I know you've been wanting to have a chat with her...”
“Ooh, yes please!” Fluff said, her eyes glowing.
Marinette smiled, picking up her mug of tea again. “I'll just go and get her for you. I'm sure she'd be overjoyed to see you again, Fluff.”
“Thank you, thank you!”
Marinette walked off, giving Alix a friendly punch in the arm as she went. Fluff floated in mid-air, happily munching on the carrot from earlier.
Truly, being Bunnyx was lonely. But being Alix? Significantly less lonely. Fluff was there for conversations about time and space and relativity and all that scientific junk, Marinette was there for existential conversations and the support that only Marinette could give...
Being the last, leftover, final straw to thwart the universe’s apocalyptic schemes wasn't all that fun. But someone had to do it. And at least she could die knowing that out of everyone in the world, Ladybug had picked her for the job.