Work Text:
Ryūko blew every shot the akuma fired away from the heroes. If any darts made it through, Viperion was ready to reset time with his Second Chance. After all, it would be a disaster if Ladybug and Chat Noir switched bodies. But despite their best efforts, the battle dragged on and on.
“I need an opening!” Ladybug cried.
Ryūko resolidified on the roof of a nearby building, giving her a curt nod. As Ladybug turned her full attention back to Forced Perspective, Ryūko was hit just once, in the arm, with one of Forced Perspective’s black darts. Before she could cry out a warning, the white dart dart hit Viperion’s shoulder and everything went sideways.
Kagami woke up in an alleyway. Ladybug knelt beside her, looking worried. “Are you okay, Luka? You passed out back there.”
Kagami’s head ached. “I think I’m okay,” she said, “but I’m Kagami.”
Ladybug covered her mouth. “Oh no,” she said. “Oh no. I need to go see…will you be alright for a minute if I check on Viperion?”
“Of course,” said Kagami, who was not at all sure she would be all right. It was just what you said, if someone asked. “Of course.”
While Ladybug was gone, Kagami took stock of the situation. For some reason, the strangest thing was that her skin and hair were a slightly different texture. By comparison, it seemed almost reasonable that Viperion was Marinette’s ex-boyfriend and that they had switched bodies. Luka’s hair was short and spiky, and his clothes were worn enough to be comfortable. By the time Ladybug returned, Kagami felt almost okay.
She had her first bad shock when she saw Luka. Looking at your own body from the outside was nothing like using a mirror. It felt very, very wrong.
Judging from the expression he was making with Kagami’s face, Luka felt the same way. “This is weird,” he said.
“I know, and I’m so sorry,” Ladybug told them. “Forced Perspective got away while Chat Noir and I were making sure you weren’t hurt. We still don’t know where he is. As soon as we find him, I’ll be able to put you back to normal.”
Something in her tone made Kagami apprehensive. “You have no idea where to find the akuma,” she said. “It could be a very long time, couldn’t it?”
Marinette’s ex-boyfriend fiddled with a strand of Kagami’s hair, tucking it behind his ear. He looked just as worried. “And we were hit on camera, weren’t we?”
“You were,” said Ladybug. “Everyone who watches the news coverage of the battle will know that only Viperion and Ryūko were hit. And your identities need to be kept secret.”
Luka held Kagami’s hand out to her with a very unKagami-ish shrug. “Okay. I’m Luka Couffaine.”
“We’ve met,” said Kagami, though she tried not to sound mean. It was a stressful situation. “Kagami Tsurugi.”
“Right,” said Luka. His sheepish expression made him look even less like Kagami. He ran a hand through her hair. “You’re Adrien’s girlfriend, right?”
“No,” said Kagami. “I ended it.”
Luka nodded. “Right.”
Ladybug’s earrings beeped, and she bit her lip. “I have to go. But you have so much in common! I’m sure you’ll get along. You both like…music. Do you like music, Kagami?”
Kagami didn’t dislike music. “Sure,” she said.
“Okaygoodluckbye!” Ladybug leapt to the nearest rooftop, earrings beeping insistently. Luka and Kagami were alone.
Kagami took a very deep breath, trying to ignore the disconcerting way her mouth was now larger and her lips the wrong texture. “We need to make a plan,” she said.
Luka turned to her. His serious expression made him look almost convincing as a duplicate of her. “I was about to say the same thing.”
Kagami suggested they go to her house to discuss matters. Luka, who knew that his mother and sister would spot Kagami as a fake the moment they saw the tension in her shoulders, didn’t argue.
“Best case scenario, this is over in three hours,” said Luka. “But in the worst case…”
“It could be weeks or longer,” Kagami said with a nod. “Let’s begin with important people and places.”
Luka felt like he had it easier here. Where Kagami was an only child who lived alone with her mother, Luka had his mother, his sister, and a dozen friends for her to memorize. Luckily, Kagami had met most of them.
He stopped feeling better off than her when Kagami said, “Do you know any Russian? Can you fence at all?” As Luka was shaking his head, she sighed and said, “We’ll need to create an injury. A badly sprained ankle may do, but then we still need to worry about the Russian. And say as little as possible to my mother. She’ll notice you in an instant. Keep your sentences short, direct, and necessary, understand?”
Luka nodded. He wasn’t sure if he liked Kagami very much. Some of her disagreeableness was probably stress, but her cold, sterile bedroom with its shelves of trophies did not improve his impression of her.
“You might need to fake an injury, too,” he said.
“Why?” asked Kagami.
“I play several instruments,” said Luka. “My family and I play together all the time.”
“Even if I played all the same instruments, there would be a noticeable difference in musical style,” said Kagami, getting it immediately. “I’ll hurt my hand. Are you right handed? Good. What else?”
“I can draw you some diagrams,” Luka suggested. “You should know where the rooms on the Liberty are, and my classroom at school.”
Kagami looked at him with careful, calculating respect. “Good idea.”
“I have a job, but you should just tell them you can’t work with your hand injury,” Luka added.
They studied together for two more hours. Kagami did all of her own homework, taught Luka some basic Russian vocabulary, and memorized his hand-drawn map of the Liberty . Slowly, the ice between them thawed just a bit. They were nothing alike, but they were allies. They could work together.
Then, as the front door opened with a click and the smart house said, “Welcome home, Tsurugi-san,” Kagami grinned at Luka in a way that almost made his face look like his own again.
“Showtime,” she said in an exaggerated impression of Luka’s voice.
“Never do that again,” said Luka, wrapping his ankle in compression bandages. “Are you ready?”
Kagami put Luka’s blue hair in order. “Of course.”
It was almost exhilarating to meet her mother as a stranger.
“Kagami sprained her ankle during the akuma attack,” Kagami explained in Luka’s voice, “so I walked her home. It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.” She hoped she sounded passably like a French teenage boy. It helped that Luka’s mouth wanted to speak the way it always did.
“Why didn’t the superheroes repair the damage?” Kagami’s mother demanded suspiciously.
“I don’t know,” said Kagami, because why would Luka Couffaine, Regular French Boy, know why Ladybug did things?
It was so easy to be someone else. Before long, her mother’s attention slid off her and Kagami was free to take the elevator down into the street.
“Success,” she texted to her own phone. Then there was nothing for it but to take Luka’s backpack and Luka’s bicycle and Luka’s body back to where they belonged.
Before Luka and his family, Kagami had never met anyone who lived on a boat. The Liberty was painted in an array of bright, somewhat garish colors and decorated any-old way. Kagami locked up Luka’s bike, climbed aboard with a wave to Luka’s mother, and hurried downstairs to the living quarters before she could be conversed with. Old children’s art was taped to the walls of the living quarters alongside pictures of family and friends and an eclectic collection of artwork. It was warm and cheerfully messy.
Kagami realized she was afraid.
The twin sister didn’t seem to be home, thankfully. Kagami wasn’t sure she believed in the whole “twin bond” thing, but she wasn’t used to siblings. Luka seemed to think that she could fool his mother but not Juleka.
This was one thing they had argued about.
“If she gets worried, tell her the truth,” Luka had said.
“We can’t let anyone know our identities,” retorted Kagami.
“Then you should avoid my sister,” Luka said simply. “She’s sensitive, smart, and knows me better than anyone else.”
Kagami knew even less about Juleka than she had about Luka. She was one of Adrien and Marinette’s friends, but she almost never spoke. The short blonde girl who was always beside her, Rose, tended to speak for her. But it would be fine. She would be fine.
Kagami staged the hand injury just before dinnertime. As Luka had predicted, his mother fussed over her and brought her dinner in bed. If she thought Luka was behaving strangely, she could assume he was in pain. At last, Kagami was left alone to explore Luka’s bedroom.
It was tidier than the rest of the living space had led her to expect. She inspected his luthier’s tools and instruments with great interest, careful not to disturb anything. Kagami played piano because she was expected to play piano. She was not a very musical person. The layout of Luka’s workstation suggested he had a very tidy mind. Somehow, it made her feel friendlier towards him.
Kagami spotted a blue notebook with a soft cover on top of a worn instrument case. It looked important. A diary? She flipped it open, feeling a little guilty. No, songs. Song for Marinette , read the top of one page. The music there had been erased and rewritten several times. When it came to music, Luka was a perfectionist. And he had clearly loved Marinette.
Her own confusing rift with Adrien had taught her never to assume that two people were perfect for one another, but Kagami felt a small pang of sadness as she closed the notebook and put it back. Why, she wondered, was the world set up so that you could feel deep, intense, painful feelings towards someone who would never feel the same way? She took a deep breath. She was over Adrien. Kagami deserved someone who would take her feelings seriously.
Luka’s phone buzzed. “You weren’t exaggerating about your mother,” Luka had texted.
“Yours is nice,” Kagami wrote back. ‘Nice’ was an understatement. She felt very strange. And it was so uncomfortable to have someone else’s teeth in your mouth!
School the next day was better. Luka sat near the back of his classroom, and he had told her he was quiet in class. Pretending to be reviewing her notes, Kagami double-checked his list of important people. “Morning, Jean,” she said to the boy next to her. She was getting better at Luka’s voice. You had to let your tongue be—lazy was the wrong word—loose.
During the lunch hour, she and Luka had arranged to meet in a park. On the way there, though, Kagami ran into the last person she wanted to see: Marinette.
“Luka!” Marinette looked flustered.
This was bad, very bad. Luka and Kagami hadn’t talked about what they would do if they ran into Marinette and Adrien. Were Marinette and Luka still friends? Who had initiated the breakup? Kagami’s stomach clenched. What if she did the wrong thing and Marinette was hurt?
“Hello, Marinette,” she said. Loose voice. Looser than that. Throw in a music metaphor. “You have a lovely…melody today.” Was that too much like flirting? Kagami had no experience talking to girls as a boy.
Marinette seemed to suppress a giggle. “Thank you, Luka,” she said, smiling a little wider than normal. “Where are you going?”
Kagami panicked. “Boat,” she choked out. “Goodbye!” She fled, almost tripping over Luka’s feet. She was sure that she was imagining that the sound of Marinette’s laughter followed her into the park.
Kagami was late. If spending the night in her bedroom had taught Luka anything, it was that this was very unlike her.
Kagami’s belongings told the story of a hardworking, eager-to-please daughter who did her best not to make waves at home. It had been a relief to find the sketchbooks and manga collection in the closet, a touch of color in an otherwise empty and impersonal space. Luka wondered if Kagami’s mother disapproved of her artistic aspirations.
The wardrobe was another difficult change. Luka stood up from his park bench and tried to pull his skirt a little lower. How did she wear this uniform every day?
The crunch of gravel behind him made Luka whirl around. There was Kagami, in his body. That would never stop being weird.
“I apologize for my lateness,” said Kagami in a tone that Luka was sure he had never used.
They sat side by side on the bench, not quite looking at each other.
“It’s fine,” Luka told her. “It’s been a weird day.”
“Yes,” Kagami agreed. She fiddled with the strings of Luka’s hoodie. “I looked at your song lyrics,” she confessed.”
Luka smiled, feeling relieved. “I looked at your sketches! I think it’s only fair to snoop, under the circumstances.”
“Agreed.” Kagami blew Luka’s bangs out of her eyes. “You’re a good writer. I liked the song you wrote for Marinette.”
Of course she had seen that. Luka tried to look unbothered, though he suspected Kagami knew her own face too well to be fooled. “She was—is—very special to me,” he said after a too-long pause.
Kagami nodded, studying her hands. Luka’s hands. Luka wondered if his bitten fingernails bothered her. “Marinette is wonderful,” she said carefully. “I love her very much.”
Oh.
“Does she know?” Luka asked. The weight of Marinette and Adrien, of Kagami’s dual heartbreaks on top of his own, was almost too much to bear. His heart thrummed with a flat, off-beat melody that hurt to hear.
Kagami shook her head forcefully. “No. She can’t. I can’t. She loves Adrien.”
Luka understood, and he ached for her. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t.” Kagami covered her face. “It doesn’t matter.”
That night, alone in Kagami’s sterile bedroom, Luka couldn’t get her face, her melody, out of his head. In the end, he opened the back pages of one of her notebooks and began composing a song he would never show her. If he got it out of his head, maybe he would be able to sleep.
The next morning, Kagami woke up in her own bed. Her head was fuzzy, but it was nice to have her own teeth again. Pulling back the blankets, she found her slippers under the bed where Luka had left them and padded into the bathroom for a drink of water.
The bathroom light momentarily blinded her. Kagami rubbed her eyes and studied her face in the mirror. It was a relief to have it back. She looked into her own eyes and felt better than she had before the attack.
Adrien. Marinette. Luka. When it came to love, Kagami didn’t believe in holding back. No matter what it cost her.
She smiled grimly at her reflection. She and Luka had planned to meet in the park again today. If he showed up—and Kagami had no reason to suspect that he wouldn’t—she knew she had to tell him the truth about how she felt. Luka knew what it was like to love someone who wouldn’t or couldn’t love you back. If he didn’t share Kagami’s feelings, she trusted him to be gentle with her.
Marinette was waiting on the sidewalk outside Kagami’s building when she came downstairs. This was deeply unusual, though Kagami was so relieved to be back in her own body that she let it pass without remark.
“Hello, Kagami,” Marinette said in a singsong voice. “Is your ankle better?”
“Yes,” said Kagami. “Did you want a ride to school?”
Marinette looked from Tatsu to Kagami. She grinned. “Yes, absolutely! That’s why I came over!”
“Right.” Kagami beckoned for Marinette to follow her into the car. Tatsu smelled the same as ever, and its seats were the same texture. It was incredibly comforting.
Marinette spent the car ride shooting Kagami furtive, cryptic looks until Kagami was sure she knew something. It didn’t matter how. Marinette was Marinette.
“I’m going to talk to Luka today,” said Kagami just as Marinette stepped out onto the sidewalk.
Marinette’s mouth opened, but no intelligible words came out.
Kagami smiled. “Goodbye,” she said, closing the door.
To the frustration of his teachers, Luka spent most of the morning in another world. Every so often, a series of notes from Kagami’s song would come back to him and he would hurriedly jot them down.
She had texted him in between classes to confirm that they were still meeting after school. Luka did his best not to read too much into it, but it was nice that she still wanted to see him. He was glad that he hadn’t managed to ruin her life during the few days he’d spent living it.
This time, Kagami beat him to the park.
“We are still strangers,” she said when Luka sat down beside her. “We know… trivia about each other, and we both care about Marinette. That is all.”
Luka took a deep breath. It was for the best, then, that he’d decided not to tell her about the song.
To his surprise, Kagami smiled at him. It was a quick, sharp smile, nothing like Luka had ever seen before. “But what I know of you has made me certain that I would like to know more,” she said. “Forced Perspective threw us together, but I would like—I want—”
Luka realized that Kagami was nervous. She wore it differently than most people, but the inner melody was the same. His first instinct was to reach for her hand, but he held back, waiting for her to find the right words.
“I would like to know you,” said Kagami. “I want that—and anything further—to be a choice we make together.”
Luka smiled. His inner melody soared. “I’d like that very much,” he said.