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"What are you going to do now?" Chat Noir asks.
He patiently waits a few seconds for her response. When none comes, he glances over and sees that she's spaced out again, staring across the crowd around the Trocadéro, not truly seeing them. She's inside her own head.
"My lady?"
"Huh?" Ladybug says, jolting back to the present. She hastily rubs a gloved hand against her face to wipe away the errant tears.
"I asked what you're going to do now."
"I… I don't know. We need to find the other Miraculouses and—"
"No," he says, placing a hand on her shoulder. "I don't mean what we're going to do next. I mean, what are you going to do right now?"
The crowd below begins to disperse. Hundreds of bystanders who will now go home, returning to their normal lives, just like they always have. He wonders if this feels any different from a regular akuma attack for them, where the threat remains but there's no visible lasting damage. The cure fixes all, and everyone goes home like things are the same.
She's not the same. She's shattered, and he's amazed she's still standing. He wonders how many other times she's looking collected and in control while secretly anything but.
"I don't know," she admits awkwardly.
Ladybug almost always has a plan, but he isn't the least bit surprised she doesn't right now. Plans required faith. It's easy to lose faith when something is taken from you.
"I don't really feel like I can transform back right now and just act like everything's normal," she says vacantly.
"I know what you mean."
"I think… I think I need your company right now."
She looks at him and he's distraught by how guilty her expression is, like she's ashamed to ask anything of him after. Well, Chat Noir protects her from all things, including herself.
"Come with me," he says, holding out his hand.
She takes it, and he leads her away on his staff, soaring over rooftops through the misty rain.
"I found this place a few weeks ago, actually," he says as they go. "It's a little more secluded than some of our usual haunts, but… well, you'll see."
It's not a long trip. Just enough time to collect his thoughts. Soon they touch down on a beautiful rooftop garden. In the hazy lamplight, he sees it's much how he last saw it: flowering plants, a small vegetable garden, and even a furnished patio with a table and chairs, all of it discreetly hidden among some hedges.
"I'm sorry," she says once they land. She takes a few steps away, back fully to him, hiding herself in the shadows. "Whenever I'm overwhelmed and can't deal with things, I feel like this is some unique burden and nobody else must know how I feel." She turns around to face him, and the lamp light illuminates fresh tear tracks. "I forget that of course you would."
"I always have a hard time imagining you overwhelmed by anything."
It's not entirely true. He's seen her fall to pieces before, in moments of quiet desperation. But it's a secret of hers that he keeps, sometimes from himself. He knows the reality but simply chooses not to imagine her that way. In his mind, she's always at her strongest.
"If only you knew, Chat. I'm always overwhelmed by things."
Ladybug idly picks a leaf off a nearby tree and walks a few more feet to lean out over the railing. She twirls the leaf in her fingers.
"I owe you an explanation for what happened," she says. "I mean, I owe you a lot of things, but…" Her body quakes with a shuddering breath. "I enlisted another holder, thinking I could trust them. But they weren't who I thought they were. They…" She exhales through her nose like a bull. "Well, I guess we shouldn't hide our enemies' identities. It was Felix Graham de Vanily."
Adrien knows this of course. His brief conversation when Ladybug came to retrieve the Dog Miraculous from Adrien thoroughly explained that. But he's not about to stop her from being more communicative.
"Flairmidable," he says, and she nods grimly. Something isn't adding up, though. Based on prior encounters, Ladybug wouldn't have much reason to trust his cousin with something like this. "Why did you think you could trust him?"
"I… I didn't. I thought it was— I guess this doesn't make sense without the full picture. Felix was pretending to be… someone else."
She releases the leaf into the wind.
"Why did you think you could trust him?"
It's a selfish question, but he can't shake the jagged memories from earlier, of her so excited to have Flairmidable on the team. Of her praising Felix. Even giving it this abbreviated thought is enough to taste acid.
"He's a good person," Ladybug declares, and his hackles rise from the lingering thought of Felix before realizing she's talking about Adrien. "I usually have good instincts about this." His heart settles and warms from the compliment. Then her face falls. "Usually. I screwed up though. Felix used the Dog Miraculous to steal my yoyo and all the other Miraculouses."
He nods weakly, like he's learning new information.
"Well, knowing that gives us a lead and puts us one step closer to getting them back," he says.
"I hope you're right. I'm just uncertain what to do now." She slumps over the railing. "My last plan was a complete disaster. I thought I was doing the right thing by having the Miraculouses easily accessible when I needed to enlist others to help us. I thought having a team would make us stronger. Then it all fell to pieces."
He forces himself to see the loss of their team as the tragedy it is. He knows they're stronger as a team, like she says. She's also said he's her favorite team member, though, and sometimes that doesn't feel like enough.
"Your heart was in the right place," he says.
"But that's not enough! Ugh. I'm getting worked up again. I can't go home and be around people like this."
She sinks into one of the patio chairs and curls in on herself.
"So you don't live alone," he teases lighty, mostly to distract her. While he doesn't think she's likely to have another panic attack, he doesn't want her to spiral.
"Chat, that's not funny," she pouts.
She pulls her legs up onto the chair and wraps her arms tightly around them.
"How do you do it?" she asks, in a voice far too small for Ladybug.
"Do what?"
"Manage being Chat Noir and… you."
"I've told you before, m'lady: my civilian life tends to be pretty boring. Not everyone would agree, and it's still busy, but the time I spend with you is my favorite. I know you take this seriously. I can tell being Guardian is wearing you down. I wish you could have as much fun as I do. When I see you, I feel on top of the world."
"Right now I'd settle for not being crushed underneath it."
Chat Noir sits down in the chair next to her, perching on the edge to be that much closer to her.
"I don't want you to feel like that, and definitely not alone. Honestly… I should've realized sooner how much being guardian was eating away at you." She hangs her head, frustrated over not having managed on her own. "And after this, I wish you told me who you planned to give Miraculouses to. I mean, I wish you didn't feel like you need to do everything alone."
When she speaks, it's still muffled into her knees, but she at least looks up to make eye contact.
"You know that's dangerous. If you know who I'm choosing, you might…" She leaves the thought unfinished, but it's enough to highlight the same fear that's ensnared her: things being traced back to her. Him learning who she is. "You shouldn't know the people I'm connected to."
He knows several of her temporary holders, but two in particular cross his mind.
"Except we lost today because I didn't know who you were giving it to. If I'd known, I could've—"
He stalls. He could have warned her, yes, but this whole situation would have been avoided if she'd already known who he was. If they'd revealed themselves to each other—or even just him to her—ages ago like he'd always wanted.
Ladybug shifts her whole body to face him.
"You could have what?" she says sharply. Not a snap, but exasperated. Raw.
He sighs. This is absolutely not an 'I told you so' situation.
"I could've reminded you that Felix and Adrien have a history of disguising themselves as each other."
She's quiet for a while, but he's at least confident that it's not a sullen silence.
"Maybe you're right," she whispers, almost more to herself than to him.
He can tell she's mulling it over, and opts not to push her. If she is going to come to a conclusion, he wants her to do it all on her own and fully embrace it. He wants her to feel confident.
"I'm scared but… maybe you're right," she says, still clearly deep in thought, weighing options, assessing risks, hedging bets. Just like she always does. "Maybe we can't afford to keep things like this from each other. It's just… I'm scared of how dangerous it could be. We only have each other now, right?"
He wants to simply agree and move on, but his mouth works faster than his brain.
"There's nothing 'only' about having you," he says.
This seems to startle her out of contemplation. She drops her feet to the ground and sits up properly.
"Oh! I didn't mean it like that! You know I don't think you're only—"
"I know."
"No, Chat—"
"I know."
"I'm sorry. We need to talk. We will talk. I promise."
He nods. He's not entirely keen on having a big talk right this second anyway. Or maybe they already were, in a way.
She sinks back into her chair.
"I don't want to leave you," she continues, "but I'm too exhausted to think straight. Not like you deserve, kitty. Can we… Can we meet up tomorrow?"
Tomorrow is either "later today" or "the day after" and both feel too soon and too far away. With the heightened threat of Shadow Moth, once they part, every hour will stretch to infinity. Still, Chat Noir offers her a soft smile.
"Of course."
Things aren't perfect, even now, but he's hopeful they can improve.
"I don't want to just tell you 'tomorrow,' like an order. I'm asking if you'd agree to meet up."
"It's okay. You know you don't have to order me to rush to your side. My answer is always: for you, of course."
For the first time in hours, her anxiety melts a bit and a safe smile pokes through the thaw. She stands up, moves closer, and throws her arms around him.
Ladybug isn't normally warm. Possibly due to her small frame or poor circulation or low blood pressure or something, she tends to run cold and he's happy to provide warmth to compensate. Now though, despite the late hour and misty darkness, she's a million degrees, a scorching sun in the Paris night undergoing fusion as anxiety slowly turns to determination.
"Thank you, kitty."
"Of course, m'lady."
She pulls back to study his face, but continues to grip his biceps like she's desperate to maintain their connection.
"You're going to get some sleep now too, right? We've had a long day," she asks.
"I will. But if anything happens, I'll come running."
"Of course you'd say that," she says fondly. "And… thank you again."
Despite her words, she's reluctant to actually part. Is she afraid that he won't come running? Is she afraid that things have changed too much? That she's leaving things between them in an uncertain state? He's certain they aren't.
But if she needs the push…
He separates from her.
"Until tomorrow," he promises with a dramatic bow.
Ladybug nods once, then zips away on her yo-yo. He watches her leave, graceful as always.
"She thinks I'm a good person."
Falling through her skylight, Marinette crashes onto her bed as she releases her transformation. After the words depart her lips, only quiet remains.
The room should be a familiar oasis, her home for far longer than she's been Ladybug. Now it's taken on new life as the eye of a storm, too quiet when there's a turbulent future just outside. She rolls onto her back and drowns in the silence. The other kwamis would have been in the miracle box—she always made sure of it when she left for the day, so they wouldn't get up to mischief and so she could retrieve them through her yoyo.
Now they're gone. All but one.
"Are you okay, Marinette?" Tikki asks, landing on the head of Marinette's enormous cat pillow.
They both know the answer is No, but Tikki is merely extending a gentle invitation. Part of being a kwami is caring for her holder. Marinette merely shakes her head.
"I can't talk right now, Tikki, I—"
A quiet thump directly overhead startles Marinette into silence. With a stab of fear, she wonders how close on her tail he was. Did he see her enter the bakery? How could he possibly come right now?
"Marinette?" Chat Noir says in some approximation of a greeting as he sticks his head through her balcony hatch.
She lays there in her pajamas, too stunned to even feign sleep. She's searching for something in his expression—some evidence of knowing her secret—but finds nothing.
"What are you doing here?"
"I was passing by and saw your light on," he says with an air of cheeriness that's honestly impressive considering she knows it's fake and he must be almost as torn up about her failure as she is. Her failure, her mind helpfully repeats, like a fabric caught in the sewing machine, the same loop punched over and over, screwing everything up. "I thought that—Marinette, you okay?"
Huh? She frantically looks around as he drops down onto the bed.
"Your eyes are all red and puffy. Were you crying?"
"Oh? Oh! Yeah! Psh. I'm fine," she says, physically waving off his concerns.
Now Chat Noir's eyes are searching her, and she tries to erect a sufficiently disarming front. She can't just kick him out; it would be too suspicious, and… now that she's with him again, feeling his familiar weight on her mattress, she's not sure she wants him to go anyway.
"You heard the news, didn't you?"
She can only play so dumb, and this doesn't feel like a time to push it.
"Yeah," Marinette says instead, and she doesn't have to pretend to sound distraught over it. In fact, she has to force herself to sound calmer than she is to sound like a normal civilian would. "Ladybug lost the Miraculouses."
"Shadow Moth stole them," he corrects. He's chiding, but with a heatless sort of anger that's directed at the situation, not her.
"Of course," she agrees feebly, and his expression resumes its prior concern. Concern augmented by a light affection that Chat Noir has always shown Marinette and that rarely makes sense to her.
"I know you're probably scared," he says. "I'm a little scared too. But Ladybug and I will get them all back, okay? Cat's honor."
She laughs once, more a cheap, humorless exhalation of pent-up breath than anything else. It's ironic, how he's trying to reassure her with confident claims about her own abilities in order to bandage up her own ineptitude, but the fact that he's doing it at all—that he's doing it to a stranger and seems to almost believe himself—bolsters her more than the claim itself.
God, sometimes she doesn't deserve her partner.
The reminder that she could have so easily lost him strikes like lightning, bright and jarring. They've each made mistakes but his pale utterly compared to hers. There's a version of this day where things played out far differently without Chat Noir's cataclysm getting absorbed by Strikeback and making everything harder on them. But there's a version of this night where Chat Noir, having never taken the ring back from Cat Walker, simply doesn't return to her side when she needs him most and deserves him the least. She can't imagine where that future leads, but it's dark and cold and she suffers it alone.
As that thought, which she keeps in the gray periphery of her mind less the full-color version consumes her whole, fades back into her room, she realizes she's crying. It's hard to say why this hits harder now, but being out of the suit almost certainly has something to do with it.
"Princess," he says consolingly, and Chat Noir's arms are around her in half a second.
Marinette closes her eyes and allows herself to sink into his warm embrace. An embrace that was growing more and more important to her by the hour. Not just important, but essential.
"I'm so scared," she admits to both of them in a quiet, broken whisper. "What if we can't get them back?"
"We will. We have to. You're not going to lose faith in Ladybug, are you?"
Marinette has no way to tell him that there's nobody who's lost faith in Ladybug more often than herself. She tries to squeak out anything in response, but all that emerges is a harsh wordless sob.
"It's okay," he soothes. "It's okay."
They sit like that for several minutes, long past the point of her thighs cramping from the weird position where she's pitched forward into his arms and he's pitched forward to catch her and neither of them can relax, physically or emotionally. It's an eon where anxious waves wash up on a stoic beach, break, and peel away, carrying sand away with them, but leaving the beach as a whole. They wait for low tide together, and as the beach dries, so do the tears, though they're still underneath, and digging but a few inches would expose them again.
"Thank you, Chat Noir," she says hoarsely.
"Anytime, Marinette," he says, rubbing a firm hand in circles around her back.
She's not sure how he can be so adamant about comforting Ladybug and Marinette. She's not sure how he's so good at it.
"Ladybug doesn't deserve you."
"She deserves far more than I can give her," he insists easily. "But I do what I can."
She wants to apologize about a dozen more times, but can't.
She wants to say that he gives her too much already, but can't.
She wants to prove that she can be better, but can't.
Instead, sounding pathetic and sniffly and tired, she says:
"Thanks for the hugs tonight."
"The hugs are free," he assures. "No need to thank me. I should get going, though. You need to rest and I need to recharge my kwami."
"And rest yourself, right?"
"O-of course."
"Chat," she scolds wetly.
"I'll sleep eventually, princess. I promise…"
He slowly extracts himself from her. He seems hesitant to leave, and completely unwilling to turn his back on her when he finally does. As he pushes himself up through the hatch, she rises to follow him, poking her head out to see him off. With a backward hop up onto the balcony railing, never taking his eyes off her, he bids her a final goodbye, extends his staff, and vaults into the night.
Marinette watches him go, and he disappears from sight beyond the apex of the Agreste mansion's roof. In his absence, the mansion itself draws her attention.
"Oh no, Tikki! I ran out on Adrien! I… I need to check in on him. He must be so worried about me. About Felix… Tikki, spots on!"
Chat Noir becomes Adrien Agreste one second before he hits the bedroom floor, and Plagg appears before he's taken two steps.
"Kid, I'm proud of you. You stuck by your partner, even when she gave you every reason to be upset with her."
There were certainly things that had recently put their partnership under immense strain, and he couldn't pretend they no longer existed, but all of them are insignificant compared to this new hell they've found themselves plunged into.
"Ladybug's hurting, Plagg. I could never turn my back on her."
"And that," Plagg says, "makes you a great—"
Plagg vanishes both without warning and as a warning in itself.
"Adrien?"
The boy in question whips around to see Ladybug hanging from her yoyo outside his still-open window. He's shocked that he has enough energy left to stop him from dispensing an automatic "m'lady?" by mistake.
"L-Ladybug?" he says instead.
She drops onto his window sill, and he rushes over to extend a hand to help her step down into his room. Not that she needs help, but, well, it's only polite.
"Sorry for the late house call," she says. "I realized I flaked out on you earlier and… and I needed to fix that."
He checks the clock and does a double-take
"At one in the morning?"
He welcomes seeing her any time; he just hadn't realized how late it was. Despite the long day, he's so keyed up that he isn't the least bit tired. He doubts he could even sleep at all, especially not if she needs him. Even with the mask, he can tell her eyes are puffy and red from crying earlier. To his surprise, though, the redness creeps down to her cheeks.
"Well, no, but I wasn't going to be able to sleep unless I did. This visit was kind of selfish of me."
A dozen different responses speed through his brain. He tries to sort through which ones might please her, comfort her, impress her. In the end, he just starts talking.
"I think the hero of Paris is allowed to be selfish, but you're saying you'd personally feel better if you checked in on me?"
"Yeah," she admits.
"That doesn't sound selfish at all. It sounds like the exactly the kind of selfless concern I'd expect from you…"
He smiles, and she fully flushes.
"....and even then, there's no way I'd ever think you're a flake. Not when you're always there to protect us. After the day you've had…"
Her face falls further and he winces. Knowing her, she probably doesn't think she deserves praise for her job protecting Paris today.
"...I'd hate to see you worrying about something as trivial as me," he amends lamely.
"Adrien, you are not trivial!" she stresses. "Please don't think that about yourself."
"Well, thank you, but I'm more worried about you right now."
Her eyebrows rise in surprise. Even if he wasn't Chat Noir, he can't imagine not being worried about her in light of what happened.
"I'm… doing better. Sort of."
He could only hope that Chat Noir helped, even a little. With every passing moment, the guilt digs into him a little deeper, like a persistent splinter that he can't pinch and pull. As much as he'd like to place all blame on Shadow Moth and Felix, he can't distance his actions from the consequences.
"I'm sorry me switching places with my cousin led to all this," he confesses.
"Of course it didn't! How could you say that?"
"It did, though."
"No," she insists, adamantly shaking her head. "This is Felix and Shadow Moth's fault. No one else's."
"I'm not saying it's my fault, my la— my— my— lame cousin turned out to be so… I don't even know. Selfish?" He takes a breath. "But I still agreed to it."
"You weren't thinking, though. You were just trying to get out of traveling and—"
"You're right, I wasn't thinking. And now we're in this mess."
"It was just the akuma making us take risks."
"It wasn't just that. This was something Felix and I did when we were little. It was reckless even before the akuma."
She doesn't have a response to that, and the two of them drift into an uncomfortable silence. He doesn't want her to blame him, or think less of him, but he's involved in this on both sides of the mask. If one of them can't be acknowledged, the other should.
It's almost enraging how this defeat is precipitated on so many factors that involve him. Why did he have to get tagged? Why did he have to switch with Felix? Why did Ladybug try to enlist him?
One of those, he can get an answer to.
"Can I ask a question?" he asks. She hums in confirmation, and he presses on cautiously. "I swear I'm not trying to figure out your methods or anything, but… why were you trying to give me a Miraculous in the first place?"
"W-w-well I needed someone who didn't have a frog foot mark since I wanted to make sure we could defeat Strikeback without reckless decisions. I remembered seeing you at the train station and you weren't marked. Well… Felix wasn't."
"He probably arrived in Paris after people got marked," Adrien says bitterly.
She mulls this over.
"He only showed up today?"
"Yeah. Apparently he saw the Gabriel ad campaign announcement about me leaving and rushed right over from London."
"Weird."
"Felix has weird priorities sometimes," Adrien agrees. "If he wasn't marked, that explains it."
"Where were you while Felix was pretending to be you?" she asks.
"Um. Around. I definitely was marked too, for what it's worth, so I'm not sure that plan would have worked."
"Well, it was my plan and I was marked too, so it was probably needlessly risky in the first place. But I thought you were a safe bet."
She's looking at him with an unreadable expression. Almost hopeful. Almost disappointed. Almost something else entirely.
"That's the only reason?"
She's about to say something when she hesitates. She's tried to recruit him twice now—first as the Snake and now the Dog—and in neither situation was he just conveniently nearby. He knows she sought him out. Is there some deeper reason why? She swallows and takes his hands in hers.
"Adrien, you are such a good person. I know, with all my heart, that you have what it takes to be a hero."
His lips threaten to smile and he can feel his cheeks warming and she probably thinks he looks foolish. This still doesn't feel like a situation he should smile during, but "Adrien" isn't caught up in it like she is. If he's earned her praise, he can revel in it.
"That's very kind of you," he says quietly, "but you've tried with me twice and both have been catastrophes. Maybe you should stop."
She looks at him sympathetically, and he can't help but wonder if she thinks he's weird for passing up an opportunity to be a superhero.
"No. Adrien. If I could have, I would've made you try out every single Miraculous until I found the one that works for you. I should have."
She says it like she means it. Like she thinks nothing could be more wonderful than really fighting alongside him, but he knows it's wishful thinking. She marches forward and hugs him. After a moment, he wraps his arms around her too.
His heart is racing, and she can't help but wonder if he's nervous about the prospect of her trying to make him be a superhero. It's understandable, as she shared the same reluctance at the start. But doing the thing once grants the courage to do it again, and maybe she can show him that.
Not now, of course.
Ladybug no longer has any Miraculouses left to give him.
The reminder scalds her.
Not that she needed a reminder. Not that she can forget. But she's maybe been a little distracted in his presence, and isn't that the whole problem?
"I have to go," she whispers as she pulls away.
He releases her willingly and moves to see her off.
"I'm going to fix this," Ladybug declares for him. "I know it's scary, but remember that Ladybug is here to protect you. With Chat Noir by my side, we'll always save the day, no matter what. Until then, please take care, Adrien. Bug out!"
She departs back out the still-open window, the whine of her yoyo string quickly fading into the darkness.
He flops backward onto the couch. He should have gone straight to the bed first, because now he feels unlikely to ever move again. He's not tired. Just emotionally drained. The only thing in motion are his thoughts.
So it wasn't a coincidence. Ladybug really was trying to recruit him specifically. This casts all of Ladybug's interactions with Flairmidable in a whole new light. She thought he was Adrien. She was excited to welcome Adrien to their team. She thought she was praising Adrien for his performance with the Dog. She wanted him to get along with… Chat Noir… which… he'd have to sort out later…
Something isn't sitting right, though. It's a length of thread that, like any good cat, he can't help but pull.
"Plagg, I realize this isn't the time, but… I think Ladybug might like me."
"Eh, sounds like projection," Plagg says, but his tone is off somehow. "She's made it pretty clear she doesn't like you like that."
"No… Not Chat Noir. Me."
He tries to tamp it down. He'd hate to get his hopes up, and they have much bigger concerns. But it's a comforting thought, even if Ladybug has barely interacted with Adrien and can't possibly know him too well.
Then again, sometimes it feels like nobody does. Not when everyone's excited for his trip and apparently he's been so good at hiding his feelings about modeling and Lila and everything that nobody thinks twice. Nobody except Marinette, anyway.
God, Marinette. Her broken expression floats into his mind and his heart aches for her. Even if she was only a hero once and never again, she sees how devastating this loss is. Even if Ladybug can always clean up the mess, there's more at stake.
Poor Marinette, crying into his hug.
Thanks for the hugs, she said.
One word, one letter, is electric.
"I didn't see Marinette as Chat Noir today until just now," he says, partially to Plagg and partially to himself. "Why would she thank me for hugs?"
"Are we talking instead of sleeping?" Plagg asks, irritated.
"Hugs," Adrien repeats. "Multiple."
"I don't know, kid," Plagg yawns. "She misspoke? How do you count a hug, anyway? Maybe to her a really long hug is two hugs."
The thread unravels further, and he can't not tug it.
You were just trying to get out of traveling, she said. How did she know? How did she know he even wanted to? How did she know exactly when Felix would be at the train station to see him off? Unless she knew exactly when Adrien was leaving. Unless she knew Adrien. Or unless she knows someone who knows Adrien. There's no way of telling what mutual friends they could have in common. He's pretty sure Marinette's talked to Ladybug before. That would make sense.
Adrien gets a sudden headache, and swears he hears a sizzling sound in his brain.
That would make sense. though the simplest explanation is… Oh no. As a matter of her privacy he needs to stop, but he can't. And he finds himself saying something he's said once before.
"Plagg, what if Marinette is Ladybug?"
"I don't know," Plagg drawls, knowing he's in for a long night. "What if?"
All tiredness forgotten, it's like a piece of the magic shatters.
Marinette lies back in her bed, utterly failing to fall asleep despite her brain begging her to. It has to be nearly 3am by this point, but it might as well be dawn already for all the rest she's going to get.
"Poor Adrien. He seemed so upset thinking that he's at all responsible for Felix's betrayal."
"He was bound to feel guilty, Marinette. He's got a very good heart."
"He does, and that's part of why I knew he should help us. Or thought he should, anyway."
Marinette groans and rolls face-down on her pillow. She really believed she was doing the right thing. But maybe there is no "right thing" when it comes to Adrien. Between the apparently disastrous attempt to have Adrien fight Desperada and now this, the universe doesn't want her recruiting her crush. It's clearly telling her it's dangerous. This distraction is dangerous.
And now the stakes are even higher. How can she protect the city when she can screw up and allow stuff like this to happen? Adrien makes her do stupid things. She knew that already. The problem is that it never feels like a stupid decision. It's like Tikki says: he has a good heart. The heart of a hero.
"Tikki, how can I feel so certain that Adrien is a perfect Miraculous candidate?"
It's a rhetorical question, and she expects some sort of joke or cute response from her kwami. Instead, Tikki looks weirdly flustered by it.
"Um… Intuition?"
Marinette rolls onto her back again.
Adrien has put up with so much but he's still gentle and kind and persistent. And she's given out each Miraculous positive that she was giving them to the right person based on how well she knew them…
"The only other time I've been wrong has been Felix."
"You thought Adrien would be good with Sass first," Tikki notes, echoing her earlier observation.
"Well yeah, but that was bad luck to rival Chat's. I've otherwise had great instincts about these things, right? So maybe Adrien—the real Adrien—would be a good Dog."
She looks to her kwami for confirmation, but Tikki merely stares back blankly.
"He just screams prime Miraculous wielder," Marinette murmurs.
"I don't know... Even he suggested you're trying to pick the wrong person."
"He's wrong, Tikki," Marinette declares defiantly. Tikki's wrong. They're both wrong. How can they not see that?! "I've handed out every Miraculous and every time— Well, almost every Miraculous. All except for the Butterfly and the Peacock and…"
There's a quiet thump overheard, and she knows it can only be one boy. With a soft knock on her balcony hatch, it cracks open to reveal a different pair of green eyes, tense and searching.
"Adrien!" she gasps. "W-what are you doing here? HOW are you here? Did…" She sputters out, and her brain frantically searches for anything that can make sense of this scenario. She's certainly had very… vivid dreams where Adrien has shown up to her room, but this… isn't that. Also, how did he even get on her balcony? "Did Chat Noir bring you here?"
"That's one way to put it," he says heavily.
He drops down and lands on her mattress with a soft whump wearing comfortable pajamas and socks, no shoes. He's gazing at her with an intensity that leaves her breathless.
"I'm sorry," he says quietly. "I shouldn't be here. But once I…" His lips quiver, but no further sound emerges.
He looks nauseous. Adrien seemed in decent spirits when she left him, so this precipitous drop in composure is alarming. She reaches out to take one of his hands.
"Adrien, what's wrong?"
"Someone told me not to come, but…" He flounders, mouth working worthlessly as tears prick his eyes. He runs his free hand through his hair, disheveling it. "I couldn't wait. I had to come."
He finishes like he's begging for absolution.
"I'm Chat Noir and you're Ladybug."
Marinette yelps and throws herself backwards over her giant kitty pillow and topples into the narrow gap between it and the wall, half hidden, half shielded. Her shout was loud enough to wake her parents, but in the silent chasm that follows it she hears nothing from downstairs.
She eventually pokes her head slowly back over the top of the kitty pillow and sees her other kitty, her alleged kitty, staring wide-eyed with an arm outstretched like he'd hoped to catch her before she fled. If she knows him half as well as she thinks, he feels rejected all over again.
"Are you really?" is what she means to say but instead says "Am I really?"
His extended hand drops to the bed. He starts gripping her blanket, bunching it up tightly until his knuckles go white.
"Pretty sure," he says tonelessly.
"You're Chat," she breathes.
"Pretty sure," he repeats. "I mean, yeah."
She wants him to be joking, but knows he's not. The longer she stares at him, she sees the two merge in her mind, inexplicable but understandable. She's counting the seconds until Bunnyx appears to tell them everything is ruined forever.
Any second now.
"Chat…" she says, strained. "Why?"
"You said something. God, it was so idiotic. But it was enough for some things to click and then… I couldn't keep this to myself!" he insists desperately. "I had to tell you as soon as possible! I didn't want to figure it out, m'lady, I swear it, but—"
"Hey, hey!" She flops herself back over the kitty and grabs his hand. His worrying overrides hers. "It's okay, Chat."
The reassurement fizzles his burning terror and relief sweeps over him so briskly he looks like he might cry. He squeezes her hand tight enough that it starts to hurt, but she thinks she could endure anything for him in this moment.
"It's not," he corrects.
"No, it's not. Not at all," she agrees. "But I'm here with you, okay? Apparently I've been with you all night, Chat."
"Why do you keep calling me 'Chat'?"
"Because I'm TRYING NOT TO FREAK OUT," she says, releasing his hand to grab her pigtails.
His tension snaps and he laughs, a bright and boisterous real laugh, and it's beautiful.
"Quieter, m'lady."
"I'm trying so hard not to freak out," she whispers. "Chat. Adrien. How have we been doing this together for so long without having any idea? You… You two are so different." He's looking at her curiously, and it's an expression she's seen on both Adrien and Chat Noir. "But also so similar."
"I could say the same for you."
Chat Noir called her "Everyday Ladybug."
"I'm such an idiot," she whines hoarsely. "I thought you could help me defeat the akuma. And I was right. You could. Because you've helped me defeat every akuma." Not strictly true, but he smiles all the same. "Oh my god," she says, running her fingers down her face. "You had a front-row seat to me fawning over your awful cousin."
"Well, I didn't know he was my cousin at the— Fawning?"
Marinette freezes from her slip. She glances up nervously to find him thunderstruck by her admission. Realization dawns that she unwittingly holds all the cards right now. It's a Full House, and the three Kings are all Adrien and the two Jokers are all Chat Noir. It's not actually a good hand, but it's the only cards she needs and they're all Hearts and one day she really needs Alya to explain the rules of poker again and—
"Marinette?"
Ladybug confessing to Chat Noir isn't nearly as intimidating as Marinette confessing to Adrien.
"Fawning," she confirms defiantly, and even this moment's anxiety and their earlier defeat can't fully diminish the boyish delight that overcomes him. "We can talk about that later."
Much later.
After she's had some time to think about all her embarrassments and all Chat Noir's embarrassments.
Maybe much much much later.
Especially as they've just suffered this frightening defeat.
Especially if he's leaving for three months.
"You're going to leave me," she gasps.
"What?" He jumps. "I'm not going to leave you!"
"No, not us," she says, shaking her head. "Your modeling trip!"
He's leaving Paris.
"I don't want to," he insists urgently. "You know that more than anyone. I just thought it'd be okay because you had your whole team and you didn't need me and—"
He's leaving her.
"OF COURSE I need you, kitty! Just like I've told you. Maybe not all the time, but I still NEED you."
And even "maybe not all the time" might be a lie.
"And this wouldn't have been all the time," he says. "Just for… several months…"
"Several MONTHS," she says, grabbing his arms. "Please, kitty. You can't leave me."
The thought of not having Adrien in her life anymore was bad enough. The thought of losing Chat Noir—again—is immeasurably worse. Losing both of them at the same time, because they're both the boy she loves and the partner she needs, might as well be a death sentence.
A tear escapes.
"I'm not," he reassures quickly. "That's why I switched places with Felix and let him go. And I'm going to talk to my father first chance I get. You convinced me that I need to be honest with him and myself and tell him I don't want to model anymore. And I can't now, not when you don't have any other backup."
"I don't need backup! I need my partner!"
One tear is followed by more.
"Please, kitty," she says, burying her head in his chest. "Don't."
He wraps his arms around her and pulls her in so tightly that his hands almost reach back around to his own shoulders. With one hand, he begins rubbing soothing circles across her back.
"Don't worry," he whispers. "I promise I'll find a way."
Without him, she'd surely fall.
"I need you," she croaks.
And Paris will follow.
"I'll find a way to stay in Paris, m'lady. I promise."
She shudders in his arms.
"Please," she quietly sobs. "Don't leave me."
And he keeps holding her close.
"I'll never leave you."