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A very, very long time ago, when Marinette was still young and didn’t quite understand what she would be and who she would become, Su-Han read her palm in preparation for her ritual to become Ladybug. He’d taken her right and looked it over before placing it back onto the table, muttering to himself about how it was too easy to read it, something cross on his deep-set eyes— even at the age of seven, Marinette had understood those concerned faces that her mother and her great grand uncle had given her when Su-Han had taken her other hand. Offering him the fleshy, sensitive part of her palm, his calloused hands crossed the lines and creases of her skin until he found whatever he had been looking for.
He’d stood up and promptly left, never speaking a word about her future. It seems that because of this, her great grand uncle had taken this as a bad sign, because when it had been time for her to take the Ladybug Miraculous…
It’d been the Black Cat Miraculous instead in the little jewelry box.
Lady Blanche lives in Paris. It hasn’t been long since she’s been alive— barely for a few days at most— but it’s caused massive political upheaval throughout the city. The mayor has cowered behind his podium, shouting obscenities about this whole scandal. Mister Bug had argued on live TV over her, protective of her every single moment he’d been on air. Fire in his eyes, something stern etched into his mask as he stared into the camera, telling Hawkmoth that if he laid a finger on her, he wouldn’t see the end of another day.
You even dare to show up in public, Hawkmoth, and I’ll tear you from limb to limb.
My Lady Noire is out there, hurt and alone, and for every day she suffers, I’ll make yours just as worse.
Get close to the Eiffel tower and I’ll make sure you hang from the bannister.
A humorous laugh, unless Lady Blanche gets to you first.
Even here, now, where she scans the horizon and sees nothing but loneliness: empty shingles on the buildings that flank Sacre Coeur, no tourists at her feet wanting to take a better photo with her, with the city silent and weeping for one of its very own heroes, she knows that Mister Bug has a plan or two to help her recover to her original state.
It’s no one’s fault but her own.
But she’s here now. Lonely on her roof, letting the breeze whistle against her ears. Pink and purple skies darken into beautiful bluish hues, melting Paris into darkness that she can’t hide in. As Lady Blanche, there’s no way to disappear. In the dark, shadowy and shade, Lady Noire was able to blend in. A shadow in the night creeping towards her enemies before slashing them with her claws, but even though she’s more visible this way, no one… wishes to be near her.
Everything hurts.
Those words her mother had said, threatening to expel her if she got closer. Holding the broom and shaking it to scare her off; she can’t even go home. It’s no place for her. Her plants are probably mourning her loss just as much as she is, dreaming about being in the enclaves of her bedroom like her very own safe-haven. She spends the nights longing, searching the clear sky and examining the Moon. When she cries, it’s on her own, because the citizens in the city she dearly loves don’t approach. They can’t. They shouldn’t.
Not when she’s sleek and colored white. Not when her cries create shockwaves and cause windows to break as she sobs into her gloves. She’s secluded herself near the place where she always waits for Mister Bug to arrive, waiting for him to save her. Maybe he can. Maybe he will. After all, who says he won’t? He’s always been able to. She believes in him. She believes in Mister Bug.
And yet…
And… yet…
Should she have to wait for him? Should she wait, like a good little Kitty, and wait for him to save her? After all, it hurts to breathe, and it hurts when she doesn’t breathe, either. She’s in a state where anything she does feels like lacerations to her arms, pulled apart by the hexsteel claws that adorn her nails. Breathing feels like nails are stuck in her ribs. The silence is so loud that it blares in her ears. Existence is painful.
She’s alive.
And though it hurts, it’s so beautiful. It’s so wonderful. And above all else, it’s so, so good.
There’s no one to share this excitement with. There’s no one here to try to save her. Not yet, at least, and there definitely will be someone soon, because Mister Bug is definitely dealing with the ethical situation about having his companion get Akumatized before actually dealing with her, but until then there will be nobody.
And she knows why. Who could ever learn to learn a monster? Who could ever learn to get close to someone who’s black hexleather has changed to white; who could ever learn to get close to someone who is so close to failing and shattering everything with just a yell of her voice?
But it’s time for her to change that. It’s time to prove to everyone that she’s still herself, and not this irredeemable creature that the mayor of Paris had so desperately tried to convince everyone.
Mister Bug, no matter how much he yells on TV for everyone who’s failed her, can’t be the one to save her.
She needs… she needs to save herself.
Which is why, when it is dark and the streetlamps light one by one on the streets she walks through, with citizens looking at her through their closed curtains, wondering what the hero turned super villain is doing making her way through the empty roads, she raises her chin. Which is why, when she makes it to the convention center that sits in the foot of Paris, nothing stops her from breaking through the glass roof as she jumps through and sticks the landing. Her tail lands on the floor with a thwap. Glass haloes her as she lets it rain, scattering off of her hexleather like crystalline stars. It’s nothing but water against her back.
She feels alive.
Her entire family is here in this convention center, with no lights except the glass roof that they’ve used as a way to see. Here, they huddle, and stay close to keep themselves from losing themselves to fear. She’s always known they were here, because it is the most logical sense that they would be somewhere large enough to fit her whole family and be in a place secluded enough where she wouldn’t hurt them. Here they are, as she stands, feeling the strength and the skill of the Akumatization feed through her blood. Here they are, staring at her, wary as she fists her hands— her mother is in tears, and so is her father, desperate to get her back. All at once, her mother looks to try to reach out to her, only to be pulled back by her father. Tears in her eyes, hazel turning liquid at the sight of her, all because she doesn’t wear her traditional colors.
Her mother cries.
And her father does, too. Tucking her mother closer to his chin, her father’s eyebrows pinch in the middle. A serious face has never suited him. A lonesome face has never suited him. And it doesn’t suit him now, as he looks to the floor, evidently too ashamed to look at his own daughter.
Though she’d broken through the ceiling, with the wind peeling in with her, no one speaks. Everyone is too afraid. No one sees the excitement on her face, nevermind the bravery; all they do is stop, and stare, and wait for her to say anything at all. If she’s even capable.
No one calls out her name. few speak at all— most are just gasps, and steps back.
Adrien.
Adrien.
Adrien is here, too. Here, he stands, all tall and all strong and all determined to stop her should he need to. Thumb on his Miraculous like a trigger, waiting for her to strike, he keeps his arms at the ready. To punch, to swing. He’ll protect her family at any cost, including having to fight her for it. She turns, staring at everyone here, nothing on her face as she critically assesses their situation.
Uncles. Aunts. Cousins.
All of them.
Her great uncle is here, too, mouth as thin as a line as she makes eye contact with him. All eighty people in her family, staring at her in the center of this convention room they all snuck in, because Mister Bug only has one thought of how to keep someone safe when he sees such a huge group. Hiding. Trying to keep away. Trying to get out of her line of sight. Refugees, each and every one of them, all attempting to stay away from her and her Akumatized claws.
They didn’t know that she knew all along that they were here. How could they have been so naive?
She stares at each uncle, each aunt, and each cousin she sees. Faces she recognizes, of those who she loves and those who she cares about and those who she hasn’t gotten the chance to become acquaintance with. There are so many in her family. So many people to protect. So many people to keep safe, even if she doesn’t know them all, but all of them are Chengs. They looked towards her to keep Paris from disintegrating, none the wiser that she would be the reason for the city’s demise. The reason why no one walks outside of the streets, the entire country on lockdown until safety is secured.
She looks towards Felix. A lone box-dyed blonde in the sea of brunettes, tall as a weed and miserable. Felix is the only one who doesn’t move, and doesn’t shy away or stare back just as hard as she makes eye contact at him. He looks so somber.
So… defeated.
She’d been the one to hurt the family, after all, and though Felix looks so disappointed, the little toddler in his arms knows of nothing as she teeths on a baby-safe green silicon cat, completely unaware of her. Unaware of the thrill that chases through her veins at the idea of being who she is; of who she could be; of who she will become.
She’s never felt so alive before in her life, thrumming with energy and heat.
“My name is Lady Blanche,” she starts, something licking up her spine with excitement at the rapt attention they give her, “and I’m the Guardian of the Miraculous, and the owner of the Chinese Zodiac.” No one denies her when her smile bleeds big, though Adrien looks pensive when she makes eye contact with him. “With or without the Ladybug in my hand, I’m still the new owner, and I’ll do anything to keep it safe.”
“You’re sentient?” Master Fu asks. Quizzical. Adoration in his eyes.
Tales of the Chat Blanc Miraculous being unable to think or speak or create rational thought follows and plagues this family since time began. That no matter how strong or how quick; The Chat Noir succumbs and becomes hollow. They can’t think. Can’t be. Can’t exist without purification. That there will be one, and only one, who will be able to stand under the weight of the crushing heat of Chat Blanc.
And that’s what Su-Han had seen. Had shook his head after staring into her wide, innocent little eyes, seeing that she would become something bigger than anything anyone had ever seen.
She grins. And then nods. In that order and nothing else. “Hawkmoth tried his biggest gamble and lost.” She lifts up her hands to look at her arms. White, beautiful hexleather shines under the pale moonlight. Her claws glint from where she is, shining with all the stars and all the light of heaven inside of her. “With this, he’s created his own demise.”