Chapter Text
In the grand scheme of things, Luka Couffaine knew he was allowed to make mistakes. He had made his fair share in his fourteen years of life, in angry outbursts to his Maman, in the tiresome months he spent learning how to make stringed instruments, and in countless other ways. Mistakes were a part of life.
Knowing this in theory was often very different to knowing it in practice.
The difficult thing was, Luka didn't tend to make mistakes anymore. Not big ones, certainly not ones he remembered for long. Every decision he made was calculated, his actions measured against his emotions, and even when he got hurt from taking a chance, it wasn't a mistake; he had learned something from it, he had been himself without shame, he had lived his life and that could never be a mistake.
It wasn't that everything he did was perfect the first time around, or that he didn't have regrets, or even that he never wished he could go back and change how something had unfolded. (Really, that last one only became as pressing as it was after he became Viperion). He just didn't get hung up on it. He trusted his own judgement and was proven right to do so more often than not.
And so he had largely forgotten what it felt like to spend a little bit of time every day tearing himself apart because of something he did.
Thanks to you, our secret identities were preserved and no one discovered who Chat Noir and I really are.
He had still been in shock.
Not even you, right?
Down from the tension of the battle, what he had learned came rushing back and clouded his logical brain.
He just wanted nothing more to change.
Not even me.
He just wanted to process this on his own terms without worrying about giving up his miraculous or his friendships with Adrien and Marinette for good.
Luckily, Wishmaker never hit you or Chat Noir.
He had lied. At first, he thought it was only fair: Marinette had lied to him constantly. It still stung at that point to think of how she viewed him as something less than whatever she was looking for. The lie was temporary. Something he could keep to himself as justice, or revenge.
He'd correct it eventually.
The more time he had with the secret, the more things started to make sense. Marinette's disappearances, her transparent excuses and her constant rescheduling — none of it had been her messing him around. He had assumed it was just her crush on Adrien and her lack of a crush on him.
Privately, easily, all the resentment he harboured was washed away. Luka still wished she had trusted him enough to explain things herself, but he couldn't blame her for it anymore. Not when it was this serious.
Without Marinette ever consciously giving him the tools for it, Luka forgave her wholeheartedly — a one sided interaction, as per usual, he noted.
But— was that even true? Luka began to reconsider everything. Maybe Marinette had wanted to be with him after all. The self esteem he had needed to build back up in the face of their breakup was suddenly secured by the revelation that she may have never wanted to break up in the first place.
It wasn't like he thought he was right to keep it a secret.
Things were just easier this way. Luka got to be a superhero sometimes. He got to see his crush in her element, while he acquainted himself with the responsibilities she faced and gave himself quiet closure on their failed relationship.
And, most recently, he got to be friends with Marinette. Without it being that awkward.
Now that they had cleared the air, now that Luka had the full picture, it was easy to build a friendship with her where she didn't seem to have one foot out the door. What they had was finally real.
Predictably, all of this did nothing to help Luka get over her. But the strange thing was that it no longer hurt. He no longer worried about whether she cared for him, because she did. Truly. He could see it.
Even the topic of Adrien Agreste stopped being an issue.
"I think you should ask him out," Luka suggested at one point.
They were at a party at Rose's. Marinette had gravitated to Luka the instant Nino stole Alya away from her. Adrien, absent as per usual, had not originally come up in conversation because of Marinette's crush on him, but that was where it was headed now.
She shrunk away, ashamed, but she still grinned at the teasing. "I— Yeah, I should."
"I think you should ask him out," he repeated.
She shared a look with him then. She seemed to be inspecting him, and something about her expression was sad. "I should have been better to you when I had the chance."
Immediately, she blushed, and tried to play it off by taking a drink from her cup. And Luka, having been seconds away from grabbing her by the shoulders and telling her, Adrien likes you, he's Chat Noir and you're Ladybug and you like each other! didn't know how to reply to her.
He wondered about her words. Marinette knew better than he did what time-consuming work it was to be the Guardian of the Miraculouses; in the end, their breakup had been over that obligation. She regretted that she hadn't seen that coming and wished she had made better use of the time they did have together.
"You can be a good friend to me now," Luka said deliberately, not wanting to presume, needing to see her react to the word friend.
She met his gaze and smiled, relieved. Perhaps they were in the same boat of enjoying each other's company whether it was platonic or romantic. Perhaps she did regard him as a friend and nothing else.
And, so, for a while, he kept the secret because revealing it would break his friendship with Marinette.
In the back of his mind, he knew it was wrong. Marinette would be pulled away to fight the day's akuma victim and Luka would be reminded exactly what was at stake here. The guilt would eat at him, and eat at him, until the threat was dispelled and he could ignore it once more.
He thought he was better than this. He was a man of action: if he could do something about a situation to change it for the better, he would. It took all of a month after he realised he was a boy for him to come out to his mother. He realised he was crushing on Marinette mere days before he decided to tell her. Never before had something so changeable burned him from the inside out and been left burning.
The problem reached a head when she lost the miraculouses.
Suddenly, it wasn't just that Luka knew the identities of Ladybug and Chat Noir: he knew the identities of the only remaining superheroes in Paris.
He had to tell her. What difference would it make? Sass was already in the hands of Monarch. He had nothing to lose but her trust.
The next time he saw her, she was a wreck. He didn't ask: she couldn't tell and he already knew.
"I don't know why," she said, after Luka had gotten her some orange juice and they had sat down on the edge of the barge, "but everything's just gone to shit at once. I'm really stressed all the time, and I've no idea why."
"You should talk to Mylène," Luka said automatically. Tell her, tell her! "Or Rose. I know they've both dealt with a lot of anxiety."
"Mm," Marinette hummed, because what he said was useless. Tell her, at least then you'll be able to have this conversation properly!
"Alya and I aren't talking," Marinette said abruptly.
Luka looked at her.
"It's my fault." Her eyes welled up with tears. "We're just drifting, and I can't bring myself to say anything about it to her, because I'm worried she'll just— end things, and I— she knows I'm in a shit place, but she's stopped trying to text or call me about it. I feel like she just— just wants to pull away, and—"
Marinette gulped down a sob, and Luka wrapped an arm around her. She cried, hopelessly, into his shoulder. Something settled in him, a realisation that his secret would only make things worse for her.
He vowed to tell her when things got better, when she and Chat Noir began to recover the miraculouses and when she had her best friend to rely on once more.
Naturally, in order to stay informed about when this would be, he became Marinette's closest confidant. She called him or met him most nights. He worked out that she would do this almost immediately after she met with Chat Noir. Often they would sit in silence, watching a TV show on Luka's laptop.
If he told her his secret, he decided he would also nudge her towards telling Chat her identity. It was only fair, seeing as they were both enamoured with each other. It was more frustrating to see Marinette do nothing about her feelings than it was painful to imagine her dating someone else. This had always been true, even before Luka knew Adrien liked her back.
And yet he held back from telling her, even when she began to recover the miraculouses. He told himself this was because he was waiting for the right moment, and not because he refused to play a part in ruining his chances with her.
It wasn't like Marinette was in a great headspace, anyway.
It took some coaxing, but the more Luka asked how she was doing, the more she trusted him with something closer to the real answer.
The day she recovered the Snake Miraculous, she visited him as Ladybug. She informed him that he might be needed again soon. Luka was caught off guard by her cool demeanour at first. He replied he was happy to help whenever she needed him, and her gaze lingered on him as she smiled.
He made sure to test the waters when he next saw her.
"I still have trouble sleeping," Marinette admitted dutifully. "I mean, I've never been the best at having a proper sleep schedule, but now even when I do sleep it's not proper rest, it's just…like I'm laying dormant until the next day."
So, still not ideal.
When at last he was called to action for an akuma attack, he found it easy to get back into the rhythm of watching, analysing, and feeding back his findings once he reset his miraculous.
The timer was set to Viperion, Ladybug and Chat Noir standing on a museum roof, a moment before the latter two jumped into action. From his vantage point and through his earpiece, he saw the way the two interacted with each other. Ladybug said little to Chat, as he said more than enough for the both of them, and they worked in precise synchrony, more so than Viperion had ever seen before.
It took about five Second Chances before they got it right, and when they did, the solution was so stupidly simple it took all of 30 seconds.
The three of them stood and watched, underwhelmed, as the redeemed akuma flew away.
Chat laughed. He squeezed Viperion's arm. "It is good to have you back."
Viperion felt his chest flood with warmth. He had always understood Marinette's thing for Adrien: he understood it now more than ever. He smiled at Chat, for lack of a good way to reply.
Chat volunteered to deal with the akuma victim. He and Viperion said goodbye to each other, then he turned to Ladybug, winked, and said, "Later, Buginette."
He turned and left without waiting for an answer. Many moments later, when Chat was definitely out of earshot, Ladybug belatedly said, "Bye!"
Viperion smiled to himself. He and Ladybug wandered towards Viperion's rendezvous point together.
"How are things between you and Chat Noir?" he asked. "I know you and him were in an argument a while ago."
Ladybug considered him for a moment, then said, "Yeah, we were. We're fine now, though."
Viperion felt a flash of irritation with her for lying to him, always lying to him. He brushed past it. "How many miraculouses have you gotten back now?"
She exhaled, distracted, and listed them off. Viperion didn't listen — he was too focused on her posture. She was exhausted, a weariness that couldn't have come from such a quick akuma save or even from weeks of stress. Something had happened.
"Almost there now, then," Viperion said earnestly. "You're almost done."
Ladybug chuckled. "Yup, and when I'm done, I can finally sleep."
Viperion said softly, "You've been having trouble sleeping?"
He asked just to see her eyebrows pinch together and her eyes go round as she realised someone cared about her. He never got tired of reminding her of this.
"Yeah, I…" She stalled over her words. "I have. I do sleep, I just don't sleep well. When I go to bed, it's…"
She strained and strained for the right words. He was never one to pass up an opportunity to put her at ease.
"Like you're laying dormant until the next day?" he offered.
She was quiet for a while. "Yeah."
Viperion felt her hand close around his wrist, pulling him to a stop.
She looked up at him, right into his eyes. Under the weight of her gaze, it was impressive how tall she could make herself seem.
"That's just—" She fumbled her words again. "You're just saying it like that because—"
An icy trail was sent down Viperion's back.
She frowned. Her voice became desperate. "Right?"
For a while all that broke the silence between them was his miraculous, tick, tick, ticking on his wrist. He should have said something, should have denied it, like he had the first time around.
Lying had never been in his nature.
The further his silence stretched, the more realisation dawned on her face. She dropped his hand and stepped back from him as he watched, unmoving.
"Luka," she said, but it may as well have been a sob. "Do you know who I am?"
His gut wrenched. A tiny voice inside his head protested, Not like this, not like this!
When was he going to tell her? She already knew. She already knew.
Tick, tick, tick.
"I've known since we fought Wishmaker." His voice wavered.
"Shit," Ladybug hissed. She breathed in, out, in, out, like there was no oxygen in the air around them. Tick tick tick.
Desperately, gently, he reached for her hand, which she had raised to her forehead. He circled her wrist with his thumb and forefinger. He had ruined everything. "I'm really sorry. I'm so sorry, I knew it was wrong—"
Ladybug snatched her arm away from him. "I trusted you!" She gasped. "I needed you to be— Fuck!" she shouted, foregoing the argument in favour of despair.
She was frozen, shaking on the spot, and he couldn't touch her—tick—couldn't say anything—tick—to console her—
Viperion came to a startling revelation.
"I'm sorry," he said, horrified. He wasn't sure it would get through her haze of panic. "I'm going to fix this. I promise."
He swiped his thumb over the bracelet on his wrist. There was a flash of light, and he was standing on the roof of a museum with Ladybug and Chat Noir.
"Wait," he demanded, though it took a few more seconds for him to remember what they had to do to defeat the akuma. He relayed it numbly, his voice even but his mind miles away.
He excused himself to go to the rendezvous point as soon as it was over. Ladybug met him there and wasted no time in asking him if he was alright.
He de-transformed. He told her, "Yes," and handed his miraculous back.
Luka wanted to tell her what was wrong, of course. Marinette, Ladybug, was one of his closest friends. But the truth would destroy her if he didn't say it properly.
She let it go, and he went home. He began to form a plan.
He tried writing it down. He considered sending it over text, just so he didn't have to see the look on her face, then dismissed the thought just as quickly. He loved her. He wouldn't do that to her.
He turned it over in his mind as he went to sleep every night that week, tweaking it wherever he thought something might set her off.
Luka could take her anger. He just didn't want that look on her face, like her world was ending and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Eventually, he realised he was stalling. It wasn't the wording that would change things, at the end of the day. All he needed to do was tell her purposefully, face-to-face, with no safety net to turn back time. That was all anyone could ever do: offer the truth and compassion with it.
He received a text from Marinette asking if she could come over tomorrow. That would have to be it.
He sat on his bed in a haze of worry. He didn't notice Juleka enter the room until she called his name.
“Marinette was asking me if I thought she still had a chance with you,” she said meaningfully. Indiscretion was uncharacteristic of her, but it wasn’t hard to understand why this was an exception.
“I told her I don’t know,” she continued. “Does she?”
Luka’s heart was in his mouth. He wanted this so badly he ached. This was surely the last hurdle in confessing his secret.
He knew Marinette would feel betrayed. But he also wondered whether they could recover from this, so long as he fessed up to his actions like he should have done long ago.
He pictured it: the two of them finally able to be honest with each other, stronger for their trust in one another and better off than they had ever been before.
And Marinette wanted to be with him again. Luka couldn’t think too hard about that or he’d lose his nerve entirely.
He’d make things right. After two months of doubt, he was resolved once more to tell the truth, and it felt like coming back to himself