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Chat Noir bounded through the wreckage, gaze darting to and fro. It was…surreal, seeing his school in ruins. The building was still recognizable as the place he frequented daily, but the crumpled walls and twisted furniture made for a jarring image. He winced as he moved past the crushed remains of his locker, silently mourning the cheese stash he’d had hidden in there. Cheese was expensive.
Thankfully, property damage was the worst of the attack. It was fortunate that most of the school had been out in the courtyard for an assembly when the building collapsed. The students were fine, save for a bruise or scrape here and there. After he’d gotten the chance to slip away from the paramedics on scene and transform, though, he’d run into a frantic Alya—who’d told him that Marinette had been in the building when the akuma brought it down, having excused herself to go to the bathroom.
Normally, Chat would’ve been running off to fight the akuma, not playing damage control. But Marinette was a friend, and the akuma responsible had disappeared elsewhere almost immediately after she tore the building apart. Seeing as neither the akuma nor his lady had presented themselves yet, he had some time to make sure Marinette was okay and to get her out of harm’s way.
“Marinette!” he called, brushing aside a cloud of dust and peering around. “Marinette, are you here?”
Nobody answered. Chat continued onward, scanning the surrounding wreckage as he continued to call out for Marinette. If his senses hadn’t been Miraculous-enhanced, he would’ve missed the flash of pink amidst the rubble.
Chat spun towards the bright splash of color. “Marinette?” he asked, stepping around the last chunk of rubble obstructing his sight. The scrap of pink cloth fluttered from where it’d been torn on a piece of rebar—and right next to it was—
“Marinette!”
Chat dropped to his knees next to Marinette’s prone form. The girl was sprawled haphazardly amidst the rubble. Her clothes were torn and covered in dust. One of her pigtails had come loose from its tie, leaving her blue hair to fan out beneath her head. A vicious bruise had begun to form along her jawline, a ragged gash was bleeding sluggishly near her collarbone…and a large chunk of concrete lay over her midsection and most of her legs, pulverizing them beyond repair.
Her eyes were open, blank, staring up at the sky—but they flickered to Chat when he entered her field of vision. “Ch-Chat?” she rasped, a terrible, pained noise that had Chat’s heart lurching in his chest. “You’re…here?”
“Marinette,” Chat repeated helplessly. His hands hovered over her, wavering, like he could somehow will her injuries to fix themselves. “You’re—you—”
Marinette coughed. Blood stained her lips. “Some—thing’s defin-itely broken,” she ground out, like Chat couldn’t see the thick crimson oozing out from beneath the concrete. He didn’t know how she wasn’t screaming in agony. He didn’t know how she was even conscious.
“I—I’ll—” Chat had to do something. He had to fix this. “Don’t—stay still, I’ll cataclysm the debris—”
“Not gonna m’ke it,” Marinette slurred. “Th’ hospital c-can’t fix th-this. Don’t waste…your time.”
Chat wanted to protest, but he was interrupted when Marinette began coughing again. Blood dripped from the corner of her mouth, forming a macabre trail to the dust. Chat stared at it, uncomprehending—
Understanding hit him like a truck. Marinette was dying. Marinette was dying right in front of him.
“Chat,” Marinette choked out. “Chat, you have to—have to—”
Her hands fumbled for her earrings. Chat tried to stop her, but she brushed him off with a harsh breath and a noise of annoyance.
“Chat,” she repeated as she yanked out her second earring and held the pieces of jewelry up to him. “Take. Take my—Miraculous.”
For a moment, Chat Noir didn’t understand. He stared blankly at Marinette’s outstretched hand.
“My Miraculous,” Marinette grit out. Her next inhale wheezed on its way in. “‘M—Ladybug. Take. It. St—stop Hawk. Moth.”
“What?” the word crawled from the depths of Chat Noir’s chest, frail and cracked and broken. “You’re—Ladybug?”
“Take,” Marinette insisted. Because Marinette was Ladybug. And Marinette was dying. A dead Ladybug couldn’t do anything with a Miraculous. So she was giving it to Chat Noir instead.
Marinette glowered. “Chat. Take. The damn. Ea—earrings.”
There was a little voice in the back of Chat’s head, screaming and screaming and screaming. He robotically reached out and took the earrings from her shaking hand. She let her arm drop with a huff of relief.
“Stop him,” she ordered. It was the voice she used for missions—the voice that had made Chat love her just a little bit more. “Fix. Fix this.”
“I will,” Chat promised. His voice cracked as he repeated, “I will.”
The tension bled from Marinette’s shoulders. “Thank…you,” she whispered. “‘M s’rry, Chat.”
Her eyes slid shut. She breathed out—a rattling, gurgling noise—and was silent.
Blood roared in Chat Noir’s ears. His hand remained clenched around the Miraculous. Robotically, he rose to his feet, then just—stood there. Looking. Looking down at her broken body. He had to get moving, before the akuma hurt someone else. Had to figure out how to use the Ladybug Miraculous. But his body felt alien, wrong, like he was half-drifting out of it. He couldn’t make it move—couldn’t stop looking—
“Chat?” A familiar voice echoed off the rubble behind him. Alya. “Chat, did you find her?”
“I’m so sorry, I know you said not to go back in and I really tried to stop her but she—” Nino’s voice cut off with a sharp inhale.
For a moment, there was stillness.
Then Alya staggered forward to Chat’s side, a breathy, disbelieving “Marinette?” falling from her lips.
Marinette didn’t reply.
“Oh my god. Oh my god!” Alya’s voice rose to a wail, taut with immeasurable grief and horror. She fell to her knees beside Marinette’s corpse. “Marinette! This isn’t—wake up, please—”
Nino slowly turned to Chat Noir. His eyes were wide. Vacant. “Hey,” he said, eerily calm. “Ladybug can fix this, right?”
The earrings burned in Chat Noir’s hands. He wanted to reassure Nino. He wanted to tell him that a Miraculous Ladybug could fix everything. He should say that. He—he could promise that—that Ladybug could fix—
—could fix—
—could fix herself—
—his lady full of laughter and joy and life—
—so still beneath the concrete, her eyes closed and—so much—blood—
“Ladybug can fix this, right?” Nino’s voice rose, hysteria edging his words. Chat Noir could only stare at him even as his fingers went white-knuckled beneath his gloves.
Ladybug could fix this. Ladybug was dead. Ladybug was a corpse and she expected Chat Noir to fix this and here he was standing like a useless lump while her blood pooled around his shoes and her earrings burned a hole through his hand. He had to…move. Put on the earrings. Find the akuma. Undo everything.
Nino was still talking at him—shouting, now—but Chat Noir didn’t hear any of the words. With monumental effort, he forced his fingers to uncurl. Nino stopped shouting.
The earrings stared up at him. They looked so small. So insignificant. So harmless. Marinette had died because Hawkmoth wanted these earrings. His lady was dead because of these earrings.
Nino made a small, punched-out noise. His knees folded under him, and he sat down hard amidst the rubble. “Sh-she—” he stammered, eyes roving wildly between Chat Noir and the earrings in his hand. “She w-was—Marinette was—”
“Yes,” Chat said blankly. “Yes. She was.”
The earrings flashed. Tikki sprung free. Tears streamed down her cheeks, landing in Chat Noir’s hand with a steady plip-plip-plip.
“Marinette is dead,” Chat Noir told her.
“I know,” Tikki whispered. “I’m…I’m sorry.”
Chat Noir’s fingers spasmed. “Can you bring her back?” he asked, and now there was some inflection entering his voice—a sort of desperate hope that promised danger if it went unfulfilled.
Tikki’s lips thinned. “...Yes,” she said after a long pause.
Chat Noir’s eyes flared bright, venomous green. “Don’t,” he said softly. “Don’t lie to me.”
Tikki shook her head. “I’m not lying. There’s—a possibility that if you use the Miraculous Ladybug cure, she’ll—she’ll heal. But…the magic is fickle when it comes to deaths that weren’t the direct result of kwami interference. She…technically, it was the—the—” she gestured at the slab crushing Marinette’s body, “—that…”
That killed her.
“But there’s a chance,” Chat Noir said. “You said there’s a chance.”
“Yes—”
Without hesitation, Chat uncapped one earring and stabbed it through his unpierced earlobe. Tikki jerked with the movement, her blue eyes going wide.
“Chat Noir, wait—”
Chat Noir paid her no mind—just forced the second earring through his earlobe. This time, it was Nino who started forward as though to stop him from hurting himself again. Chat stepped back, his breaths sharp with pain and slow-growing rage.
“I’m getting her back,” he growled at Ladybug’s kwami. “Don’t you dare try to stop me.”
Tikki’s stared at him for a long moment. Then, she said quietly, “You have to detransform first. If you unify the Ladybug and the Black Cat—”
Chat Noir didn’t hesitate. “Plagg, claws in.”
“WHAT THE FUCK!” Nino shrieked, lurching back and covering his eyes before he could see the superhero detransform. Alya turned with the exclamation, her bloodshot eyes widening when she saw Adrien standing where Chat Noir had once been.
“Adrien?!”
Nino yanked his hands away from his face. “WHAT THE FUCK?!”
Adrien ignored them, yanking off his ring and tossing it to Plagg. Then he turned to the wide-eyed Tikki. “Tikki, s—”
A tiny paw slammed into his jaw, snapping it shut before he could get the full words out. “Kid,” Plagg said, fast and worried. “Stop. Slow down. You’re not thinking clearly—”
Adrien brushed him away. “Tikki,” he snapped, harsher now. “Spots on.”
The transformation washed over him. It didn’t feel like previous transformations—it was rougher, uncomfortable, Ladybug’s kwami responding reluctantly to his command. Adrien didn’t care. His lady was dead. Marinette was dead. And the akuma who did it was still out there. Hawkmoth was still out there.
Without heeding Plagg’s panicked “Wait!” and Nino’s shout of “Adrien!”, Adrien launched himself into the ruins. Within moments, he was back at the entrance of the school. The various people milling around the scene stopped what they were doing to stare at him.
“Mister Bug?” One of the paramedics asked, approaching him warily. “Are you…are you alright? Where’s…Ladybug?”
Adrien opened his mouth. Closed it. The grief battering at the inside of his chest surged, threatening to drown him—but he tamped it down, locking it away for later. Instead, he focused on his rage—on the hatred sizzling in his veins.
“Which way did the akuma go?” he growled. The paramedic flinched back in surprise, her eyes widening.
“U-um—”
“It’s on Rue de Grenelle,” someone called. A policeman. He had a walkie talkie held up to his mouth. “Headed towards the Eiffel—”
Adrien didn’t need to hear any more. He hurled his yoyo across the street, wrapped it around a lamp, and, ignoring the shouts of surprise, used it to swing himself up onto the rooftop. Without a moment’s pause, he bolted for the tower looming on the horizon. His thoughts raced, powered by cold, calculated fury—plans for taking down the akuma, plans for tracking down Hawkmoth, plans to fix this—
His lady— Marinette—was better at this. She could make plans on the fly, improvise, dance circles around their enemies. She was clever and quick and bright. But now Marinette was dead, and it was up to Adrien to fix this. It was her last request to him—to stop Hawkmoth.
Come hell or high water, Adrien would do it. He’d do it. Hawkmoth would rue the day he chose to put on the Miraculous, because once Adrien found him…
…there’d be nothing in the world that could stop him.