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Marinette is three, and there is a vase on the ground.
Maman comes in and gasps, a soft intake of breath that she can barely hear over the sound of the porcelain toppling and shattering on the floor. White and blue dotted pieces surround her, too many for her to count, and she can hear quick footsteps making their way towards her and she can't help it.
"Mari? Sabine? What happened?"
She starts to cry, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. She's done a Bad Thing, her Maman's face still set in shock and Papa's harder than usual voice confirm that and she cries harder when he comes into the room. Maman comes over beside her, wrapping her up in her arms and picking her up with no small amount of effort, and Marinette curls into her Maman's neck even though she's a big girl and doesn't need to be held anymore. She hears Papa walk out of the room and then back again, the sound of a broom scraping against porcelain filling the air. Maman carries her away from the mess, sitting her down carefully on the cushions on a chair.
"Shh, mon petit chou. It's ok."
Marinette looks up at Maman's soft voice, her hiccupping sobs slowing to a stop. Maman rubs her back carefully, letting her calm down, and waits until everything stops being so loud and big and wrong before talking to her in a low voice.
"Maman knows that you didn't mean to do it, Mari. Everyone makes mistakes."
Marinette's eyes begin to tear up again, and Maman wraps her up in her arms. For a moment, the world is quiet and small, just Mari and her Maman and nothing else.
"We all make mistakes, mon petit chou. The important thing is to apologize."
"M'sorry," she says, and Maman grins. It's okay; Maman's happy so it's ok. Marinette smiles too. "Love you Maman."
"I love you too, 宝贝."
---
She's Ladybug.
Marinette tests the word on her tongue. La-dy-bug. It feels foreign, like an article of clothing that doesn't quite fit. Tikki said that was normal - because that was the name of the tiny god (kwami?) in her purse and it was the first day of school and god she had not signed up for this.
"You did great, Marinette." Tikki flies up to her face, eyes huge and blue and honestly pretty adorable, for all the weirdness that she had brought into Marinette's life. That was nice, at least. "It's hard adjusting to become a superhero."
Marinette can only nod, because what are you supposed to do when you randomly become something straight out of a comic book? It's not like she had ever thought of it before (though the same couldn't be said of Chat Noir, judging by his excitement over the whole defeating supervillains in Paris thing) and frankly she was feeling a little overwhelmed. Tikki, at least, has been helpful, explaining her powers and different areas of combat that she'll need to work on. As weird as the entire situation is, Tikki is definitely one of the best parts.
"So how often is Hawkmoth going to attack?"
Tikki frowns a bit, considering her question. Marinette doesn't have high hopes for an answer; Tikki has already shrugged in response to a bunch of them or flat out denied her with an apologetic "I can't tell you." Tikki hesitates for a moment, buzzing softly. "I don't know. It's hard to say. But judging on what we've seen from him so far, I would say at least once every two or three days."
Marinette feels a chill running down her back. Once every two or three days? Today had been the most ridiculously terrifying day of her life. If she thinks hard enough, she can remember the people screaming as Stoneheart trampled cars and destroyed everything in his path, Alya ducking down with her phone held in front of her paralyzed in shock, a face appeared in a fluttering black void. She's a kid; she isn't ready for the weight of Paris on her shoulders. Tikki seems to notice her quickening breaths and lets out a low croon, something to hold onto before the fear sweeps her away.
"Careful, Marinette. Hawkmoth will take advantage of any negative emotions that he can, and if he akumatizes you, Paris is doomed." Marinette forces herself to calm down, pushing the panic deep, deep down into the recesses of her mind to keep under lock and key. Tikki's eyes are almost mournful. "You have to do this for Paris. You can do it."
I can't, she wants to say, I can't because I'm just Marinette, just a teenage girl trying to deal with Chloe and homework and I've already messed up once; how am I supposed to do this again? She breathes. She can't freak out, or else she'd endanger all of Paris and Hawkmoth would take her earrings and Chat’s ring and everyone could die or something. It wasn't really clear. That's fine.
Calm down Marinette. Go over what you know.
- She's a normal girl with a normal life besides that she apparently now moonlights as a superhero.
- She has special earrings that make her Ladybug, as well as the literal God of Creation as a mentor or something like that.
- She has a partner, Chat Noir, who helps her from keeping an old creepy dude steal her their jewelry.
- She's responsible for the fate of Paris and possibly the world.
- She's 100% in over her head.
"Tikki? What happens if I mess up?"
Tikki frowns, a tiny disgruntled expression that seems to be ninety-nine parts exasperation and one part worry. "You'll make an amazing Ladybug, Marinette. I told you this."
"Hypothetically then," she says, but it really isn’t hypothetical because Marinette isn't stupid. She's clumsy and shy and doesn't have a backbone, and Ladybug is everything that Marinette isn't, but Marinette is Ladybug and secret identities are the worst. Tikki sighs.
"Fine, Marinette. If you mess up, you apologize and try to make things better. Isn't that what you do normally, anyways?"
Apologize. Yeah, Marinette can apologize. It's already something she does constantly, as her legendary clumsiness had given her her fair share of awkward encounters. Of course, she’s not just Marinette now. She’s Ladybug, which means she has to take responsibility like Ladybug, which means she needs to put Paris before herself. That’s fine. Every hero makes sacrifices; Marinette can deal with this much.
“Thanks, Tikki.”
Tikki smiles brighter than the sun, her voice lilting and cheerful. “You can do it, Marinette.”
---
Marinette, decidedly, cannot do it.
“Marinette, you have to calm down!” She can almost hear Tikki in the back of her mind, screaming at her to focus because there’s still an akuma on the loose. It doesn’t matter. She can still see Chat Noir fading, arms wrapped around her neck with a sad smile on his lips and green, green eyes closed, fading to nothing but Timebreaker’s cruel words and cruel laugh and the phantom feeling of her heart being ripped in half.
It doesn’t even matter that she’s been handling akumas for two months, at this point. Something cold and harsh and angry forces its way through her veins, a million shades of broken painted in the robotic movements of her limbs and the haze surrounding her head. For a moment, there’s no akuma. There are no consequences, no Alix under Hawkmoth’s spell.
There’s only Timebreaker, and Ladybug needs to destroy.
She sees the familiar haze of light on Timebreaker's face from Hawkmoth's influence, desperate for a Miraculous. Try, she thinks almost hysterically, try even touching Chat and I’ll rip you to shreds. Tikki’s screaming, shrill and high and trilling in the back of her mind and she can’t even react to it because she can feel her own emotions inside of her, bubbling and overwhelming and about to explode. Timebreaker realizes far too late that she is desperately outmatched, only barely ducking and weaving out of the way of Ladybug’s calculated blows. Timebreaker starts skating in the opposite direction and Marinette feels a curling streak of possessiveness.
Come back here, little akuma. I’m not done with you yet.
It’s a whirl of movement and emotions and Tikki still screaming, screaming in her head and people all around her running for their lives but then there’s a sound like ripping paper and she feels something snapping behind her and-
Silence.
Her breaths are hard. The air is calm and a little chilly as she comes down from her adrenaline high and Timebreaker runs away before she can react. Below her are cheers; she steps almost carefully towards the edge of the building.
It’s her.
She watches herself, the other Marinette, as she cheers on the side of the race. There’s a flurry of activity as other-Alix’s watch gets broken again (though this is the first time, right? Because they had traveled back in time to the first time and it’s been less than a minute and time travel was already confusing her.) She watches as Alix falls to the ground beside her broken watch, tears welling in her eyes and she shouts, because she can’t watch them all fade away.
She can’t be alone again.
Other-Marinette stomps behind her, and she forces a smile on her face. Marinette looks so angry, filled with righteous rage and determination that she can’t find anymore, and it’s so stupid what a difference six minutes can make. There’s not enough time to explain, not enough time for her to break the way she knows she will if she doesn’t focus on the akuma. Tikki – other-Tikki, that is, pops out of her bag and reassures other-her that she is Ladybug even though other-her is also Ladybug and she wonders if other-Tikki can hear her-Tikki’s screams still echoing in her ears and-
Focus.
She sends other-Marinette running to the bakery—it’d be easier from all fronts if she avoids having both of them on the scene, and she’s gone against Timebreaker before. There’s a thud behind her and something loosens (Chat, it’s chat and he’s safe and he’s here and her minou isn’t gone, she still has a chance). Guilt rolls heavy and dark in her gut, but it’s okay because Chat Noir is here and she’ll be damned if she lets Hawkmoth hurt him again.
“Which life? I’ve got nine,” he says with a smirk and a gleam in his eyes and she wants to scream because he doesn’t understand, because he’s her chaton and her chaton was a stupid self-sacrificing idiot that was going to get himself killed.
“I’m serious!” Ladybug – because she’s Ladybug right now, and Ladybug has to fix everything even if Marinette is breaking—turns to him and she thinks that he sees the desperation in her eyes because his eyes narrow and his jaw sets as he looks to her with a sort of trusting determination only her chaton could have, and it hurts because he trusts her, trusts Ladybug with everything that he has and she failed him. Her throat locks up without warning, but there’s a battle so she forces herself to stay focused, forces herself not to look at her stupid, stupid cat’s face because she knows she’ll break.
They dive down to meet the Timebreakers in sync, Chat Noir by her side (the way it should be) and watching the two of them talk, knowing smirks on their faces with their eyes hidden behind their helmets, makes rage burn in her gut and threaten to boil over. They start skating towards them and panic flashes through her skull, and with a warning to Chat she’s parrying the akuma’s blows with her yo-yo and everything fades away besides adrenaline running through her veins and her partner by her side.
She cleanses the akuma and ladybugs surround her as memories flood into her brain. She’s Marinette, but she’s also other-Marinette seeing Marinette, and she’s fighting the akuma but at the same time she’s giving Mrs. Chamack a cake from the other side of Paris. She looks over at Chat—her Chat, because it doesn’t matter if she’s Marinette or if she’s other-Marinette because no matter what it’s still her Chat—and relief washes over her because nothing seems to show that he remembers being wiped away from existence. Marinette’s head is pounding as she tries to reconcile one set of memories with another, but she still smiles at Alix as they talk about responsibility and consequences and she tries not to think about how she had failed her partner when he needed her most.
I’m sorry, she almost says when she turns back, but his eyes are playful and he’s bouncing on the balls of his feet in that skittish, ridiculous way that he always does once they defeat an akuma, and she can’t take that away from him. Her tongue feels dead in her mouth as they banter, a rhythm that she knows all too well (a rhythm she almost lost) and she swings far, far away before Marinette hides herself in an alley and lets herself cry.
---
The nightmares start small.
If she had made a wrong step with Stoneheart and someone ended up hurt. If she hadn’t grabbed Alya’s bag and was unable to transform. If she tripped trying to use her Lucky Charm and ended up alerting the akuma to her and Chat’s position. It’s nothing she can’t deal with; nothing she hasn’t dealt about as Marinette because her overthinking had never quite served her well when fear crept into her dreams.
But as Hawkmoth becomes more and more brutal, her dreams get darker as well.
She’s too late to save Alya and the car crushes her best friend against the wall. Her class is isolated by an akuma, specifically targeted because of Chloe’s cruel words and crueler actions once again, and she can’t get to them fast enough to prevent them from getting caught under tons of rubble. Hawkmoth finds out her identity and she comes home to find her parents hurt, disappeared, or worse. She’s too late and can’t stop an akuma, her miraculous are taken and the last thing she sees are black butterflies surrounding her as Hawkmoth forces Tikki and Chat Noir’s kwami to do his bidding. She’s not careful and an akuma gets into her head, and she wakes up from a voice in her mind to Paris in flames, blood dark even against the bright red of her suit.
I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’msorry I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry
Chat dives in front of her and is controlled by an akuma. Chat can’t duck out of the way fast enough to avoid an akuma’s clutches. She loses her powers and can only watch as he loses ground against an akuma until he loses his balance and bleeds out in her arms. He pushes himself to take hits meant for her, always meant for her, and looks up with guilt and apologies in the green of his eyes and she screams. Hawkmoth’s whispering sweet, sweet nothings into her head, and she can’t control her limbs as Chat refuses to hurt her, watching as her own hands choke the life out of his limp body.
Her eyes snap open into the night and a quiet voice whispers into her ear. For a moment, she’s by Maman’s side once again, but then she blinks and it’s just Tikki, concern in her big blue eyes. Tikki tries to wipe her tears as she cries into her arms and as she bites down on a pillow to muffle her sobs, but Marinette wants her maman, wants her kind smiles and arms around her head and to pretend that there’s no Ladybug or Hawkmoth or akumas, that nothing exists but her family and their tiny bakery that smells like chocolate and flour and home.
“I’m sorry, Marinette,” Tikki says mournfully, antennae just barely brushing against her cheeks. She can’t blink Chat’s terrified eyes out of her mind, can’t wash out the blood and ruin seared in the inside of her eyelids. Tikki sings to her, a lullaby of sorts that she can’t recognize, and Marinette wonders how many times she’s had to sing her Chosens to sleep as they crack under all that Ladybug has to be.
“I couldn’t stop him,” she breathes, emotion rising in her chest like floodwaters against a dam at its breaking point. “I couldn’t stop myself, couldn’t save anyone. I hurt them,” and her throat’s tight and her breaths just keep getting quicker and everything’s just so loud. “I can’t do—I can’t be Ladybug, I can’t save Paris, I can’t protect all of them I can’t even protect my own partner I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry-
She needs quiet. Everything is too bright and too loud and too much, her thoughts bang against her skull and she can almost hear them clicking against each other behind her eyes. She needs to get out of here, needs to abandon everything that was Marinette far far away, needs to calm down or Hawkmoth will use her to hurt everyone but she can’t and she needs air she can’t breathe she can’t breathe she can’t breathe-
“Tikki, spots on.”
She feels the magic washing over her body, Tikki a whisper in her frazzled mind and hoists herself out the skylight. The night is dark and quiet, speckled with stars and the slightest sliver of a moon. Ladybug lets herself run, diving and flipping from one rooftop to the next and hoping that if she runs fast enough she’ll leave Marinette far, far behind. She lets herself fall towards the ground, faster and farther and closer until she’s about to hit the ground and her yoyo whips up as her toes skim the concrete.
(The only difference between flying and falling is the consequence.)
She runs and runs and runs until the burning in her limbs and the pounding of her heart have silenced the static in her head, until she’s too tired to think and too exhausted to sleep. She climbs up the Eiffel Tower and sits on its beams, wondering how strong the wind has to be to send her careening over the edge.
Her bangs fall over her eyes as she lowers her head. From where she sits, Marinette can see almost all of Paris. All these people relying, trusting Ladybug to defeat the akuma and fix the damage that it deals, hoping that she'll take down Hawkmoth and keep them safe.
"I'm sorry," she says into the cold night air, too quiet for anyone but herself to hear. Maybe, on this quiet night, she can apologize for every mistake she's ever made. Maybe she can atone for her sins before she makes them; maybe she can let them know that Ladybug's shoulders are fragile under the weight of the world.
---
Akumas begin to bleed more and more into her life as Marinette, affecting the people around her. She can count on one hand how many of her classmates haven't been akumatized, and she's beginning to wonder if Hawkmoth's specifically targeting her school with how many times it's been the epicenter of an akuma attack. She thinks that he's getting more desperate when she has to skip out of physics again to take out an akuma near the Seine. The fight is annoyingly long, especially when Chat gets tossed into the water and she has to go fish him out with the akuma right on her tail, but a well-placed Cataclysm and paperclip (Tikki, can't you give me something that I'll know what to do with for once?) and she's running back to school, out of breath and exhausted and trying to remember as much as she can from Mrs. Mendeleev's lecture from before she left.
She slips through a window to an empty classroom, detransforming in a corner out of the prying eyes of whoever might have been in the hallway at the moment, because as powerful as the glamour magic might be, there's no way she's risking her identity for a few seconds wasted before class. Marinette skids into the classroom, barely avoiding crashing into the doorframe with her hand clamped tightly over her purse, and a scowling Mrs. Mendeleiev meets her at the front of the class.
"Marinette Dupain-Cheng."
Her fingers find the top of her bag and she clasps and unclasps it methodically, losing the world to the snap of the metal clicking against itself. Mrs. Mendeleiev yells at her, face pinched behind her rectangular glasses and neatly manicured hands waving wildly in the air. Snap. She nods her head to her angry words, mind still recovering from the high that the akuma battle had brought. Snap. Her mind wanders to Hawkmoth and where the akuma had been this time; she would have to check out Alya's map after the battle to get some more data on where the akumas might be coming from. Snap. Mrs. Mendeleiev's hand waves in front of her face.
"Are you even listening to me?"
Marinette blinks out of her daze, purse closing with a loud snap. Alya looks at her with a worried expression, and then Mrs. Mendeleiev's hand is wrapped around her upper arm and dragging her into the hallway.
"Marinette, we have to talk about this." Her face is stern, though not unkind as the door closes behind them, and the all too familiar wash of guilt that comes with having to hide half of her life hits her like a bullet. "You used to be one of the best students in the class. Recently, it seems like you've been slipping more and more. You're skipping class, missing homework, making mistakes on your tests. Is everything alright?"
Maybe it's a bad thing, she thinks, that she wants to tell her teacher everything. How much she'd give to have someone other than just Tikki, a millennia old god who has seen so many Ladybugs come and go, someone that she could vent to and lean on and could pick her up when Ladybug made it too much for Marinette to live. Maybe it's a bad thing that she almost told Mrs. Mendeleiev, a teacher that was just trying to do her job and barely knew anything about Marinette beside her penchant for tardiness and slipping grades, that she was so desperate for someone to know that it didn't even matter to her anymore who it was.
"I'm fine, Mrs. Mendeleiev." She's fine. She has to be fine, because she's Ladybug and Ladybug has to be fine so Marinette needs to be fine too. "I've just been busier for these past couple months."
"I believe you, Marinette." Mrs. Mendeleiev sighs, concern flickering in the back of her eyes. "But I'll have to call your parents."
That's fine. "I'm truly sorry, Mrs. Mendeleiev. I'll try for it not to happen again."
"I know you will."
---
It happens again.
She tries. Nobody sees the way that she stays awake until the sun begins to peek above the horizon to finish studying for her physics test, the cups of coffee that she downs while typing up an essay on whatever book they're studying that month. She tries to spend time in the bakery because Maman and Papa never say anything but they're almost as tired as she is baking and mixing and talking to customers to keep them happy, tries to work on her fashion designs for the school play that somebody had volunteered her to help for and make a scarf for Juleka because she had mentioned how cold the school building was. She tries to patrol with Chat and hang out with Alya and do her homework and take down akumas, tries to fit in research on Hawkmoth and work on Uncle Jagged's new cover because he thought that most people didn't have the spark he was looking for in them, tried to do everything and anything that people needed Marinette or Ladybug to do.
But trying isn't always enough.
"Marinette, please," Maman begs, eyes earnest and pleading and it makes bile rise to the back of her throat because Marinette hates liars, hates those who pretend to be someone they aren't but Marinette is Ladybug but Ladybug must stay secret so Marinette has to lie, over and over and over and over and over-
"I'm sorry, Maman."
"Marinette just talk to us," she says, her eyes big and grey and shining with tears. "Your papa and I want to help; you're slipping away from us and we don't know why. Please, just talk to us and we'll figure it out together."
"It's okay, Maman," she says though neither of them believe her, her eyes darting around the room so she doesn’t cry. "I'm okay."
"You're not, Marinette."
Anger rises in her chest, boiling and irrational and terrible, and she wants to snap because she's trying, Marinette's trying to be okay, trying to be the beacon of light that everyone seems to think she's supposed to be. She's trying to be good, but even if Ladybug is good Marinette is Ladybug so how good can Ladybug truly be? She's angry, because she's trying so so hard to be okay and nobody believes her, not her teachers who talk behind her back or her parents who plead and beg and cry for her to talk to them and not Tikki, who can only sing to her broken heart in the middle of the night knowing that lullabies of old can do nothing to the darkness that swells against her ribs.
"I'm fine," she says, because even if Marinette wants to say that she's Ladybug, wants to scream at Hawkmoth until her throat goes raw and her voice gives out she can't. The words are harsh and bitter and they make Maman flinch back and Marinette feels herself snap back to apathy. (Don't let Hawkmoth win.) "I'm fine."
"You don't have to be fine, 宝贝."
The smile that she gives Maman is tenuous and watery and fake (lies, all lies) and she closes the door as her maman leaves the room. "I know," she says, quiet and bubbly and a paper-thin disguise over the anguish that threatens to burst out of her skin.
Tikki flies out of the corner she had hid herself in, not even bothering with giving Marinette advice and simply rubbing her forehead against Marinette's cheek.
"I'm sorry," she says, her tiny body drooping and her blue eyes shining with regret. Marinette tucks her head into her arms and sobs.
---
"You ok, milady?"
She watches her legs as they dance over Paris, kicking out one after the other over the edge of the wall. "I'm fine."
"I apologize if I don’t exactly believe that, Bugaboo." Chat's tone is teasing, but she recognizes the edge in his voice. "The display from last night says otherwise."
What display? She just manages to bite the words back from where they had been resting at the tip of her tongue, angry and loud and about to lash out because she's talking to her chaton, and her chaton didn't deserve her anger just because she wasn't feeling well. "I'm sorry, Chat."
Chat stares at her for a long moment, long enough to make Ladybug feel awkward. She fidgets in her suit, legs still swinging over the edge of the building.
"Why are you sorry?"
"Hmm?" Marinette looks back at Chat, and it's weird because his eyebrows are furrowed and his lips are pursed, like he's eaten something sour and wants to spit it out. Did she do something wrong? She bites her lip; she can't have Chat lose his trust in her too. "I acted out unprofessionally. It's not fair to you or to Paris if I lose my cool when I'm a superhero."
If anything, Chat looks even more upset. "M'lady-"
"I'm sorry, minou. It was wrong of me to do that. I know it wasn't easy for you." She ducks her head down, heat rising to the tips of her ears. It was stupid, she knows, to get so worked up. It was stupid of her to lash out in the public eye, even after Hawkmoth had pulled the same stunt before. It was stupid, even for a moment, to let Marinette break through Ladybug's carefully constructed persona because Marinette was a child and Ladybug couldn't be one. It was stupid-
"Ladybug, you don't have to be sorry."
Her response is automatic. "Yes I do. "
She ducks down so she can't see his face, can't see him react to whatever she's doing wrong this time. Tikki is a faint buzz in the back of her mind, offering some sort of comfort that bursts into ash on her tongue. The night is quiet from so high above the city, a slight breeze cold as it nips against the exposed skin of her face, and Chat's footsteps are loud as he walks over towards her.
"Ladybug," he says, and she almost tells him to call her Marinette when Tikki stops her just in time.
"Yeah, Chat?"
"It's ok for you to be angry, you know." He looks at her, his eyes a bright blur of green in her peripheral vision. "You're not perfect. You don't have to be perfect." His words are bitter with understanding, the weight of a world that she doesn't know on his shoulders. "You're allowed to be a kid."
"But I can't be a kid, Chat." Her hands shake, and she knows that it isn't from the cold. "I'm Ladybug. You're Chat Noir. Paris is relying on us - on me."
Chat Noir is quiet, the silence stretching as they sit side by side, their shoulders and their knees knocking against each other. They're almost always touching, Marinette thinks as she leans her head on his shoulder. Being superheroes left little room for personal space, and they had long since learned that physical contact was the easiest way to calm each other down from a panic attack. She noted almost absently that it was bad, how codependent they had become, how she felt like she couldn’t breathe sometimes without Chat at her side.
"I'm sorry, Chat." She closes her eyes, feeling his head rest on hers and his hair brush against her neck. He rumbles a bit, a purr that rolls between them like thunder to say the words she can't find. It's stupid, because they're just kids playing pretend, teenagers wearing magical spandex and holding the fate of the universe in their hands. It's stupid because sometimes she can feel fear press against her lungs so hard that it hurts, so stupid because she looks into Chat's eyes every time he takes a hit for her and every time there's the same panic, the same gleam of I don't want to die.
"I'm sorry too," he whispers, and she murmurs a sad, keening sound as she buries her head into his neck. It's everything she wants to say and can't put into words, all the apologies resting in her heart. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. His other arm comes around in front of her and he holds her like she's the only thing he has left.
They watch their city as the sun rises above it, bathing the world in brilliant shades of rose and gold, two children up far too high in a world that is far too big, and Marinette can't help but wonder if her people are sorry too.