Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Invincibility was only granted to the Ladybug and Black Cat that worked together. Not even the Miraculous Cure could heal them, otherwise.

Ladybug wiped her bloody nose with the back of her hand and spat the residue somewhere on the ground. She didn't let her yo-yo stop — not even for a second. Electragirl cackled, arms spread, head thrown back, approaching Ladybug on top of her great ball of concentrated charge and the akumatized battery pack clenched in her fist.

Ladybug would have to dodge the next one. The last electric bolt was a throw-away, almost accidental attack, yet there was still blood pouring from her nose and catching on her upper lip.

The next one would hurt. 

Chat Noir knew this — of course he did. Ladybug had made the mistake of playing his game of cat and mouse (cat and ladybug?) where she did the chasing and he did the running. He had led her straight into a thoroughly-cataclysmed alleyway. The ground had nearly been turned inside out, and all her escape routes had been blocked with rubble.

And, of course, Electragirl.

"You sure that's a good idea?" Ladybug said.

Chat Noir stopped from where he had been about to leave Electragirl's side. "What're you gonna do, Bug Girl? Yo-yo me into oblivion?"

Ladybug spat more blood to the side. "Come any closer and we'll find out." 

Their gazes remained locked for three heavy breaths.

Then Chat Noir gave Electragirl a quiet instruction, and began crossing the distance to Ladybug.

This was always the part of their battles that Ladybug never understood.

It always went a little something like this—

Hawk Moth's akuma would throw whatever blows it had — flames, icicles, you name it — and at the first sign of blood, at the first sign of Ladybug's weakness, Chat Noir would halt the attacks.

He'd come up to her, look down his nose, and demand the Miraculous. Sometimes his voice wavered, and once he took her by the shoulder (a mistake — she wrenched his arm back and almost grabbed his Miraculous), but he had never even done so much as raise his hand at her for her earrings. 

Then when she refused, he'd call the akuma back over.

Marinette had spent hours with Tikki trying to figure out what on earth that technique was meant to do. Chat Noir was tall, much taller than her, and had strong hands and arms she was sure could easily push her to the ground if she were injured. Why wouldn't he?

Chat Noir stood in front of her.

Ladybug felt more blood well up near her mouth. 

This time, she spat it at him.

"Wow," he said. Nonchalantly, he brushed it off the front of his suit. "Not even a thank-you for stopping her?"

"Cut to the chase, Chat Noir. I don't have time for your games."

"And I don't have time for yours." He opened his hand, palm-up. "You want to do good, right? Then give me your Miraculous."

"Never."

He narrowed his eyes. "Can't you see how many people you're hurting?"

"You mean you are hurting?"

His expression flickered. "Aren't you tired?" he said. "Aren't you tired of people getting hurt everyday just so you can put it all back together? Wouldn't you want it all to stop?"

"I'll fix everything every day for the rest of my life if I have to." She took a step towards him. "Because one day, you and Hawk Moth will fall. And I'll take both your Miraculous, and laugh in your faces."

Chat Noir stared at her. She stared back. She let the blood drip out of her nose and off her face.

Electragirl cackled from where Chat Noir had left her.

And then she was gliding towards them, battery pack sizzling with white-hot electricity, crackling like a fire as she drew nearer.

Ready and aim. At Ladybug.

Chat Noir whipped around. "What are you doing ?" 

"Let me do this!" Electragirl cried.

"That'll kill her!"

"And then we can take her Miraculous!"

Ladybug watched the battery pack sizzle. Crackle. What was charge measured in, again? Because whatever it was, Chat Noir was right.

It would kill her.

The electric bolt ripped through the alleyway, heading straight towards Ladybug.

Then an arm was around her waist, she was pulled into a side, and she was going up, and up, and up, until her feet landed on something solid.

A rooftop.

With Chat Noir and his baton beside her.

Ladybug almost forgot about her bloody nose.

She could only look at him, but he wouldn't look at her. Chat Noir released her, walked back to the edge of the rooftop, and leapt off without a word.

Chapter Text

An akuma with knives . It was almost as if the universe was making fun of her mortality. 

Lucky for her, knives were much easier to dodge than electric charge, and, other than a little nick on her cheek she could later pass off as an accidental scratch, Ladybug was doing pretty well. She could finally breathe through her — now healed — nose, and with her focus no longer split between battle and oxygen intake, she found herself at a vantage point on top of a chimney.

She crouched low, pulled out her yo-yo, and zoomed her camera into Chat Noir.

He was looking right back at her.

She lowered it, and narrowed her gaze.

Chat Noir and Culinoire were side-by-side, scoping out the street for what should've been Ladybug, but she had already been spotted — was it just a farce to get her to come out?

Unwilling to call out her Lucky Charm just yet, Ladybug went back to her yo-yo camera.

This time, she shifted it onto Culinoire — a monstrously-sized chef with a bow and quiver full of steak knives, chef's knives, and cleavers.

Once again, he was looking right back at her, but instead of playing the nonchalance game Chat Noir had, Culinoire whipped out his bow, and took aim with a steak knife.

Ladybug watched. The knife fired towards her; she dodged. It skittered to a standstill across the rooftop.

Chat Noir whipped around on Culinoire. "That wasn't the plan!"

"Maybe you should leave the planning to me," Culinoire said, bringing out a cleaver. "Your plans always seem to go nowhere."

"Are you insane? You can't kill her!"

Culinoire lowered his aim from Ladybug, and, slowly, turned to look down at Chat Noir.

"You know what, kitty-cat? I think you talk too much."

Culinoire raised the cleaver, sans bow, at Chat Noir.

And Ladybug leapt off the rooftop, sprinted up, and waved her arms.

"Hey! Look!" she yelled. "Come here! It's me that you want!"

Both Culinoire and Chat Noir snapped their heads around.

The cleaver was retracted.

Ladybug let out a sigh of relief, then summoned her Lucky Charm.

Chapter Text

Friday nights were always quiet in Paris. Music boomed out the open windows of house parties, and girls in high heels clung to their boyfriends' arms, and loud laughs and big smiles and scarlet disco dresses littered the streets. There was too much joy for the coming weekend for akumas to be running amok. 

For that reason, Ladybug loved Friday nights.

She landed on her usual rooftop, undid her ribbons, and settled on the ridge, looking out onto the park in front of her. Shaking out her hair, she watched a woman with a pram stroll down one of the winding paths, illuminated by lamp posts, her laughter clear in the summer night when she leaned over to coo at her baby.

"What are you doing here?"

Ladybug leapt up at the voice behind her, and snatched up her yo-yo.

Chat Noir stood at the edge of the roof, baton clutched in front of him protectively.

"How did you know I would be here?" he demanded.

"What?" Ladybug said. "This is my spot."

"No, it's not. It's mine ." He held her gaze for a moment. "Wait, so, you're not here to fight me?"

Ladybug narrowed her eyes. "Not initially. But I will if I have to."

He sighed, and closed his baton. 

Then, to her surprise, held one hand up in surrender, and used the other to offer his weapon to her.

She blinked down at it, yo-yo still spinning. 

"You don't have to fight me tonight," he said. "Promise."

Ladybug hesitated.

Then, she reached over, and took his baton. She handled it like an explosive, because what were the chances it wasn't? Chat Noir was tricky, and although his bargaining in battles were fruitless, that didn't mean there wasn't more where it came from.

He took her silence as permission to move. He crossed the rooftop, and sat himself on the ridge.

Ladybug stared at him.

For a while, neither spoke. Chat Noir was busy looking up at the star-spangled sky, and Ladybug was too busy inspecting the baton.

"Why are you here?" he asked finally.

"Uh…" She considered not telling him the truth, but eventually caved in. "I just… come up here sometimes. The view of the park clears my head."

"Oh, yeah, me too. Not the park, though. I like the stars."

"Oh. Cool."

She shuffled uncomfortably. Now what? The most appropriate thing for her to do would be to leave, but it was her Friday night. She wouldn't let Chat Noir, of all people, ruin that for her.

Besides, her ribbons were still lying beside him.

So, baton in one hand and yo-yo in the other, Ladybug settled back down on the ridge, grabbing for her ribbons.

"You took your hair out?"

Ladybug stopped tying her hair and looked at him. He was looking at her — uncommitted, chin in hand, still half-facing the sky.

"Um. Yeah. It just… helps me relax, I guess?"

"Oh. It suits you."

"Uh… thanks?"

They sat frozen for a moment. Then Chat Noir returned his gaze to the sky, and Ladybug to the park.

Who knew they'd be so awkward when they weren't brandishing weapons at each other.

Ladybug rolled his baton around in her hand.

“So…” she said, “...you came here to clear your head, too?”

He shrugged. “I guess.”

“Any particular reason?”

His mouth twisted as he watched an aeroplane skim through the stars. “I argued with my father.”

Ladybug almost dropped the baton.

To say she wasn’t expecting that was an understatement. She always imagined Chat Noir and Hawk Moth to be close outside the suits, too — a shared secret, shared goal, shared desire to harness the ultimate power… shouldn’t they be closer than anyone?

Moreover, why would Chat Noir be telling this to Ladybug ?

“Oh, I’m… sorry.” She went back to rolling his baton around. “Do you… wanna talk about it?”

She told herself that, even if he was the enemy, she couldn’t give Hawk Moth the opportunity to akumatize him.

(Really, she knew it had nothing to do with him being akumatized, and everything to do with her impulsive compassion that always chose the worst moments to come out).

Chat Noir swallowed. For a moment, Ladybug didn’t think he’d tell her. Why would he, anyway? She was at his throat just yesterday afternoon.

“I… asked him to give up his Miraculous.”

The baton stilled in Ladybug’s hands. “ What ?” 

Then, he whipped around, and his nonchalance fell from his face to be replaced with what Ladybug could only define as sheer panic. “Please don’t tell anyone I said that. Please. I don’t know what he would do if he found out I told you.”

His eyes were blown wide. Desperate tears gathered in his waterline.

Ladybug knew a superheroine had to use her brain. But she knew a gut feeling when she felt it, and there was something in Chat Noir that made her know he wasn’t lying.

“I-I won’t,” she said. “Why did you…?”

“Because—” He struggled, and averted his gaze back to the stars. “Because… I’m tired.”

“Tired?”

This time, he faced her. Those tears at his waterline gathered, and caught onto his mask when he nodded. “Tired.”

Ladybug watched as Chat Noir — Chat Noir whom she spat blood at, Chat Noir at whom she cursed — cried.

What else could she do? This wasn’t Rose, whom she could placate with a hug and bringing out the unicorn plushie from her bag. This wasn’t Alya, whose glasses she could take off when her teardrops dirtied them, and hold her while she wept. This wasn’t even Adrien whom she knew only in passing, but still put a hand on his shoulder and offered a smile whenever he came to class with dark-rimmed eyes.

“I’m sorry, I—” He sniffed, standing up. “I should go.”

He hurried to the edge of the rooftop, ready to take off even without his baton.

Ladybug shot to her feet. “Wait!”

Chat Noir turned.

She fiddled with the baton. “S-stay. You look like you need someone to talk to.”

They stood where they were — Ladybug on the ridge, Chat Noir at the edge — unmoving.

A breeze rustled the foliage in the park. Ladybug’s newly-tied ribbons brushed past her neck.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

She played with her fingers. “Yes.”

To make her point, Ladybug sat back down on the ridge. It didn’t take long before Chat Noir took in a deep breath and joined her. 

They maintained a one-person gap between them. Ladybug inspected the baton one more time, then slid it over.

She didn’t say anything. Nor did he. She left it to sit in between them, where it wouldn’t roll off the side, but he didn’t try to reach for it.

Chat Noir turned his head back to the sky. “We, uh, we lost my mother… a few years ago.”

“Oh.”

“My father… he wants to bring her back.”

“ Oh .”

They lapsed back into silence. A lone car drove past a few streets behind.

“Is that why… you want the Miraculous?”

Chat Noir tore his eyes from the stars and set her with a heavy expression. “I never wanted it,” he snapped. “He did.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Wh-what?”

“ He wants to bring her back.”

The empath in her put herself in his shoes, but retreated immediately. Losing her own mother would be… she couldn’t even think about it. 

“You don’t want to bring her back?” she said.

Chat Noir quietened. “It’s… it’s not how it sounds.”

She waited. 

He pulled his knees up and tucked them under his chin. This was the smallest Ladybug had ever seen him. He always made himself as big as possible during battles — puffing his chest, sneering down at her, giving her an eyeful of his razor-sharp jawline. Now, curled up on the rooftop beside her, arms clenched around his legs, weapon forgotten, he was almost unrecognisable.

“I guess… when I first got the Miraculous, I did. But I was barely fourteen, and it had barely been a year, and… all I could think about was how much I wanted Mother back… and how happy it would make Father if I helped.”

There was a pause before he continued.

“Actually, that’s not really true. By that time I’d… I’d already started moving on.” He rubbed his brow with his knuckles. “I loved my mother. So much. But… I also just want to… let go of this grief.”

Ladybug nodded. “I understand.” But did she? Could she ever?

“I did it all for Father. I thought… I thought if I could help him with this one thing…” His voice cracked. “Maybe he’d act like he loved me again.”

He used the tip of his claw to flick some tears off his cheek.

“I just want this to be over,” he said. “I’m tired of hurting people. And I’m tired of hurting myself. Because Father will never act like he loves me unless Mother comes back.”

Ladybug swallowed down her shock and allowed herself to process.

How long had he been bottling this up for? Long enough to confide in the enemy, that was for sure.

No matter how much she tried to stand her ground, to tell herself she couldn’t feel sympathy — not for him — her heart contracted as she turned what he said over and over in her brain.

He had barely been fourteen. Fourteen, motherless, and convinced his father didn’t love him.

A father whose grief he had to shoulder alongside his own.

“You know what’ll happen if you use the Miraculous wish… right?” Ladybug said once she found her voice.

His mouth was hidden by his arms. Only his sad green eyes were visible as they flicked to her.

He nodded. “That’s why I asked him to give back the Miraculous. I just… wish he’d understand that using the wish won’t put everything back to normal. We could never go back to normal, not now. Maybe if he tried to move on before, if he just… loved me… if he knew the right thing to do… we could’ve created a new normal. But it’s been three years, and we have blood on our hands, and even if Mother comes back, the horrible things we’ve done won’t just… disappear.”

Chat Noir buried his face into his hands. “I just feel so stupid. I should’ve—I should’ve come home quicker that day. I should’ve been the first one to see the Miraculous in my room, not him.”

Ladybug looked at him sadly. “We were gonna be partners.”

He looked back at her, and smiled. “Yeah. We were.”

A squirrel scurried off one of the trees, and ran across the park.

Ladybug rubbed her hands together. “What did your father say? When you asked him to give back the Miraculous?”

Chat Noir froze. “I—I don’t wanna talk about that. I’m sorry.”

They said nothing for the rest of the evening. After twenty minutes of silence, Ladybug stood up, picked up her yo-yo, and headed home.

Chapter Text

Ladybug learned it was hard to remain inconspicuous when carrying a bag of frozen peas across rooftops, but other than a few confused looks from strangers, she made it to her rooftop in ten minutes — peas and all.

Chat Noir jumped when she landed behind him.

"Here," she thrust the bag at him. "While they're still cold."

He made a face — or at least tried to, but his broken nose was in the way.

"I'm not eating cold peas," he said.

"Oh, for goodness' sake." She dropped to her knees, tilted his head up, and pressed the peas to his nose. Chat Noir flinched; she held him in place. "Why did you come to battle with a broken nose?"

Chat Noir sounded like he wanted to huff, but it was muffled into the peas. "I argued with my father."

Ladybug's grip on the peas faltered.

"Chat Noir…" She rearranged herself to look him in the eye. "He didn't…?"

"Oh, no, he didn't do anything like that, don't worry." He muttered something about 'ruining the money-maker', which Ladybug couldn't quite catch. "I was mad and wanted to leave. I pulled my window open too hard and it smacked me in the face."

"Oh… wow."

"It's okay, you can laugh."

"No, no, it isn't funny. It sucks."

"Then stop smiling."

"I'm doing no such thing." And yet, she found herself pursing her lips against a wayward smile that she knew had chosen the wrong time to come out. 

She shifted the bag of peas, catching his eye for any discomfort.

Instead, he chuckled. So did she.

He had kind eyes and a kind smile, and it hit her for the first time that he really was just a kid. They both were, in fact. Kids ill-equipped for the very adult world they’d been thrust into. A bag of peas for a broken nose. A sixteen-year-old boy doing a supervillain’s bidding. 

“Is this too cold?” she said.

“Just a little. Do you mind taking it off for a bit?”

“Sure.” She handed the peas over to him, in case the pain flared up again.

They sat side-by-side, looking out at the park. It had rained earlier that day, around the time Marinette had been walking home from school (and had had to use her bag as a makeshift umbrella) — a thin film of dewdrops clung to the expanse of grass below them, and the concrete path bisecting the field was darkened, like a rectangle of fabric, with rainwater. 

Ladybug watched him from her periphery. He wasn’t looking at the park anymore, nor at the skies like he had last time. Chat Noir was looking at the bag of peas in his hand, fiddling with it, running his claws over the round bumps poking through the packaging.

A silly thought came to her mind — were those the kind of peas he had in his fridge at home? Were they the kind of peas piled onto his plate at dinner time? Did he push them around, did he eat them obediently, did he hide them in a fold of tissue paper and throw them away when no one was looking so he could get his dessert early? 

Her heart clenched. 

His mother was gone. His father was Hawk Moth. Did he even have anyone to pile peas onto his plate?

She’d spat blood at this boy. She’d punched him. Kicked him. Pulled him into a chokehold and muttered into his ear about how she’d rip him apart before she’d ever give him her Miraculous. But this boy was just a boy, much like how she was just a girl. He probably hated eating peas with his dinner, just like she did. He probably had to walk home in the rain today, too, with his school books and folders held between his head and the sky.

They were meant to be partners. She couldn’t fathom it, before, but it made so much sense now. All that separated them was circumstance.

“Do you like peas?” she blurted out. 

He raised his head. He tried to wrinkle his nose in what might’ve been a quizzical look, but it was too swollen to have much of an effect.

“Peas?” he said. 

Her face burned. “Yeah. Peas.” Great going, Marinette. What a conversationalist.  

“Well, not on my nose as much as on my plate.”

“So you like them?”

He shrugged. “I mean, they’re peas, aren’t they?”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“You aren’t planning on making me eat these, right?”

He laughed after that, and she joined him — if only to wave off how sorely embarrassed she was at her own choice of conversation. It was all so bizarre. They'd just finished battling each other and now they were talking about peas.

“I was meant to have peas for dinner tonight,” he said. “I got a peek at the menu before I’d left.”

“‘Meant to’?” she asked, but she’d latched onto something else, as well. A menu ? 

“Yeah.” His tone changed, the laughter drifting out of his voice. “But then my father and I argued, and…”

“You didn’t want to stick around to eat with him?”

“We don’t usually eat together, anyway.”

She turned to face him fully, doing little to hide the shock on her face. “You don’t?”

He gave her a cold look. She recoiled.

Ladybug played with her fingers. “Sorry. I forgot about…”

“No, don’t sweat it. I’m the one who should be sorry — it’s a bit of a touchy subject. I can’t expect everyone to coddle me.”

“It’s— it’s not coddling. Chat Noir, what— what you have to go through…”

“Let’s not talk about this right now, okay?” Although sharp, he wasn’t unkind. Generously, he even offered her a smile. “I come here to get away from that. It really doesn’t matter right now, Ladybug.”

A jolt went through her body. 

What an odd time to realise she’d never heard him say her name before.

She’d said his plenty. Laced with venom, with words her mother would scold her for using, with blood that had welled up in her mouth mid-battle, she couldn’t even remember the first time she’d said it. Had the christening of his name in her voice been one filled with hatred? With misplaced anger? Had she even given that name, that collection of syllables, to be something more than just evil’s mouthpiece? 

Looking at him now, she saw more than all that. She saw a sixteen-year-old boy with a broken little nose and who had been meant to have peas for dinner tonight. She saw a boy who smiled at people so they wouldn’t worry about him. She saw a boy who was meant to be her partner, with whom, from the very beginning, this rooftop was meant to be shared.

She saw, above all, someone who could be her friend.

Wind threaded through the close-cropped grass below. Ladybug reached a hand behind her, undid her ribbons, and let out her hair.

Chapter Text

“I’m sorry for figuring out your identity.”

Ladybug stopped swirling her straw around her Coke can and sighed. “It’s fine. It can’t be helped.”

“I really am sorry, though.”

“It can’t be helped,” she said again, because what more could she say?

Between the warmth of their weekly meet-ups and her determination to get to know him better, the whole ‘secret identity’ thing had sort of slipped her mind. They had been chatting two weeks ago, she still thrumming with energy from the brilliant evening she’d had, and her recount about a sweater she had made for her best friend must have struck a bell of recognition in his brain, because his eyes widened, and, as if by a knee-jerk reaction, he’d gasped, “wait, you’re Marinette.”

Ladybug had never been one to flee. Until then.

Luckily, there had been no battles between then and now, giving her ample time to cool herself down, and for the cut on her cheek from the last akuma to heal into a pink little scar. She patrolled only when she knew he wouldn’t be around, and traded in her rooftop on that Friday night in between for an evening-in to have a (cathartic) freak out.

The following Monday, however, in the middle of an uneventful patrol, her yo-yo had beeped.

Chat Noir 

please can we meet up. i miss you and we need to talk

Chat Noir

friday at our usual place? please?

Chat Noir

i know this is asking for a lot but please trust me. i haven’t told anyone and i promise i won’t

She had only been able to muster up a reply after doing a round around the city to clear her head.  Funnily enough, she’d processed the reveal, by then. 

What she’d needed to process was the fact their compacts were linked. The fact that their partnership — though skewed as it was — inhered in the very essence of their Miraculous. 

The first few months they’d had with their Miraculous were magnetic, but not in the way you’d expect. They had been two like poles, pushing back against each other, repellent, insisting they were too different to get along, when really they were exactly the same.

(Or perhaps the only one that'd been insisting had been Ladybug).

The picnic he had prepared wasn’t quite enough evidence to call him a ‘great cook’, but he sure was good at making sandwiches. He’d made hers with white bread, crusts cut off so cleanly she only knew they weren’t bought like that because of the fleck of gold at the corner of one of them. They were tuna sandwiches, just like the ones she got from the school canteen every lunch time, except these were obviously homemade. Chat Noir took a bite out of his own sandwich. His were made with white bread, too, but with the crusts still intact. He didn't like tuna. The dark red jam in between swelled under the pressure of his teeth, a little chunk bursting out and sticking to his suit.

Ladybug glanced down at it. 

“Sorry for spitting on you,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow over his sandwich. Nonchalantly, he grabbed for a tissue and cleaned himself. “When did you spit on me?”

Her face coloured. Sheepishly, she ran her fingers over the scar on her cheek. “That time a few weeks ago. With Electragirl.”

He blinked at her. Then, recognition dawned on his face.

“Ah. Now I remember.” He finished wiping the jam off himself then folded the tissue neatly in his lap. “I mean, you’ve done worse.”

She scowled at him. “That’s not how people usually accept apologies.”

“Remember when you threatened to strangle me?”

“Listen—”

“Or when you gave me a bloody lip?”

“Hey—”

“Or when you kneed me in the… well. You know.”

She winced. “In my defence, you were being a dick.”

“Pun intended?”

Ladybug choked on her sandwich, then laughed. “You’re so blasé about this. I remember you called me an idiot once and I fumed for, like, a week.”

“The difference is that I deserved it.”

At that, she stopped laughing.

He busied himself with the sandwich, catching a stray drop of jam before it fell down his chin. 

"Hey," she said.

Still, he wouldn't look at her.

Before she tapped his leg, Ladybug hesitated. She'd touched him before. She even knew how his blood felt against her cheek. But there was a different kind of touch barrier she had still yet to cross — the touch of friendship.

And so she tapped his leg, warmth spreading through her for this boy with raspberry jam staining his lips. 

"You didn't deserve it," she said.

He gave her a half-smile. "You said it yourself. I was being a dick."

Shame burned her face. It almost hurt more than the time Electragirl took a shot at her head with her charge.

"I was joking," she said. "I know you didn't have a choice. You know you didn't have a choice. You don't deserve any of this."

The last bit of jam sandwich disappeared into his mouth. His expression twisted, and he rummaged through the picnic basket before he let himself cry.

Wordlessly, Ladybug picked out a tissue from the packet, and handed it to him.

A tear escaped his eye, rolled off his nose, and fell into the picnic basket. Chat Noir sniffed, and took the tissue. "Thanks."

He always reminded her of one of those insulated water bottles, like the one Alya would always bring to summer sleepovers. How you had to be careful with how much water you filled it with, because if you filled it too high and tried pushing the lid down, water would spray out against the pressure.

Chat Noir was like that. Still and steady until he tripped and fell square on one of his wounds, then sprayed out against the pressure. 

"He told me that he wished it'd been me," he said.

"What?"

"My father. When I asked him to give back his Miraculous, he told me that he wished it'd been me instead of Mother, and that the least I could do was to help him bring her back. As if it were my fault that it hadn't been me."

Hatred was corrosive. Ladybug thought she'd known that already. But what she had deemed as 'hatred' back when she'd swear to kill Chat Noir every battle felt like petty playground tears in comparison to what she felt now.

It was as if her stomach had eroded its lowermost layer. Instead of feeling sick, Ladybug burned. Burned so hard she couldn't even speak.

"And— and I know he was just angry, you know? But I can't forget the— the disgust in his eyes. Like it was my fault he even had to look at me." His voice cracked. As did Ladybug's heart. "My dad . He used to sit me on his knee when I was little so I could watch him while he sketched. And— and now—"

"It's okay. It's okay. Come here."

But she didn’t wait for him to come to her. Ladybug got onto her knees and threw her arms around him, pulling him into her chest before he could flee from the rooftop.

He sniffed against her collarbone, then, tentatively, wrapped his arms around her, too.

Could he feel the fire coursing through her? The anger that burned straight through her skin? Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe the thick membrane of his sadness was impenetrable.

But God, did she hope he knew. If anyone in this world would be angry for him, it would be her.

She held him close, as if she could take his pain and transfer it into her. Even this close, with her legs all but tangled with his, Chat Noir schooled himself into some semblance of composure. He didn’t shake. Didn’t shudder. She only knew he was crying because of the tears smearing against her neck, and he used gentle, practiced movements to flick them away before too many spilled out at once. 

She hugged him tighter. She wanted to wring him of the clouds in his eyes, of the smog polluting this sixteen-year-old who didn’t deserve any of this.

“Sometimes I wish it’d been me,” he said calmly. It made her feel sick.

“I don’t.”

He laughed mirthlessly. “I’m sure you had, at some point.”

A breeze whipped her ribbons against his face. Ladybug closed her eyes. “That wasn’t you. I thought it was you, but it wasn’t you. I know you, now.”

“Marinette... no one loves me. You know that, right?” 

Her heart clenched. She knew she couldn’t even dispute it.

“Father won’t let me make friends at school in case I reveal myself. Paris thinks I’m the one behind all this. Everyone hates me.”

“Hey. Look at me.” When he complied, Ladybug cupped his face. She had to crane her neck back to look up at him. They’d only ever stood so close to one another during battles, when they’d get into each other’s faces, distorting themselves with scowls and bloody noses. “Do I look like someone who hates you?”

“Maybe you should.”

“But I don’t.”

He smiled at her, but his jaw was tense. Chat Noir reached up and clasped her wrists.

“We could run away,” he said softly.

She smiled back. Tears pricked at her eyes. “We could.”

“To an island. Far away from everyone.”

“We could take walks in the sunset. Pick berries during the day.”

“We could sit by the ocean and talk for hours.”

“We wouldn’t have to fight anymore.”

“Why don’t we do it?”

The haze in his eyes shifted into something different, something solid. 

Ladybug took a step back, but didn’t let go. “Like… for real?”

He nodded. The life inside of him had been resuscitated, appearing under his cheeks in a soft flush. “Right now. I have money, Marinette. A lot. I’m— I’m—”

“Chat Noir…” Her chest contracted. “I can’t. My family, the bakery… Alya...”

And the life, having had only one gulp of oxygen so far, died from him, just like that. 

“Oh,” he said. “Of course.”

He made no move to let go of her, and she took that as a sign to continue. “But that doesn’t mean things won’t be okay. They will .”

“What, when you defeat him?”

“ Yes .”

“Then what? People aren’t just gonna accept you hanging out with me .”

“I’m the only one who knows he’s your father.” She moved her hands to his shoulders and squeezed. “We could move in together — as civilians.”

His eyes flickered, but he said nothing.

“We could get a flat… it’d have big windows and a balcony, so we could watch the cars go past while we eat breakfast.”

The smile that graced his lips, although small, filled her with warmth. “We could have a radio. Or a stereo. And listen to music all day.”

“You could meet my parents. They could come over and we could all have dinner together.”

“And we could get one of those dimmer switches so we can watch movies without turning the lights all the way off.”

“We could get a cat,” she said, and felt lightheaded at the look of wonder on his face. “A little one. We wouldn’t need to get it a bed or anything because it could just sleep with us.”

His breath hitched. “With us ?”

A deep flush spread on her face.

Us . Them. Ladybug and Chat Noir — the way it had always been meant to be.

A double bed. Picture frames. Shared blankets. A cat. 

"Yeah," she breathed. "Us."

He brought his head down and kissed her. She tasted raspberry jam and hope.

Chapter Text

Dawn cracked over the park, orange light spilling above them like watercolour.

"I'm scared," she said against his chest.

"Don't be. You always win."

"What if I don't, this time?"

"You will, Marinette." His lips brushed her hair. "You will."

Ladybug hugged him tighter, pretending she believed him.

✯¸.•´*¨`*•✿ ✿•*`¨*`•.¸✯

But when it came to it, she wasn't scared. Not even when Hawk Moth's eyes blazed a hole into the overcast day at the sight of her holding his son's hand. 

Ladybug squeezed Chat Noir's fingers. He squeezed back.

It would be okay. 

Hawk Moth's voice was deep with rage. It rumbled through the cracks in the pavement, as if he could shift the earth's tectonic plates with the force of his anger. "What is the meaning of this?"

Chat Noir flinched, but in a way that only Ladybug could feel.

He raised his eyes and set his father with a levelled stare. "This has to end."

His timbre sent a shudder through her core. She'd almost forgotten how icy his voice could get.

Even last week, when he had said the same words to her on their rooftop, he had said it gently, against the shell of her ear while he cuddled her. Perhaps he had done it so he wouldn't frighten her, so she would know this didn't mean them and rather him — Hawk Moth.

They had built their game plan with voices swollen with emotion, trembling from the pressure bursting inside of them. He had told her he would lure his father over to a place devoid of civilians (as devoid as you could get in Paris) while tracing circles and stars into the back of her hand. She had told him she would hold Hawk Moth down so he could grab the butterfly Miraculous while leaning her head back against his collarbone.

They had been frightened. 

But they weren't anymore.

Chat Noir's face was steely, like that of the boy she would fight in alleyways almost a lifetime ago. The boy she had spat blood at. Whose Miraculous she had vowed to take and then laugh in his face.

She squeezed his hand again. He squeezed back. 

There was still some semblance of him left. Of Chat Noir. Of someone she needed to protect.

Hawk Moth's brow hardened. 

At the first step he took forward, Ladybug pushed Chat Noir behind her and brandished her yo-yo. It whipped the hair at her neck, charging the air with its momentum, searing the pale afternoon with a blood-red nimbus. 

Hawk Moth sighed, and tapped his baton against the ground. He looked at her impatiently. "I'd like to talk to my son."

Ladybug narrowed her eyes. The yo-yo skimmed past the goosebumps on her cheek. It almost burned.

"Be careful who you trust, Ladybug," he said.

"I could say the same to you."

"He's just a boy. He's confused. None of his promises mean anything."

"They mean more than anything you've ever told him."

He took his eyes from Ladybug and set them on his son. "Stop this childishness at once."

Chat Noir spoke coolly behind her, reciting from the script they had prepared last week so his voice wouldn't shake. "I'm doing the right thing, Father. You should, too."

"Your mother wouldn't want this."

"If she could see you now, she wouldn't want you, either."

Ladybug stopped herself from glancing back at him at the very last minute. That hadn't been in the script. But he said it so smoothly, punched out the consonants in all the right places, she found it hard to believe he hadn't rehearsed this before.

Hawk Moth's face flashed, like a burst of flame ripping through the grey sky.

Then, it changed. It softened, but in all the wrong ways. Ladybug felt sick.

"Son," he said through his melting features. "Don't you want your Maman back?"

Chat Noir's sharp breath sliced through the silence.

Slowly, he removed himself from Ladybug's grip.

(With it, he tore the hope — the hope that she'd bottled up with the taste of raspberry jam and his lips — right out of her chest).

Closing her eyes, she took her hand away from him, and brought it to the loose end of her yo-yo. The string lay dead in her palm.

Hawk Moth outstretched his hand, Chat Noir took it, instead.

Father and son. A shared secret. Shared goal. Shared desire to harness the ultimate power.

Thunder crashed in the sky. There was no rain.

Chat Noir's electric gaze shone under the swelling clouds. 

He looked at his father. "I wish it had been you," he whispered.

The world seemed to fall silent. Another roll of thunder was coming — its approach weighed down the stagnant air — but the sky seemed to hold its breath.

Ladybug's own lungs were about to burst.

"I wish it had been you instead of Mother," he said. "I wish it had been you. I wish it had been you. I wouldn't have been sorry if it had been you."

A spark of green light crackled.

Ladybug looked down.

At Chat Noir's ring. Glowing. Brewing up a Cataclysm in the hand that clenched his father's.

"No," she croaked, but could they even hear her? She felt far away, miles away, suspended in the sky the colour of a sharpened blade. Holding her breath until her lungs burst. "No, Chat Noir. You can't. Don't. You'll never be able to live with yourself."

A drop of rain fell from the heavens. It ran a streak down his cheek like a tear track. 

His eyes were locked with Hawk Moth's. "But we won't get Mother back. And nothing will ever be the same. This has to end."

Like the thunder that hadn't come, his next words — or word — waited at the sidelines. From the tendon in his neck that had solidified, winding down his soft throat like a thick keloid scar, she could tell he wanted to say it. 

Cataclysm. It would've been so easy.

But he was searching his father's gaze. Because he was Chat Noir, and Chat Noir was a good person, and good people had hope that no one was too far gone to change.

He'd probably been a better person than her all along.

Hawk Moth didn't even try to retrieve his hand. His expression contorted, inappropriate for the occasion. The disappointment was skin-deep, as if he'd just lost the battle of whether his son should finish his peas before getting dessert. 

"Well, if you insist on siding with her" —he spat it out like poison— "I won't treat you any better."

Finally, thunder tore open the sky. Rain tipped down, catching onto Ladybug's eyelashes and blurring her vision.

Maybe that's why she wasn't quick enough. Maybe that's what had given Hawk Moth the chance to pull back his cane and drive it through his son's stomach.

One always wonders how they would act in a disaster. Ladybug had never been any different. Just a few hours ago, when Chat Noir had kissed her goodbye and told her he would see her soon, the thought — unbidden — came to mind about what she would do if something had happened to him. 

She'd thought she would scream. Would leap into action. Run on a surge of grief-stricken adrenaline to keep going, to keep fighting.

She had been wrong.

Because in that moment, all she could do was stare at the point where Chat Noir's body ended and the cane began.

She saw his eyes. She saw his eyes gaze up at his dad, heavy with pain. The hope in them never died.

Hawk Moth deigned to grimace, removed his cane, then brought it back down on Chat Noir, launching him across the sky in a tall arc above the cars and buildings, his body threading through the low thunderclouds.

Ladybug didn't think. She ran .

It didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered anymore. Hawk Moth could destroy the city beyond repair and it still wouldn't matter because— because Chat Noir.

Two like poles. A south and a south, a north and a north, but not of two different magnets. She felt it, then, stronger than ever: they were the same pole of the same magnet, forever on the same side, each of their atoms intermingled with the others', a compound impossible to separate. 

She felt it when she heard him hit the pavement, felt her existence intertwined with his, felt like her own stomach could blow open in sympathy for his.

She wasn't thinking. Couldn't think. All her brain could muster was one word, chanting it like a prayer, keeping her afloat as she grabbed onto it with both hands.

No. No. No. No. No no no no no no not him not now please

Ladybug fell to her knees beside him. His blood splashed up, like a thin puddle, on impact.

He opened his eyes, and, as if that hadn't hurt her enough, smiled. "Hey, Marinette. Look." Weakly, he patted his stomach. "I always said you gave me butterflies. I guess these ones got a little out of control."

Ladybug covered her mouth. It was then she realised she must have touched him, because an acerbic, metallic smell filled her nostrils.

She snatched her hand back quickly. Chat Noir took a look at her face and raised his eyebrows, but not as fast as he usually would. 

Part of her hoped she was about to faint, that her world was just in slow motion right now, that life wasn't draining out of Chat Noir onto her hands and this dirty concrete. She hoped that it was just a surface wound, that she was just panicked, that he was still just as quick-witted, as quick-moving, as silver-tongued as he had been last night.

"You look like you just came out of a horror movie," he said. He tried lifting himself onto an elbow, hissed, then placed himself back down again. "A red handprint across your face and everything."

The laugh that came out of her was wet and unrecognisable. "Speak for yourself."

She was almost running on autopilot. Without it, she wouldn't have survived.

But sometimes, her brain — the part of her that was one step behind, just now processing the cane and the blood and him — emerged from the fog.

"Chat Noir… I'm— I'm going to stop the bleeding, okay?" Ladybug placed her hands on the cut; a rough groan scratched through his throat. She bit her lip then looked away. "Then we're gonna take you to the hospital. We'll ride the ambulance together. They'll give you a few stitches and you'll be okay and then you can stay at my place and then— and then when we turn eighteen we can get our apartment together. Okay?" 

He said nothing. Chat Noir couldn't get his hand up quick enough (couldn't get his hand up at all) to cover his mouth when he coughed. His lips and tongue were stained red.

Ladybug's hands slipped. There was too much for her to hold down.

"Why isn't this working?" She tried and tried and tried until even her superhero costume seemed to give up, and the warmth of his humanity struggled through the pores and onto her bare palms. Ladybug sniffed. She hitched up her shoulder and tried wiping her tears, not wanting to use her hands. "Okay. I'm gonna de-transform, okay?"

"Marinette."

"I'm gonna use my blazer."

"Marinette."

 "You'll be okay. Everything will be okay."

"Ladybug." 

For the first time since he coughed, Ladybug looked at his face. 

The colour in his cheeks had left through his stomach. His eyes gazed up at her — the love was bright, the life was dim.

Gently, he pried one of her bloodied hands from his belly, and placed it on his cheek.

His lashes fluttered. From the wetness of her palm, she told herself. He hadn't expected it. That's why his eyes had closed like that.

Then, he cracked a smile. "Look. We've got matching handprints."

"This isn't funny."

"It's not. But I hate seeing you cry."

Her voice broke. "It's too late for that, isn't it?"

"It's never—" He coughed again, harder this time. It wracked through his body, using up more of the precious energy in his depleting stock. "It's never too late."

"Then why won't you let me save you?" Tears fell from her jaw and onto his abdomen. She chased it with her finger, not wanting her despair to mix with her beautiful, beautiful boy. "Don't you want our apartment? Our stereo?  Our balcony? Our little cat?"

He closed his eyes and sighed. The smile never dropped from his lips, scarlet like that raspberry jam.

"Marinette," he breathed, "I'm not gonna make it to the hospital. You know that, don't you?"

"No. No. You are. You can. You're— you're still talking, right? That's a good sign."

"It's the suit, chérie. You know that. When I de-transform…"

"Then don't," she snapped. "Don't de-transform. It'll give you extra time."

He gave her a look, but said nothing.

There would be no extra time. She wasn't stupid. Just in agony.

She was crying again. "What am I gonna do? Oh, God, what am I gonna do? There's so much— I can't—"

"Hey. Hey. Ssh. Look at me." 

She did. 

His smile was radiant. If she looked at it long enough, maybe she could imprint it into her mind, so she could take it out every night before bed, like a worn photograph, and hold it up to her eyes.

Thunder shook the city. From her periphery, she watched the rainwater slip down the slope of the pavement, carrying ribbons of his blood into the gutter.

Chat Noir didn't stop smiling. "Hey. I'm not going anywhere, okay? I'm always gonna be here."

Ladybug shook her head, shaking what sounded awfully like a goodbye out of her ears.

"I will. After all this is over, go up to our rooftop and close your eyes. You'll feel me. I'll stroke your hair and kiss your lips and cuddle you. I'll even let you be little spoon."

Ladybug squeezed her eyes shut.

"And then when you turn eighteen, you can get our apartment, with the stereo and the balcony and our little cat. And you'll feel me. I'll sit with you while you eat breakfast and tell you off for working too hard."

She wanted to cover her face, but he wouldn't let go of her hand.

"My love. My Lady. I'm always gonna be there. Every time you think of me, I'll be there."

"Don't say it like that."

"Say it like what?"

"Like you're gonna die." She hiccuped. "Like you're gonna leave me."

Chat Noir took in a shuddering breath. "Ladybug, you have to go."

"No."

"Please."

"I'm not going without you."

"It's too late for me."

" But you said it's never too late!"

" For you!" His body froze. His cough wrung through him like a paroxysm and he choked on whatever (she knew what it was of course she did it was blood but she wished she didn't) was stuck in his throat. His hand moved to wipe his chin, but it fell lamely against his clavicle. He looked up at her with glassy green eyes. "It's never too late for you. It's always been too late for me. It was too late by the time Father found my Miraculous, too late by the time I realised what he wanted to do — it was always too late. But it has never been too late for you."

Black clouds poisoned the sky. She could hardly see his face anymore.

"Marinette," he begged, "please. Please go. I'm fine. It doesn't even hurt."

For you, she wanted to say. It doesn't hurt for you. But what about me?

"He's coming. I can hear him." And she could, too. Hawk Moth's leaps resounded around the buildings. Chat Noir tightened his fingers just a fraction around her hand. "Go. Go and save everyone. But promise me something."

"Haven't I done enough?"

"Promise me you won't look back at me. You won't come back for me. Promise me that you'll win, and you won't try to find me afterwards. Plagg will give you my ring when it's all over. Just don't come looking for me."

For my body was what he meant, wasn't, it?

Ladybug bit her lip. "Okay. I promise."

And, despite everything, he smiled. "I'm not sad anymore, you know."

Fresh tears welled up in her eyes. Even she smiled. "Really?"

It took great effort, but he nodded. "I can hear piano music. Mother is playing in the next room." He met Ladybug's gaze. "I want to go to her. She's so beautiful and I miss her so much."

"Can you tell her I wish I could've met her?"

His eyes slipped shut. "I think she knows already."

He lay like that, and Ladybug let him. She brushed his hair out his eyes. No, he didn't look sad anymore. He took long and deep breaths, chest expanding with the handful of life it had left. If she closed her eyes, too, and put her hand against his heartbeat, she could pretend this was just one of their Friday nights, and he had fallen asleep.

But he hated the rain. He would never sleep in it.

Glass shattered somewhere behind her, from where she had hauled herself away from Hawk Moth.

She had to do this.

She didn't want to do this.

But she had promised. And she loved him.

Her lips trembled when she lowered them for a kiss. He tasted horrible, like metal and death. It made her weep against his mouth, and she only wept harder when she realised his hand was too bloodless to thread itself through her hair like usual.

He tasted horrible, and it killed her, but kissing him was all she had. 

Lightning bleached the sky. 

Ladybug brushed her nose against his. "Can you still see your mother?"

He lay with his head against the concrete and lips parted. Slowly, he nodded.

"Is she speaking to you?" 

He nodded again. When he coughed, this time, he couldn't lift his head.

"What is she saying?"

Chat Noir closed his eyes. He mustered up all his strength to squeeze her knuckles.

"Come home," he mumbled. 

And, well, she supposed he did.

The rain thinned. Some of the clouds whispered in the swollen sky. 

Then, there was just silence. 

A thick, funereal silence, as if every cell in his body had stopped to grieve.

As if every cell in her body had died, too.

She looked away. She looked away because she was selfish, because she wasn't as good of a person as him. Because she didn't want the goosebumps his Friday night laughter gave her and the blush his kisses brought into her cheeks to be eclipsed by this .

The concrete juddered when Hawk Moth's cane hit the ground.

Ladybug's legs hoisted her up for her. Distantly, she noted how cold her hands were, now. How the blood was washing off her body. How she was being stripped of all she had left of him.

Ladybug stood up, but she was dead. Grief had infected her, a disease transmittable through only the bleeding of hearts, and now she was dead.

She stood there, dead, her boyfriend's blood still in her mouth.

But her voice was alive. It took the life that no longer lived in her and spat it into the rain.

  It was deep with rage. It rumbled through the cracks in the pavement, as if she could shift the earth's tectonic plates with the force of her anger.

"You will have wished it'd been you," she said. "I'm going to make you wish it'd been you."

Chapter Text

Marinette didn't stick around to watch the arrest. 

Maybe she should've. Maybe Chat Noir would've wanted that. Now, when she looked up at the stars through her wet fringe, she could see that glimmer that'd always appear in his eyes whenever they'd talk about winning.

They were kids. They'd just wanted to win.

But Marinette didn't stick around to watch the arrest. She didn't care. Her insides felt like they'd been scooped out, washed away with Chat Noir's ribbons of blood into the street gutter.

She didn't care. She didn't give a fuck about anything anymore.

The fight and everything after waited outside the gates of her brain but it didn't seem like they'd be entering any time soon. She spectated them from inside of herself, looked at the organised, chronological timeline of memories that didn't even feel like belonged to her. 

Fight.

Take Miraculous.

Gabriel Agreste.

Police sirens.

Blood in mouth.

Miraculous Cure.

The only semblance of emotion she could find in the carnage left in her heart was a speck of sadness for, in a macabre way, the blood. After she'd cast the cure, every bit of Chat Noir had untangled itself from her and left. Her hair no longer smelled of his blood. Her face was no longer stained with his blood. Her lips no longer burned with his blood.

It was macabre. She knew that objectively, like she knew that bad things had happened. It meant nothing to her, no matter how well she knew it.

Above, an aeroplane skimmed through the stars. The air was damp, and she'd let out her hair to dry. It was almost like the night they'd first talked. Except this time she was in the park, their rooftop was empty, and he was dead.

When they used to talk about revealing their identities, Ladybug couldn't imagine a happier ending to their story. She had millions of daydreams, dozens of diary pages inked with all her favourite ways she could learn his first name. She'd thought it would be freeing, that she would finally know the eyes behind the lips that she so adored to kiss.

Now, all she could think about were missed opportunities.

Chat Noir — Adrien — was nothing like Chloé. Not even close. Not enough to warrant the careful distance Marinette had kept between them after his tentative apology about the chewing gum on the third day of school. Not enough for her to laugh behind her hand at the jokes people made about him being a daddy's boy, even if he wasn't totally out of earshot.

Marinette's heart clenched so hard she doubled over, clutching her chest.

A daddy's boy. Oh God. And she had laughed at that.

She hadn't even hated him. She'd just been wary — everyone in their class had. The son of the elusive Gabriel Agreste seemed to have inherited his reticence. He spoke nothing in lessons, ate lunch by himself in the library, and used monosyllables in every conversation until people just learned to leave him alone.

Father won’t let me make friends at school in case I reveal myself.

Marinette took in a deep breath, then righted herself.

Her anger, numbing in the most terrifying way, seemed to have replaced all her nerve endings.

But sparks of feeling spat against her, as miniscule as a hot toothpick on her skin, yet still present. 

The day Chat Noir had kissed her, a week after figuring out her identity, she'd slipped a snide remark into a conversation with Adrien about how people like him and Chloé thrive off being at the top of the lycée food chain. It'd been one of those comments that came from an ugly, bitter, battered part of Marinette, but one she'd thought she'd manage to camouflage pretty well.

No. No she hadn't. Because Adrien wasn't at the top of the food chain. The whole point of being at the top of the food chain is that you don't get killed because you got in the way.

They'd been awkward friends — or acquaintances, at least — but that did nothing to make her feel better. She should've sat down with him. Talked to him. Tried to get him to make one of his puns, because that would be when his face really lit up, and she'd give anything to be able to see it without his mask.

Or just see it one more time. Just one more time. She wasn't asking for a lot.

Her phone screen lit up. Her mother's caller ID flashed across the screen for the fifth time tonight.

Marinette almost did answer, this time. For the briefest spark of a second, she believed hearing her voice would press play on this awful clip that had been stuck on pause. 

But this wasn't a video clip as much as it was a snapshot. Adrien was dead. That fact was immortal, and couldn't be softened by background music and cutscenes and credits rolling up over an artificial sunset.

The good - Adrien Agreste

The bad - Gabriel Agreste

The one who watched the good die in her arms - Marinette Dupain-Cheng

It just didn't have a great ring to it, did it?

But that is what it all felt like, right now. A video clip or a snapshot, playing on her TV screen at home or published on some photo gallery online. She was a spectator, safe behind the glass of her eyes. None of this could be real. None of this felt real. If she was real, how could the pain not have eaten through her insides?

Her phone lit up again. Marinette switched it to silent, but didn't put it back in her bag.

For a long while she sat there, bent at the hips, watching an ant emerge from the crack in the pavement and crawl between the tufts of grass beneath the bench. Her phone lit up once more. Her mother was worried. Maybe if she went home she'd raise her voice, eyes clouded with disappointment, then set in front of her dinner she'd cooked three hours ago and had saved for her in the microwave.

Marinette had seen enough today to lose all her naïveté. A stern talking-to wasn't going to penetrate this fog in her brain. Even if she stood up and walked all the way home, it'd still be there, thick and noxious, so why bother standing up, anyway? Standing up wouldn't be worth anything. Nothing would be, anymore.

" Mademoiselle , do you mind if I sit here, too?" 

Chat Noir had watched one of her press conferences, once. He'd teased her for the way she'd rolled her shoulders back, for the hardness in her face he always managed to kiss away. 

"Mademoiselle Ladybug, please give me an autograph. I'm your biggest fan," he'd said, laughing into her hair.

And she had. Autographed her love against his lips.

She didn't look up. Two ants emerged from the pavement, this time, but headed in the opposite direction, splitting off individually once met with the obstacle of the boy's orange shoes.

"No," Marinette said, her voice hoarse from all the screaming, "go ahead."

But the boy didn't move. He stayed looking at her, his orange shoes shifting only to step closer.

"Mademoiselle Ladybug," he said through a smile, " please give me an autograph. I'm your biggest fan."

At this, she looked up.

Adrien stood there, not a scratch on his face, smiling down at her.

She didn't jump up. Didn't smile back. Didn't let a single expression fall on her face.

(Tears welled up in her eyes, but that was beyond her control).

"Is this that thing you said would happen?" she asked bitterly. "That I'd feel you?"

He opened his mouth, but his eyes latched onto her phone.

Her mother was calling her. Again.

So instead of responding to her, Adrien took her phone and responded to her mother.

"Hi, Mrs Dupain-Cheng," he said into the receiver.

The volume was set loud enough that Marinette could hear the other end without her mother being on speakerphone. "Who's speaking? Oh, my, is this Adrien? Adrien Agreste?"

At that, Marinette shot to her feet.

He was speaking to her mum.

He was holding her phone. The flesh between his thumb and index finger wrapped around the edge of her shockproof case.

"Yes, it is. I'm with Marinette right now."

He offered his hand. Shakily, she interlocked their fingers.

Warm skin and filed nails and the silver dust of stars shimmering on his Miraculous. It was too real to just be a feeling. Too real to be fake.

Marinette stepped forward. She placed her cheek against the fabric of his shirt, and, numbly, wrapped her arms around him.

One of his hands went to her hair, threading through it like it usually did. "I'm sorry for keeping her so late. She had to come to the police station with me because of…" 

"Oh, honey, I'm so sorry. Yes, take as much time as you need."

"I'll try and get her back to you in one piece, Mrs Dupain-Cheng."

The tears still streamed down Marinette's cheeks, but her face felt like stone.

That was until she got a handful of the back of his overshirt. Damp fabric filled her fist.

Trembling, she pulled it closer to her.

It was wet, sprinkled with black and silver stones, like how her legs had looked after she knelt on the wet concrete by his dying body.

Cry , she told herself. Hold him and cry. He's here and he's real and he's okay.

And, for the first time since he died, Marinette cried.

She clutched him and sobbed, burying her face against his clothes and his scent and the jut of his collarbone and wept against him. She didn't chase her tears, didn't wipe them away when they smeared against him, because he was alive , and part of being alive was being awash with things like tears of joy and tears of grief and everything in between.

Adrien melted the numbness away with his soft conversation with her mother and his hand threading through her hair. His voice touched every one of her nerve endings, resuscitating them, reassuring every fibre in her body that he was really, really here.

The call must have ended, because he wrapped both arms around her, and, sniffing near her temple, whispered, "you saved me."

With her wet eyes pulsing against his shoulder, she realised.

Invincibility was only granted to the Ladybug and Black Cat that worked together. Finally, the Miraculous Cure had saved them.

Chapter Text

Valérie bit Marinette's hand, stopping it enroute to Adrien's abdomen.

She snatched it back. " Valérie. "

Adrien, not even glancing up from his book, laughed. "My bodyguard." Fondly, he patted Valérie's head. She chirruped, butting the white diamond of fur on her head against his hand. "She's a good kitty."

"Mean. Like you." But she didn't mean it — not about Adrien nor about Valérie. For a rescue cat, and for the things that she'd gone through, Valérie was doing her best. They all were.

Adrien laughed again, this time putting his arm around her shoulders and pulling her close.

In exchange, Marinette held open the left side of his book. This one couldn't have been any shorter than a thousand pages, but that was nothing to him. The side under her fingers was already thicker than the width of her forearm. It was hard to keep track of Adrien's reading — he got through books like she got through journal pages — but she was sure this particular novel had only appeared on his nightstand last night.

Maybe one day she could tease him about it. Not just yet, though. 

It was with his therapist that Adrien drew up a plan to manage the nightmares, an element of which involved reading before bed. It'd been just over two months since he'd started with this new counsellor, and he'd read enough books for them to have to take some of the picture frames off their shelves and hang them up on the wall, instead. He'd read and read and read, Marinette often falling asleep with the lamplight soft on her eyelids and the sound of his pages flicking by her ear, or, when she stayed up late writing her journal, would find him with his eyes closed and head lolled back, to which she'd readjust him on his pillow, kiss his cheek, and curl up in his arms.

The nightmares still came but at age twenty, he'd gotten better at waking himself up before they got too bad, unlike when they'd first moved in together at eighteen. But there would always be the odd night where Marinette would roll over to that soft lamplight once again, and see Adrien with purple circles under his eyes and tears caught on his reading glasses while one shaky hand held his book and the other stroked Valérie, who would rest her cheek against his thigh and purr. 

Sometimes, Marinette wondered if Valérie understood.

To an extent, she must have done. Must have felt her Maman and Papa 's (as Adrien referred to themselves around their cat) memories tied to their ankles like a ball and chain. Despite never coming to cuddle with her, and biting her whenever she got close to Adrien, Valérie always woke up when the nightmares got to Marinette, a patter of light footsteps following her down the corridor in the dead of night and hopping up onto the dining table while Marinette made herself a cup of chamomile tea. Valérie would watch her with sleepy eyes like Marinette's own mother would, back when she'd been eight or nine and was too scared to go downstairs by herself to get a glass of water at night.

Plagg or Tikki or sometimes both would follow, too. And if Adrien woke up to an empty space beside him, he'd join them all, and they'd laugh tiredly about having a family gathering at three o'clock in the morning.

But journaling helped, just as her own therapist suggested. Adrien helped, too. Sometimes, rolling over and placing her hand on his stomach, feeling the smooth, intact skin, would be enough to lull her back to sleep. It had become a habit, now, to reach for that part of him every once in a while. He understood. Maybe one day he'd tease her about it, but not just yet.

It was progress. For the first year after the last battle, Marinette couldn't even look at Adrien with his shirt off. She couldn't put her hand against the warmth of his abdomen without remembering the warmth of his blood, how it had seeped through the palm of her suit, how there was so much, too much, the fear .

They'd been kissing on her chaise in her parents' house when she'd realised it. He'd lifted his shirt over his head and the flush had drained out of her face, the oxygen draining from her lungs. She'd sobbed for almost half an hour, and said to him what she sometimes felt like Valérie — the owner from whom she'd been rescued having been a woman with dark hair only a year older than Marinette — would want to say to her:

I'm sorry. It isn't you. It's what happened. I love you, I just need time.

She'd seen him shirtless, since then, the first time being on the summery night of her nineteenth birthday.

It still sent a jolt through her every so often, but she was getting there. At least she had reclaimed that specific agony, and putting her hand to his stomach was something that gave her strength rather than took it away.

When she felt his smooth, intact skin beneath her hand, it felt like winning. They had won. Invincibility was only granted to the Ladybug and Black Cat that worked together, and they had won.

Marinette's hand, almost on its own, crept towards Adrien's abdomen once again.

Valérie hissed.

"Angry kitty," she tutted, and scratched her behind the ear. Something between a growl and a purr unravelled from the back of her throat. "Love you so much."

"Haha, me or Valérie?" Adrien asked.

Marinette looked up. The lamplight hit his face, soft and golden like sunshine.

"Both," she said. "I love you so much."

He brought his head down and kissed her. She tasted his bedtime tea and victory.

fin.