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When Marinette comes down from bed the next morning, the first thing she notices, sitting unassuming on her work desk, is the quilt. It’s something like half-finished, and if she could channel the way her heart sinks and her hands tremble into something more productive, she’d sit down without an ounce of breakfast in her stomach and get right back to it. It’s just that the only thing she thinks of, as soon as she lays eyes on it, is how she felt in Luka’s arms on the chaise, and he she felt so safe for all of a few minutes—and how funny it is, that you always feel safest right before the real danger hits—
If you can save Paris at least once a week…
Half of her wants to climb right back into bed—especially when she remembers that she and Luka didn’t have their usual video call the night before. And especially after Tikki flutters down to her and asks, too calmly for her liking, if she’s really okay. It feels so easy to hide under the covers with a couple of the volumes Adrien lent her, or the recent drafts of the comic script that Marc emailed her, or even the memories she’ll need to hold onto if—when—if Tikki ever leaves her.
Instead, she fights against instinct, and for her better judgment, and ambles downstairs.
She doesn’t expect her mother to be sitting on the living room floor, eyes closed and legs crossed; she figured the bakery would already be up and running by now. One glance at the clock tells her it’s just about half-past seven, and that her father is probably up to his elbows in flour for a fresh batch of baguettes, and that the first morning rush has probably already come and gone. She tries not to make too much of a fuss on her way to the kitchen, even though she can’t help but stares. And it’s as she’s staring, of course, that her mother opens one eye and gives her the kind of smile that says, I’m worried about you.
“Come sit with me,” she says, instead of good morning or even would you like some toast?
Marinette knows better than to refuse when her mother’s looking at her like that, and she doesn’t think she wants to besides. Without a word, she rubs the rest of the sleep from her eyes and sinks to join her mother on the rug.
The next thing her mother says, once they’re seated back-to-back, is, “Did you sleep all right?”
Marinette doesn’t know what to say. The last thing she wants to do is disappoint, even though she’s already got the feeling she’s about to be doing a lot of it. But what is she supposed to say? She had an anxiety-induced nightmare about her superhero partner who doesn’t know he’s her superhero partner finding out her secret identity because her real-life boyfriend, who she’s pretty sure isn’t her superhero partner but very well could be for all she knows, really did find out her secret identity?
God, even thinking it out feels like a mess and a half.
“Bad dream,” is all she decides to say. And then, “Nino got me on that whole thing about… not talking about them, so…”
She can feel her mother nodding, the sort that seems to say she knows it’s probably a whole lot more than just a bad dream. “Fold your hands and breathe with me,” she says. “There’s still some time until I’ll be going back down.”
Marinette hesitates, and her mother can probably feel that, too. With one deep breath, she relents and closes her eyes. There’s no technique to it yet; she knows her mother will lead the way like she always has. Breathing in, she’ll say. Breathing out. Breathing in, breathing out. Then she’ll count—and her mother is already doing it under her breath. One, two, three, four, hold. One, two, three, four, out… It’s the same technique they’ve used handfuls of times before. The same technique she’s used with Luka over the phone, late at night when he couldn’t sleep. The same thing she used just the night before, when nothing else helped—and even that didn’t help.
But it’s… different this time. With someone else taking the thoughts away from her. The responsibility. It’s different, feeling every breath and every shift under her mother’s skin. Feeling someone exist near her so… viscerally. There’s something about it that tells her, I’m here with you. I’m existing with you, too. I need what you need, too.
“One, two, three, four, hold,” her mother says, and Marinette feels every fiber of herself sink into the floor. It’s not that she’s entering some other space. “One, two, three, four, out;” it’s more that she’s falling into herself, and her mother’s words come to her as if breaking through the surface of the ocean.
Then all the words fall away, and her mother is breathing with her—the only sound between them—and whatever tension is left in her body starts to loosen its hold on her.
Marinette doesn’t know how long she sits there, sinking into the floor and herself and everything except her own thoughts for once. She only knows that the thing that breaks all the calm is the growl of her stomach. Her face goes hot, and her mother laughs and says, “Have some breakfast, sweetheart.”
But Marinette doesn’t move. “Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks.” She swivels around on the floor, presses her forehead to her mother’s back and closes her eyes, arms finding h/their way around her waist. She can’t remember the last time they sat like this—the last time she felt this willingly vulnerable. “You never have to ask what’s wrong, and you never push, but somehow you always know what to do to help me feel better. Even a little bit.” She squeezes her eyes shut; she shouldn’t be crying now. It doesn’t matter why she’d be crying; it still doesn’t feel right. “And I can’t remember the last time I said thank you for that.”
It takes a moment, but her mother turns around, too. Marinette’s sure she’s much too big to fit in her lap, but she slumps forward all the same, lets her mother make an attempt at holding her. “That’s because you don’t have to,” her mother says. “You don’t have to thank me for the things I’m supposed to do.”
It’s as she’s getting up to make a late breakfast that her mother stops her again. “You should get some fresh air today.”
“Where?”
Her mother smiles, tosses a glance out the window. “I’m sure you’ll find somewhere.”
Somewhere is, apparently, right across the street. The Place des Vosges is as far as her body will carry her, partly because she’s too tired and partly because it’s too hot to bother going anywhere else. Even the shade is suffocating, so she takes refuge by the fountain, tries the same old one-two-three-four-hold, one-two-three-four-out technique on her own. It doesn’t work, but it’s at least worth the attempt; it’s funny, how just closing her eyes lets her feel the cool air from the fountain a little better. How it forces her to sink into the stone kilogram for kilogram.
But then, it’s almost like slipping underwater. Stay too long, and she forgets how to breathe.
Someone calls her name, amid the nudging at her thigh from inside her purse, and at first she doesn’t quite think it’s real, thinks it’s coming from inside. Then she thinks it might be some way-below-pitch version of Tikki’s voice, and then—weirdly—that it might be Chat Noir’s voice. But the someone calls her name again, and when she opens her eyes, it’s only Adrien standing there, the sparkle in his eye looking genuine and nervous all at once.
“You all right?” he asks. There’s a photographer standing just a few meters away, examining his camera and a reflector, and even farther back a car revs up and drives away.
She wishes, among the realization that she’ll have to get up and leave, that people would stop asking that. It isn’t as though anyone, least of all herself, is going to spill the contents of their life to just anyone who asks. Not to mention the fact that all it takes is that one question for all the floodgates to open again. No, she wants to say. No, I’m not, stop asking, go away—go away—
Instead, Marinette smiles, half-fatigued, and nods. As she should. “Yeah,” she murmurs, getting to her feet. “I’ll be okay.”
“Are you sure?” Adrien asks, and she tries not to wince. “You just seem… I don’t know.” He bends to get a closer look at her—she didn’t realize until now, just how much he’s grown. How much she feels like she hasn’t. Except… maybe this time last year, her heart would have sped up astronomically. Now, it just reminds her it exists. “Have you been getting enough sleep?”
She keeps her expression plastered, even tilts her head to shade the parts of her expression that might be betraying her. “I’m fine,” she says. “Honest.”
“Okay.” He doesn’t seem entirely convinced, and she wouldn’t blame him. “Will you reach out to someone if you need them?”
Her heart twinges, asks him over and over why he wasn’t there when heer lips refuse to. Even asks itself if she wants to entertain this anymore. In spite of it, she laughs, the silent, tired kind, and mumbles, “I’ll try.”
Adrien frowns, but Marinette doesn’t let herself see too much of it before she’s off, texting him an apology all the while and wishing she could do it all over.
She stops in the street, phone in hand, eyes wide.
Do over.
Of course.
She doesn’t ever know just how she gets to Master Fu’s residence. It’s like all the silly things she’s heard about Americans getting drunk and going to a diner at three in the morning. They don’t really go there; they just end up there.
This is like that.
There is no concern on Master Fu’s face when he opens his door and finds her shifting from foot to foot, half-looking like she has to go to the bathroom. Instead, he makes way for her, with Wayzz floating just at his shoulder, and says, “Come in, Marinette. Would you like a cup of tea?”
He’s always been phenomenal at this. Mediating the catastrophes in her head. Reminding her, without words, that in months this won’t feel like a catastrophe at all.
There are still parts of her that are bracing themselves, though, because she hasn’t exactly told him what’s going on, and she doesn’t exactly know how to. Even minutes later, when her shoes are sitting by the front door and she’s kneeling over a cup of green tea that’s far too hot for an early August day. Tikki is sitting beside her teacup on the coffee table, cradling a biscuit that, even half-eaten, is bigger than her head, and both of them are quiet. Marinette isn’t sure if kwamis even have stomachs, but if they did, she’d wonder if Tikki’s is turning as much as hers is.
Deep breath in, Marinette tells herself. Hold it. Deep breath out.
“Master,” she says slowly, while he’s still tending the pot behind her. While she’s trying to wring the leftover trembling out of her fingers. “May I borrow the Snake Miraculous? I promise I’ll return it.”
“You have never given me reason to doubt you,” Master Fu replies, and soon enough he’s kneeling across from her with a cup of his own. Wayzz takes a seat beside Tikki, politely refusing her offering, but otherwise he says nothing. “Please, drink your tea before it gets cold. It goes well with conversation, but its first purpose is to calm the mind.” Master Fu looks at her meaningfully, as if he knows exactly what’s swirling around in there—and she probably wouldn’t be surprised if he did. “For someone under your circumstances, that ought to be a necessity, and not a luxury.”
Without another peep, she takes a few more sips of tea, and her whole body feels like it slumps in relief—if not because of the tea, then because of how Tikki floats up to nestle in the crook of her neck. To remind her that she’s still there. It isn’t until her cup is half-drained that Master Fu brings out the phonograph and punches in the code on the side panel. It’s never failed to amaze her, how securely the miracle box is hidden.
“You understand,” he says, without all the fanfare that comes with the time crunch of a mission or an akuma attack, “that you must place it in the hands of a trusted individual, and return it to me once it has seen its use.” There’s an unsettling sparkle in his eye. “You also understand that it must not be used to manipulate time for one’s personal gain.”
There’s a weight that freezes and sinks in the pit of her stomach, and a second or two of silence, before she nods once. “I know,” she says, as solemn as she can. Doesn’t even bother to afford herself the time to ask what personal gain even means anymore.
“Of course.” Master Fu gives her a nod of his own. “Of course you do.”
“Master?” The word slips out before she can even think to say it, and she wants to kick herself for it. He looks to her, waiting without expecting, the container holding the bangle in the hand he extends to her. She swallows down everything else she’s thinking, all the questions she wants to ask and shouldn’t, along with the rest of her tea. “Thank you,” she says, even though the words go sour in her mouth. “For trusting me.”
Master Fu pauses, and his face softens with an almost grandfatherly smile as he locks the miracle box away once more. “I always have,” he murmurs, perhaps more to the box than to her. “Your earrings have always been proof of that.”
Marinette wishes that hearing that didn’t make her stomach turn so much.
This has to be a piece of cake. Actually, it should be the whole damn cake. All she has to do—all Ladybug has to do—is go back in time, as many times as she needs to, and keep Luka from ever finding out who she really is, and let their relationship carry on as usual. It’s not selfish gain, right? Wanting to fall in love, and stay in love, isn’t selfish gain. And wanting to continue protecting Paris definitely isn’t selfish gain. It should all work out… perfectly.
In the afternoon shadows of an alleyway, Ladybug takes what feels like her deepest breath, and she slides the silver bangle onto her wrist. Instantly, Sass materializes before her and meets her eyes without a word. Somehow, she gets the feeling he knows exactly what he’s going to ask of her, why she bothered to become Ladybug at all, and refuses to tell her whether any of this will actually work.
Well.
There’s only one way to find out.
Ladybug closes her eyes and holds out her hands. “Tikki,” she says, feels her very essence come to attention. “Sass,” and she feels him at her side, ready to follow her whim with all his secrets behind his fangs. She folds her hands, chest tight and mouth twitching and eyes flying open against the brick wall. “Unify.”
A whirl of wind and light surrounds her, and she almost goes dizzy, but by the time it subsides, she’s staggering against the wall with no graceful pose to rely on. The only thing different about her that she can see are the coils of teal snakeskin that wind around her limbs and her torso, and the bright bangle that glows on her wrist, waiting to be used. She sighs in relief. At least this part is going right.
Her fingers are twitching when she reaches for the snake head, holds her breath at the sight of those glowing yellow eyes. This should do it. This should give her the do-over she needs.
Ladybug screws her eyes shut.
Flick.
Nothing happens, except for the sound of a bike bell.
Her body goes rigid. She tries again.
Flick.
This time, she can feel the shift in the seconds. It’s not the same kind of whirlwind that she was expecting. Instead, it feels something like a sucker punch to her back and her gut at the same time. Like some unnatural thing has ripped her out of the present, and placed her in the past. She winces from the feeling, reaches out for any flat surface for purchase, and she dares to open her eyes again.
Nothing’s changed. She’s still Ladybug—Snakebug? she can’t be bothered to think of a new call name when there are more important things at hand—and she’s still confined to this alleyway. And there’s the bike bell again, reminding her that it’s not the bangle that’s faulty.
Her heart starts to pick up, and her breathing goes shallow, the way it does just before she starts to cry, and her head starts to swirl so much that it feels like the walls are moving, closing in on either side of her. Again and again, she flicks the head of the snake; again and again, there’s that shift in time and space, and it’s starting to make her sick. It’s not long before it feels like that stupid bike bell is taunting her, reminding her of what she hasn’t been able to achieve. How… possible it is, that she never will. How maybe this is more selfish than she’d like to let herself believe—
No. It isn’t. It can’t be.
Think, Ladybug, she tells herself with one hand cradling her throbbing head and the other clutching at her stomach. She only has so much time before the bangle goes dead, and she can feel it ticking down in her blood. Think. What haven’t you tried yet? What haven’t you used yet?
Somewhere inside her, she feels a pulse. The kind that begs for attention, reminds her she’s not alone. Reminds her there’s still a way to save this.
Wait.
That’s it.
A save point.
Almost desperately, Ladybug gropes for the yoyo at her waist. Using her Lucky Charm is a long shot, but it is meant for creation, and it is meant to give her exactly what she needs. And she needs this. She needs this so badly it’s starting to hurt her heart as much as it already hurts her stomach. She throws her yoyo to the sky with all the uncertainty of the very first time she used it—doesn’t dare look at it, so focused she is on practically praying that this works—and she waits. Waits for the exact moment to come up in her mind. The moment Luka figured everything out. The moment she was foolish enough to give herself away.
All that falls into her hands, beside her yoyo, is another hexagonal box. Just the same size as every miraculous container. When she pries it open, another bangle lies nestled inside, bright red and spackled with black dots.
What is she supposed to do with this? What is this supposed to mean? That Luka found out who she was when she gave him the box in the first place? Or is this just a token for—
No, she doesn’t have time for any more questions, or any more thinking, or even any crying. The clock is ticking, twofold now, and it’s only a matter of minutes before she transforms back. Maybe there will be time for everything else later. She has to act now. With one more held breath, and her eyes screwed shut yet again, she takes out the red bangle and flicks the head with her thumb.
Nothing happens.
Nothing, nothing, nothing. Not even the stupid bike bell. Nothing but the beeping of her earrings.
It takes everything in her not to crumple to her knees and sob, run through every single possibility in her head. Ladybugs aren’t allowed to cry; it’s probably bad luck. But then, ladybugs aren’t supposed to be found out, either. So she’ll probably have to give the earrings up after all. Or… or if she’s able to keep the earrings, then she might have to take Luka to Master Fu, and he’d have to erase her memory, just like in those comics Adrien lent to her—
It might be an overreaction—she’s not even sure if Master Fu knows how to erase memories in the first place—but the thought, the mere possibility makes her chest go tight. Makes her feel like she can’t breathe. But she forces herself to. One, two, three, four, hold. Hold it. Grit your teeth. Go on, you have to go on. One, two, three, four, out. Out. Get out. Get away. Breathe. Breathing is the only thing keeping you going. Breathing keeps you alive. Just don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t fall back.
Don’t fall backwards.
Before she can take a step out into the sunlight, or even attempt to count to four again, her earrings beep one last time. In the flash and the whirlwind of her detransformation, the fake miracle box disappears—and with it, the fake bangle. Only the real snake miraculous, thin and a painfully dull silver, remains on her wrist, and both Tikki and Sass emerge and settle in front of her.
Marinette swallows down the lump in her throat, or tries to. Her vision starts to swim, and she sinks to her knees, and she falls. Backwards. “It didn’t work,” she whispers, voice cracking for all her attempts to keep calm. “It was supposed to work, and it didn’t. It didn’t work.” She doubles over, buries her face in her hands. Stop shaking, she tells herself. She’s Ladybug. It’s everyone else who’s supposed to shake. Everyone else who’s supposed to feel safe because she’s here.
Who’s supposed to do that for her?
Who’s supposed to keep her from shaking?
Who’s supposed to come to her when her dreams become unbearable, too?
Something nudges at the back of her hand, and when she looks up, Tikki is wedging her way into her hand and nuzzling her cheek to comfort her. “Marinette,” she whispers, so high-pitched, so sorry. “It did work, exactly how it was supposed to.”
“But—” Hot tears start to spill down Marinette’s cheeks, and she wipes them quickly with the cuff of the hoodie tied around her waist. Sass has to flit out of the way to avoid getting hit. “The Lucky Charm is supposed to give me exactly what I need. And I needed a save point. I needed to go back and keep him from ever finding out.”
Tikki tilts her head, almost in pity. “How would you know when to go?”
Marinette pauses, mouth half-open, with no idea of what should come out of it.
“The Lucky Charm did give you what you need. Think, Marinette.” Tikki nestles closer, like she can’t bear to be apart. Like she knows some kind of goodbye is coming, but not when or where or how. As if trying to protect her, even. “What do you need?”
What does she need?
Or who?
For perhaps the first time in a long while, Ladybug considers herself lucky.
When she comes to the Seine that night, long after her parents have fallen asleep, she feels much calmer than she did in the afternoon. She still hasn’t figured out the words for what she needs to say. It’s something along the lines of You can’t know who I am. Or, We only have two options available to us. Or, horrifically, I don’t know if I’m supposed to lose you or Paris, because I’ve worked so hard for both. Or some strange combination of all three. The only thing she knows, for now, is that she is supposed to be here. Right where the Liberty is.
It’s hard to tell if any of the Couffaines are awake from where she’s standing, just in front of the gangplank. Without a word, and with the snake miraculous tucked away, Ladybug leaps aboard the boat, landing feather-light on the glass ceiling of the greenhouse area. It’s as she’s scanning the deck, holding her breath in her throat, that a light flickers on underneath her, and immediately she looks down.
There’s Luka.
His hand is still on the light switch and he’s holding his guitar by the neck, and he’s staring at her. He doesn’t look particularly elated to see her, but he also doesn’t look like he’s about to turn tail and run below deck, either. It’s hard to tell what the wins and losses are when it feels like her legs are starting to turn to lead.
Maybe it’s a good thing after all, because she’s not running either. No matter how much the urge eats her up from the inside. No matter how much a part of her wants to crumple, just like earlier.
Before Ladybug can say anything, or make any gestures, Luka points, none too urgently, toward the captain’s cabin at the back of the ship. He can get there pretty easily from the greenhouse, but she has to jump up a level—on top of the Couffaines’ ping pong table, no less—and dangle from the stern, propelling herself to land catlike just below and make her way up the stairs.
Luka’s already in the cabin by the time she arrives. It’s not too cramped, but she can’t exactly keep a fair distance from him. She clears her throat, quietly, and he turns away from the compass and the captain’s wheel, looking her right in the eyes and nowhere else. Honestly, she’s expecting him to go off on her—about why she didn’t bother to keep in touch, why she lied to him all this time, what else she must be hiding from him. At the very least, a cold question of what she’s doing here would do.
Instead, he sighs, his whole body heaving, and glances back toward the captain’s wheel with a loving stroke of his fingers, and he says, “I always wanted to steer this thing. I think Ma would kill me.”
If it’s supposed to relieve her, or lighten her load, it doesn’t do a very good job. “Luka,” she says as evenly as she can manage, fishing out the container and holding it out to him. “I need you.”
It’s only then that she notices the metal statuette is missing.
Luka’s expression goes solemn when he meets eyes with Ladybug again, and he takes the box without question. She wouldn’t be surprised if he’d been raised on the principle of doing things first and asking questions later. Or on the principle that asking for forgiveness is easier than asking for permission. “I said I’d do this for the greater good,” he says, as if to offer an explanation. “You don’t have to give me any context yet.”
Suddenly the cabin feels a bit too cramped, and for a moment she finds it hard to breathe. “I will,” she says, pressing the box up into his hand. “But not here. Come with me.”
It isn’t difficult for them to leap off the edge of the Liberty and across to the riverbank, and Luka is looking for a hiding spot just as carefully as she is. They step into one together, far out of sight of the boat, and there’s something almost melancholy in his eyes when he slips on the bangle and greets Sass like the stranger-friend he is. His transformation ebbs and flows easily, like the music he plays, but even when he opens his eyes again, his usual quietly confident smile is nowhere to be found. “Where are we headed?”
Ladybug raises a brow. “Ever climbed the Eiffel Tower before?”
Now that makes his eyes light up.
They make their way to the seventh arrondissement in literal leaps and bounds, racing across rooftops and patrolling each neighborhood along the way. Like this, with the night air right over and through her and the mask over her eyes, Ladybug feels right. Feels like this is where she’s always supposed to be. Like she couldn’t give this up for the world, even—or maybe especially—with Viperion at her side, following her every step. And if she looks closer, she might see him smiling. Like he doesn’t want to give this up, either.
It’s light work in their suits, scaling the Eiffel Tower in a series of jumps, and soon enough they both land on the very top tier, Viperion wobbling just slightly from the sheer height of it. He finds his land legs just fine, and they’re both silent, staring out at the city as house lights flicker off and street lamps stay steady. He breathes in deep, catching her attention, and he’s still staring out as he says, “Why do I get the feeling you didn’t take me out to patrol?”
Ladybug tries not to flinch, and doesn’t bother to ask what he’s talking about. Even through two masks, he knows. But with him, there’s never been a point to lying… about most things. “Viperion,” she murmurs, as steadily as possible, and reaches to touch the snake miraculous. “I need you to use your Second Chance.”
“For what?”
“I need…” It’s not selfish, she reminds herself. She could give the both of them a whole lecture on it by now. “I need you to go back to the moment you found out who I was. So we can undo it.” So we can be safe. So we can be together. So I can do the thing I’m destined to do. “You know that moment better than I ever could. I need—we need, to go there. To go then.”
For a while, Viperion doesn’t say anything, and for that same while, Ladybug is afraid she might have said something wrong. That he might never want to take up the bangle again. Eventually, he closes his eyes to the city and bows his head. “I can’t do that,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
Ladybug’s chest goes tense, and she tries not to demand, so her voice cracks instead. “But why not?”
“Because that’s not how Second Chance works,” he replies, simple and patient with some hurt of his own at the edges. “I can’t just jump back in time to a given moment and redo it.”
“The…” She hesitates. “The last time I used my Lucky Charm, it gave me another bangle. One I could probably summon again, and you could use it to take us to—”
“No, Ladybug…” He turns to her then, and his expression softens sadly, and he takes a step closer. “I don’t want to go back to that moment. I don’t want to not know who you are.”
Ladybug searches his face in the dark, and her grip on the railing tightens so much that her knuckles bulge out of her suit. “Don’t you know what happens if someone finds out who I am? I can’t be Ladybug anymore. I’d have to give all of this up, or…” She swallows hard, presses her lips into a firm line because it’s the only way to prepare herself to get the words out. “Or I might have to give you up. And I’m not going to do that again.” She grits her teeth. “I’m not going to let you let me go again.”
Viperion only watches her. Doesn’t even dare to touch her. She almost wishes he would, and tries to look for the pieces of him that might be holding him back. “I don’t want to let you go again,” he confesses, so soft that no one else could hear if they tried, but it feels like it resounds through the whole city. His gaze drifts down to the bangle. “But this… this, I can let go, if it means you get to keep what you need. If you never need to call on me again… that, I understand. But you know?” He heaves a single weak laugh. “Not that I never felt this way before, but… you really made me mean something when you gave me this.”
Ladybug, in the moment, doesn’t know how to tell him that she always wants to make him mean something. “It is selfish of me, isn’t it,” she murmurs, turning back toward the city, focusing far too deeply on those streetlights. This far away and this high up, it’s hard to see the people who pass under them as people. “To want both. To use my powers—our powers—for personal reasons. Because if—if I do, then something terrible could happen. I’ve only done it once before.”
She can feel Viperion’s eyes flick toward her. “When?”
She holds her breath. “When you had that anxiety attack, and you called me. When I slept over… how do you think I got there so fast?”
Ladybug wonders if the realization hits and drags him down as heavy as it does to her. He takes another step toward her, lays his hand near hers. Still doesn’t dare touch her. “You think something terrible could happen?”
“I always do,” she says, so deeply afraid to admit it that the words fall out as a whisper. “I’m always scared.”
It feels… terrifyingly liberating to say that to the dark. To say it way up high, where no one else can hear. It’s as though she can feel the whole weight of the world lifted from her shoulders. Floating above her, sure, but lifted still.
Viperion seems to know and feel that, too, as his teeth sink into his lip thoughtfully. “Well,” he tells her. “Is anything terrible happening right now?”
Somewhere, something might be. Ladybug shifts her weight, fingers curling protectively around her yoyo. “No…”
He inclines his head in that way that sort of says, I told you so, without actually saying, I told you so. “And do you think,” he goes on, “that if something terrible did happen, you’d have to face it all alone?”
“I…” Ladybug can feel her voice go small; now that one admission’s come out, the rest spill from her more easily. “I don’t… want to.” She isn’t sure she ever wanted to. From the very beginning, she just took it and ran because she was supposed to. That’s what kids have always done—what they were supposed to—and some of them have ended up suffering for it. “I don’t want to do any of this alone. And I don’t want to run.”
Viperion holds out his hands to her, and right then it’s hard to tell which parts of him are Viperion, and which parts of him are Luka, or if they’re all the same. “I don’t want you to, either.”
Ladybug hesitates, again, looks him up and down—and gives him her hands, too. They’re shaking, and now she can only bear to stare at the platform beneath them, or out at the city. “No one can know,” she murmurs. “No one else can know. Not even Chat Noir. Especially not Chat Noir. Even this, I… I don’t know what’s going to happen next. And I hate that.”
“I know.” He gives her hands a gentle but solid squeeze. “You’ve always been the planner, huh… Listen. I get it, how important all of this is to you. And between now and whenever you do find out what happens next, my lips are sealed. And even after that. Even if I have to give this up.” Slowly, his thumbs brush over her knuckles, and now more than ever she wants so badly for their hands to be bare. “I’ve kept this secret for you since the moment I found out, and I’m not planning on letting it go anytime soon. You can count on me for that much.”
She smiles faintly at their feet. “I can count on you for a lot of things.”
Viperion laughs under his breath, and soon enough he’s swaying, leading her with him, pulling her into a hold she didn’t think she needed until now. “’s beautiful up here,” he murmurs just over the quickening beat of his heart, his hand reaching up to cradle the back of her head. “And safe. I’m glad I got to see it with you.”
(He never could be upset with her, could he. After all this.)
He holds her a while longer, neither of them speaking. They simply soak in the moment for what it’s worth, as though it’s the only one they have left. Even when he lets her go, he keeps his hands firmly planted at the small of her back, his forehead pressed to hers. “Hey,” he finally says. “Would you let me show you that I mean it?”
With half an inkling of just how he might do it, and with her stomach turning over and over, Ladybug nods.
The last thing Viperion says—Luka says—just before he slants his mouth along hers is, “You’re shaking.” It’s hardly more than a whisper, words she practically swallows as he nudges her out of Paris’s sight. She stills at every touch, eventually, and she might be dizzy from the feeling of his lips, but she thinks she hears a gentle flick behind her. And she might be too overwhelmed from the need to hold his face and pull him closer, but it feels like the kiss lasts a little longer than it’s meant to.
Viperion says they have two minutes to jump all the way down the Eiffel Tower, and he laughs as they fall. Ladybug can’t tell if it’s the sheer exhilaration of a three-hundred-meter drop he’s never done before and might never do again, or if it’s because just before they did, she said, “I have to go, before I get grounded. Again.” The whole time, she watches the night air whip through his hair and give him life all over again, and the whole time, she’s bracing herself to catch him if he transforms back halfway down.
At least Sass, she thinks, has the good sense to wait until they’ve made it to the ground. In the dark and still out of Paris’s sight, Luka presses the box and its bangle back into her hands. He reassures her that he’ll be fine getting home on his own because he’s navigated worse, and he lays a hand on her shoulder to squeeze it the instant that her fight or… well, fight instinct kicks up. Then he thanks her, and when he does, it looks like he’s saying, see you soon.
Ladybug smiles, perhaps the most dopey for the first time in a long while, and she swears she can feel Luka’s eyes on her all the way home. She can definitely still feel him holding her, kissing her, long after her own transformation back, after she’s slipped under the covers with Tikki and started to count her breaths.
One, two, three, four.
Hold.
One, two, three, four.
Rest.
The next morning, Marinette takes the bangle back to Master Fu, who welcomes her back into his home like he’s been expecting her at any moment. He makes her another cup of tea, this time with honey and chamomile, and when she drinks deep she actually lets herself feel the warmth of it. Without a word, she slides the container across his little wooden coffee table, and with a grateful, knowing sparkle in his eye, he places it back in its rightful place. He doesn’t ask if she did what she thought was right.
It’s as he’s opening up the phonograph that Marinette finally speaks. “Master,” she begins cautiously, avoiding Wayzz’s eyes and all too aware of how Tikki nestles into the crook of her neck. “What if… someone who isn’t Chat Noir… or Hawk Moth… figured out who I was?”
Master Fu doesn’t turn around right away, and she starts to think she’s made a mistake by bringing up this… supposed hypothetical. “I thought it might be about this,” he says. When he does look at her, his expression is strangely lacking in upset, or even disappointment. “Did you know, Marinette, that in every incarnation, it is inevitable that the holder of the Snake discovers the Ladybug’s identity?”
Marinette’s eyes widen, and she shifts back to look at Tikki, whose eyes are cast toward the floor in some combination of embarrassed and apologetic. “What?”
He doesn’t smile outright, but it’s hiding somewhere, in the crinkles at the corners of his eyes, and in each careful step he takes back to her, the box still in his hand. “I suppose you could call it nature’s course. It is always the holder of the Snake who finds out. By virtue of the powers of Second Chance, they often reverse time, carrying that secret to their very grave—hiding it even from the holder of the Ladybug for her own protection. From that moment on, the Snake becomes the Ladybug’s most trusted ally, loyal to her for the rest of their days. One might say it’s a bit tragic.” He nods toward her and slides the little box back to the center of the table. “It is up to you, and only you, to decide whether it will be the same for you.”
Marinette doesn’t want to ask how he knows all this—how he knows her like this. She’s not sure she wants to hear the answer. Instead, she only stares at the box, weighing the options in her mind. There’s no reason Luka couldn’t be her strongest ally—or one of them. But he only came into her life recently, even more so as Viperion; Chat Noir’s been around for her almost since the moment she put the earrings on. She wouldn’t even know how he’d take it, what conclusions he’d jump to, if she told him that Viperion was a permanent member of the team. She doesn’t even know how she’s taking it now; her mind is swimming with every moment she could have transformed back mid-battle, right in front of his eyes, and never known it.
It’s… terrifying. The things that happen to you that you never remember again.
“You do not have to make your decision right now,” Master Fu encourages, his hands folded patiently and Wayzz at his side. “But for what it’s worth, I believe you already have.”
He’s right. This is her decision. Hers, and no one else’s.
One, two, three, four, and Marinette covers the box with her hand, holding her breath.
One, two, three, four, and she pockets it.