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“The end begins with hero’s death, unleashed within a final breath.”
That was what Ladybug had always been told. A cautionary tale for little ears, though she was never sure of the meaning, even as a kid.
She supposed she knew now. She wished she didn’t.
Ladybug had always assumed the alluded “hero’s death” the tale referred to was literal. In a twisted way, she yearned for that to still be true. In a warped way, it was. With words she’d never speak, she thought about it greedily. She hadn’t even admitted it within the flashes of anger she still felt when thinking about him. But what the daytime sneakily thought, the night time punished her for.
A lone funeral replayed in her mind every single night, like an echo. A dream she’s had so many times now she can no longer separate it from memory. He stands there, looking down at her. His suit looks made for a funeral , she thought, as if this revelation could have saved her. Her bed had become one of wood and cushion, adorned with an engraved cement headboard.
It always read the same thing.
“Ladybug. Beloved Superheroine of Paris. She will be missed.”
The words always felt wrong in her mind. Always off. Distorted. Every time that thought – the same one every time – played through her mind the scene changed as quickly as it had been conjured. Suddenly, she was the one standing over the casket, over Chat Noir. The headstone was blank now, and she didn’t want to know why but she did .
Villains don’t deserve headstones, a voice whispered in her ear. His.
She spun, every night, in every dream, to find him right behind her. His easy grin made her heart sink. The same smile he wore on patrols, the same mouth from which his proclamations of love fell from. The same mouth that had touched hers.
Was the same one that had betrayed her.
Paris might not have known the truth. The people she had fought to the bone to save over bad days and petty fights might not have believed her, but she would be damned if she believed him too.
“What have you done?”
The same words, just like all of her other dreams. What once she had screamed at him had become merely a whisper. It didn’t matter. He never seemed to hear her.
“I had to.” He said. “I love you,” he adds.
“I’m sorry” never manages to pass his lips.
And every night, she’s reminded of the same thing. His love was not enough to save her.
The breeze rustles his hair the same way every time, and every time she has to look away. He touches a hand to her face, but she has stopped flinching by this point and just lets this stupor take its course.
He traces the shell of her ear.
She moves away from his touch as if in a memory. As if it would count this time around. As if he hadn’t already taken her miraculous. Made the wish. Traded her life for his own selfish platitudes.
The power she had once held was taken by the hands of the only person who would ever understand it. She was alone, now. Truely.
She had no means to explain to the Parisians why she couldn’t help them anymore. No way to confess her heart as the fatal flaw in a downfall she couldn’t suspect. Her account would forever be lost to the man who had stolen her voice.
He stands in front of her still, eyes of concern she had been too trusting of. His hand is at her shoulder, all too familiar. Warped into a sound only a dream can make.
“I was just a boy.” He pleaded. “I needed my mom.”
But I was just a girl.
She opened her mouth to say, but the words wouldn’t come.
And now I’m dead. Where's the justice in that?
He seems to hear it all the same, reading her thoughts like he always could. A curse she once thought she was blessed with.
The air then freezes in real time, as unforgiving as the dream before it and now the heart within her. She could feel it interlaced into her skin, turning her fibers into scicles of ice.
“You got your wish.” she bit. His eyes grew sad.
“I never wanted this. You have to understand – I never wanted to lose you.”
“But you would do it all again, right? If losing me meant getting your mother back?”
He grew silent as her eyes grew heavy. The tears soon freeze into her face, etching sorrow into her cheeks, creating from her a statue of sorrow. He’s frozen now, too, watching her become something lost inside of the memory she haunts.
Her grave is unmarked only because his should be. He is no longer the hero Paris knew him to be, and she was not the villain he had tried to make her.
The children’s tale was wrong, she knew now.
It was not the hero that had marked her end. It was his love.