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The florescent skylights seem to buzz with the same energy radiating from Adrien’s skull. He considers that perhaps he’s controlling it, or maybe they’re just perfectly synched up, like magnetic waves. He thinks there might be a physics test tomorrow.
“You look like shit, dude. Long night?” Nino’s voice snaps Adrien out of his thoughts, and when he takes too long to turn his head and assess Nino, his softly fond face scrunches up into concern. It reminds Adrien of a cornflake.
“What? Are you good? I’m surprised Nathalie let you out of the house like that.” Nino continues. Adrien doesn’t remember responding to him. He doesn’t remember when his chair started tipping over, either. That’s probably new. The tap-tap-tap at his breastbone is probably new, too.
“Like what?” Adrien asks.
“Like.. that!” He gestures broadly to Adrien’s person to accentuate his point. Adrien still doesn’t see why Nino is making such a big deal about this with his scrunched-up face.
“Dude… ‘cornflake boy?’. I think you need to go see the nurse.” Nino says after a length.
The nurse sounds rather appealing, has his head been pounding this whole time? But a trip to the nurse means a call to Nathalie, which means a call to Father, which means-
“Nino, really, I’m fine. Long night, like you said.” Every word he forces out feels like a punch but they come out even, a testament to the effort he’s putting in, and the small burst of adrenaline at the thought of inconveniencing his father.
It occurs to him that he doesn’t remember what he was doing last night. This gap in his memory upsets him.
Nino relaxes a measure. Adrien must have kept that bit to himself. The tapping on his breastbone increases.
“..You know, if you ever get sick of.. my parents would take you in a heartbeat. They act like.… I swear, my mom only makes her best Bastilla and m’qualli when you…” Nino prattles, still watching Adrien carefully, and Adrien lets it wash over him as he gingerly lets his head fall on his hands, satisfied that Nino’s bought his excuse and he’s bought some peace.
What is he making an excuse for? Was there an Akuma attack last night? When he tries to bring it up his mind fills with static. He barely remembers what he was doing right before Nino sat down next to him. Has school started yet? The more he thinks the worse his head hurts.
He’s suddenly really, really over this.
“Als, come here… If I didn’t…”
That voice continues, now more like a spoon in a meat grinder than Nino’s voice. He’s never heard a meat grinder before, so maybe it’s not like a meat grinder. He’s falling, being pureed and stuffed into a sausage casing, and then cut open and thrown back into the meat grinder. How does he turn this thing off?
“..come on.. you can miss one day..”
He feels himself lurch out of the grinder all too abruptly, and nausea roils in his gut. Nino’s grip on him is firm, a connecting point to reality. Firm and sure. Like a turtle. Hah. A turtle with secrets. That’s not fair, it's not Nino’s fault. He’s a good turtle. He tells Nino this.
Nino shoots him an unreadable look, tightens his grip on his arm, and hastens his pace towards the door. Adrien shuts up.
Leaving the classroom feels a little like how it would in a video game, where the loading screen lags between environments. Nino must not be playing it with him, though, because by the time the loading screen has closed he’s halfway down the stairs, Nino’s hands still steadfastly supporting him.
Has Nino always had four arms? Like a spider. He got trapped in a spider’s web once, stupidly. How does a human get trapped in a spider web? He can’t remember. it probably would have been easier to free himself from that web than Nino’s spidery grip right now, he thinks. Spider, or turtle?
A new voice, equally grinder-like in quality, pipes up from his left.
“Turtle? Nino, you didn’t.”
“I was going to tell ..”
Oh, so that's where the extra arms came from.
He doesn’t feel like paying attention anymore, and something tells him this is private, anyways, so he zones out again, trying to ignore the anvil chorus above his head.
They make it down the last step, where Adrien feels his stomach bottom out. He hasn’t adjusted to flat ground, and still feels like he’s descending somehow. Tumbling.
After a pause where he gets his bearings, they begin crossing the courtyard to the.. somewhere. Ladybug would know where they were going. She would know, and she would use her Lucky Charm to fix his pounding skull, and then she would catch him. She’s so deceptively strong, whenever she picks him up it makes him feel light as a feather. It’s just the powers of the miraculous, he knows, but he likes to think without them she’s just as strong.
None of that matters, though, because she’s not going to catch him. Of course she won’t, she’s not psychic. Why does the thought hurt so much anyway?
“What’s that?” Alya asks.
“Because she’s..she doesn’t want me anymore. Like m-m-.” He chokes off the last word. Why the hell did he say that? The tapping becomes lower, more of a vibration. It’s oddly calming.
“Adrien, Adrien, shh. It’s okay. I mean, it’s not, but like. God. We’re almost there, okay?.” Nino's voice wavers too, and the hand that isn’t under his arm rubs at his shoulder, just on the wrong side of too hard. His hand is shaking, Adrien realizes. Or maybe Adrien is shaking and Nino is the steady one. Slow and steady wins the-
Pain feels like a physical force that knocks him down and his vision whites out briefly at the intensity of it. When he comes to, there are voices muffled by a steady, ear-splitting siren somewhere above or below him. Swirling around a drain.
“One of us should..” Probably Nino says.
“He’ll be safe..nurse,” Probably Alya says, “Ladybug..”
He opens his eyes that he hadn’t realized were closed, and Nino is holding his face in his hands, looking more serious than Adrien’s ever seen him.
“Adrien, can you remember this? Let the nurse check you, okay? We’re not a-leaving you, Ladybug needs us, and Chat Noir hasn’t shown yet. Tell her your head is screwed up, don’t lie and say you’re fine. We’ll be back before you know it. ‘Kay?”
Adrien, after clinging to every word and realizing Nino’s finished his speech, nods. Nino is still holding his face, so Adrien decides to speak in case he didn’t get the nod.
“Yeah, Nino. Can you..”, He trails off.
“We’ll come back right after”, Nino guesses. Adrien resents how transparent his unspoken request must have been.
The loss of contact makes him feel like a balloon that’s been let go, but it’s quickly replaced by the nurse leading him into her office. He can’t for the life of him remember her name right now, but at least the siren has quieted as they’ve stepped deeper into the building.
She plops him down onto a chair and he.. was supposed to say something to her, he’s pretty sure. While he gathers his bearings, she gently places a cup of water into his hands and affords him a brief respite from noise and movement as she works her gloves on and approaches him.
The break eases his headache, slightly, and he takes a few slow sips of water before setting it down.
“Adrien, can you focus for me right now? Does your head hurt?” She’s fixing him with an identical look that Nino wore earlier. He’s getting tired of that. He’s getting tired of paying attention, too. He’ll do it for Nino, though. If only to avoid future cornflaking.
“Yes ma’am, and I’m.. dizzy.” He can’t tell what would be important and what wouldn’t, so he settles on that, cringing as she flicks on another light.
“Alright, I can see that you’re sensitive to light as well. May I feel your scalp? I suspect you have a head injury.”
He nods and presents his head for examination. He likes that she asked. Most people don’t.
Then there are fingers dancing across his skull. He imagines the shower scene from the Grudge, where she feels a hand on her scalp, but it’s not really there. After watching it with Plagg, he was terrorized for days by little black paws in his hair followed by innocent denial. Those little black paws.. That must be what’s been tapping at him for so long.
He starts as she slightly prods at a tender spot on the back of his head. He irrationally worries that if she pokes too hard, his brains will come spilling out. She doesn’t, though.
She’s taking her gloves off and looking at- something. It’s too hard to pay attention anymore. He hopes he hasn’t let Nino down.
“..drien? You’re showing signs of a head injury. When it’s safe to leave, I’d like to … emergency contact.” She finishes, and leaves him in the room to fetch something. Something about an emergency contact. The phone number, maybe.
Wait.
She said, “When it’s safe to leave.”. Why wouldn’t it be safe now?
Plagg bursts out of his jacket and buzzes around his face like a manic bee. Plagg. Kwami. Akuma. There’s an Akuma, and Ladybug is all alone.
“Kid, worry about yourself for once. I didn’t think you hit your head that hard, you seemed fine after. Humans will never make sense to me.” Plagg says as he assesses the tender spot with those little Grudge paws. Adrien swats at him half-heartedly.
“I didn’t hit my head. Leave me alone, I need to think.” Adrien grumbles as Plagg dodges a well-aimed flick to the butt. He needs to concentrate. What does he need to do?
“Adrien, I know thinking is new territory for you, but forget Ladybug. Let’s just listen to that lady and sit here. She seems like she knows what she’s doing. Doesn’t that sound nice? And then we can-.“
His memories catch up to him at the mention of Ladybug. She needs him. Plagg recognizes his mistake a moment too late.
“Plagg, transforme-moi.” He says before Plagg can get another word in, and when the transformation completes he feels like he’s sat up in the bathtub after a while of floating on his back. His head has even reached an acceptable volume of screaming protest. He’s not sure why he didn’t just transform earlier.
This newfound clarity lets him know that there is definitely, definitely, something wrong with him, and probably not in a way a painkiller and a good nights sleep can fix. Or maybe thats Plagg’s protest. Akuma first, and then head. That’s a good plan.
He takes off out of the office before the nurse has a chance to return, and goes to the roof. Ok. Maybe he’s not at his best, as vertigo still clings loosely to him. But feels good to be Chat Noir after a period of uselessness.
The akuma attack is easy to find. A man is taking unnaturally long strides stands on two circus stilts through the 9th arrondissement, towering over any building in the area. Adrien settles on disgraced circus performer as his most likely cause for akumatization as he makes his way closer to the fight.
Ladybug is there, joined by Carapace and Rena Rouge. When she spots him, her expression cycles through relief, stress, and annoyance, which isn’t exactly unfamiliar. After assuring Carapace and Rena are holding him off, she approaches Chat Noir carefully.
“Let me guess: disgraced circus performer?” He says in lieu of a hello.
“Nope, Napoleon complex. Be careful where you step, he shrinks anyone his stilts come into contact with. ” She says, accompanied by an eye roll.
“I guess my idea was just a ‘tall tale’.” He cracks. Wow, that was not his best one.
“Yikes. Try that again, chaton. Or actually don’t, I need you to help me reach the Akuma.” She zips towards a higher roof and he follows wordlessly.
It would have been a straightforward affair from there for just Ladybug and Chat Noir, but with the added presence of Rena and Carapace, it’s almost laughably easy. He launches himself and Ladybug up on his baton and Cataclysms the Akuma he finds in the tall, because of course it is, hat, while Ladybug takes care of the rest.
There’s a moment as he’s sitting up there where he panics, vertigo making the view below look like it’s swirling around a drain again. He loses his grip, slightly, but regains it when he realizes he can’t let Ladybug fall too.
She doesn’t notice, thankfully.
Nino and- Carapace and Rena have taken off already back towards the school, which reminds Adrien of his current predicament. The rush at being actually needed during a fight for the first time in a while staves off some of the anxiety at how he is going to explain disappearing from the nurse.
Ladybug does notice when Chat misaims their customary post ‘bien joué’ fist bump, though. That’s a first.
“Chat? Is something wrong?” She asks, as he looks where their knuckles have pressed unevenly together.
“Not at the moment, my lady. Just some civilian things I’m worried about, nothing big.” He says with an easy grin that feels less easy the longer he holds it.
She seems torn, for a moment, between investigating further and taking off before her transformation wears off. He should probably take off, too. The closer he gets to detransforming, the more he feels himself slip into that half-conscious state he was in before.
“Are you sure? You look a little green.” How many people are going to fuss at him today? She never worries about him. There must be a Paris-wide conspiracy.
“Does it go with my eyes?” He jokes as he flutters his hands near his face to accentuate said features.
“Not really, it kinda looks like you’re gonna barf. I don’t think even you could pull that off.” She shifts and rests her hands on her hips.
“‘Even me?’ Does that mean you think I look good?” He leans on his baton.
She sputters and stamps her foot (cutely), not having meant to give him that inch. He’s running out of time and patience for this, so he decides not to needle her further.
“Oh, shut it. Ok, can you meet at our usual spot tonight? There's some things we should talk about.” Hands back on her hips, she looks so serious again.
“Of course, my Lady.” He says, because even like this he can’t deny her.
She nods, shooting him one last brow-furrowed look, before zipping away out of view. He jumps onto a rooftop before deflating like a puppet with its strings cut. He slides, back against a chimney before hitting the ground on his butt unceremoniously. He fiddles with his rapidly beeping miraculous and is hit with a wave of anxiety at the uncertainty of what might follow. Why did he land on a roof? He’s going to have to get down somehow, Nino and Alya are probably looking for him, he’s going to slip and no one catches him and
oh god his head hurts so badly.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Marinette is a little ball of nerves as she heads back towards the school. On top of everything in her life she now has to figure out how to have a discussion with Chat about why she hasn’t been as forthcoming with him as she should be; without bringing up the alternate future where he causes an apocalypse, of course. She knows she should trust him, she doesn’t know the full story of that future, but, but, but.
And speaking of Chat Noir, she feels beyond the guilt and anxiety a niggling worry at how he acted during the Akuma fight just now. Aside from the Reverser incident, she’s never seen him act so hesitant, especially in the midst of a fight. There was a moment where he almost looked afraid when they were perched on top of his baton, which keeps playing in her mind like a broken record. She’ll check on him, when she sees him tonight. She doesn’t want to lose him again. What a silly thought, it’s not like she’s lost him before.
Staccato buzzes on her phone break her from her mental spiral, and she opens it to see several texts from Alya and Nino both; has she seen Adrien?
She huffs a semi-hysterical laugh. At this point, she could probably be run over by a truck and not notice, with how wound up she is. But no, due to the akuma and her typical lateness she hadn’t run into him yet today. She feels her worry spike at why they might both be asking, and wills it to calm until she’s opened the messages.
As she enters her passcode a black ball zooms right into her midsection. Ok, that might as well happen. The black ball lifts it’s head and- no, Plagg? This can’t be good. Which of her blond boys can she ignore for the moment? What is her life that she has to even ask that question?
“Plagg? What are you doing here? Is Chat okay?” She asks as she yanks them into an empty alley, holding a dazed Plagg in her hands.
He looks- tired. Not like the lazy attitude she remembers from when they swapped kwamis, but genuinely worn out.
“That-that- cheese hoarding imbecile made us transform when he- ugh, Marinette, you think it’s hard to put up with that kid during fights, try all the time. “ He grouses as he rolls theatrically in her cupped hands.
Tikki, who zipped out of her purse when she heard Plagg speak, is looking at him expectantly.
“What happened, Plagg?”
“He slipped on a roof after the akuma attack last night and hit his head. I think it scrambled what little brains he’s got, he’s making no sense right now. I can help him when he’s transformed, but it’s not fun.”
He turns his head to Tikki at this bit, “Trust me, sugarcube. I wouldn’t have involved you and your kid if he didn’t need you.”
“Okay.” She says, shakily. “Okay. Where is he? Do you need some food first, or should we get to Chat? Wait, I think I brought a cheese danish from the bakery, do you-”.
Her question is answered by Plagg diving into her backpack, retrieving and then devouring the danish with relish.
“I’ll need this to,” He says between bites,” transform him back. For your silly secret identities.”
Right. Right. God, how had she forgotten?
She does a cursory scan for watchers, and, seeing none, transforms to Ladybug. She almost pulls her communicator out, but remembers Chat won’t get any messages she sends right now.
“Okay, Plagg, where to?”
“Right where you left him, pigtails.” He replies, finding a spot on her shoulder to sit for the ride.
Oh, kitty. What is she going to do with him?
The trip back to the 9th arrondissement is silent, but a tense kind of silent. She is almost sure Plagg won’t say anything more when he suddenly pipes up from his perch on her shoulder.
“Between you and me, that kid is sensitive, you know. He knows you’re keeping things from him.”
She falters. “I.. I’ve been meaning to talk to him. ” She doesn’t want to lie to Plagg, but it’s not easy to find the truth, either.
“Yeah, you don’t trust him. I’ve seen it before, kid. But Ladybug and Chat Noir are meant to be balanced. Whatever your reasons are, just know this. He’s destructive maybe, self-destructive definitely, but he wouldn’t hurt you. That kid doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. Whatever you’re trying to avoid right now, is going to get worse the further you push him away.”
After a lapse of silence, he grumbles something she’s pretty sure is “stupid human affairs” and “camembert”, but doesn’t say anything for the rest of the trip. Nor does she.
She finds the rooftop, and Plagg zips behind a chimney, where Chat Noir must be. She resists the urge to go and check on him herself. After a beat and a flash of light, he still hasn’t come out, so she walks hesitantly closer.
“Chat? Are you okay?” She calls, and peeks around the corner. He’s crumpled on the ground with his head in his hands, shaking slightly.
She kneels in front of him and puts her hand on his wrist, calling his name again.
“My lady”, He croaks, “I thought our meeting wasn’t until later. Unless..” He opens his eyes slowly, like he’s afraid of what might happen when they open. Whatever he expected, however, doesn’t seem to pass, and he takes in the afternoon sun and her concerned face hovering in front of his.
“It wasn’t, but Plagg thought we should meet early. I’m starting to see why, you hit your head last night? Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Me, she thinks, but that doesn’t feel like a fair question right now considering her own secrets.
“Cats are supposed to land on their feet, I didn’t want to ruin my reputation.” He tries.
“Try again, Chat.”
“I.. didn’t think it was that bad.. and if my.. I thought it would go away but it just got worse.” He drops eye contact with her, looking sheepish.
“I didn’t want to be a burden.”, He adds, quieter.
“Chaton, anyone who knows you behind the mask is lucky to have you in their lives. You’re not a burden to me, or anyone else with half a brain.” She cups his head in her hands where he’s tucked it down into his chest, and continues.
“Somehow, we’re going to figure this out, and whatever bad thing you’re trying to avoid won’t happen.”
He looks up at her like she’s made of stars.
“That's optimistic, my lady. How do you know we’ll be okay if you don’t even know what I’m trying to avoid?”
“Because we’re a team. I think I’ve been forgetting that lately, but I can’t anymore. We’ll make it through anything. ”
“Even if it means my identity?”
She sucks in a breath, stands up, and reaches out her hand.
“If it has to come to that, then yes, chaton. You are more important to me than our identities.” She says, and finds that she means it.
He smiles and takes her outstretched hand.