Chapter Text
Chat Noir was glad the dark energy crackling around his palm didn't actually make any noise as he snuck closer to the Akuma. He might not have taken the threat seriously enough at first, chiefly because "Switcheroo" didn't sound like too dangerous an enemy, but now all his concentration was focused on the silver serving tray she was spinning.
If anything, this fight proved that the Substitution Jutsu from Naruto was a pretty good strategy. (The backstory was apparently that she was a waitress and wanted to make a rude costumer switch places with her).
Ladybug's distraction had proved pretty effective. The Akuma wasn't looking in his direction, and he didn't make any sound as he reached out his claws…
… only to stumble as the ground beneath his feet suddenly shifted. He had no time to recognize his new surroundings as he fell forward and his claw touched something. His eyes widened and he tried his best to pull back the Cataclysm's power and limit the destructive energy.
It worked, to a point. He'd gotten better at controlling how much damage he did with his power, but none at all was unfortunately not a setting that was available.
A crack appeared in Ladybug's left earring.
His insides filled with ice as he saw that, and Ladybug's wide eyed look of horror mirrored his own.
"I'm so sorry, my-" he started, but before he could finish his sentence, his surroundings shifted again. He was suddenly in free fall.
As he grabbed his baton and looked frantically around for an anchor point to stop his descent, his environment shifted again, and he was upside down, still falling. He caught a glimpse of the Akuma also falling, but there was another switch before he could find a way to attack.
He still wasn't sure where they were or where Ladybug was, and the switches just kept picking up in frequency, so that even with gravity pulling at him and accelerating him further and further towards terminal velocity, he couldn't tell where up and down was anymore.
Cats always landed on their paws of course, but right now he couldn't even be sure where any of his limbs were. He had to find a way to right himself, to slow his descent, to stop the constant switching…
Except now he was a lot closer to the ground than he'd been expecting, and the top of a pole - a traffic sign maybe? - appeared right in front of face.
Dodge was his last thought before impact and everything went black.
"Kitty! Chat Noir, where are you?"
Ladybug's frantic voice coming from some distance away was the first thing he heard when he came to.
"Over…", his first attempt came out as more of a croak, before he took a deep breath and tried again, "over here!"
His voice sounded a bit like he'd sand papered his vocal chords, but at least it was comprehensible. He pushed himself up and took stock of his surroundings. He sat at the center of a crater that had probably been caused by his impact on the ground. The mangled remains of a “no parking” sign covered in blood were next to him.
The hand he rubbed against his forehead didn't come away bloody, and he didn't feel any wounds around his head. His cat ears were bent out of shape, but perked up when he payed attention to them.
"Chaton!" Ladybug was throwing her arms around him before he'd even registered she'd showed up. "Oh my god, are you okay, I was so worried", she babbled, pressing her face into his shoulder.
"I'm fine", he said, without really reflecting whether that was true or not. "Should we get back to the fight?" He didn't see Switcheroo anywhere, but with all the destruction around the fight clearly couldn't be over yet. He finally recognized the Place de l’Etoile around them, and there was a pretty noticeable crack running up the Arc de Triomphe.
"No, the fight is over, I purified the Akuma", Ladybug said. She bit her lip looking around at the destruction.
"So… do you wanna wait with the Miraculous Cure for some… reason?", Chat ventured. It occurred to him belatedly that she was still huggin him, and he should probably be more excited about it, but he had trouble focusing right now.
"I already did", Ladybug admitted miserably. "It looked worse before, but it didn't fix everything right."
That jolted him out of his befuddlement. He stood up, disentangling himself from Ladybug and looked around more intently. Several of the surrounding houses showed signs of the fight, and there were cracks in the street running towards his crater. This would definitely cause traffic issues, but at least it didn't look like any of the buildings were in structural danger so far.
"Oh", he commented eloquently.
"It's because the Miraculous is broken, it couldn't fix everything properly", Ladybug was wringing her hands. That guilty look on her face was his fault. If only he'd redirected in time, none of the destruction would've lasted…
"I'm so sorry, my lady! I didn't… it happened so fast, I couldn't… but that's no excuse, I never should've…" A hand on his shoulder stopped his rambling.
"I don't blame you, Chat Noir. I should've thought the plan through more, I should've expected something like this…" Well that wasn't right either.
"No, if you don't wanna blame me, then you definitely can't blame yourself", he said emphatically. "Look, let's stop passing blame and figure out how to fix this, instead." Ladybug nodded tentatively. "Can we fix this?", he added.
"I… I think so", she said. "There's something in Master Fu's notes about fixing broken Miraculous, I just need to figure out how it works. And then cast another Lucky Charm, and hopefully this'll all be fixed, then."
"Okay, great, that sounds like a plan", he encouraged. Both their Miraculous let out near simultaneous beeps. "And that sounds like our cue." She still looked doubtful. "You can do it Buginette, I believe in you."
"Thank you. I should go, take care of this", Ladybug said. She swung out her yoyo.
"Right, good luck", he said before she zipped away. He grabbed his staff off the small of his back and started making his own way home. It occurred to him en route that they'd never even done their traditional fistbump, but looking at the left over cracks in multiple buildings, this victory didn't feel all that celebration worthy.
At least the affected area wasn't as big as he'd initially feared. Or rather, it was multiple spots with somewhat contained damage each. Hopefully nothing vital was broken, and everything would hold up until Ladybug managed to fix the damage.
Ladybug said he shouldn't blame himself, and he could see her point. It had been an accident, or rather a deliberate manipulation by the Akuma. He'd done his best to minimize the damage, and she said she could fix it, so he should be able to get over it and not continue feeling this weird.
But no matter how many optimistic thoughts he tried to forcefully make himself think, something was… off, somehow.
He landed inside his window with a tuck and roll and dismissed his transformation.
"Well that was not exactly a success", he observed, as Plagg darted for the cabinet with all the cheese in it. Well, one of the cabinets with all the cheese in it. Plagg's collection was expanding at an astounding rate. There was definitely more cheese there than Adrien could remember acquiring, and adding in the rate at which Plagg ate it, there was a lot of cheese of unknown origin in his room.
"Could've been a whole lot worse", Plagg said and swallowed a slice of camembert whole. "At least your head's back."
"Yeah, there is that… wait, what?"
Adrien wasn't aware that his head had gone anywhere.
"You're all in one piece again, so that's a success", Plagg said carelessly, and rewarded himself with another slice of camembert.
"I… was unconscious…"
"Yeah, cause your brains were spilled all over the pavement, that tends to knock people out."
"Huh?" Adrien felt sick, but also had a weird certainty that he wouldn't be able to vomit right now.
"Wait, you really didn't realize you died?" Plagg looked bemused. "Is that why you make such a habit of it?"
"What?", Adrien squeaked. "Make a habit of it? I've very rarely even passed out in fights!"
"Yeah, but most of those times you were also dead."
"Oh." He plopped down on his bed heavily. "That's…" he blinked. It was both news, but at the same time not exactly surprising. He knew that the Lucky Charm could bring dead people back to life, he'd just never considered himself one of those people. Or, well, he'd considered it before, but chosen not to think about it.
"Um… there, there?" Plagg offered, and patted Adrien's shoulder.
"Is that why I feel so weird? Cause I just came back from the dead?" He couldn't remember any afterlife, but that seemed like a consideration for later.
"Uh, could be? Never happened to me, can't really say how that feels. Kwami are immortal."
"Must be nice."
"Kinda annoying when everyone else isn't", Plagg said with a shrug. There was definitely more to that, but Adrien didn't think it was a good idea to pry, especially when he was busy freaking out about this himself. "By the way, what's up with your eyes?"
"What? Are they like red or something?" Adrien blinked a few times. His eyes weren't itchy or hurt, so he wasn't sure what Plagg could mean.
"No, they're… weird." Adrien blinked at Plagg. Plagg blinked back at him. "I'll just show you." Plagg floated off and returned with a hand held mirror.
Adrien took it and looked at his eyes. They weren't reddened but they were… foggy. He'd never seen anything like it before. It was harder to make out his pupils, like they were hidden behind a cloud. He poked at his eye lid with his pinky, to see if it was gunk he could make move, but nothing changed.
As he considered touching his eyeball directly to see if he could make it move, he noticed how his hand looked for the first time.
"What's up with these bruises?" The palm of his hand was dark red, like a large bruise. And so was the rest of his forearm, with some gaps in between he couldn't explain. Other arm, too.
"…oh", Plagg murmured.
"What's up with…" he realized that his face looked weird, too. His skin was pale and almost yellow tinged "…all of this?" Plagg ignored his question and floated over to press his ear to Adrien's chest.
For a moment Adrien thought Plagg was going for a hug, which happened only rarely, until Plagg said, "Take a breath."
"Okay?" Adrien breathed in deeply, and exhaled loudly. He waited for Plagg to say something, but nothing happened.
After nearly a minute had passed Plagg said "you know, you're kinda supposed to keep doing that."
Only then did Adrien realize he'd been holding his breath the entire time, and he wouldn't even have noticed if Plagg hadn't said anything. He didn't feel any compelling need to breath in or out.
"Though I guess it doesn't really matter when you don't have a heartbeat, anyway", Plagg concluded.
"I don't?" Adrien exclaimed. He put both hands up to his neck, and tried to feel for a pulse. There had to be one. Simple logic, people without heartbeats didn't also have conversations.
"That Lucky Charm could've worked better", Plagg concluded. "Looks like it reanimated you, but didn't revive you."
"What, so you're saying I'm animated but not alive?" He still didn't feel a heartbeat under his fingers, but he wasn't trained in that, anyway. In CPR class the instructor had said people shouldn't rely on whether or not they could feel someone's heart beat because it was easy to get wrong, and rather focus on if the person was… breathing.
He took another deep breath and let it out, because he'd forgotten again.
"That's crazy, that can't be real. I can't just be… undead! That's not a thing!" Adrien jumped up and started pacing his room. Pacing, clearly a thing people without heart beats couldn't do!
"Bold words from someone who didn't think magic existed this time last year", Plagg commented. There was more cheese in his hands, even though Adrien hadn't seen him retrieve anything from the cupboard.
"You're really calm about this", Adrien observed. Plagg took a moment to throw the cheese into his mouth before answering.
"Eh. Not the weirdest thing I've seen."
Well, considering how old the Kwami was, that was probably fair, still… "What is the weirdest thing you've seen?"
"Oh, you see year was 1346 A.D and my holder back then had this cozy job on a goat farm…"
"Does it involve cheese?"
"Yes it does, and now I'm not going to finish my story because you interrupted me", Plagg declared, crossing his arms.
"Tell me some other time, I'm not really listening, right now, anyway." Adrien ran his hands through his hair. He was only now noticing that his skin was a lot colder than it was supposed to be. "I can't be dead, I've got stuff to do. School, and fencing, and piano, and saving Paris and modeling, and meeting with friends, and sometimes I even sleep!"
"Well they do say you can sleep when you're dead", Plagg threw in.
"Yeah but I wanna do the kind of sleeping where you wake up again!"
"You did wake up. Your bodily functions just didn't."
"But what if I wanna have a bodily function again?" Plagg made a face at that.
"Ew, gross."
"I can't be a corpse, people look at me, someone's gonna notice. What am I gonna tell people if someone asks why I'm a corpse? Oh my god, I'm a corpse!"
"You know, they're gonna notice if you keep yelling", Plagg said.
"Corpses can't yell, I can't be a corpse!"
"Well, look on the bright side, at least your brains are back in your skull, people would've noticed that one, too."
"Yes, thank you for that mental image, that really helps me calm down." Having heard that Adrien might never sleep again. So maybe it was better that the jury was still out on whether dead people did that. "Wait, whose brains were on the street, anyway?"
"Whoever lives in your right hemisphere, I guess?" Plagg looked mildly puzzled at the question.
"No, I mean, if someone walked by, did they see dead Chat Noir or dead Adrien Agreste? And what happened to you while I was dead?"
"Oh, right. Kwami can keep up the transformation for a while after death, depending on how strong the bond with their chosen is. You were Chat Noir the entire time."
"Oh. So… if I'd stayed dead, what would've happened?"
"I would've been able to manifest for a bit to bring the Miraculous to safety. It's a safety precaution so the Miraculous doesn't get buried." Plagg was looking away pointedly as he said that. This definitely wasn't theoretical knowledge only, and he could only wonder how often the Kwami had had to flee from the scene of one of his Chosen's untimely demise.
Eager to change the subject, Adrien picked up the hand mirror again. He didn't look that different at first glance, but the cloudy eyes and the yellowish skin was a dead giveaway. He poked his own face. The skin didn't feel like normal, either. It wasn't as elastic as before, feeling waxy and cold.
"This is gonna be difficult to hide", he concluded. Make up could liven up his complexion, but the eyes were gonna be more of a challenge.
"You look like death warmed over, literally, you think you can hide that?", Plagg scoffed. "Everyone knows that the Lucky Charm didn't work right, you could just tell people you got killed in the attack."
"Yeah, but how many people do you think actually got killed? I'm gonna guess not a lot, probably just me. And the way you tell it, that injury sounds pretty obvious, someone's bound to have seen it. And I'm kinda well known, if people hear about me being undead that's definitely going to be a news story, so if people hear that Chat Noir died, and Adrien Agreste died at the exact same time, someone's gonna put it together. Just because I died doesn't mean I don't still have to protect my identity."
"To be fair, being undead might warrant a news story even if you weren't famous", Plagg mused.
"Yeah but Paris teenager becomes zombie after Akuma attack would probably still be slightly more anonymous than That kid from the perfume commercial crawled out of the grave."
"Still, no one knows for sure who would've died in the attack and who didn't. You could still claim to be a bystander, no one would be able to prove anything. Not even the akuma remembers who they did and didn't kill."
"But Hawkmoth might."
"I don't think the connection goes as far as a live video feed of every single thing the akuma does", Plagg said, but Adrien could tell that there was a sliver of doubt in there.
"Well as long as we don't know for sure, it's better if no one knows about this", Adrien stated.
"Okay, sure, then how are you gonna pull this off? Cardboard face in a motorcycle helmet again?"
"Let's keep that idea on standby", Adrien mused. It wasn't the worst possible idea, actually, especially since it had already worked once, so why not again? "Gotta do some research first, see what sort of stuff I need to be hiding if I have a dead body." He sat down on his bed again and took out his phone. He'd already typed How to hide a dead body into the search bar before he realized that that probably wouldn't be quite the right type of advice. He changed his search to decomposition.
"You know, you could say that I'm both alive and dead at the same time…", he said as he idly scrolled through his search results. "And I am a Cat…"
"I'm the cat, you're a guy in a cat costume", Plagg objected, but he'd already floated off towards the cheese cabinet again.
"… So I'm basically Schroedinger's Cat now", Adrien concluded with a grin.
"Whose?"
"Oh it's based off a thought experiment by a famous physicist to explain the quantum mechanics of observation…"
"Ah, so the head injury didn't cure your nerdiness", Plagg interrupted. "Good to know."
"Oh shut up, you know I'm hilarious", Adrien said. His interest got caught by a Youtube video of a Morticia Adams lookalike promising to put the "fact" in putrefaction.
With that sort of help he could totally figure this out.