Chapter Text
It was such a small thing that shook her.
She and Chat Noir had gotten really good at doing acrobatics across the rooftops of Paris. Despite their magical suits, however, they were both human and did still occasionally trip. Shingles and gutters became loose; some things were less stable than they looked. Sometimes one of them just had a slightly off day.
Whatever the case, it wasn’t all that unusual for either of them to lose their footing and perform a sudden movement to save themselves from crashing or falling. They just rolled with it, trusting their instincts and powers to get them through the worst of fumbles. What was most important was that they recovered quickly.
This time, though, it was absolutely jarring because the rooftop seemed to disappear right beneath her feet. Ladybug was running towards the source of the chaos when she launched her yoyo, preparing to jump, but there was nothing solid where she took her next step. Her yoyo missed its intended and she was suddenly hurtling toward the ground.
Marinette gasped and redirected her yoyo just in time to prevent herself from plummeting straight into the cement, but her direction and timing were off. She stumbled sideways on a wall, spun around twice from the tension on her yoyo, and skidded hard against the wall before finally rolling into onto the cobblestone. It was a rough and embarrassing fall, but not the worst she’d been through. At least no one was close enough to this area to see her fall.
“Huh?” she murmured to herself as she regained her footing, heart hammering against her chest. The roof she’d just fallen off of looked solid. Had she just mis-stepped right of the roof? Like it was her first week as Ladybug again?
“Milady?” Chat called from somewhere ahead. “Where did you go?”
“Focus,” Marinette scolded herself, and swung back up to resume pursuing the akumatized victim. She didn’t dare think too much about how the throbbing in her head and soreness in her muscles protested more than they should have.
She landed beside Chat Noir with none of her normal grace, fortunate he had his back turned so he didn’t see her stumble once before standing up straight. She held her chin up as if that alone could forcibly contain her exhaustion.
“Ah, there you are. I thought you might have decided to stop for a cat-nap,” he said cheerily.
“Oh, I would love one, but I don’t think now’s the best time for that,” Marinette said sincerely. She gestured down to the park where the akumatized victim was spouting their normal gibberish. “What do we have here?”
Chat began to speak, but before he could get more than a few words out, the victim had spotted them. She appeared to be one of their most brightly-colored victims yet, which was saying something considering the variety of people that had been akumatized. “Ladybug and Chat Noir! I am the Cryonator! I’m going to show everyone why they should appreciate kindergarten teachers. You try handling a bunch of kids armed with glue and crayons!”
The Cryonator was wearing a pointy, multicolored dress that seemed to be composed entirely of crayons. She wore bright red lipstick that matched the perfectly-round circles on her cheeks, and a giant glue-gun hung on her belt. Evidence of what she could do was already splattered around the park: bright purple globs of glue were covering several trees and several parts of the playground, while some crying kids were pinned on the ground with crayons stuck through the edges of their clothing.
She seemed mostly harmless, but they had to take every akumatization seriously. She and Chat Noir split up and got to work. They were running around more than usual in this battle desperately trying not to get stuck by her glue, which seemed unbreakable based off of the number of people that were currently stuck in place. Again, nobody seemed to be seriously hurt, but of course getting stuck could be dangerous enough for either of them when they were trying to keep their Miraculous from getting stolen.
When she used her Lucky Charm, which was a just a roll of craft string, it seemed to take her twice as long as usual to figure out what to do with it. Usually, the suit was good at keeping physical injuries and exhaustion at bay, but Marinette could feel it creeping up behind her eyes. That wasn’t good. For her to feel so tired in the suit meant that her normal un-transformed self would be twice as tired.
Still, she pushed through and set the appropriate trap with the string. Soon, the Cryonator was struggling in her own glue and growling at them. Chat Noir kicked the glue gun from her grip and leisurely jammed the end of his staff into it, which cracked to release the tell-tale dark butterfly.
After the whole purifying, setting everything back to normal, and checking in on the victim routine, Marinette was about to swing off without saying goodbye. Of course, Chat took the chance to tug her closer just outside the entrance of the park.
“Wait, Milady,” he said in a slightly quieter tone of voice, mindful of their very public location. “Are you feeling okay? Today didn’t seem like a top purr-formance for you.”
Marinette flashed a small smile at him. Trust Chat to soften his criticism with a pun. He was right, though, that battle hadn’t been one of her best. She’d stumbled a few times too many and was slow enough that Chat had held her gaze a bit longer than usual at points in the fight to make sure she was okay. “It’s just been a really long week for me,” she said honestly.
Chat nodded and let go of her arm. Of course, they both had real lives outside of this hero gig, which generally took up most of their time. Over the past three years of fighting together, Marinette had gathered that Chat had some sort of job that took a lot of time out of days, on top of school. Chat had shown up for fights looking a little worse for the wear. He would understand pushing through stress and exhaustion.
“Well, we’re over halfway done. Sleep soundly tonight, Milady,” Chat said with a bow in her direction before bounding away.
Marinette heaved a sigh and stood where she was for a few seconds. Returning home would mean more effort on her part, but her earrings beeped insistently, reminding her that she better suck it up and get back.
When Marinette released the transformation in the middle of her room, the exhaustion hit her in a wave. She almost collapsed onto her bed but instead forced herself over to her desk, which was piled with the assignments and projects she’d been working on that evening before leaving to attend to the akuma attack.
Yes, it was just Wednesday and it was still a long week for her. What she had neglected to mention to Chat, though, was that it was only one in a series of long weeks that hadn’t let up… well, nearly all semester. And it didn’t seem to be getting any better.
“Marinette!” Tikki had spotted her stumbling to her desk and floated over with a macaron in hand, voice incredulous and accusatory. “Don’t tell me you’re working instead of resting!”
“It’s only 6pm, Tikki,” Marinette said, stifling a yawn with one hand while she rifled through a stack of papers with one hand. She had a science worksheet due tomorrow, she was pretty sure. “It’s not even dark yet.” Despite her best efforts, a yawn broke through her fingers.
The kwami frowned at her. “Yes, but you hardly slept at all last night and you just spent a lot of energy fighting. You’re exhausted. You should take a nap, at least.”
Her math notebook was somehow unearthed with all the paper shuffling. Okay, she might as well do the problem set while it was in front of her. “I can’t. I’ve got work to do.” Then she could start on her latest commission for Jagged Stone on another radical jacket. She would have to wing the history reading discussion tomorrow, or at least skim the material on her walk to school; there was no way she could read without falling asleep.
A rumbling noise came from her stomach. Tikki broke off half the macaron she had and handed it to Marinette. Marinette took it with one hand without looking at it and put it in her mouth in one bite, leafing through her notebook.
“I know you have a lot to do,” Tikki said sadly. “But you’re not productive when you’re this tired. Don’t you think you’d work better after a quick nap?”
That sounded so tempting, but— “No way, Tikki. I’ll just pass out and won’t wake up until tomorrow, and I have so much due this week!” Marinette looked at Tikki for the first time since releasing her transformation, begging the kwami to understand with her pleading expression. “It’s my last year in high school. I can’t slack off on my grades now. I also want to make Jagged Stone’s new Jacket as good as possible—not only would a poor product damage my reputation as a designer, but I would feel really bad for not putting in all my effort, especially since he’s paying me so well. I’ll just have to push through tonight.” Marinette topped the rant off with an apologetic, stressed look, before forcibly turning away from Tikki back to her work.
A few moments of silence passed. Marinette tried to rub the tiredness out of her eyes and make sense of the derivatives in front of her. She thought Tikki had gone rest in her bed when the kwami spoke quietly beside her, “You can’t do this every night, Marinette. You’re wearing yourself thin. It’s dangerous to be Ladybug like this, and more importantly, it’s hurting your health.”
Despite her best efforts to focus only on her work, Marinette grimaced at the words. “I know, I’m sorry,” she said quietly. That’s all she could say. She knew she was pushing herself a bit too hard, but what else was there to do? It was a critical time in her life. She was graduating high school this year and was compiling a portfolio to apply to one of the top fashion designing programs in France. The top-notch grades and statement pieces that feat needed would take all of her focus.
Yet, she had also gained responsibility as Ladybug, which meant she couldn’t focus completely on her life. She had been the Guardian of the Miraculous for almost a year now. Even though she trusted Ex-Master Fu enough to trust herself with the task, it was stressful as hell. As tired as she was with all of her activities, she was still occasionally kept herself awake at night worrying about every possible situation involving the Miraculous.
What if her house was destroyed in an akuma attack, irreparably damaging the Miraculous? She kept the box in her room in a locked chest, which was inconspicuously nestled against the wall amongst some blankets and other boxes filled with crafting supplies. What if Alya started snooping and became interested in that chest? Once Alya became interested in something, it was almost inevitable she would find exactly what she wanted, locks and magical boxes be damned.
The stress of being the keeper of the Miraculous had also pushed her to put in more time and effort as Ladybug. She and Chat now did weekly night patrols, and she often took on extra patrols by herself, desperate to reassure herself that she was doing everything she could to keep Paris safe and discover Hawkmoth’s plans before they formed into something dangerous.
Unfortunately, Hawkmoth had been extremely careful in the past year after his chaotic plan failed, so Marinette hadn’t gained much traction on that front. Still, that didn’t keep her from pouring over records of Akuma attacks and notes she’d taken, trying to piece together who the man behind the mask was.
All this extra work and stress as Ladybug on top of her regular life was exhausting. She had been considering for a while now how she could possibly lessen the pressure of at least one of her burdens, but the best answer she could think of was one she knew Tikki wouldn’t like. It was understandable considering it was a course of action she’d been advised against since day one of becoming Ladybug. However, she had put serious thought into her decision and was almost ready to make her argument.
Not now, though. Now she was tired and had a lot of work to finish, and convincing Tikki that she and Chat should reveal their true identities to each other would take a lot of energy.