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Adrien wakes up disoriented, with a headache that feels like his skull is being split in half. It takes him several seconds to determine that he must be sitting upright, the only feeling in his body the pain pulsing through every fibre of it. He forces himself to fully open his eyes, his vision clearing and blurring again as he blinks sluggishly, trying to make out his surroundings in the dark. Someone must have removed his night vision goggles. The thought jolts him awake like an electric shock, his hands immediately twitching to where that vital part of his gear usually sits. Or at least, they try. A sharp pain slashes through his wrists, up all the way to his shoulders that are forced back in an unnatural way. Adrien groans.
“Oh, you’re awake,” her voice is soft but it etches deeper than the zip tie cutting into his wrists, “I’m sorry about the restraints, but I’ve seen you use those claws.”
Light trainers, so much more delicate than his own heavy combat boots, step into his vision. They’re tattered and filthy with ashes, but the red of the fabric is still just recognisable. It’s the same colour as freshly shed blood.
“Ladybug,” he breathes hoarsely as the images begin crashing back into his mind. The pitch black catacombs of Paris. The brightly lit laboratories. Their mission. Papillon. His partner, one of her dreaded “Lucky Charms” in hand as he watches in horror. Run.
Her legs, still clad in those familiar black jeans, seem to tremble lightly at his words. Or maybe it is just his consciousness flickering like a candle in a storm. He shakes his head, determined to stay awake.
“Why are you doing this?”
“No, why are you doing this?”
Within the blink of an eye she’s in front of him, the usual mask obscuring the upper half of her face while her teeth bare into a scowl.
“Prancing back in there and messing up the plan like this,” her voice is loud and rough around the edges, trembling fingers digging painfully into his leather jacket as she pushes him back against the pipe he’s been tied to. The tunnel flashes white behind her as a new pain pulses through his shoulders but his eyes stay fixed on her face.
“You mean saving your life?”
“I had it under control.”
“You were about to die!”
“A calculated risk! I was doing my job.”
“As I was mine!”
They’re both panting now, the echo of their yells ricocheting of the damp walls, haunting the tunnels like ghosts.
“No you, were not.”
Adrien flinches at the steel in her voice.
“Your job is to do what must be done. To follow orders. Mission above everything else.”
“Even you? Please, Ladybug, anything but – I can’t just – I’m your partner!”
“You’re not my partner, Noir,” her voice is nothing short of a snarl, “you were assigned to me. I command, you follow. LADY and CAT, that’s how this works.”
“Milady – ”
“And it’s LADY Bug,” she cuts him off. “Not milady, not Ladybug, not buggaboo or whatever else you like to come up with. The codename is LADY Bug.”
She runs her hand over her mouth, as if to reach for words that have long left her lips.
“I- I can’t believe I let this get so out of hand”, she continues quietly and Adrien can see the shadow of her eyes flicker closed behind her toned goggles, “I should have stopped this. I should have kept things in line. The signs where there but I never – I didn’t want this to –“
Adrien can do nothing but stare at her as she crouches in front of him, wrapping her arms around herself searching shelter from a chill only she can feel.
“It doesn’t matter now. Papillon got away. We failed. This,” she gestures between the two of them, “failed. And they’re going to make sure that’s not happening again.”
“No,” he croaks, his wrists numbing as he violently pulls at his bonds. “They can’t – I won’t let them –”
“I’m so sorry, I – There’s nothing we can do.”
“We’ve still got time. I’ll tell them. We can still find Papillon. You know him better than anyone. They can’t take you off the case.”
A new kind of pain rips through his chest, a pain that has nothing to do with his cracked ribs or bruised stomach or the plastic slowly cutting off the blood supply to his hands. His voice collapses along with his body, the next sentence nothing more than a hoarse whisper.
“Please, milady, don’t let them take you away from me.”
Her lips part in a silent gasp. “You think that’s what they’re gonna – Don’t you see?”
Her arms wrap even tighter around her chest, desperately looking for comfort he would give everything to provide.
“They know exactly what went down in that laboratory. This isn’t about Papillon. It’s about you.”
Adrien’s brows furrow.
“M-me? They’re not taking you off your case?”
“For goodness-sake” Ladybug jumps to her feet causing Adrien to writhe against the pipe as he watches her pace back and forth in front of him. “Will you stop worrying about me for once? You disobeyed direct orders. You’re out.”
Adrien feels the breath being knocked out of his lungs by the impact of her words.
Out.
He knows what that means. Of course he does. It’s not like the organisation offers a retirement plan.
“You’re going to kill me.”
It’s surprisingly easy to say. The words roll of his tongue, his own voice ringing in his ears while he wonders what else on earth he expected.
Ladybug makes a choking sound and almost trips over her own feet in her pacing as her entire body begins to tremble.
“Why couldn’t you just listen to me?” she asks quietly.
“You with your flirting and teasing and milady this and buggabo that. I told you to stay professional. Let nothing come between ourselves and our duty.”
She almost spits out the last word, as if it were acid on her tongue. Her steps are quickening again, their echo along the walls in synch with his speeding pulse hammering inside his skull.
“But you just kept going. You with your stupid charms. And I started to – You almost made me hope –“
Her voice cracks and Adrien feels something within his chest shatter at the sound. Ladybug has stopped a few meters to his right, facing away from him. Her shoulders fall and rise with heavy breaths.
“I told you not to fall in love with me”, she whispers, her voice so fragile that he’s afraid the words won’t withstand the violent shake of her body.
He’s never seen his lady cry before. There were times he thought she simply didn’t know how. Who knew that it would be him to teach her?
“I’m sorry,” he whispers breathlessly, his whole body aching to reach out to her.
Ladybug laughs. It’s the bizarre caricature of a usually light and pearly sound, like the washed out negative of a familiar photograph, too tattered and strained by the acids to convey anything but an eerie memory of the feelings it once held.
“I’m about to end your life on the orders of others and you tell me you’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry it has to be you.”
She turns to face him and he can see the trails of her tears glistening on her face like fresh scars. Adrien draws a rattled breath, tongue burning from so many unspoken words and heavy at the same time. Still, he has to speak them, before his time is up and they have scorched his insides completely. So he speaks.
“I’m sorry. But I won’t apologize for my actions. Falling in – loving you was the best decision I have ever made. It might be the only good thing I have done in my life. I can’t give that up. Let them take anything, but not that. I’m too selfish to regret saving you today.”
He feels his own eyes begin to burn as they stay fixed on her, the mask covering her features more familiar than any human face. There’s tears welling up inside of him but he chokes them down, he can’t allow them to extinguish the fire burning on his lips, not here, not in front of her. Adrien balls his fists.
“The only thing I am sorry about is letting you down. I hope your next CAT will be a better one.”
He closes his eyes, straining to hold onto that image of her standing in front of him, tattered and filthy from the battle, frozen in time at his words as she sucks in shaky breaths through her chapped, bloody lips. Alive. Let this be the last thing he sees. The only thing he takes with him. He couldn’t have asked for a better ending.
“Please forgive me, Lady Bug.”
He pretends to not hear her sob.
In the end, it’s his body that betrays him. He can feel it begin shaking violently against his restrains, feel icy sweat burn every inch of his skin. His teeth clench, breath coming in sharp, shallow bursts as the air flees his body, turning into a treacherous whimper as it hurries past his tight lips. Inside his chest, his heart rampages and brawls like rabid animal, clawing against the bars of his ribs as if desperate to escape it’s inevitable fate, hungrily sinking it’s teeth into live like a starving stray. Adrien finds his mind racing with the question of how she might do it. If she loves him enough to make it quick and painless. The rushing of adrenaline fused blood fills his ears, drowning out every thought he might have had. The image of her threatens to be washed away by the stream. Tiny lights begin to flicker in the dark of his eyelids.
“You were the best partner I ever could have asked for, Chaton.”
Her voice is close now, so close and he feels her crouching in front of him, his heightened senses on full alert. Instinct takes over and he can’t stop his body from pressing as far away back away from her as possible. It stops shaking, every muscle tensing up in breathless anticipation, awaiting the feeling of unforgiving steel to break through the soft skin, spilling the life out of him like water wells over the rim of a bath. Somewhere in the back of his mind, on his tiny island in this sea of panic, Adrien finds himself grateful for being tied up. He doesn’t trust this new side of him, this selfish, animalistic side that seems to desire nothing but life, no matter how.
Her breath tingles on his forehead and his mind is wiped blank, and the waves of panic crashing onto the shore pulling him under.
And then.
Contact.
He flinches, but it’s not cold steel drilling into his skull. It’s soft, warm lips crashing into his, muffling his surprised yelp as he instinctively tilts up his chin to reciprocate. Ladybug scoots closer, deepening the kiss, the desperation in her movements a mirror of his own. She’s everything hot and beating and alive and he can’t help but cling onto her in a desperate attempt to share her warmth. Her left hand comes up to straddle his face, pulling him closer and closer as he again fights his restraints to give in to her silent command. He’s vaguely aware of her other arm circling around his back, vaguely aware of the cool aura of a blade moving along his exposed lower arm. He doesn’t want to think of it. Instead he focuses on her, on the feeling of her fingers caressing his hair, her breath stroking his face in hot rapid bursts. On being alive. That’s why, when Ladybug suddenly surges forward, the muscles in her knife arm tensing against his shoulder he pushes forward against her, into her kiss. This is what he wants to remember.
But the blade doesn’t harm him. Adrien feels a strain against his wrists, the zip ties tightening painfully before suddenly, with a snap, releasing him. He slumps forward, the feeling rushing back into his hands just as Ladybug breaks their kiss, her left hand pushing him upright so that there is just enough space for a breath between them.
“Go,” she murmurs against his lips, “run and don’t turn back.” Her hand leaves his shoulder and she moves back. “You have two minutes.”
And he does what he was born to do, obey her voice, obey her as he scrambles out from underneath her. He gets up and runs, steps echoing through the catacombs while his entire body burns from being alive.
Not once does he turn back to look at the shrinking figure of Ladybug cowering in the middle of the tunnel.