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Kwamis are not compassionate creatures.
It’s the first lesson Fu is taught, to never bond too deeply with a Kwami, to never let them get too close. They are cosmic energy personified and confined to a form too small for them, they are ravenous and limitless and they take more than a living person can give them.
Years after the last Temple burns, and all of the other Guardians are long dead and buried, Fu has a miraculous on his wrist and a responsibility too big for him. He has a sharp-edged creature with an impenetrable shell and hardened skin living in his head, in his soul, and it’s almost enough to drive him mad.
The Butterfly and Peacock are gone, the miracle box weighs heavy in his hands, he has a duty to protect a power that is as old as the Earth itself, and it is sucking the life out of him.
The thought crosses his mind a handful of times in the centuries that he is alive; burying the miracle box at sea, setting himself free, but something stops him every time.
A whispering voice in his head, a weight at his shoulder, a tiny creature that has eyes like poison needles up close.
Wayzz’s words are soft and soothing, he speaks as though Fu’s choices are important, as though what Fu wants matters to him.
It’s a lie, Fu never truly has a choice.
But it’s been hundreds of years, and they are bonded too deeply. Fu can’t escape.
He feels fresh guilt eat him alive every time he has to choose a new Ladybug and Chat Noir. Creation and Destruction are not kind to their chosen, they devour them whole and spit them out broken.
Every time the Butterfly and Peacock miraculous escape him again, he tells himself it will be the last time. He refuses to ruin anymore lives.
He becomes a ghost; he runs and hides and keeps all of the secrets of the miraculous locked away. He vows they will die with him.
He never wins.
…
When he sees Marinette Dupain-Cheng for the first time, Wayzz pushes Fu in her direction, towards a busy street. Wayzz waits until a car is coming, too fast to stop, and tells Fu to jump.
He jumps. He is unafraid.
But he is terrified when she saves him.
“It’s her,” Wayzz says. “She’s the one.”
“She’s thirteen,” Fu grits. “That’s too young.”
“She was born for this,” Wayzz says. “Just like you were.”
Fu shakes his head, lurking in the alley across from the girl’s school. She’s too young, too innocent.
“It’s her,” Wayzz repeats, firm and honey-sweet. It’s not a request.
Fu never wins.
…
Adrien Agreste is as sheltered as they come. He is bright-eyed and smiling and Fu thinks, with so much vehemence it startles him, no.
Adrien offers him a hand to help him to his feet. When Fu does not rise, Adrien bends down to meet him.
He is kind-hearted and exceptional. He has all the makings of a hero, everything Fu sees in him, he saw in Marinette Dupain-Cheng.
“Him,” Wayzz says simply, without preamble. “It has to be him, he’s a perfect match.”
Too young, is all Fu can think. They’re both too young.
Fu looks into Adrien Agreste’s eyes and says, “Thank you for stopping to help me, young man.”
I’m sorry, he doesn’t say. I’m so sorry.
“They need to be given their miraculouses immediately,” Wayzz instructs, and after all these centuries, Fu has stopped trying to resist. “I sense the emergence of the corrupted Butterfly wielder.”
They’re too young. They’re too good.
They’re going to ruin them.
“Very well,” Fu says, with a heavy heart.
He never wins.
…
Later that day, bare moments after Wayzz has returned from delivering the ring and the earrings, the news breaks about a monstrous stone ravager tearing the city into ribbons and making Paris’ streets run red.
Fu closes the television the moment he sees the Black Cat wielder get on the scene. He knows the Ladybug will not be far behind. Creation and Destruction always work in tandem. They are horrendously, dangerously co-dependent.
A new century, a new danger, always the same thing.
The song remains the same.
He closes all the lights in the massage parlour he is using as a front, changes the opened sign to closed. He curls up on a yoga mat and stares unseeingly into the darkened room.
“Don’t worry master,” The voice in his head, in his soul, in his skin whispers. “They will be fine.”
No, they won’t.
They never are.
They never win.
…
Within his first week of moonlighting as Chat Noir, Adrien starts losing time.
It’s the same monotonous routine day in and out. Wake-up, shower, early morning photoshoot, go to school, go to fencing, go to his Chinese lesson, another photoshoot, go home, do homework, sleep and repeat.
It’s suffocating, he’s suffocating. He feels claustrophobic in his room, in his home.
Going to school helps, having friends helps.
Being Chat Noir is a blessing. Plagg is there, every night, encouraging him to let loose, to escape. Test his limits and himself, run until he feels light and weightless and free.
It begins with a niggling sense at the base of his skull, so minor he barely registers it. There’s a buzzing underneath his skin that wasn’t there before.
He hisses and snaps at shadows. He avoids water and rain. He purrs easily, is desperate for hugs and love and attention, with a deep-rooted longing that doesn’t entirely feel like his.
He has panic attacks whenever Plagg isn’t in view. It’s normal, Plagg is quickly becoming his best friend, maybe just barely higher than Ladybug on the list.
He can’t sleep without Plagg sharing his pillow. He can’t eat if he doesn’t feel Plagg’s solid warmth on his shoulder, hidden underneath his shirt. This is normal.
He starts losing time when he transforms, remembers calling claws out but never retracting them back in. He finds bruises on his body that he can’t explain the next morning, his eyes are always a darker shade of green.
He only starts getting scared when his black-outs begin occurring more often, for longer periods of time. Adrien finds himself missing whole nights and evenings and he doesn’t know why.
Plagg is oddly tight-lipped about it, but his Kwami has never been forthcoming with details, so Adrien keeps his mounting panic to himself.
It reaches a boiling point when he wakes up on a Saturday morning and the last thing he remembers is going to sleep on Thursday night. The levee breaks.
“I have to tell my father, maybe—maybe a doctor could help; monitor me, or something. I’m freaking out, Plagg.”
Plagg blinks at him slowly, with glowing green eyes that have never looked so eerie, and says quietly, “Kid, you’re fine. You don’t need a doctor.”
Adrien’s mind goes fuzzy, “I don’t need a doctor.” He repeats, suddenly feeling dumb for suggesting it in the first place. “You’re right, I’m just overreacting. It’s probably nothing.”
He goes to sleep that night, and he wakes up two days later in a grimy alley with a migraine and blood under his fingernails.
You’re fine, someone whispers.
“I’m fine,” he says, and believes it.
…
Marinette feels at her lowest when she isn’t doing anything.
She’s constantly designing, creating, and when she’s not designing, she’s baking or drawing or gardening. The need to always be in motion is overpowering.
Tikki tells her this is normal, this is healthy and good and she’s becoming more productive, less irresponsible.
In the beginning of her career as a superhero, Marinette dreaded having to be Ladybug, because she was terrified of messing up, of being bad at it.
She also resented how much time it took away from all the things she wanted to do, like hang out with her friends and design commissions and spend time with her parents.
Now, Marinette lives for the times when she can transform into Ladybug.
Ladybug is useful, Ladybug is productive and innovative and Paris—loves her.
There’s a wispy voice at the back of her head telling her, “Why would you want to be Marinette when you could be Ladybug?”
Marinette is clumsy and spacey and too quiet.
Ladybug is brave and headstrong and clever. She’s a saviour of Paris.
Some days though, days that are few and far in-between, where Marinette’s head feels full of cotton and she’s too exhausted to function, she feels so overwhelmed it terrifies her.
Marinette asks Tikki if it’s normal to feel weighed down, chained and tethered to something too big for her. Tikki always has the answers.
Tikki smiles at her and says, in that gentle way of hers that makes Marinette feel floaty and warm, that every Ladybug who ever existed felt this way. It’s normal.
She wakes up and she can’t breathe. She’s tired but she can’t sleep. This is normal.
She’s fine.
…
Whenever there’s a particularly grueling Akuma attack, Adrien likes to unwind by taking a bath, or listening to music, or playing video games over headset with Nino.
Recently, though, he unwinds by lying on his bed with his eyes closed and listening to Plagg purr against his chest. He feels like he’s melting, floating, like nothing exists.
“Nino asked me to see a movie with him tomorrow after school,” Adrien says, and Plagg’s purring cuts off abruptly.
“What did you say?” Plagg asks, sounding disinterested.
“I said I’d ask my father and get back to him,” Adrien blinks his eyes open, staring at his ceiling. “I don’t think he’ll let me go. Should I ask him or just make up a lie about having to work on a school project? Would that be bad?”
Plagg is silent for a few moments, then, he says, “Don’t ask him.”
Adrien nods, he dislikes having to go behind his father’s back, but it’s just a movie. Nothing bad will happen. “So, I should just lie? Nino will probably go along with whatever story I—”
Plagg appears directly on top of him, hovering just inches above Adrien’s face, luminous green eyes glowing, as if lit from within. Adrien can’t look away.
“No, I don’t think you should go to the stupid movie.” Plagg says, and it sounds—reasonable. Adrien can’t remember why he wants to go, anyway. “What if there’s an Akuma attack while you’re in the theatre and you don’t get the alert because your phone is turned off? Ladybug would be all alone.”
Panic seizes Adrien, thick and cloying. He can’t leave his Lady alone—
“You’re right,” He agrees. Plagg is usually right about most things, Adrien finds himself looking to Plagg for help making decisions more and more these days. “I’ll tell Nino I have a last-minute photoshoot. I’ll make it up to him, somehow.”
“Sure you will,” Plagg snorts and goes back to purring. Adrien smiles and sinks deeper into his mattress. Plagg always knows exactly how to make him feel better. “Kid, hey, before you doze off, do something for me.”
Adrien nods without thinking, “Anything. What is it?”
Plagg’s voice lowers dangerously, “Claws out.”
“Claws out,” Adrien says, except he feels funny, and his voice is strange and distorted, but—
But Plagg told him to do it, so everything must be okay.
…
A news story surfaces, a murder in an alley some passerby caught on camera—
There’s blood, a lot of it. There’s screaming and choking and begging and the victim’s broken body is blurred out.
The murderer isn’t caught on video, the quality too dark and grainy to make out much more than a pair of glowing green eyes.
There’s sound, but only for an instant before it cuts out, the victim is yelling—
“I don’t know anything about Hawkmoth! I don’t even know what a miraculous is, please don’t hurt me!”
The person who took the video sends it to the Parisian police anonymously. Several days after the news starts running it, there’s a thread on the Ladyblog that starts picking up traction.
Who else would be trying to get information on Hawkmoth but Ladybug and Chat Noir?
The responses to the post are all defensive, thousands of users protective over their beloved superheroes. The creator of the Ladyblog deletes the post and the user that posted it is banned from the site.
But Marinette reads that post a day before Alya deletes it. She watches the video on the news and feels sick to her stomach.
“Tikki,” She whispers, staring blankly at her television screen. “The—the eyes. I…I recognize those eyes.”
Tikki sends her a comforting smile, sharp and cutting, with all of her teeth showing. “You must be wrong, Marinette. I don’t recognize them.”
Relief washes over Marinette in a tidal wave, “You—you’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking, I’ve never seen someone with eyes like that before. They’re too dark to be Chat Noir’s, too evil.”
She flops back on her couch, ignores her parents hushed voices in the kitchen. Tikki nuzzles her cheek, and Marinette feels a rush of warmth and affection for her Kwami. All of her worry and doubt fades away, she trusts Chat Noir implicitly. He couldn’t have done this, he’s too kind, too sweet and loving. He doesn’t have an evil bone in his body.
“Thanks for being here for me, Tikki.” Marinette sighs. “You always know just what to say to make me feel better.”
“I’ll always be here for you, Marinette,” Tikki says, and it’s more than just a promise. It’s a vow. “I love you.”
Marinette is flooded with love and devotion so intense she almost loses herself in it. She feels like she’s on cloud nine, like she’s flying. She’ll call Chat Noir later, she decides. They can meet up and talk about this together.
“I love you too, Tikki,” Marinette says, her heart feels so full it might burst. “I’ll never leave you.”
The words feel strange and foreign and wrong for a moment, because wouldn’t it be the other way around, wouldn’t Tikki leave her one day—
But the moment passes, and her mind goes blank, and Tikki’s always saying she thinks too much.
…
She and Chat Noir meet up for patrol that night, and nothing is out of the ordinary. He’s happy and loud and cracking jokes, they do a quick scan of the city and then spend the rest of their time stargazing. They leave each other at ten minutes to midnight.
He pulls her into a hug before they part ways, and Marinette is struck by the overwhelming urge to kiss him. Her thoughts become a scattered mess, reality fading in and out. She frowns as a weird feeling steals over her body; her brain overrun—
She kisses him viciously. He kisses back twice as hard. It’s fierce and hungry, almost like a competition between the two of them. She doesn’t feel like herself as she clutches his shoulders, winds her arms around him, cups the back of his neck.
There’s something wrong about this, Marinette’s never wanted to kiss Chat before, her romantic feelings for Adrien are so strong. For a half-second, she is terrified, because she doesn’t know why she’s doing this. What is she doing?
Her fear is quickly replaced by longing, the kind that’s been built up over centuries, which makes no sense, because she’s only known Chat for a few months.
She can’t stop kissing him. She knows she’s going to have to come up for air, but she doesn’t want to. She wants to crawl into his skin and his head and stay there, he’s her other half, isn’t he? It makes sense to want to be so close to him, they share a heart. His feelings are her feelings.
She realizes she’s talking against his lips, pressing feverish kisses all over his cheeks, his nose, his eyes, his forehead. She’s saying, over and over, “I love you.”
He replies, voice darker and rougher than she’s ever heard it, “I would die for you.” I would kill for you.
Who said that? Did she say that? Did he?
Neither of them said it, but they’re both thinking it. His thoughts are getting mixed up with hers, she doesn’t know where she ends and he begins.
He’s your partner, someone whispers, sounding achingly familiar and far away. You belong to each other.
With a force and veracity Marinette didn’t think she possessed, she picks Chat up and slams him against a chimney. A second later, he’s reversed their positions, and her back hits the brick roughly.
Something’s wrong, her instincts are shouting at her. Her emotions don’t feel like her own. Chat Noir would be gentler than this, he feels off. Something feels off.
The thought flits out of her head, as though by magic. She drags her partner closer and can’t remember why she didn’t do this sooner.
The next morning, they wake up tangled together on the same rooftop. She’s freezing, even with her transformation still on. She opens her eyes and sees his face millimetres away from hers and starts panicking.
She should get up, she should leave, she doesn’t know if she’s late for school. Her parents could think she’s missing.
They don’t matter, that internal voice, soothing and alluring and gentle, echoes in her head. Nothing matters but him. He’s our world.
Marinette relaxes, snuggling deeper into Chat Noir’s arms. She never realized it before, but he’s breathtakingly beautiful. They do belong together, there’s no place she’d rather be than in his arms.
She feels herself drifting back off to sleep, but something stops her cold.
He’s our world. Our?
“Tikki,” Marinette asks quietly, even though she knows the Kwami can’t answer her while in the suit. “Tikki, what are you—”
A moment later she loses her train of thought. Staring down at her sleeping kitty, she’s overcome by exhaustion and closes her eyes.
Everything’s fine.
…
Adrien starts eating more. He feels hungry all the time, the diet-approved meals aren’t cutting it for him anymore, even though he knows they should be.
He tries eating more fruits and vegetables, things low in calories, that won’t make a dent in his diet. It doesn’t work, he’s still famished all the time. It hurts, like his insides are being carved out.
It gets so bad one day that he calls his father and leaves school early, his driver picks him up and brings him home, and since his father is at a company board meeting and Nathalie’s with him, Adrien is alone.
He opens the fridge, there’s a cheesecake at the back that was meant for a dinner party with the Bourgeois’ but was never eaten because Chloe’s mom pitched a fit about something and the dinner ended early. He thinks his father wouldn’t even notice if it disappeared.
“I shouldn’t,” He scolds himself. His father’s got a show in two weeks, the measurements for the clothing are already done, Adrien can’t afford to—
“Do it,” Plagg says, materializing at Adrien’s side, eyes sparkling with mischief. “You know you want to. I can control your metabolism anyway; you can eat as much as you want.”
“I’ll feel sick,” Adrien reasons. Plagg’s eyes narrow in on his, and Adrien’s thoughts go disjointed and muddy. He grabs the cake out of the fridge, eats every last bite of it.
He spends the rest of the night throwing up over the toilet.
“Why did I do that,” He groans. “Plagg, if I ever look at another cake again, slap me.”
The next day, he stops at the Dupain-Cheng bakery on his way home from school and buys a slice of every cake they have. He must pass out from a sugar high, because he wakes up a few hours later disoriented and aching.
“I think something’s wrong with me,” He says. Something feels wrong with him.
Plagg scoffs and shakes his head, “You’re fine, you’re just experimenting. You’re a growing kid, you need more fuel than a kale salad can give you.”
Plagg’s logic is flawless, Adrien can find no reason to argue with him. His Kwami’s not wrong that the meals pre-prepared for him by their personal chef and approved by his father and dietician aren’t exactly Adrien’s favorite foods.
Still, it’s never bothered him this much before. He’s never noticed how hungry he is, even after eating, how empty and starved and hollow he feels.
Plagg isn’t wrong about the not gaining weight part either, Adrien begins religiously staring at himself in his vanity mirror before going to bed each night to make sure there’s no evidence that he hasn’t been sticking to his diet.
There isn’t, if anything, he might actually look thinner. Adrien watches his reflection move in the mirror’s glass like he’s analyzing someone else, it feels like he’s seeing someone else, sometimes.
His skin looks paler, and he tells himself it’s the lighting even though it’s night time. There are rings like dark bruises under his eyes, and he tells himself it’s his overpacked schedule taking its toll.
His eyes, though, he doesn’t know how to explain away the change he sees. They look greener, darker. Plagg tells him, careless and unconcerned, that he should consider getting his eyesight checked.
Adrien seriously considers it, but then Plagg scoffs and tells him to learn how to read sarcasm.
He lets it go after that.
“Stop obsessing over your appearance. Sheesh, models and their vanity,” Plagg snorts, floating lazily through the air above Adrien’s head. “You look perfect, stop worrying about it.”
“Excuse you,” Adrien huffs, settling against the headboard of his bed and hugging one of his pillows to his chest. “I can’t help it, if my father finds out I’m breaking my diet and becomes disappointed in me, I will literally die.”
He’s being overly dramatic, it’s the only way he knows how to cope with the dread that’s set underneath his skin like a second layer. Adrien is constantly a hair away from a panic attack these days.
Plagg flicks him in the forehead with his tail, “You tryna get nominated for drama queen of the month or something?”
“No,” Adrien grumbles, “I just, I don’t know. We’re in a kind of okay place right now, father and I. I don’t want him to look at me differently.”
“Look at you like what?” Plagg demands, a harder edge to his voice now, although he still sounds somewhat amused. “Like you’re a normal kid who likes binge-eating sweets and junk food like everyone else?”
“Like I’m not perfect,” Adrien says, despite himself. Despite all of his reservations and his instincts screaming at him not to, not to show weakness when he’s already feeling so unbearably fragile.
Plagg goes still, the air around him growing colder, until the whole room feels frigid and tense. Adrien’s eyes widen and his breath catches at the complete 180-shift in Plagg’s mood and the atmosphere of the room, he hugs his pillow closer to himself.
“That,” Plagg says frostily, “Is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Um,” Adrien replies dumbly, his thought process going hazy, suddenly unable to form a coherent sentence. “What?”
“Your father is the least relevant person on the planet,” Plagg glowers, whiskers bristling. “His opinion means less than squat to me and it should mean even less to you. Adrien.”
Adrien’s head snaps up of its own accord, his eyes meeting Plagg’s. He freezes at the look he sees in them.
“You’re already perfect, there’s no way you could ever not be.” Plagg says, floating closer, his tiny hands coming up to cradle Adrien’s face as best he can. “You’re perfect for me.”
It’s like all of the week-long worry and anxiety and self-doubt he’s been harboring drains out of him all at once, leaving him tired and unable to hold himself up. He sags against his bed, limp and exhausted of whatever energy was keeping him going, unanimated like Marinette’s Chat Noir rag doll.
“Thanks Plagg,” Adrien says gratefully, more thankful than he can put into words. Plagg squeezes as close to him as he physically can, going from rubbing his head against Adrien’s cheek to nuzzling into the hollow of his throat.
A strange and unwanted thought crosses his mind then, unbidden and foreign but clearer than any of his thoughts have been in a long time. If Plagg wanted to, he could kill Adrien right now. His claws were sharp enough, his teeth close enough.
Plagg makes an unhappy tsk noise and the thought flees Adrien’s head as quickly as it came, leaving his mind dizzy and empty and scattered. Adrien tries to hold onto the clarity but it slips through his fingers.
He lets it go.
“It’s late,” Plagg says, unusually gentle, re-capturing Adrien’s attention. “You finished your homework a while ago, and didn’t that assistant lady say that you have to wake up earlier than usual tomorrow? You should go to sleep, kid.”
“Okay,” Adrien says, moving to slip under the covers automatically, having changed into his pajamas earlier after having taken a shower. “Stay with me?”
“Don’t I always,” Plagg mutters, half fond and half something else. “Go to sleep. Stop thinking for tonight.”
Adrien listens, his eyes closing on their own the moment Plagg tells him to go to sleep again. As he’s drifting off, Plagg still cuddled against his neck, another weird thought crosses his mind.
Plagg’s words, the ones that seemed so reassuring before, come back to him. Except, in the quiet of Adrien’s head, they’re not as reassuring.
Maybe Adrien’s brain mixed it up, but he could’ve sworn Plagg said you’re perfect to me. He didn’t.
Plagg said you’re perfect for me.
For me.
Adrien feels a scream build up in his throat, coming from somewhere deep within himself, a part of him that’s been bottled up and terrified and is shouting warnings about all the red flags he’s missing.
His chest seizes, his bottom lip trembles—
Plagg makes another unhappy noise, shifting his weight to press closer still to Adrien. His breathing deepens, his usual purring starting up; comforting and hypnotic. The length of his tail wraps loosely around Adrien’s neck.
Like magic, Adrien’s entire body relaxes, the pressure in his chest disappearing. Adrien lets himself drift off.
The scream in his throat dies out, like it has a dozen times before.
Adrien never remembers in the morning.
…
Under the cover of nightfall, hidden in the darkness of lamp-less alleyways and unlit rooftops, Chat Noir doesn’t sleep.
The taste of skin in his teeth, blood discoloring the black leather of his claws, Chat Noir’s eyes burn greener than Adrien’s ever could.
Adrien wakes up feeling more tired than he went to bed, unrested and restless, disoriented like he’s gone through an out of body experience.
On the news, Nadja Chamack discusses the circulating rumors of a new serial killer in Paris. Possibly a sociopathic Ladybug and Chat Noir fan gone rabid, murdering people in an effort to help them find Hawkmoth.
At night, Adrien falls asleep, Plagg’s teeth nuzzling his throat, his tail around Adrien’s neck, his claws kneading gently into Adrien’s skin.
In the morning, Adrien wakes up with the taste of blood in his mouth, his body aching, and his fingernails stained red.
In the morning, Adrien wakes up, and never remembers.
…
The first time Tikki suggests Marinette go to the Guardian and ask him for the permission to hand out miraculouses to other allies, Marinette says no, immediately and on the spot.
No, she says, I don’t want to put that pressure on anyone else.
No, she doesn’t say, an irrational, all-encompassing fear stopping her. I would never, ever, put anyone else through this.
“I don’t need any other allies, Tikki,” Marinette replies, with a calmness that is paper-thin, flimsy and barely masking the terror that has settled into her bones. “Anyway, I have you and Chat Noir. There’s no reason to bring in anyone else. We’re already a perfect team.”
Tikki doesn’t reply for several seconds, as though considering Marinette’s response. Marinette holds her breath.
Finally, Tikki smiles, knowing and calculating, and lets Marinette get away with it. “Alright, if you’re sure.”
Marinette conceals her relief like she conceals everything else these days. She leans forward and presses a kiss to Tikki’s head, almost nauseous at the warm buzz she feels afterwards, like an endorphin high to mask that something is slowly killing you.
Marinette’s fingers drift, instinctively, towards her ears. The Ladybug earrings burn.
She hasn’t been able to take them off since she put them on.
…
The thing is this; Marinette knows why she was chosen. Because ultimately, she cares deeply about others, is always willing to go out of her way for the people she keeps in her heart. Her family, friends, the citizens of Paris. Marinette loves easily.
Marinette loves being Ladybug, but being Ladybug is killing her.
Tikki loves Marinette, but Tikki’s love is killing Marinette.
It would be funny, if this were a dark comedy, where all of the jokes end with someone dying as the punchline.
Marinette watches her hair and her eyes turn bluer, the rings under them darker, her skin paler. None of this is funny.
Her life feels like the distorted version of some superhero-themed Shakespearean tragedy; the hero never wins in the end.
Marinette can’t stop herself from giving in the next time Tikki tells her to go to Fu and ask him to pick other allies.
Marinette hands out miraculouses like candy, like Oprah giving out cars, and swallows down the scream building in her chest.
Allies or not, catching Hawkmoth or not—
She can’t win.
…
Adrien loses time, bits and pieces of his memory.
Marinette loses her resolve, bits and pieces of her sanity.
Little by little, they both know they’re losing themselves.
…
“My Lady, I’m scared,” Chat Noir says out of the blue one night, towards the end of one of their longest patrols yet. They keep extending their patrols the longer Hawkmoth remains at large.
“What if we never catch Hawkmoth,” He continues, but there was a pause between the two sentences, and Marinette zeroes in on it, careful to keep her mind blank at the same time. Tikki shares her feelings when she’s Ladybug.
Chat Noir’s voice is measured, cool, nonchalant and unbothered, like he’s just airing out a concern. Marinette pointedly avoids looking into his eyes as she leans closer to him, pressing a tender kiss to his cheek out of habit. They lost any concept of personal space or boundaries long ago, couldn’t try and separate themselves even if they tried.
Beyond the railing of the highest landing of the Eiffel Tower, life in Paris goes on, unbothered. Marinette can see the Ladybug and Chat Noir statue in the park from here, can see the way her and Chat’s colours have been strewn across the city in preparation for the annual Heroes’ Day parade. A homage to Paris’ heroes.
Heroes. Marinette feels a single tear escape her eye; she doesn’t bother wiping it away.
She reads between the lines of what Chat is saying. My Lady, I’m scared. What if we never catch Hawkmoth?
My Lady, I’m scared.
“Me too, chaton,” Marinette says, and leaves it at that.
…
The miraculous picks the wielder, is what Fu said, what feels like a lifetime ago now.
What he meant to say is you don’t have a choice.
You’re going to be superheroes, Tikki and Plagg say, as Marinette and Adrien put on jewelry that will permanently stain their skin and never come off, as they take on titles they don’t know they’ll have for life.
Years after Ladybug and Chat Noir catch Hawkmoth, after Adrien discovers it’s his father and the Agreste mansion burns down in the ensuing battle and takes Gabriel and Emilie Agreste with it, Marinette and Adrien finally hear the part Tikki and Plagg left unspoken.
You’re going to be superheroes, the Kwami say. Their teeth bared; their claws sunken in deep.
It’s going to hurt.