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It’s snowing.
The world is silent still and tense with anticipation; almost like every single creature on it already knows what is about to happen, knows that their final reckoning is at hand with a sureness that defies all measures of logic, that defies every law and rule he’d spent years of his life reading about in a creaking library chair.
But like the insanity and chaos of the form he now embodies, the world suspends its disbelief for a haunting moment as it watches its own destruction through two nameless figures atop a snowy roof.
War is at hand and he can feel her behind him, standing just a ways off, a stark red against the grey sky. He doesn’t turn, doesn’t have to check for her presence, not when her existence was as much a part of him as the suit he now dons.
Chaos and order, misfortune and blessing—neither one can possibly exist without the other and rather than finding the thought alarming, he breathes it in like the chill around him, taking it in as a truth he’d long since accepted.
Perfect balance in the most wonderfully terrible of ways; opposites in all but their true selves.
He’s a black smear against the powered ground, an ugly stain on the clear tableau Paris has become.
She’s a crimson flush, a sign of life, the first splatter of blood before the battle.
Now that last thought he finds alarming.
Breathing out the hot air that’s sifting around in his lungs, he seeks out her presence once more and takes a deep satisfaction in the fact it was still there. She hasn’t left yet. Not that it mattered even if she did rush off and leave him again, for he would simply follow as he always has; as close as he possibly could. But then again, how close could a cursed cat track a ladybug in full flight?
Certainly not close enough for his liking.
“Chat.”
He is alert within instants, her soft call almost lost through the storm swirling around them, but still resounding in his skull. The underlying affection of the word causes him pause. His reply is as quizzical as it was longing, “Lady?”
She’s suddenly right at his side, her feet crushing the snow slightly as she looks to him, eyes full of resolve. The sheer bliss he would normally be feeling at having her so close vanishes as he takes those troubled eyes in.
She sucks in a calming breath and begins softly, “Listen, I don’t think—“
“No.”
His answer is hard and unyielding. He knows what she was going to ask just as he knows that she was well aware of what his answer would be. She wasn’t going to face all that alone, he needed to help, he needed to fight, and he needed to be there because even if she didn’t need him, he needed to be useful.
He had made her a promise, swore that he would show her that he was worth a kiss, and even cats had to live up to certain principles.
He doesn’t like thinking about the idea of a life without her, without someone to chase around the rooftops of Paris in their strange game, without having someone to talk and confess to in this form, without the exasperated sighs and bright grins that usually came at his expense, without the lively and splendid ladybug in flight that he would never, ever have.
And oh, how he wanted so badly to have her.
He’d already lost all faith of that happening from the moment they’d first met. When she’d made her own promise in return, that she could never like nor kiss someone like him as long as she breathed, crushing any hopes he’d had at the time for return to normalcy, and also the hopes that had formed later, the achingly desperate ones that besieged his every waking moment.
She could say whatever she wanted right now, yell and curse and beg, but he won’t—can’t —let her go alone.
Although, he admits, if she begged he would have the most horrible time refusing her. Those shining blue eyes did wonders to his self-control, what little he had of it in this form. Especially concerning her.
But those eyes are surprisingly familiar…
As he ponders that thought, he fails to notice the subtle changes in her stance, the desperately concerned look in her wavering eyes, the clench of her fists, or the sharp hitch of her breath as she makes her own resolution.
He does, however, notice when she starts to kiss him.
It’s quick and hesitant; her lips warm and soft against his own cold and chapped ones, just a brief peck that she has to stand on her tiptoes to make. A rush of warmth floods him from head to toe as his eyes widen in surprise. But, before he can summon the synapses necessary to make his arms move to steady her form in order to deepen the kiss, she has moved away.
Shock is at the forefront of his dazed mind, although excitement follows along quickly, nicely nipping at its heels.
She kissed him she kissed him she kissed him she kissed him
He starts to grin in the goofy sort of way he always finds himself falling into when she was around, wondering if a two second long wait was enough to ask for another kiss. Or take one.
But then the final realization comes.
She kissed him.
The threads of fate weave themselves off of his skin, peeling away the jagged strands of chaos and magic, of misfortune and damnation, creating a swirling vortex of pitch darkness that served as a sharp contrast to the purity of the scene around them.
No stop no stop no stop stop stop STOP
He’s almost certain he calls out her name, a last cry of betrayal, a ringing sound as sharp as the daggers that were digging into his heart and under his skin, removing all traces of his cursed form.
When the pain ebbs away, he’s left crouching on all fours in the bitter cold, struggling for breath.
His voice shakes.
“W-why did you do that?”
Then it becomes stronger.
“Why did you do that?”
And finally it becomes a roar, fighting against the screaming wind for dominance.
“WHY DID YOU DO THAT?”
He climbs to feet, knowing he looks furious, mainly because he is, although whether he’s angry that she left him behind yet again in the worst way possible, or that he’s finally gotten everything he wanted, he doesn’t know.
All he knows that she just corrupted the one thing in the world he’s ever truly wanted and made it into something twisted and vile, something that still ghosts over his lips like the most treacherously haunting of memories, bringing with his pleasure and pain alike.
She looks horrified.
For a second he’s confused, his painfully human chest rising and falling fast as he tried to gather up the strength to confront her in full, needing her to say something, anything, just to make stop looking at him like that because those wide blue eyes were dragging out that all too familiar crippling ache from the corners of his heart where it nestled and hid in plain sight, and he didn’t know how to handle wanting to yell for hours and at the same time desperately needing to bury his face in the crook of her neck and calm and sooth her back into shining smiles.
Her voice shakes.
“Adrien?”
He freezes up, silent still, the cold acting in full against his heart and mind, chilling him to the bone even as his soul burns.
With her gone, his world ends.
And it keeps snowing.