Work Text:
“I have an idea,” Chat said, cutting into Ladybug’s constant inner monologue of dutiful anxiety. “How about a game of cards?”
In the three days following the recovery of the rabbit miraculous, Chat Noir’s steadfast confidence had been her anchor. This, though, was a personal slight. “We can’t play cards,” she said scornfully. “You think Monarch’s going to put his plans on hold for a few rounds of cards?”
“I—”
“I can’t believe you’d just let him lull you into a false sense of security!”
“I don’t think that’s what he’s doing,” Chat insisted, holding his hands up in appeasement. “I mean, think about it. He made that big, threatening speech to the entire city of Paris. Why would he put us on guard and then let us relax?”
“To confuse us.” Ladybug had pondered this dozens of times already. “To make us feel paranoid and uncertain.”
Chat crossed his arms behind his head. “No offense, Milady, but it’s kind of working on you.” He saw her stare harden. “I mean,” he said, “that if Monarch wants us to cat astrophize, then the best thing we can do is to keep our spirits up instead.” He held up the red-and-white box enticingly. “Purrhaps by playing cards.”
“How can you be so calm about all of this?” Ladybug asked. She wasn’t angry, exactly—she might have been jealous. Compared to her cool, collected kitty-cat, she felt like a complete wreck.
Chat Noir smiled faintly. Ladybug saw the fondness in his eyes and knew he could see right through her. Why did he even bother looking up to such a basket case? she wondered.
“Do you want to know the real answer?” Chat asked.
Ladybug hadn’t known there was a fake answer. She nodded.
“You don’t have to look so worried,” said Chat, sitting cross-legged on their shared platform high atop the Eiffel Tower. “It’s not anything scary—at least, I think it’s not. It’s just… the rabbit miraculous.” He made an offhand gesture, half shrug, half hand wave.
Ladybug thought about this. “You mean because we got it back?” she guessed. “Bunnyx is amazing, true, but I don’t know…”
“Not just that,” Chat Noir said carefully. He set the box of cards down next to his knee. “It’s more that using the rabbit miraculous was kind of… reassuring. You know?”
“What do you mean?”
Chat blinked at her. “Didn’t you use the rabbit yourself? Before the—well. Before.”
Ladybug shook her head. “I was under the influence of Risk, remember? I know what I did—I don’t think it’s exactly like being directly akumatized—but I don’t remember how it all felt.” That was part of why the stress had overpowered her so badly in Adrien’s room. It had felt like all of her built-up emotions had hit her at once. Even thinking about it now made her chest ache.
Chat Noir put his hand over hers, loose enough that she could easily pull away if she wanted. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That must be hard.”
“It’s mostly just weird,” Ladybug replied, trying to lighten the mood a little. “But what was it like for you?”
“I guess it was calming,” Chat said, “in a way. I felt… surefooted.”
“I would, too, if I could change the past.” The words slipped out before Ladybug could stop them. She looked away, hiding a wince.
But Chat shook his head. “No,” he said, “that’s just it. You can’t change the past; it’s already happened. You can only enact it.”
“That makes no sense,” Ladybug said immediately. “What about the alternate timelines?”
“They’re like rough drafts,” Chat said. “There to be erased so you can make the real thing. Looking through a portal to an alternate timeline feels wrong.”
Being in an alternate timeline feels wrong, too, thought Ladybug. “But the alternate timelines can only exist if someone does something wrong in this timeline,” she persisted. “Doesn’t that mean a change happens at the moment the timelines split?”
Another head shake. Chat’s ears twitched a little. “It’s only an alternate timeline because the correction is already made. Do you see?”
She really didn’t. “Then why are the alternate timelines there to begin with?” she asked. She searched for a half-decent metaphor. “They’re like… loose threads. Aren’t they?”
Chat Noir took to the metaphor readily, tail lashing with a kind of excitement. “Each loose thread is attached to a knot. Each knot anchors—strengthens—the correct timeline.” He continued: “When you’re using the rabbit, you can see the anchors. You can see how strong the timeline is, and you can see what knots you’re going to have already tied.”
Ladybug felt like her brain was tangled in a knot. “Going to have?” she echoed, hoping Chat didn’t think she was being obtuse.
“You can tell what your future self has already done,” Chat explained. “Well—kind of. It’s… hard to describe.” He sounded almost sorrowful.
“You don’t know exactly what to do,” Ladybug suggested.
“Right. But you put a lot of trust into the Burrow,” Chat said distantly, then fumbled his words as he tried to elaborate. “And you feel like— Well, when you do what you know you’ll do— No, when…” He huffed. “It’s like, you know what the knots look like.” He nodded to himself. “You know what the knots in the timeline look like, so you know, even if you don’t know, the way the timeline goes and keeps going.”
He spread his hands to indicate an impossibly long distance. “I don’t feel it anymore,” he confessed. “I only remember what it felt like. But imagine knowing that your every footfall lines up with this enormous path—has always lined up with that enormous path. Wouldn’t that make you feel just a little more confident taking your next step?”
Ladybug didn’t want to, but she sighed and said: “Did you ever see any alternate versions of yourself? Through the Burrow?”
Chat shook his head. “No,” he said. “Why?”
“You weren’t curious?” She felt like she was tricking him. Something twisted in her chest.
“No,” Chat said easily, “not at all. I never felt like I needed to be.”
“Why not?” She didn’t mean to sound so accusatory.
Chat didn’t seem affected by her tone. “Because those weren’t knots that needed me to tie them,” he said.
Something about those words—or the way Chat’s smile made his eyes sparkle in the sun—made the ache in Ladybug’s chest subside.
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” she said. “Though I’m not sure I trust a cat to handle the timeline. Not with what I’ve seen you do to yarn balls.”
Chat let out a huge, side-clutching laugh. “I’m going to cough hairballs into your future, for sure,” he teased, wiping his eyes. “How about that card game? We still have time.”
Ladybug smiled. “Okay,” she said. “One game.”