Archive of Our Own

It wasn’t like they even had any use for bathrooms anymore.

“Are you ready?” said Kagami.

“No,” said Marinette.

“When will you be ready?”

“Never.”

Kagami sighed. It was sometimes difficult to remember that Marinette was the one who’d been undead for twenty-one years now — had had a chance to get used to this state of affairs. She folded her arms, kicked the door not too harshly but also none too gently.

“You are the sociable one among us. You like people. You can talk to people.”

There was a groan from the other side. “I know but it’s like, even Robespierre couldn’t spin this. ‘Hi, we died two decades ago but here we are, hope you don’t mind my arm falling off on the carpet’? ‘Hi, we’re alive, I just didn’t talk to you for ages because I was afraid’? ” A cupboard slammed shut. “It’s nuts. Absolute nuts, Kagami.”

“Nevertheless, it will be good for us both to see them again.”

A pause. Then — the thump of a forehead hitting the other side of the door, and a deep exhale. “... Will it be good for them? To see us dead and rotting like this? Would you handle it well if I just showed up at your doorstep, looking this way?”

The memory of waking up and running a rusty sword through Marinette’s throat before three minutes had passed, briefly flashed across Kagami’s inner eye. She loved Marinette possibly more than anyone in the world, and she had still done that. There was no guarantee that anyone would handle this well.

But that was immaterial. “They have had twenty years to deal with it,” said Kagami. “We are doing this for us. Furthermore, they would probably like to know that we are still alive. Ahem. Relatively speaking.”

The explosion that blew them apart was the last memory Kagami had of life. After their Miraculous were stolen, but they still decided to come along to help in the fight, because… because Marinette was never good at not taking everything on her shoulders, and Kagami was never good at staying away from Marinette.

Then Su-Han had raised Marinette with an ancient spell, but he never had the chance to raise Kagami before he… died. And then Marinette spent twenty-one years trying to learn that ancient spell, just to get Kagami back. It was sweet. It was also very sad. The beauty of self-destruction, which Kagami could only find beautiful because she was seeing it all through the lens of Marinette.

“Alya and Luka visit our graves every year. Adrien and Zoé have pictures of us on their mantelpieces. We don’t have to take that away from them.”

Kagami bit her teeth together and formed a fist. She lifted her leg as high as it could go, and kicked hard into the door; the frame buckled easily and the door toppled back and over onto the bathroom floor, while Marinette yelped in surprise. “Tonight is the night they are gathered for our memorial,” said Kagami, stepping inside and onto the door. “We are not giving up just because you are afraid. This will be good for you, and you are going to like it.”

“I almost felt that,” said Marinette’s head, which had rolled over into a corner. “Ow.”

“But you didn’t, because I kicked the door with love,” said Kagami, stepping down on the floor. She lifted up the door and released Marinette’s body, before going over to pick up the head; she held it up so that it was level with her own, stroking the cheeks with her thumbs. “You have spent twenty years all alone. You told me you’ve been watching them from the shadows. That means you miss them.”

Marinette looked down. “What if they don’t want to see us again, though? What if… what if they hate us?”

“They won’t hate us,” said Kagami.

— even though dead people were supposed to be dead. Even though they would be destroying the positive memories people had of them. If they tried to force themselves back into the lives of their old friends now, after those friends had moved on, after those friends had aged twenty-one years while they themselves had not…

She pushed those thoughts back, and kissed Marinette on the nose, hoping that her doubts wouldn’t be perceptible through her lips. “They miss us. You know that. The pictures and the flowers on our graves? The memorial gathering they hold every year? That means they will be happy to see us. We might even see the kwamis again, if they’re there.”

— even though, in the depths of her mind, she knew full well it would be more complicated. But with their feet at the precipice, there was no time for considering options. They needed to get out there, even if Marinette claimed to be fine, and that she was happy about banking everything on getting Kagami back. Now that they were together, it was time for them to try something new.

Marinette softened a little. Her hands gripped around Kagami’s shin, and the feeling was warm and grateful and — still uncertain. “Okay,” she sighed. “I’ll come. At least to the door, so I can see everyone. Maybe if Tikki is there, I can talk to her first… ask her how the human people might feel…”

Kagami kissed her on the forehead. Her thoughts drifted to Longg for a moment, and while the smile that curled her lips wasn’t because of him, he was a contributing factor to it. “Okay. But if you try to turn back at the door, I will pull your head off your shoulders and carry it inside.”

They had planned this outing for a week, at Kagami’s insistence. Maybe it was because she remembered talking to Adrien and Alya very recently, even though she knew intellectually it had been far longer. Maybe it was because she could see the strain in Marinette’s eyes, behind the joy of having companionship for the first time in decades, behind the joy and love that glowed in Marinette’s eyes when she looked at Kagami. It must have been incredibly painful for her to be alone for so long, keeping herself locked away from everyone she used to know.

“I practised talking to you in the mirror for five years,” Marinette had admitted a few days ago. “I hope that’s not weird.”

Kagami had tried to say something in response, but she hadn’t really found any words to express the totality of her emotions. So instead she kissed Marinette on the cheek to say: ‘even though that is weird, I still love you’.

Even though Marinette deserved to love someone else, and find happiness wherever she pleased, Kagami still loved her.

They got to the exit and pulled on their hooded cloaks. Marinette had sewn them from old curtains and blankets. If they could still feel purely physical sensations, the capes would probably have felt warm, but the only real effect was to hide as much of their skin as possible at all times. Even though Kagami was trying her best to be optimistic about knocking on that door, she had no illusion that the general public would leave two walking corpses alone.

Because Gabriel died before anyone could use the ladybug Miraculous, there was no way to bring back the dead. That also meant his mansion, the place Marinette had ‘lived’ in since, was left destroyed. Furthermore, several nearby buildings had also been levelled as a result of Shadow Moth’s rampage of destruction that day and the day before.

As a result, the city declared the site off limits as a memorial, and put up a plaque and a statue at the outskirts of that circle of destruction. Like a Ground Zero for Shadow Moth’s final act of terror, which had luckily only killed two people — them. According to Marinette, she had made sure to give the impression that the place was haunted, by lighting lamps and howling from the shadows at trespassers. To ensure the city wouldn’t change their minds and build there, she said.

But that had attracted the attention of thrillseekers and urban explorers, who had apparently visited the place infrequently. And that, perhaps, was also a good reason to get out of here. The longer they spent there, the greater the chance that someone would come find them, someone who would be less charitable than their actual friends of old.

Kagami hadn’t looked at the statue yet, except through the dirty old windows of the mansion — but the granite sculpture was quite impressive now she saw it up close. It showed Ladybug and Ryūko, upright and triumphant and larger-than-life, looking out towards the Seine with stern expressions. But in Ryūko’s arms were Marinette’s limp stone cadaver, and in Ladybug’s arms were Kagami’s dead quarried body. The bodies were not grotesque — they might as well have died in their sleep — but the image was still stark and raw.

Underneath, the plaque read:

IN HONOUR OF LADYBUG AND RYŪKO
~ WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES TO SAVE US ~
05.03.2016

“They put flowers here sometimes,” said Marinette as they trundled past. She didn’t look up at it, Kagami observed; she must already have seen it many times, whenever she left their charnelhouse to look at their old friends from a distance. “Less now than they used to.”

“How often have you been outside the mansion?” said Kagami, trying to keep her voice low.

“Every other month,” sighed Marinette. “I couldn’t — I had to think about other things sometimes. I was working so hard to find the spell to raise you. Just looking at you lying there, all broken… I just had to go out there and think that life was possible, you know? Like… remind myself what it was like to see people smile.”

“And you were never seen?”

“I’m good at hiding when I need to,” said Marinette, still not looking back. Either at Kagami or the statue. At herself, holding Kagami. Kagami steeled herself and kept following. A few people passing on the other side of the road watched them with bemusement.

“Where is the memorial held?” said Kagami.

“Le Grand Paris,” said Marinette. She seemed to shrink away at the curious onlookers, pulling the hood more tightly around her head. “That’s where they’ve been the last ten years, at least. Used to be at the Notre Dame, but the gatherings were more public then. Now it’s just the people who knew us.”

“And… my mother?” said Kagami.

“... She’s never been.” Marinette pulled on it a while before she answered. “I’m sorry.”

Kagami sighed. It wasn’t even hope, it was just a matter for the record. Having that not-even-hope dashed was basically the same as checking an item off a shopping list. “It’s fine. Have you been there for every service?”

Marinette didn’t reply at first. She walked silently for a few steps, then turned into an alleyway. Kagami followed. “... I haven’t,” Marinette said, still walking. “I’ve been to them, but I’ve never… I just wanted… I wanted to know they were still… thinking of us. So I snuck into vents and corners and stuff, and... then out again.”

Kagami felt her heart shatter. She sped up and grabbed Marinette by the shoulder, pulling them both to a stop. “You won’t be lonely anymore after this,” she said. “You will have friends again. A family. All the kwamis.”

Marinette’s smile was damp. “I’m already not lonely anymore. I have you.”

“I can’t make up for twenty years alone, Marinette.”

“You can,” said Marinette, a little too quickly. She pulled Kagami closer and kissed her on the cheek. “If this goes badly… it doesn’t matter to me.”

If only Kagami could believe that, if only she couldn’t see the carved-out hollowness in the depths of Marinette’s gaze, she might have been satisfied to suggest that they should go back and not disturb everyone. But it was just too obvious that Marinette had suffered in her lonesomeness.

And it was obvious that Kagami wouldn’t be enough for her. And that was natural, and right, and it wasn’t something Kagami should feel at all upset about. In truth, she felt happy about it, and the worry was just a nasty little thing that she shouldn’t have. If Marinette ended today going home with her loving family and all her old friends, and Kagami was left behind, she would pay that penance. Twenty-one years spent alone in repayment for the twenty-one years that Marinette spent alone for her.

“It matters to me,” she said, because it was easier than explaining everything, because it would raise fewer of Marinette’s defensive walls than saying ‘it should matter to you’.

“I understand,” said Marinette, dragging the hood fully over her head again. Kagami did the same. They couldn’t be seen until they reached the gathering.

It did matter to Kagami, though. That was without question. It felt like only days since the last time she saw Adrien, and all the heroes who fought by their side on that fateful day. They had been kind to her. Some of them had even revealed their identities, like Juleka and Luka and Alya, before Marinette had told everyone to stop jeopardising the team. She had felt welcomed, despite the grim reality that they were about to face a murderous villain.

Perhaps those once-friends would reject them now. Perhaps they were going to scream and throw them out. But there was a chance they wouldn’t, and that chance made the attempt worth it.

They were only a few streets away from the hotel now. By the way people kept looking at them, Kagami almost started to worry that their cloaks weren’t big enough, that the wind was blowing and showing the gashes on their legs and arms and faces. She would be glad to be out of view again.

“Perhaps we should have used the sewers,” she murmured.

“Just don’t take long strides, and keep your head down,” said Marinette. “Anyway, I didn’t want us to smell —”

“Hey, girls!” shouted a man a little ways ahead on the street. He had to be in his twenties and was possibly, probably, an above-average amount of drunk. “What’s with the costumes?”

Marinette sped up a little bit. “Just ignore him.”

“C’mon, ladies,” he said, moving to intercept them — had he seen past their cloaks, somehow? No, he must only have heard their voices — “Don’t you wanna talk? Lemme see your faces. C’mon.”

“Let us be, please,” said Marinette, trying to move past him. But he stepped towards her and grabbed her by the shoulder. Kagami gritted her teeth.

“I just wanna talk. Come, have a beer with me, okay? You sound like the most beautiful girls in the w—”

Kagami grabbed him by the wrist, so hard that he immediately stopped saying words and went into a pained whine. “You will leave her alone,” she snapped, making her voice as barbed as she was able. “Stop bothering us.”

“Kagami —” squeaked Marinette. “Your hand!”

She looked down. Her hand was indeed visible under the streetlight, and the green skin and old scars were perfectly obvious. Angry, she pushed the man aside with the outside of her arm and let go of his wrist as he staggered back, shaking the sleeve back over her withered fingers. Had he seen? Had she been too careless?

Suddenly, Marinette’s hand was around her arm. “Thanks,” she whispered, and pulled Kagami along. “Let’s go.”

“What the fuck, man,” yelled the guy, but he seemed to have given up on them. “Fuck you. Just trying to be nice...”

“Ignore him,” said Marinette, in a voice so low that only Kagami could possibly have heard her, yet with an intensity that made Kagami wonder just how good Marinette had been at hiding. If she had been spotted and had to escape people like this before.

“Are you okay?” Kagami asked as Le Grand Paris came into view through the evening murk.

“Yes,” said Marinette; then, she said “No. I’m scared.” She still didn’t stop walking.

Kagami sped up a little so she could come up alongside her. “What are you scared about?” she asked — purely to keep the conversation going, so Marinette wouldn’t run away.

She knew perfectly well what there was to be scared about: stepping into a room full of their friends and families after twenty-one years. Stepping into that room as two fourteen-year-olds who died in an explosion, and looking exactly like the mangled corpses they were then. Greeting people who by now would have moved on, and reintroducing them to the trauma of those two deaths, which many of them literally saw happen. Stepping in there and asking to be seen, be listened to, be welcomed back into their lives, despite everything.

It was painful and terrifying to imagine. So the best thing to do would be to push through it, because even if they were rejected, that wouldn’t be worse than the worst thing they could imagine.

“It would be easier to say what I’m not scared about,” murmured Marinette.

“At least we won’t have to be scared after this.”

Marinette stopped. “Let’s go back. This is wrong. We shouldn’t interrupt them. We’ll just hurt them more.”

“No. We are going in there.” Kagami grabbed Marinette by the arms — just a bit too tightly, because she felt them come loose at the shoulders. She took a moment to stick them back into place. “You have deprived yourself of their company for far too long.”

In the depths of the hood, Marinette’s undead eyes looked alive with terror. “They’ve been doing fine without me. I don’t need to let them see — see this again. I, I have you now, Kagami. You’re enough for me —”

“I am not enough for you,” snapped Kagami, far more harshly than she’d wanted. She let go of Marinette’s arms and stepped back. “... I apologise. I didn’t mean to…”

“No, no, you’re fine…”

“I just… think you need closure,” Kagami said. And then, because it was true, she added “I also need closure,” even though the real reason she said it was to pressure Marinette.

“I… okay,” whimpered Marinette. She looked back and forth between the hotel and Kagami for a few moments — and then took Kagami by the arm, hurrying the both of them past the front and towards the staff entrance. There, she stopped again. “I’m really scared,” she said.

Kagami took her hands and stroked them over the knuckles with her thumbs. “I know. But this is important for you. And if it goes badly, then I will still be there for you.”

In the depths of the hood, a brief and fragile smile. “Thank you. I’m so glad I have you…”

“I am glad to have you too,” said Kagami, conscious of just how fragile that smile had been, how quickly it had faded under the weight Marinette was carrying. Kagami was certain now — Marinette must have been spotted once, and she must have had an encounter that burned her badly. “Come on. Let’s go inside. Let’s meet our friends again.”

“Yeah…” said Marinette, brightening a little at the last mention. And then they slipped in through the back door, avoiding all signs of life as much as possible. Even though they were better than the alternative, the two large hooded cloaks moving by themselves would still draw unwanted attention.

They managed fine, though, and were only seen once by a member of the cleaning staff, who seemed to shrug his shoulders in a ‘not-my-problem’ kind of way. Soon, they were at the medium-sized meeting room where the meeting was being held.

Kagami glanced up at the clock on the wall — 20:27. The screen at the side of the door said the room was booked for a ‘private event’ from 20:00 to 23:30.

Marinette’s fumbling hand found Kagami’s arm. She didn’t say anything, though. Through the door drifted snippets of an apparent speech: it was hard to recognise the voice after all this time but it was a man’s voice, speaking with joviality rather than solemnity. “To Marinette and Kagami! I still miss them, but I’ll always have wonderful memories to treasure,” was the last thing they could hear before a brief round of scattered applause.

“Let’s go,” Kagami murmured to Marinette.

Marinette hesitated for a moment, but then put her hand on the door too. Their sunken, sickly-looking skins looked so harsh in the strong hotel lights, as the sleeves rolled back. But it was time to uncover everything now. The hands were nothing compared to the rest of them.

They pushed together. The conversation in the room, which had audibly started to rise again after the speech, quickly lowered at the sight of them — which likely wasn’t helped by both of them stopping just inside the door.

Kagami could recognise almost every single one of the twenty-some people in the room. Marinette’s parents were there, grey-haired and full of wrinkles. Luka and Juleka and Rose, who sat at the closest of eight round tables, had all gained weight and looked healthy and full-figured; Juleka had cut her hair to a bob, while Rose had grown hers out, and Luka had cut his completely short. Chloé, a person Kagami hadn’t expected to see at all, sat there in a remarkably sombre outfit and had aged fetchingly; next to her was a woman Kagami couldn’t recognise at all.

There was a screen with a photo of Marinette and Kagami, as Ladybug and Ryūko, fighting an akuma together. The words ‘21 YEARS AGO’ were emblazoned in gold across the bottom. Two photo frames with a headshot of each of them stood on a table next to the podium.

It was like stepping out of a memory and into a distant future. Everyone looked older, larger, grimmer, with wine glasses in their hands and wrinkles to their smiles. They were all recognisable, in the way that a photograph left out in the sun for years would still be recognisably the same.

Then she remembered what she herself looked like, and stopped that cruel thought from progressing any further. They all looked well, and they all looked surprised and worried.

And… Kagami’s mother wasn’t there. That, at least, was not unexpected.

Adrien — because it was Adrien, despite his careless stubble and his growth spurt that had shot him up to two metres and his growing belly — returned to the podium he had half stepped away from and bowed towards the microphone. “Excuse me,” he said, and his voice was so strange and deep and yet it was still undeniably Adrien’s. “This is a private gathering. You must have the wrong room.

“Actually, we meant to come in here,” said Marinette. She spoke too quickly, only barely avoiding a stutter in the middle. “We… ugh.” She started to walk forward, towards the podium, pulling Kagami along by the handhold they shared. From the harsh grip, Kagami thought Marinette must be using literally all of her willpower just to force herself along.

A murmur rose as they moved forward. One man — Kim, Kagami realised — said: “Got a prank planned for us, Adrien?” Adrien shrugged and shook his head.

“Did anyone ask for this?” said Adrien, clearly out of his depth. There was a smattering of negatory replies. “Okay. We’re remembering some friends of ours who died. If you don’t leave, we’ll have to call hotel staff and have them throw you out.”

The squeeze against Kagami’s hand told her that Marinette needed help. “We know,” Kagami said. Another agitated murmur rose from the congregation. “We… have something we want to say.”

Adrien looked out across the room again, as though asking for support, but nobody spoke up to aid him. So he just stepped back and let them come up to the podium, though he still watched them with creased eyebrows.

There was still a persistent whispering going around the room. Sabrina, visibly pregnant, was practically hissing into Alix’s ears. Some of the eyes that met Kagami and Marinette were curious or neutral, but many were clearly disapproving.

The question was whether they would be more or less disapproving once the hoods came off.

Kagami squeezed Marinette’s hand and moved up to the microphone. Even though she didn’t need to, she drew in breath through her nose — it was just a habit, but somehow it still calmed her accelerating soul a little.

“I knew Marinette,” she started. It was a terrible start for what she was building to, but the thing she was building to was far too big. She needed to start somewhere. “She was a very good friend of mine. I loved her very much. I still love her very much. And… I would have been here at every one of these meetings if I could, but I didn’t have a chance to come before this year. I was… incapacitated.”

She stroked her thumb across the back of Marinette’s hand, and felt the grip soften a tiny amount. It was time. “The person who put me back together again so I could come here today, was… Marinette.” She gripped the front of her hood and pulled it back.

There was silence. Then there were several screams, which only worsened when Marinette took off her own hood.

“You’re sick!” screamed Mylène. Sabine broke down in tears. Ivan slammed his fists hard into the table.

“Okay, I’m calling hotel security right now,” said Adrien. “This is a really tasteless prank, girls —”

“No!” said Marinette. “No, it’s not a prank — it’s us! Look!” She pulled off the entire cloak, letting it slide down to the floor; there were more screams from the gathered guests as they saw the torn-up clothes, the clear shrapnel wounds to the body. Kagami kept hers on — if they were going to react like that to cuts and tears, the deep hole in her front wasn’t going to do them any favours. “This is how I looked! When I died! You remember, don’t you, Adrien?”

“I remember perfectly well,” said Adrien, but not like he believed — rather, like he wanted to strangle her for making fun of a traumatic memory. Behind Marinette, Tom Dupain got to his feet. Despite his age, he had considerable bulk still, and could easily carry both of them outside if he wanted.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. They weren’t supposed to take it as a tasteless joke. They were supposed to either be scared, or be loving, or both at the same time, but they weren’t supposed to be angry.

It couldn’t end like this.

Kagami took the microphone again. “Luka,” she said, “you went with Marinette on a double date with me and Adrien to Philippe’s ice rink. When Marinette fell over, both of you went to help her, but I was the one who lifted her from the ice. True or false?”

Luka’s mouth fell open. “I — buh —”

“Chloé. You and Marinette banded together to sabotage my chances with Adrien on a showing of Thomas Astruc’s film about Ladybug and Cat Noir. Marinette wanted to gift him a passionfruit macaron, but she never got to give it to him. True or false?”

“Anyone could have known that!” snapped Chloé.

“Alya. On the day I died, and that Marinette died, you decided to reveal your identity as Rena Rouge to me. Juleka also revealed that she was Purple Tigress, and Luka revealed that he was Viperion. Marinette then stopped everyone else from sharing identities out of concerns for secrecy. True or false?”

Alya gasped and slapped her hand over her mouth. But the majority of people there still seemed beyond angry with them, and Tom was still coming closer.

Kagami bit her upper lip for a second. Perhaps the hole in her front would be helpful after all…

“Everyone,” she exclaimed. “On the day you defeated Shadow Moth, Marinette and I were blown up by a grenade that exploded right at our feet. We wrapped our arms around each other, and then the explosion went off. I know many of you were there as heroes to see it. We died — but Su-Han brought us back to life.” It was a lie, but the mention of Su-Han stopped several whispers. She unclasped her cloak and let it fall to the floor. “We live, but our bodies are the same as the ones that died in the explosion.”

And she jammed her hand into the hole, rummaging around in the opening. Zoé fainted. As did Nathaniel. Nino swore loudly. Marc retched. And Tom stopped completely. The sight of a hand going into an open wound to the wrist had maybe not convinced people of what was being said, but it had made everyone take notice.

Adrien was the first person to speak up after that. “... Kagami?” he said, his voice barely a whimper.

“Yes,” said Kagami, turning around — but before she got that far, a heavy footstep clamped behind her and then his arms wrapped tightly around her, locking her arms in place.

“Kagami,” he wailed. “I — how — Kagami — you — you’re not —”

“I’m alive,” she mumbled, patting him on the back. He was far too tall for her now, and he practically had to stand on his knees to reach her height, but the heat of his embrace was still there, an emotional charge that planted itself in her body. “In a manner of speaking, I live.”

Tom came closer towards Marinette. “... Marinette… is that really you?” he said, and even he was on the verge of crying. “You — you can’t be you, you’re just — are you?”

“It’s me, Dad,” said Marinette, and the trembling in her voice almost made it break. “I’m your little girl, who set off the fire alarm once because I fell asleep while baking croissants.”

“I —” he said, glancing uncertainly back at his wife, like he was asking her to confirm the obvious truth in front of his eyes, and Kagami wanted to scream at them to just love their daughter already, but before she could —

— Adrien pulled back from his hug, but he didn’t let go of Kagami. He was obviously crying now, tears streaking down his cheeks. “... What happened? How are you — why are you — you look so — it’s been so long…”

“Su-Han, the Guardian of the Miraculous, pulled us out of our graves. He stored us in a building and raised us as — as what we are,” Kagami finished, unwilling to say that word in this setting.

And still, nobody was hugging Marinette. Tom was stuck in the middle of the floor, and Sabine looked on the verge of getting up, but nobody was yelling out their love for Marinette or crushing her into the adoring embrace she so badly deserved.

“... Why did you wait twenty-one years to talk to us?” whimpered Adrien.

“Because —”

“Because I only managed to raise Kagami twelve days ago,” said Marinette. “Because Kagami wasn’t alive.” Her voice was full of conviction, even through the swaying stagger that lay over it. “I couldn’t leave her — I wouldn’t just leave her be. I had to get her back.”

At that point, Alya stood up so quickly that her chair fell back to the floor. Her eyes were almost completely shut in a fight against the tears in them. “M-Marinette…” she said, and then she ran across the floor and up to her once-best friend, practically pushing Tom out of the way as she pulled Marinette into a vice-grip hug.

That was the crack that made the dam burst. Suddenly, everyone was getting up from their chairs. Tearful people — Marinette’s parents, Marinette’s old friends and classmates, and a handful of people who seemed like partners to the friends and classmates — queued up to hug and greet them, or ask them things, or say some kind of awkward hello, or simply ogle from a safe distance.

Most of the attention went to Marinette. As it should. Marinette was the person everyone knew, the leader, the person with parents who had bothered to show up, the person who was actually loved. Kagami waited more in the wing, pushed herself more to the side, and waited there for the people who wanted to approach her. Alix, Luka, Juleka, Alya, Rose, Ivan, Sabine, Max, Chloé, Tom, Ondine — and, of course Adrien.

Kagami had seen all these people only two weeks ago. They hadn’t seen her in twenty-one years, but for her most of that time had passed without her knowing. She hadn’t had time to properly miss them. And Marinette had spent all those years keeping away from everyone, except some worthless corpse.

The hole in Kagami's chest was literal, not figurative. Kim and Nino even stuck their hands into it, to the utter consternation of their wives.

Eventually, everyone ended up in a circle around them, and the barrage of questions became more plenary and organised. Kagami took Marinette’s hand and looked at her — and Marinette smiled, even if the smile was janky and somewhat uncomfortable. She squeezed the hand in return as if to say, ‘I’m fine’. And Kagami smiled in quiet approval.

But then Marinette asked a question, and somehow, everyone went quiet. “But… where are the kwamis? Tikki? Plagg? Wayzz? Sass, Trixx, Longg?” Kagami felt the names like jabs in her gut.

Everyone looked at her with wide, uncertain eyes. Those eyes drifted down to her front, too. After a time that felt unbearably long, Alya said: “You — they’re there, Marinette. They’ve been here the whole time.”

“Where?” said Marinette, looking around; Kagami did the same thing. “I can’t see them…”

“Tikki has been stuck to you for ten minutes, Marinette. Most of the kwamis have — except Longg.” Alya looked over at Kagami. Kagami jolted. Longg was here?

“There are no kwamis here,” said Kagami, though she was feeling deeply uncertain about that fact by the way everyone was looking at her. “Where is Longg-sama?”

“... On your cheek,” said Adrien. “He’s been inseparable from you.”

There was a terrible silence. Then Marinette collapsed to her knees with a sound so desperate and resigned, so unlike anything Kagami had ever heard from her before. “The spell — the spell was meant to take us — our souls would be fed to the Supreme — the after — it must have locked up the magic, we — oh, god —”

“The spell? The Supreme?” said Adrien. “You were… feeding your souls… Su-Han?”

Kagami stepped over and put her hands on Marinette’s shoulders. She could sense that there wouldn’t be any answers forthcoming from that mouth for a while. “Yes,” she said. “Su-Han raised Marinette like this so he could sacrifice her to the Supreme. It is a reservoir of magic for the universe. He intended to do the same to me, but she didn’t give him a chance to.” She looked into his eyes, daring him to defy her decision — but it was someone else who spoke first.

“She killed him?” said Alya, hand over her mouth. Kagami nodded. “Oh my god…”

There was barely a moment of quiet before Sabine stepped forward and knelt in front of Marinette. “Frankly, Alya, if it brought my baby back to me, I would have let her kill anyone.” Her jagged, pointed tone faded away and was replaced with mild compassion as she stroked the outside of her fingers against Marinette’s cheek. “My sweet little daughter. You died far too soon, and you came back far too late. But I still love you every bit as much as I did then.”

“Mom…”

“Tikki says she agrees,” said Adrien. “All the kwamis do.”

Kagami absently touched her hand to her cheek, taking a step back. Marinette collapsed at her feet. “T-tell them all — Tikki, P-Plagg, eve-every single k-kwami — that I lo-love them and, and miss them,” she sobbed, swallowing then retrying half of the syllables.

And Sabine bent down over Marinette to comfort her, and everyone else stepped closer, and Kagami stepped back, and all the attention was fully on Marinette again. As it should be. As was right, for the one who had been everyone’s friend, and everyone’s helper. The leader of the superhero team and guardian of the Miraculous, Ladybug. The supremely lovable Marinette, who had all the feelings to feel in this situation.

As a throng formed around Marinette’s prone and weeping form, Kagami pulled further back, almost into a corner. She could only watch now, because she couldn’t sense the kwamis either, and so she had nothing to offer.

She could only touch her hand to her cheek, as though longing for something to be there.

A time later — perhaps minutes, perhaps days or years or centuries — she heard a voice calling for her. “Kagami!” it said.

“... What?”

Marinette was in front of her, on her feet, looking worried. “Are you okay, Kagami?”

“I’m fine.”

“You spaced out… um, would you rather… is this too much?” Marinette was wringing her hands now. Everyone else was just… watching silently. The weight of their gazes was a lot heavier, all of a sudden.

“No — Marinette, you deserve this.” Kagami tried to put on a smile.

“... Deserve what?”

Marinette’s worried eyes bored into her — and she realised with a wince that the last thing that happened was when Marinette fell apart crying because she couldn’t sense the kwamis anymore. “I mean — you deserve love and attention. Everyone is here for you. You should enjoy their company.”

“We’re here for you too, Kagami,” said Alya. Adrien, next to her, nodded firmly. “We came together today to remember both of you.”

“Longg hasn’t left you this whole time,” Adrien added. Kagami quickly pulled down her hand, pushing it to her chest so as to not bother Longg, if he was still there.

“And everyone includes you,” said Marinette. She came closer and took a gentle hold of both of Kagami’s hands. Her skin practically burned against Kagami’s fingers, so fierce was the emotion behind the touch. “Did you… did you really think I’d be happy without you, Kagami?”

Kagami swallowed. Marinette’s eyes were gouging large chunks out of her, and her worried smile only made it worse. “... I…”

“I didn’t spend twenty-one years avoiding people because you were my only option, you dummy,” said Marinette, ending on a wet giggle. “I wanted you back. You. Specifically you. You were the reason I wanted to stay like this, so I could talk to you again.”

A wall somewhere deep in Kagami finally cracked under Marinette’s gouging assaults, one that she hadn’t realised was there until just that moment. She… did want attention. She did want to see people again. She wanted a family. And… she had really wanted to see Longg again, and now she would never be able to.

As the wall cracked, the emotions that had been restrained within surged forward. Her legs started to buckle. Her head felt like it was going to burst — and then she was crying, and a sob choked her throat.

And then Marinette’s endlessly tender arms swept her into a powerful embrace. “I love you, you dolt,” she said.

Kagami glanced at Adrien, at Alya, at Luka, at Sabine and Tom. They were all smiling. “I love you too,” she murmured, letting the words be swallowed by Marinette’s shoulder.

When Marinette pulled back a little bit, only to return for a kiss on the mouth, Kagami truly did believe she was loved. And the last of her shattered wall poured out of the hole in her chest and piled up, invisible like the kwamis, on the floor.

❦⨯🎕⨯🏵⨯🏶⨯🏶⨯🏵⨯🎕⨯❦

The night went on with conversations about how everyone else’s lives were going. They learned that Adrien was now the guardian of the miracle box, and that Alix was the new ladybug while Ondine was the new dragon. Zoé was the black cat. The rabbit and bee and peacock and dog and butterfly were with new holders, people who weren’t there.

It was a conversation that might have been less dour if not for the fact that the kwamis were imperceptible to them now, but Marinette insisted on hearing about it. She wanted to know what things were like these days out in the world. How things were going for the kwamis. She organised a questioning session by proxy, by asking Adrien and Alya and Nino to tell her what the kwamis were saying.

Tom and Sabine convinced Marinette to come home with them, just for one night. She couldn’t live in that place anymore, she said: “A dead body in a bakery won’t be a good look.” Tom and Sabine also invited Kagami, and she needed no convincing to follow Marinette.

The gathering ended at 01:34, well after the scheduled ending, but Adrien called to ask if the time could be extended. Chloé, who had obviously softened a lot in the past twenty years, gladly paid for the whole extension. Given the circumstances, there were a lot more things that needed to be said this particular anniversary.

After reluctant goodbyes and promises not to tell a soul about the undead kids who crashed the party, Kagami found herself walking next to Marinette and behind Tom and Sabine down the road they had walked up hours earlier, past the place they were accosted by that drunk. Marinette’s hand still burned against Kagami’s, and she hoped hers burned the same in return.

“Ryūko was just as much of a hero as Ladybug,” said Marinette, in a tone that might have appeared innocent if Kagami didn’t know her so well.

She decided not to rise to the bait, though. “Ladybug was still my favourite hero,” she said.

“And Ryūko is mine,” said Marinette.

“I hope you’ll forgive us for saying we also liked Ladybug best,” said Sabine, half turning her head around. “We can’t not choose our very own daughter.”

“But Ryūko is a definite second place,” said Tom. His large body, still as muscular as it ever was, seemed to deter any prospective harassers — not a single person yelled at them about the cloaks.

Kagami smiled under her hood. She didn’t need to win over Marinette in a competition for being loved. She only needed to be in the running at all.

“You know,” murmured Marinette, “there’s no reality where I wouldn’t have raised you. I got you killed because I was stupid. Then I got raised. I’d move heaven and earth to have you at my side.”

“I think you already did,” said Kagami. Then the meaning underneath those words bled through to her. “You… raised me because you felt guilty?”

“No. I raised you because I wanted to see you again. I raised you because… because living without you would have been the worst thing that could ever happen to me.”

There was a painful keen from Sabine. Kagami recognised it straight away. It was the ache of someone who had experienced that worst thing, but who wasn’t supposed to be listening. She moved a little faster and put her hand against Sabine’s back. “She’s here now,” Kagami said. “And I will make sure you never lose her again.”

“What about after tomorrow?” said Sabine. She wasn’t crying, but she sounded like she might be soon. “When you move back to that terrible place?”

“We’ll figure out some way to see each other, Mom,” said Marinette. “As often as you’d like.”

“But I want to see you all the time, for the rest of my life.” From the sounds of it, from the way her walk slowed, Sabine was barely keeping herself coherent. “I want to talk to you, and touch you, and be with you, and make up for all the time we didn’t get to have together. Even if you’re not… even when you’re like this.”

“Oh, Mom,” whispered Marinette, throwing herself forward to hug Sabine from behind. Both of them stopped immediately, and Tom soon thereafter.

Kagami moved in front, though, mindful about Marinette’s sleeves. She gently tugged them forward so that the hands were hidden, offering Sabine the widest smile she could manage — which wasn’t very wide at all.

“Did you really look like this after the explosion? Was this — was this what that monster did to you?” Sabine's eyes moved from Kagami to Marinette’s hands. She wasn’t crying; instead, she looked to be in a calm pool on the other side of tears, resigned to the sadness she was carrying. “You look so... so fragile...”

Kagami could only nod. Marinette, though, mumbled “We’re fine. Don't worry about us, Mom.”

“How can I not worry about you, when I’ve spent so long without you?"

“We’ll see each other as often as possible. I don’t know how, but we’ll make it work. We’ll figure out a solution. I promise.”

“And we know our little girl can figure out a solution for everything,” said Tom, smiling damply as he put his arm around both Marinette and Sabine. “Our little Ladybug.”

Sabine took a deep breath. The apparent despair that had gripped her before, now seemed to let go. It was a sweet image, made bizarre by the fact that Marinette was just a patchy hooded darkness in the middle. But it was bizarre because it had to be, and it was sweet because it couldn’t not be. A family who loved each other, even though they had spent over two decades apart.

Not like Tomoe Tsurugi, who never showed up even once.

“Kagami,” whined Marinette. “Come.” Her arms waved gracelessly towards Kagami.

Sabine smiled. Tom stretched out his free arm and pulled Kagami into the embrace. Three sets of hands reached around her, three breaths warmed the air around her.

“You’re family now too,” said Sabine. “Maybe if I have two daughters, I can make up for lost time.”

Kagami met Marinette’s eyes. Marinette mouthed “Thank you.” Kagami smiled back, then closed her eyes and let the hug happen. It was a family too late, but it was better than no family at all.

And she whispered to the empty air: “Farewell, Longg-sama.”

And the empty air whispered back: “I’ll never forget you, Tsurugi-san.”