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Whether it was the wind in her face or the words of the boy beside her, something had broken through Ladybug's wall of panic and allowed her thoughts to settle. She wasn't calm, nor would she be for the next few weeks at least, but she was too accustomed to change this great to be phased by it for very long.
"This is literally my worst nightmare," she said.
Staring down at the people of Paris cheering her name, their endless faith in Ladybug washing over her and settling on her shoulders as just another weight.
"Actually, that's not true." Ladybug sniffed and wiped her nose. She wasn't crying anymore. "My worst nightmare is you being akumatised. But this is a close second."
It was easy to say, now. There wasn't much further she could fall. She didn't have it in her to put on a brave face for the one person who was seeing her through this.
"It's good, though, hm?" Ladybug turned to Chat, whose brow was furrowed in thought. "Only way to go is up."
Chat glanced at her and laughed. "I guess so," he agreed softly. Her heart ached.
"I feel like I should say something to them."
The people of Paris believed in her. She couldn't affirm that belief when it didn't exist within her.
Chat shrugged. "Eh, we can just go over the crowd as if we're on our way to fix things."
Ladybug laughed wetly. She watched Chat carefully, making a judgement before she went in for a hug. He wrapped his arms around her and swayed, ever so gently, from side to side. She squeezed him, then let go.
"Okay." Ladybug pressed her hands against her face, hard. "Okay, okay, okay. Let's go. We need to talk some things over, and I can't do that with this racket."
As Chat predicted, the crowd cheered as the two of them soared overhead. They made their way to their rendezvous point, but quickly realised that it was not as private as they might have hoped. Ladybug only had to take one look at the people below before she zipped away again, knowing that Chat would follow behind her.
They came to a tall apartment building, tall enough that no one below would be able to see them. They sat on the wall that surrounded the roof, and said nothing to each other for ten minutes.
It was enough time for Ladybug to think of something to do. "We should set up some rules," she said. "Of communication." It would at least feel like a step in the right direction.
Chat was apprehensive. "Rules?"
"We can go back and forth, each suggesting a rule so that we communicate better," she explained. "Look, you're all I have right now. If we're going to succeed in getting the miraculouses back, we can't be fighting all the time."
"Okay." Chat's expression was distant but clearly hurt. "Okay, rule number one: no reducing our friendship to the practicality of being a team."
Ladybug said nothing.
He wouldn't look at her, his resolve hinging on the harshness of his words and the desperation of the moment.
At long last, Ladybug sighed. "That's…fair." Her voice came out strangled. She cleared her throat. "I've got one. Rule number two: no passive aggression. If I'm being too secretive or I say something to hurt you, tell me." Chat scoffed and looked away. She pressed on. "I can't account for everything, Chat. I can only deal with what's in front of me."
He jutted his chin out stubbornly, but nodded once. This was going to be like pulling teeth.
Ladybug sat down beside Chat and rummaged around in her yo-yo until her hand found a notebook and pen. She set them down next to her and took a ragged breath. It was so empty now. She slid her yo-yo shut and buried her face in her hands. Chat tugged her until she was leaning against him. He rested his stubborn chin on top of her head, and she clung to him like a lifebuoy.
She straightened up and took her notebook into her lap. With Chat peering over her shoulder, she wrote down the two rules.
"Can I put down that you have to tell me when you recruit a new miraculous holder?" Chat asked, reaching for the pen but waiting for her approval to take it. "It’s a bit belated now, but in future. You don't have to tell me who you choose, and I won't ever try to stop you from bringing anyone new on board, just…shoot me a message."
Ladybug handed him the notebook. As he wrote, she noted his neat cursive and felt a pang in her chest. What sort of life did he lead behind the mask that he acted the way he did yet wrote so delicately?
Chat cleared his throat and handed it back to her. "Do you think handwriting is enough to identify each other?"
Ladybug couldn’t help the smile that formed on her face. The two of them practically shared a brain. "No." She tapped her pen against the page. "I trust you not to commit it to photographic memory and compare it to every person's handwriting you come across." She glanced at him and was glad to see he was smiling too. "You probably could do it, though."
He shook his head. "I would never do that."
"No?"
"Yeah, no, as much as I want to know who you are, it's worth nothing if you didn't trust me with it yourself." He was still, which was unusual of him. "And even if I did work it out, what would I do? Approach you as my civilian self and befriend you without letting you know that I know? How creepy would that be?"
Ladybug's hands tightened around her notebook. Something in Chat's face softened. "I'm just going to wait until we're at the point where you trust me enough to tell me yourself. I don't want it any other way."
The world crashed around her for the millionth time that day. She grit her teeth and scrounged up all of her courage to stand her ground. Gently, she said, "I can't say that we will ever get to that point, chaton." He started nodding, unfussed, because they'd had this conversation before. She continued, "I wouldn't feel safe with you knowing. I wouldn't feel safe knowing your identity myself."
"Yeah, yeah, no, I know," Chat waved his hand, like, forget about it. "Now definitely isn't the right time. I do understand what's at risk here."
Ladybug closed her eyes. She wished, distantly, that he had said this weeks ago. It hasn’t ever been the right time, Chat. She remembered again that this was real, she had lost the miraculouses, and the next few months would be hell. She wished she could skip forward to after this was done.
"After we defeat him," she promised, opening her eyes and looking into his. "After we recover the butterfly miraculous, whenever that is. I'll tell you."
For a brief, beautiful moment, they understood each other, on the exact same page for the first time in what felt like months.
Chat looked away. "How do you know our kwamis won't stop working as soon as our duty is up?"
Ladybug chuckled darkly. They were each overthinkers in their own way. She was glad to feel a little less crazy in his company. "So you've given this absolutely no thought, then."
He grinned. "Yeah, no thought at all. I never think about this."
She leaned to bump their shoulders together. "Well, I'll just get on every news channel and tell people I'm Ladybug. And you'll know it's me because I'll say something only you would know."
And just to seal the deal, she wrote it down in her notebook:
Rule #4: Reveal our identities once butterfly miraculous is recovered.
Chat looked like he could cry. He took the pen from her and added, As a treat.
Ladybug snorted.
The heavy rain clouds were passing overhead. For a few quiet minutes, the pair sat and watched the sunset together, as they had done hundreds of times before.
“It won’t be for a long time,” Chat said in one rush of breath, and just like that the moment of peace was over.
He explained, though she already knew what he meant. “Bunnyx was quite a bit older than both of us.”
Instinctually, Ladybug wanted to reassure him. The future wasn’t set in stone. She knew that best out of the two of them. Maybe we’ll do things differently, she could say, more efficient than the versions of ourselves that Bunnyx knew.
But from where she stood, all but hopeless after everything that had happened today, that had never seemed less possible. God, she didn't want to still be doing this in ten years.
She had no empty promises left to offer him.
Ladybug let Chat Noir sit with that revelation as she predictably got to thinking about Chat Blanc. Any time she got close to telling him, she was washed over by an intense feeling of vertigo. The same happened now, or maybe it was the view of the streets way down below.
What was another change after all of today? Didn’t they need to be honest with each other now more than ever? Wasn’t that exactly the purpose of the notebook in front of her?
She brought herself up towards saying it. She backed down. Maybe she would prefer to push herself off this physical ledge and zip away from this entirely.
She brought herself up again. She took a breath. “You were akumatised.”
When Chat turned, alarmed, to stare at her, she couldn’t help but feel angry with him. He was always watching her, pressing to know what was going on, knowing her even when she kept everything inside. She wished he would leave her to be terrified in private for once.
If he wasn’t so insistent on sticking with her, she would be able to confess this with greater ease. If he wasn’t so insistent on sticking with her, he wouldn’t be here for her to confess this at all.
“In an alternate future,” she continued at last, and this time the words flowed out of her. “It was a mistake I made that had a snowball effect. I changed how things were supposed to be, and Bunnyx came back in time again to get me to fix it. I went into the future with her, and the world had ended.
“I found you right away. You weren’t working for Hawk Moth anymore, because he was dead, and so was I, in that timeline.” Tears fell down her cheeks and she fought the lump in her throat to get the rest of it out without sobbing. “I don’t know how, it looked like some sort of explosion, but the entire city was underwater, because the moon—”
She stopped herself. He didn’t need to know everything. If he felt anything like the guilt she did over this, she knew it would crush him too. She let out a determined breath and carried on. “You were trying to put things right, weirdly enough. Like, you wanted my miraculous to reverse everything. Which, um, you didn’t. I found where the akuma was and set it free, then I went back in time and fixed the mistake that caused it.”
Setting her notebook aside, Ladybug held herself and cried. When Chat moved to hug her, she switched her tears off. She wouldn’t be the one who needed comforting in this situation. Before his arms could wrap around her, she stopped him with her hand, steadying herself. She wiped her face.
They were quiet for a while. Ladybug figured Chat needed time to process. The first thing he said was, "Do you know how it happened?"
She thought of earlier, of Chat showing up and extending a hand to her when she thought she'd messed things up with him for good. And yet still he showed up right when she needed him. The relief, accompanied by him sweeping her into his arms, had brought to the surface a terrible, dangerous feeling in her chest. It had been fleeting, momentary, but unmistakable.
Akumatised people never told the full truth. They were too absorbed in their mission and the emotion that had caused it. She didn't know the whole story, didn't want to know it, but there it was. Ladybug was grateful to look at the wreckage of the city around her and know that it hadn't been caused by something as foolish as dating the boy beside her.
"No," she lied. "But you were pretty far gone. It had to have been something big." Now that her pride had been beaten so thoroughly, she didn’t mind adding, “I never thought it was for something stupid. I know you’re stronger than that.”
He wasn’t really listening. “How long ago was it?”
After that day, Ladybug had spent many nights obsessing over all the details so that she would never let it happen if she could help it. She didn’t blame him for wanting to know as much as possible. “A few months.”
“Months?!”
She nodded, unphased. “Before I became the Guardian.”
This made him lean forward and put his head in his hands. He peered at her, his eyes shining. “I wish you would have told me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, but she wasn’t, really, and he could tell. She tried to explain herself. “You knew who I was.”
“What?”
“You knew my identity. I know how that bit happened. That was the stupid mistake I made; I wasn’t careful enough, and someone found out and told people.”
Chat looked horrified. He stared at her, mouth twisted in disgust, before pulling himself to his feet and putting some distance between himself and Ladybug. He paced in a circle. He wouldn’t look at her. “For fuck’s sake,” he hissed, and Ladybug realised that he was angry.
“So this is why we’re like this now?” he said at last. “This is why you were lying so much?”
“How are you angry with me?!”
He ignored her, instead going back to pacing and cursing under his breath. This, Ladybug realised, was more like what she thought Chat would be like after their fight, not like the perfect partner he had been just a half hour before.
“I was trying to protect you, you know,” she said. He scoffed. “I’m sorry, but you’re not the only one who gets to make rash decisions for the sake of the city. That’s not how this works.”
That stilled him. He pointed at her accusingly. “Rule number one!”
Ladybug sighed, but it was more of a growl. She wanted to lash out, call him immature, a complete child. Instead she pressed her face into her palms. The cool, even pressure let her re-centre and remember that she needed him. Which meant adhering to the rules, even if she hated it.
She thought it was obvious enough that she had been too worried to tell him. And she was right to worry—it was so much better to believe yourself to be invulnerable than to know you weren’t. Even now, especially now that he was storming around the roof, she would have taken this to her grave if she could have.
No reducing our friendship to the practicality of being a team.
She swung her legs over the wall and joined Chat on the roof floor. His eyes flickered over to her, daring her to come closer. He had stopped pacing and was now just standing with his fingers locked over the back of his neck.
“I didn’t want to tell you because I knew how badly it’d fuck you up,” she said. He closed his eyes. “I didn't want you to have to deal with this.”
He tipped his head back, dropping his arms by his side. He sighed in defeat. “You know, you should learn to delegate a bit more.”
Ladybug laughed. “That’s what I was doing. That’s how I ended up giving a miraculous to Félix Graham de Vanily by mistake.”
She put on a posh accent to say his name, which made Chat laugh, just as she had hoped.
“I meant to me,” Chat said.
“I know you did.” It was neither a refusal nor a promise to change her ways.
Neither of them said anything more. Ladybug retrieved her notebook and transcribed the rules onto a different page. She tore out the page and put her notebook and pen away. Chat read over the page when she handed it to him. She had kept the version with his handwriting for herself. If he noticed, he didn't say.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said, almost wishing that he would make a joke about it. You’re not the first girl to say that to me, my lady. Eyebrows quirked, grinning stupidly as she groaned in response.
He said, “Okay.”
And what was another change after all of today?