Work Text:
There we go again.
The bottom of the pool was mesmerizing, the colors of the light reflecting from the candles above her dancing in the water, illuminating the colored stones.
The first time she saw it, it felt so peaceful, so separated from the chaotic world she had left behind in the middle of the night, that she wished it could stay there forever.
Now, there was nothing she would like more than to never see that pool and what came with it ever again.
Marinette took a deep breath before stepping in. All the candles were put out, leaving the room in almost complete and total darkness.
To ensure it, she adjusted the blindfold she had on her forehead onto her eyes. Yet again, there was nothing.
~(x)~
In order to regain your power, strengthen it, you have to remember all that made you get to it in the first place. There is only so much a Kwami can do. A Holder makes their rules, but also their limitations. Sometimes, it might not even be the Holder themselves, but their mind. The brain has many tricks to protect itself, but those tricks can result counterproductive for some reasons.
The words of the other Guardians resonated in her head as she threaded the water barefoot. It was barely enough to cover half of her feet, but somehow, it didn’t feel like anything. The first time, she was surprised. Everything seemed to feel too much, she didn’t quite have an explanation, so it felt like a massive relief to leave those sensations back on the surface.
Now, she knew what she had to do. Walk towards the light, a step in front of the other. Regardless of whatever state she was in, she would always find herself as the one she was at the moment of that memory. She wondered what would it be this time.
It was unusually bright outside, bright enough to blind her. So much light after being in almost total darkness was enough to blind anyone.
This was a new scenario. She had relived so many of her battles, both metaphorical and real ones. Battles besides Chat, the ones she had had to fight alone when he took the hits aimed at her. Even the few ones entirely without him, for one reason or another.
However, this one didn't feel familiar.
There wasn't much to see around. That if you didn't take the unusual setting into account.
She stood on broken concrete, what looked like a shattered sidewalk.
Dozens of buildings were reduced to nothing more than shards of glass and pieces of concrete.Water stood proudly where land had, making the scene look like products of a tidal wave of some sort. She stuck her hand in the water, and immediately backed down. Cold. Colder than anything she remembered other than ice.
And the air... It felt different in a way she couldn't put words to.
Almost nothing stood as it once had, and the few buildings that did were not better, all of them buried under hundreds of liters of that icy cold water.
The Eiffel Tower, once elegantly centering the city, laid now in shambles.
Marinette looked at her reflection on one of the many glass panels that floated around.
Her old spotted suit and masked face looked back at her.
This was clearly a memory, as all of the previous exercises had been, so why did this one feel entirely new?
Fluff didn’t have access to alternate versions of herself, only to those events stored in her memory. Those that had happened during her time. This felt familiar, but she had no idea what was it.
This was a younger version of herself. By the looks of the suit, probably around the time she was fourteen. She couldn’t remember any akuma from that time that could have caused devastation like this.
Almost as if she knew what to do, she looked up to where Montparnasse should have been.
A figure sat idly there, barely recognizable between all the white in the surroundings.
Cautiously, she used her yoyo to approach. With every inch she got closer, the impulse to run grew more and more, only puzzling her.
She landed on the side of the tower and climbed towards the figure, never allowing herself to leave the area behind its back.
“Little kitty on a roof,” the figure sang.
“Chat… Noir?” she whispered to herself.
“All alone without his lady.”
She wanted to run. She needed to.
Instead, she continued.
Almost as if it were a script she read before, she knew the words that came next, as soon as the figure noticed her.
“Chat Noir.”
Her partner. What was going on? Fourteen had been long before he had his first suit change, even before she had her first. This one though, it looked unlike any other he had sported.
“M'lady? I thought I'd lost you! Oh, I was feline so sad that you were gone!”
Regardless of the need she had to figure out whatever was going on, her body didn’t obey.
She had to run.
He started following, only the few seconds of advantage she had separating them.
“Where are you going, Marinette?”
How…? Had he been able to see through whatever kind of magic made her regain her old appearance to others?
This is wrong, so, so wrong, she thought to herself.
A building blocked her escape, but it had a broken window. Big enough for her to go through.
She jumped, hoping she calculated it well.
Marinette expected a muffled thud as she landed, perhaps disturbed by the wetness the rug could still hold.
Instead, the sound of pavement greeted her.
What?
The same broken buildings stood surrounding her, the water surrounded her for miles in the same way as it had before.
She stuck her hand in the water.
Again, cold.
Looking at herself in the reflection water offered, she still wore her old mask and suit.
Almost as a reflex, she looked up in the same direction as she had before.
Chat still stood there, idly swinging his legs against the building.
Something deep inside her mind urged her to repeat the approach she had used before.
She obeyed it.
“Little kitty on a roof,” he sang again.
“Chat… Noir?” she said, only slightly louder than the last time.
“All alone without his lady.”
He turned around.
“Chat Noir.”
“M'lady? I thought I'd lost you! Oh, I was feline so sad that you were gone!”
The urge to run was still there, threatening with overtaking again.
Still, somehow, she managed to stay.
“What's happened to you? No, don't tell me. We're gonna fix everything!”
He turned towards her, almost softly, as smooth as a real cat. “Of course we're gonna fix everything!”
Smoothness turned sharp, menacing.
“Now that you're back and now that you're going to GIVE ME YOUR MIRACULOUS!”
That was it.
She ran again, as fast as she could. Diving into the cold water was a far better option than staying, her racing mind concluded. He wouldn’t follow there.
She swam as far as she could, as deep as possible, until her feet reached the floor below her.
Only that it became solid really fast.
Not again, please.
She looked up. There was her partner, still as unbothered yet lifeless looking as ever.
Approaching had been the only way in which it hadn’t restarted.
She had to get back there again.
“Little kitty on a roof.” That song resonated in her head like a choir in a cathedral, known for years and well preserved.
“Chat… Noir?” She tried saying it loud enough for him to hear this time.
“All alone without his lady.”
It haunted her, feeling as if it was an old song she was done with. She wanted to cover her ears, curl up on the ground so the song wouldn’t be there, flooding her hearing.
“Chat Noir.”
“M'lady? I thought I'd lost you! Oh, I was feline so sad that you were gone!”
“What's happened to you? No, don't tell me. We're gonna fix everything!”
Maybe it would work if her legs stopped eloping before she could receive an answer.
“Where are you going, Marinette?”
She let him continue. “Of course we're gonna fix everything! Now that you're back and now that you're going to GIVE ME YOUR MIRACULOUS!”
The impulse to run hadn’t faded in the slightest, the rest of her body feeling slightly numb. Still, she managed to get out some words, as shaky as they were.
“My Miraculous? What's wrong with you, Chat Noir?”
“Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude, m'lady. Could you please hand me your Miraculous, please? Chat Blanc has... gotten into some mischief.”
Somehow, she knew what had happened.
“You've been akumatized, Chat Noir.”
Even more to her surprise, she approached him. “You don't need my Miraculous, you need me to de-evilise you. Let me help you.”
She raised a hand to his cheek, not knowing why but feeling she had to. A tear fell right onto her hand.
It was a weird sensation, feeling it on her skin while knowing he was seeing her gloved hand.
“Save me.”
Those words broke her heart. She hadn’t felt so powerless in so long… Somehow, she felt as if had been for an akumatized Chat. Wasn’t she seeing him for the first time?
“My poor kitty…” she felt herself get close to tears. “Tell me, do you remember where the Akuma went?”
He grabbed her hand, so softly it hurt, and brought it to his chest.
“Here, but it’s already broken.”
As much as she wanted to run, cry, or express any other emotion than calmness, she ccouldn’t. It felt like the only right thing to do, right as the rain and natural, unlike the newly formed beaches of Paris.
He reached for her earrings.
Calmness gone.
Eloping, however, didn’t feel like an impulse this time. She knew she had to.
“NOW YOU'RE BREAKING MORE THAN MY HEART, MARINETTE!”
She still couldn’t figure out if he was looking through her magic, or if he…
It couldn’t be. Chat didn’t learn her identity until the night she left. This must have been from years ago, from what she remembered deducing from the two previous attempts or whatever they were.
She had to know.
“What did you say?”
“Give me a hug… Marinette.”
That wasn’t going to happen.
Looking at her hands, grabbing her invisible tools, while seeing her reflection be the one of her hero alter ego, it was messing with her brain.
“Give me your Miraculous so I can make everything go back to the way it was!”
The way it was?
“MEGA-CATACLYSM!”
She jumped off the half-sunken building, hoping closing her eyes wouldn’t make ground appear beneath her feet again right before finding ground again, with her hands to her relief.
“Things were purrfect until Hawk Moth found out about everything. Once the cat is out of the bag, it's only a matter of time 'till everyone knows. It was our love that did this to the world, m'lady.”
It all hit her like a bucket of water colder than the one she had just emerged from. Those words.
It was our love that did this to the world, m’lady.
The back of her mind went blank. Chat Noir… he had to stay apart. They couldn’t be closer, there was a reason.
Why does this feel like the reason?
She had heard that before. From him.
She had to escape.
Instead, she charged towards him from behind.
“I'll find you, m'lady!! And when I do, you'll give me your Miraculous!”
His baton. It had to be that. “Time to de-evil—!”
“Looking for my akuma, m'lady?”
He attacked.
What’s that he is using- no time.
“There’s a faster way to make this end, you know. You just need to hand over... YOUR MIRACULOUS!”
She couldn’t surrender. “Never! Lucky Charm!”
An eraser.
How lovely would it be to erase all of that. From time, from her mind…
Chat Blanc thought the same, apparently. “An eraser? I'd like to erase the past too, but there's only one way to do that.”
A ball of light emerged from between his fingers. “You know that by merging our Miraculous together, we'd be granted one wish, right? Any wish we wanted. Well, my wish would be to fix everything, so we could be in love again. And have a hamster, too. You’ve always dreamed of having one. We’ll call it—”
Distractions, all distractions to grab her earrings.
~(x)~
“Master, we have to get her out of there.”
Marinette twitched uncontrollaby in the pool below them.
“Only a few minutes more.”
~(x)~
She tried again. His belt. “Time to de-evil—”
Not again.
Chat jumped aside, looking almost deceived. “You're not even listening. You don't understand.”
He burnt the ground below her, and she fell again.
Under the water, there was… her?
A version entirely made of ashes, only held in place by the pressure of the water.
Her entire self crumbled under the touch of her hand on her cheek.
She had to go back up.
“What did you do to them?” she said with the little air she had regained.
“I didn't mean to.”
His expression went from blank to enraged in a matter of moments.
“Why won't you try and help me fix it? The simple truth is you don't love me anymore!”
She didn’t know what to do.
“SO I MIGHT AS WELL DESTROY YOU, ME, OUR MEMORIES... EVERYTHING!”
“NO!”
It couldn’t be too late.
“OKAY! OKAY! I'LL GIVE YOU MY MIRACULOUS, CHAT NOIR!”
She was not going to call him that
“I'm not Chat Noir anymore.”
The blue of his eyes got even bluer if that was possible.
“I'm Chat Blanc.”
“You will always be Cat Noir to me.”
She knew what to do.
His eyes opened as she leaned in, almost to… kiss? But instead, grabbing his bell and snapping it.
“No more evildoing for you, little Akuma. Time to de-evilise Chat Noir!”
It was a memory. Her fourteen year old self had phrases, apparently.
“Gotcha! Bye-bye, little butterfly”, she said as she grabbed and released the purified akuma.
“Marinette, what happened?”
“You're still calling me Marinette. You're not supposed to know who I am. It means that if I use my Miraculous Ladybug to fix everything now… Of course! I'm gonna fix everything, Chat Noir, I promise!”
~(x)~
The water. It was… warm. The lights weren’t blinding.
Her earrings were gleaming.
“I think you have finished your training”