Work Text:
“If you want me to leave, I will.”
Adrien looked off to the side, as if he thought that he wasn’t even worthy of meeting her gaze. As if already looking elsewhere, trying to impose on her as little as possible. “I can put in my resignation and tell your parents I found a different opportunity elsewhere.”
Marinette’s mouth went dry, her stomach dropping into a cavern. He- he couldn’t- not again- he couldn’t leave her- she’d only just got him back!
She willed desperately to say something, to stop him.
Nothing happened.
Instead, she felt her mouth move, saying words she didn’t want to say. “I think that would be for the best.”
Adrien’s face fell further, his breath hitching slightly.
He didn’t say anything. Marinette suspected that if he tried, that hitch would devolve into full-on sobbing.
He turned around, heading for the door.
Marinette regained control of her limbs. She reached out to grab him, to stop him from disappearing-
Her vision turned black.
Marinette happily hummed as she kneaded some dough, her father joining her song. She’d missed spending time with her parents while she was in New York.
*ding ding*
A customer?
Moments later, Sabine walked through the entryway to the kitchen. Marinette relaxed.
Until she got a closer look and noticed her eyes glistening.
“Maman?”
“A-Adrien- he- he-!”
She burst into tears.
Marinette saw it then. Adrien desperately scrounging out of garbage bins to survive, getting thinner and thinner, having been unable to find another job. Losing his apartment, being forced out onto the streets.
Until finally someone had caught him going through their dumpster, recognized him, and decided that trash like him was unworthy of even having those rancid scraps.
Adrien leaning against the dumpster, beaten and bloody as the rain came pouring down. Slowly closing his eyes.
He didn’t open them again.
Marinette looked out the window at the rain. She’d given him her umbrella, he’d be fine. He said so himself. She didn’t need to do anything more, right? He could walk straight, he hadn’t even been slurring his words, he was coherent. Everything would be fine.
“Don’t be bemused, it’s just the news! Today, Adrien Agreste, son of the infamous supervillain, Hawkmoth, was found bludgeoned to death in an alley. The weapon of choice? An umbrella given to him by my favorite babysitter, Marinette Dupain-Cheng! Let’s give her a round of applause for helping set up the circumstances that allowed Paris to get rid of that loose end, once and for all.”
Faceless masses quietly muttered all around Adrien.
A person would occasionally glance at him. Their face would twist up, fear and anger warring over their features.
Until they’d just walk away.
Leaving him alone, crying, desperately trying to reach someone, anyone.
They all slipped through his fingers like water, leaving nothing behind.
A flash of yellow. A defined figure. The last friend Adrien had.
“CHLOE!”
She turned around, gave him a glance.
Her hair swished as she turned back.
She didn’t look back a second time.
“Don’t be bemused, it’s just the news! Today Adrien Agreste was found dead in his apartment. Police are currently treating the case as a suicide-”
Marinette turned off the TV, getting back to designing her new outfit. It was sad what happened, but right now she wanted to concentrate on something more hopeful.
She smiled as she looked at the red dress she’d just finished, its black accents making the bright red pop that much more.
Her Kitty was out there. She just needed to find him.
Marinette jolted awake, panting heavily. She threw off the covers, shakily getting to her feet. Stumbling forward, she reached out for the light switch.
It took her several tries to hit it. Her arm was shaking so badly she just kept on missing.
Taking the stairs two at a time, she rocketed down. She really missed being Ladybug right about now; she could’ve just swung down to the first story.
A seeming eternity later (36 seconds later, to be exact), she rounded the corner into the kitchen.
The light was on, the sound of dough being rolled out punctuating the quiet of the early morning.
Please let him be there please let him be there please please PLEASE-!
A blond-haired man turned around. “Mari-?”
She hit him like a freight train.
Instinctively Adrien wrapped his arms around her as they rolled to the side, dough spraying everywhere.
She couldn’t bring herself to care.
“MARINETTE!” Adrien shouted, anxiety tinging his voice. “What’s wrong? Is someone hurt? Did anything get on you? I’m so, so sor-”
She just pulled him even tighter against her, muffling his voice with her shoulder.
*thump thump thump*
Adrien was alive. He was here. He wasn’t in an alley or a grave or… or ALONE.
Not anymore.
“Ni-nightmare,” she choked out, trying not to cry.
The blood drained from Adrien’s face. “It was him, wasn’t it?” He asked quietly, his voice quavering slightly. “I- I should’ve known, I wish I’d-”
“NO!”
She was NOT letting him take the blame for this.
“It wasn’t your fault kitty, NONE of it was your fault. It was his, ONLY his, you did everything you could to stop him.”
Adrien frowned. For a minute she thought he was going to argue, but he seemed to think better of it.
“And- and it wasn’t him anyway. Not really. It- it was you.”
“I- I’d never try to hurt anyone here, I’d never try to hurt you, regardless of what happened with Mother I-”
Marinette winced. Foot, meet mouth. Again.
“It wasn’t the Peacock nightmare. It- it was-”
She took a deep breath, pressing her head into his neck, feeling his pulse. “There were so many times when things could have gone worse than they did. Where you could’ve gotten hurt or killed. And- and I would never even have known I lost you.”
“I’m not going anywhere, My Lady,” he murmured into her ear. “Not unless you want me to.”
“If you want me to leave, I will.”
“NO!” She shook her head violently. “Never. I- I couldn’t stand it if-”
If I never saw you again. If you killed yourself because you thought no one wanted you around. Because you thought you deserved it. Or that you deserved to be out on the streets, struggling to survive, because of who your father is and how people see you because of it.
“I want you here,” she told him more calmly. She needed him to know that. To internalize it. “You deserve to be here. You deserve happiness and safety and people who love you and- and just every good thing in the world!”
She’d tell him this every day if she needed to, until he believed it.
“I- I dreamed that you’d died those times. Like- like when you asked if I wanted you to leave. Or- or thinking back on what could’ve happened if you’d walked home while drunk. But the worst one? Was where you committed suicide before I ever ran into you as a civilian.”
She needed to bake Chloe some cookies. ALL the cookies. She’d probably comment about how she was only tolerating Marinette’s cooking in order to seem nicer to Adrien or something, but she didn’t care . If it weren’t for Chloe, then Marinette’s best friend, the love of her life, would probably be dead.
“In that nightmare, it barely even registered that you’d died. Just- you were just some stranger. Some stranger who was dead now. That- that was most horrifying of all.”
Her hearing about him dying and barely even caring because she didn’t know him - it terrified her more than anything else. Logically she’d known that was a possibility before she’d found out Adrien was Chat Noir, but- well she’d never really seriously thought about him dying. And- and part of her thought that because of how close they were, she’d just know if he was hurt, if something had happened to him. Would recognize him on sight if the worst happened.
But neither of them had known the other when they ran into each other at the bakery. And she’d never had a clue that the boy on the billboards was the same boy running alongside her on rooftops.
Adrien held her tighter. Something wet dripped onto her neck.
She didn’t comment. His shoulder was damp from her own tears.
“It didn’t happen.” He told her. “It could have, but it didn’t . I- I know what it’s like to have those ‘what ifs?’ running through your head. Sometimes, the best you can do is tell yourself that everything did work out. That it’s okay. I- I tell myself that all the time. Every time I think about what could’ve happened if I never met your parents- if I’d never started working here. If I’d never seen you again. Never met Nino or Alya.”
“Adrien…”
“It doesn’t help. There’s nothing that can be done about ‘what ifs’. It may not make those thoughts go away, but- but at least it doesn’t matter what could’ve happened, because it didn’t . And thinking about it in circles won’t help.”
He grinned at her. “You know what will?”
She blinked at him, lost for words.
Until she felt something sticky on her forehead.
Reaching her hand up, she got the substance off.
Dough coated her fingers.
Her partner gave her a shit-eating grin. “Ooops.”
“Oh you are ON.”
As she chased her kitty around the kitchen, trying to tag him with bits of the fallen dough, she smiled.
He was alive.
Maybe he wasn’t okay yet, but he would be.
And so would she.