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He never wanted this. The day Adrien Agreste was given a miraculous, his first instinct was to chuck it out the window. When he returned home, Plagg had already retrieved it. He explained again the importance, the honor, the glory of a miraculous.
“You’re special, Adrien,” Plagg told him at the grand finale of his speech, clearly expecting him to be touched and amazed by the concept.
Adrien crossed his arms to block the kwami from trying to force the ring into his hand. “You’re not from around here. I’ve always been special. I don’t need any more special than what I’ve already got.”
There was barely enough time in the day for him to attend school, extra-curricular lessons, and do his job. In fact, most days there simply weren’t enough hours for it to be possible. He was supposed to have extra time to save Paris on top of that?
“Don’t you want to save lives?” Plagg asked.
“That’s what Ladybug is here for.”
Adrien refused to take the miraculous. Plagg still continued to follow him around, harassing Adrien for days about his destiny. The little pest was unavoidable. He appeared in his room, in his locker, in his school bag, always holding that ring out. It was a bad time to start handling a new destiny. His father was coming out with a new line, a collaboration with a widely known couture designer. Adrien’s daily experience went something like → Wake up at the crack of dawn. → Finish that homework you were too exhausted to complete last night. → Go to class. Pay attention. → Go directly from school to a photoshoot for the new promotions. → Come home late at night, too exhausted to do anything. → Repeat.
The week was rough, stretching Adrien to his mental and physical limits. The weekend did not promise any chance to relax, because he had been signed on for a commercial shoot. The concept of seeing friends outside of school was beginning to seem like some bizarre fantasy that only existed in movies. The least he hoped for was a chance to sleep in, but the sun had not even risen yet when Adrien was woken by knocking at his door. He groaned, blinking in the darkness, feeling too heavy to move.
More knocking. “I’m awake,” Adrien called out to whoever, his voice rough from sleep.
“So soon?” someone whined from the pillow next to his.
Adrien shouted and attempted to jump away, but his legs became tangled in the sheets and sent him tumbling straight to the floor with a loud thump.
“Is something wrong?” came Nathalie’s voice from the other side of the door.
“No! Just excited!” he responded through gritted teeth.
Adrien clutched his elbow, throbbing with pain from the angle it hit the ground. Plagg laughed his annoying little head off from above.
“Would you leave me alone already?” Adrien snapped, speaking low in case Nathalie lingered by the door.
“Try the ring on once and I will,” Plagg offered, then tossed the silver ring to him.
Adrien made no move to catch it. It hit his chest and bounced to the ground. “I don’t have time.”
He showered and changed in a half-asleep state. When he went to the car, it was still dark out.
“Is my dad coming?” he asked Gorille hopefully, climbing into the back seat.
The driver shook his head before gently closing the door behind Adrien. The disappointment hit him like a punch to the chest. He looked forward to modelling gigs because they were the only chance Adrien had to spend significant amounts of time, sometimes entire days, together with his dad. He didn’t show up to every single shoot, it was always a gamble whether Adrien would see him. Somehow the dumb boy had convinced himself his first video shoot was something his dad had to be there for.
As it turned out, film shoots are grueling. Adrien was pushed straight into the makeup trailer without a chance to grab even a donut. The makeup artist was a hardcore professional at ignoring the increasingly embarrassing grumbles coming from Adrien’s starved stomach, which he appreciated at first. By the time she started on his hair, he was hungry enough to ask if he could get up for a second to grab something to eat.
“You’ll need to ask the director if you can,” she said. “He’ll be here any moment.”
If asking permission to eat was required, Adrien knew well that the answer was already no. He knew better than this. He always ate before going to a shoot. He was so annoyed by Plagg and eager to get away from him that he rushed out of the house without thinking about it.
The director arrived after Adrien had already been handed over to the wardrobe staff. He was Christian Balmain, a relative of the designer his dad was collaborating with. A tall, severe man who came in with two assistants to approve the styling. Christian cut straight to the actress opposite Adrien, scrutinizing her with dark eyes. She looked to be fourteen years old at most, although Adrien had not been introduced yet. The director wasted no time informing the girl that she looked awfully fat, and she would cost them a lot of extra effort to make her look thin. Adrien felt simultaneously offended on her behalf and grateful he didn’t eat that donut.
The trio turned their attentions to Adrien when they were done picking her apart. They prodded and pulled at his clothes, demanded him to turn every couple of minutes, while talking about him as if he wasn’t there. Adrien tried to ease the nerves of being inspected so impersonally by looking to the girl, who stood with her arms apart while the stylist worked on adjustments. She looked at him with sympathy. He tried to give her a look that he hoped would say, “I think you look just fine.”
“Is this Agreste’s son?”
Hearing his name pulled Adrien’s attention to the three men dissecting him. One of the assistants answered yes on his behalf before he had a chance to speak for himself. Christian’s eyes swept him up and down and up again. He gave final notes on the stitching and construction to his assistants, who murmured and nodded their heads before walking off to inform the stylist. Christian lingered in front of Adrien, adjusting the lapels of his blazer, before bringing a hand up to caress Adrien’s neck. Adrien shot a questioning look straight into the director’s eyes, but the black pits in his skull had no answer. Whatever the intentions, the touch had nothing to do with styling. Like nothing, Christian turned to follow his assistants out of the trailer. Adrien’s skin crawled, an icy sensation spreading out from where he was touched.
That was how Adrien started the morning, and it did not get any better from there. The set was rushed, disorganized, and dragged on for over twelve hours. Adrien was exhausted, mentally and physically, and purposely kept starved, and upset his father hadn’t come, and his flesh felt like it would fall off his bones every time Christian laid an unnecessary hand on his back or shoulder while instructing or repositioning him, and nobody was saying anything about it even though they were all watching it happen.
The moment Christian called cut and announced it was time for Pilar’s (that was the other model, Adrien found out) close ups, Adrien made a silent beeline for the makeup trailer. He slammed the door behind him, going straight for his backpack. The second he unzipped it, Plagg flew out, making Adrien shout for the second time that day.
“Would you leave me alone already?” Adrien growled.
“Whoa, calm down there, grouchy,” Plagg snapped back.
Being told to calm down only made Adrien grouchier. His cellphone shook in his hands as he pulled up his contacts. “Just get away from me, I’m tired of people pushing me into things and I’m not going to put that ring on.”
“If you did, you could get out of here… You know what it does.”
Adrien dialed his dad. “I can’t leave here, my dad would kill me.”
“If production was postponed because of a disaster, it’s not your fault…” that treacherous little devil whispered from his shoulder.
Adrien shrugged Plagg away. The call went to voicemail. He dialed Nathalie, pushing his back against the wall and sinking down to rest.
She answered on the second ring. “Yes?”
“I, uh, hi, Nathalie.”
“Hi. What is it?” she asked brusquely.
“I’m at the shoot for the commercial–”
“I know that, I woke you for it.”
“Yeah… it’s just that, I’ve been here a really long time,” Adrien picked at his artfully distressed jeans, feeling unprepared for this conversation. Like he should have rehearsed or something.
“Is it over?”
“No, but… I want to go home,” he felt it coming, but couldn’t do anything to stop his voice from shaking. Adrien took deep breaths while silence dragged from Nathalie’s end.
“You have to finish your scenes, Adrien,” she finally said. “It’s only one day.”
“I ca–” Adrien’s voice cracked, and he pulled the phone away from his face. He tilted his head back and blinked up at the ceiling.
“Hello?” Nathalie’s voice floated up from the floor, where his hand holding the phone had fallen. “There’s nothing we can do this late into the project, Adrien. It has to be finished.”
Sluggishly, he raised the phone back to his ear. “Can my dad come?”
“He’s unavailable.”
“Okay.”
Silence on the line from both of them.
“Well… I have work to do, is there anything else?”
Adrien sighed through a clenched jaw. “Nope, that’s all.”
“Good luck with the shoot then.” The line clicked.
Adrien let the phone slip through his fingers and hit the floor. He stared at the wall opposite him, blank and numb and powerless. There was nothing he could do for himself. Nothing anyone else would do for him. They were too absorbed in their more important adult problems or too afraid of the consequences if they protected him.
Without saying a word, Plagg fluttered up to his eye level. He was holding out the silver ring. Obedient as he was, Adrien put it on.
Chat Noir burst out of the trailer. Filled with anger and adrenaline and anonymity, he went straight for the lighting equipment. He leapt, easily, ten feet through the air and brought the first light stand tumbling down. Sparks exploded where it crashed on the pavement. The crew screamed in confusion, at first assuming it was an accident. Until the second one came down and burst much larger flames, then they began to run. Chat Noir sent them on a game of cat and mouse by directing the crash of the next light into their path, watching them flee in the opposite direction before pushing the next enormous lighting fixture that way with the weight of his body.
The destruction of the lights left the film set in the dark, only the flames on the floor flickering weakly. No problem for Adrien, now that cat eyes granted him night vision. He could see everyone around him, but they couldn’t see him camouflaged perfectly into the darkness. A good scare was all he wanted to give them.
Behind the adults running selfishly for their own lives, he saw the girl, Pilar, cowering in a corner by herself. Chat Noir ran to her side and scooped her up in his arms.
“Let’s get you out of here, gorgeous!” he said, still feeling sorry for the brutal criticisms she had to hear from the director and his two assistants that morning. He wished he could tell her that she wasn’t even actually fat and she looked very pretty. He could now.
The girl cried out in surprise as he lept from tables, to trailer roofs, to the top of an adjacent building. “You practically weigh nothing!” he reassured her. She shrieked and pounded her fists on his chest.
It wasn’t the reaction he was expecting. It frightened him, and he dropped her. She fell roughly to the floor, and it looked like it hurt.
“Oh, god, sorry,” Chat Noir winced. He reached out to help her up, but she crawled away and screamed for help.
She was terrified. Well, okay. Unexpected, but understandable. She couldn’t tell it was Adrien and she had seen him causing destruction with a grin. He supposed the best he could do here was bow out and call it a night. He ran to the edge of the building and took a fearless leap off the edge, knowing he would land on his feet somehow.
He didn’t land on his feet. He made it halfway down the drop, then his entire body slammed against the side of the building. Pain blazed sharply through what seemed like every nerve in his body. When it subsided enough for Chat Noir to come to his senses, he realized he was dangling upside down.
Something was fastened around his feet. Someone was pulling him back up. With a grunt, Chat Noir pulled his upper body towards his feet, until he could slash at the cord around his ankles (wow, he was suddenly flexible). His claws merely caught on the string, and could do nothing to sever it. What the hell was this made of? He fell back, limp and useless. His back dragged against the rough brick wall as he continued to be reeled in like a fish.
He was pulled back to the rooftop, and slammed to its floor without a split second to get his bearings. Adrien had never been in a fight, or been injured doing anything, really. He had never had so much as a sprain. While he was still blinking white spots out of his vision, something pressed down powerfully on his ribs, pushing the breath out of his lungs.
It was a girl, sinking her knee into his chest to keep him pinned on his back. When he saw the red and black mask across her face, he knew he was screwed.
“How did you get here so fast?” he hissed. Not even the police had arrived.
“I was around,” she answered idly, bright eyes darting around his body. Searching for something?
While she looked elsewhere, Chat Noir swiped a clawed hand at her face. She ducked before it struck, and in that same movement both her hands seized Chat’s forearms. With their arms locked in a power struggle, they wrestled back and forth, before she ruthlessly twisted her knee into his rib cage. Pain shot through him, ripping a whimper out of his throat, and with a kind of adorable grunt she slammed both his wrists to the cement by his head. She clearly knew how to defend herself better than he did.
“Where’s your akuma? Is it in this bell?” her sharp, clear voice demanded.
“I don’t have one!” he spat, squirming beneath her. He wouldn’t be able to tell someone what an akuma was, but he recalled Plagg naming them as the main thing he’s supposed to use these abilities against.
“Yes, you do. You wouldn’t have transformed without it,” Ladybug insisted.
His wrists, chest, and legs restrained, there was nothing Chat Noir could do to get himself out of the mess he made. With a huff, he went limp beneath her. “Nope. That’s my miraculous.”
She blinked, and pink lips parted in surprise. “It can’t be.”
“Oh, it can.” And he remembered one more thing he could do to get out of here. He used the magic word Plagg had told him. “Cataclysm!”
When dark power swirled over his hands, Ladybug was smart enough to jump away. Instinctually, Chat Noir slashed at the yoyo cord around his ankles. It crumbled to dust in two seconds. Ladybug was frozen ten feet away, perhaps panicked even. He took advantage of this to scramble over the side of the building while Ladybug soaked in the shock of finding another miraculous holder. In the moments it took her to recover, he had already transformed back to Adrien Agreste.
He did his best to act shaken as he jogged towards Gorille, who was frantically searching for him. A powerful hand on his shoulder steered him to the car, while Adrien looked back to see a girl’s silhouette jumping across the rooftops behind.
When he arrived home, his father was standing at the door. He'd been waiting for Adrien. He tenderly cupped his son's face and asked if he was alright. Adrien wanted to remain upset at him, but his ability to resist wasn't strong enough after longing to see his father for so long. Adrien’s pride told him to shrug the hand away and let his father know how upset he’d been, but that weak will made him nod adoringly. He saw his dad too rarely to feel anything but a fond thrill at face-to-face signs of affection, however austere the hand on his shoulder was.
Adrien was told to go rest, and sent a tray of dinner up to his room. He and Plagg helped themselves, laughing at The Perfect Crime they committed in the most sloppy way possible. Despite the thorough beating he took, Adrien didn’t feel a single bruise or sore spot. For someone as overprotected as Adrien, it was exhilarating; the idea of being as reckless as he could dream of without any consequences.
“You know, she wouldn’t wipe the floor with you if you whipped your staff out on her,” Plagg said through a mouth full of cheese.
“My what? Don’t be gross.”
“You’re gross! You have a literal baton equipped when you transform. She gets the yoyo, you get a stick.”
“Oh.”
“Try it next time,” Plagg suggested.
Next time was sooner than Adrien expected. It was a week later, on a Saturday, because Adrien was bored. Chloe had bought four tickets for a concert at the Zénith, and offered two of them to Adrien and Nino. Unsurprisingly, Adrien was forbidden to go by his father. So he was left in the silence of his room, alone, while his friends went out to have a blast at the front row for Rihanna. He was so restless and lonely, it barely took any nudging for Plagg to get him to say, “Claws out.”
He’d never snuck out of the house before. He thought about it many times, when he had been left in situations like this, but always been too afraid to try. He hadn’t thought about committing theft before, never needed to. So, those were two new things he tried that night.
When a masked guy in a black catsuit walks into a hardware store, everyone knows he’s not there to buy anything. Security was called on him before he reached the first aisle. Chat Noir felt insecure about his abilities to hold his own after Ladybug subdued him in ten seconds flat, but as it turned out, average cops didn’t stand a chance. He tried out that baton for the first time, and left them all on their backs. He caused a scene, made a mess, crashed out one of the back windows with a sack full of spray cans.
Adrien was cracking beneath the pressure of maintaining a sparkly clean public image as the face of Agreste brand and being held to standards of perfection in his home life at the same time. Living up to expectations he never agreed to meet was asphyxiating. If it was his responsibility to take on yet another public persona as Chat Noir, he would be the one to set the expectations.
That night, black cat silhouettes tagged “Chat Noir” appeared across freeway signs, water towers, over his own smiling face on the billboards at the center of town. He heard police sirens a couple of times, but by the time the cars reached where Chat Noir was last spotted, he was already gone.
As the night wound down, he became steadily more comfortable in his new, wicked skin. For someone who was always too timid to make a scene, Adrien liked to think that he was learning fast. He stalked down Chloe’s street at midnight, using his staff to bash in windows of cars parked along its perfect cobblestones. Mercedes, Royce, Jaguar, all shattered. He paused when he reached a Nissan, sticking out almost shamefully amongst the rest of the luxury lineup. Unlikely car choice for someone living in this neighborhood. So he skipped over it, and slammed his staff through the Hummer in front of it. A hideous choir of alarms screamed behind as he did so, and he could see the lights of mansions turning on, silhouettes of Parisians peering out their windows. No one came out to stop him.
He jumped over the lush hedges of the mansion at the end of the block, planning to cut through backyards to avoid the police cars that were surely on the way. He landed silently on the marble-tiled patio behind, but the hedges rustled behind him. Bristling, he spun.
“Chat Noir, is it?” said Ladybug, crossing her arms.
He held his staff up defensively, despite her relaxed pose.
“What is wrong with you?” she asked.
Glowing green eyes narrowed in the shadows. “That’s rude, so I don’t think I’ll answer, but it would take all night to get through the list.”
She stepped towards him. “I didn’t mean it like that—I just, I haven’t been in this situation before.”
He stepped back. “Meeting another miraculous holder?”
“Well, that too. I meant dealing with a criminal that wasn’t possessed by evil forces… Is someone making you do this?” She came toward him again.
“No,” he said, raising his staff. She swatted it aside with a nonchalant sweep of her hand, coming closer still.
“I want to help. Are they threatening you? I can protect you,” she insisted, her blue eyes full of sincerity and sympathy for assumed circumstances that simply didn’t exist.
Chat Noir inhaled slowly, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “I said no. For the first time in my life, no one is controlling me.”
“Then why…” Ladybug grasped for words, confusion written all over her expression. Was she so naive that she never considered someone would willingly use superpowers to make trouble? Not even Adrien was sheltered enough to think so.
“You don’t know what to do when it’s not as easy as sticking me in your yoyo to make me a good person?”
The compassion in her eyes went cold and he knew he struck a nerve. “How can you be so cruel to your kwami, forcing them to be a part of these crimes?”
He couldn’t hold back a single, dry laugh. “He’s no angel. It means nothing to Plagg as long as there’s a cheese platter in it for him at end of the day.”
“I don’t believe you. What are you even trying to accomplish?” Ladybug’s voice was rising steadily, betraying her lack of control over this situation. It’s what gave him the confidence to angle his baton toward her and push the green button.
It extended out, ramming Ladybug in the chest and pushing her off her feet. He let it stretch out far enough to send her crashing into the hedges.
It was a sucker punch, but he wanted to avoid this ending in another fight. Because he was sure she could still kick his ass. So with a quick, “Sorry, goodnight!” he vaulted to the neighboring backyard and crossed through strangers’ properties in the darkness until he found himself back home. He scaled the wall of his home, careful to avoid the window of Nathalie’s office that was still lit up. His window was left open from when he snuck out earlier. He rolled in and transformed back to Adrien simultaneously. When he stood up, he waited tensely in the silence, somehow expecting his dad to materialize out of the shadows and demand to know where he’d been.
No such thing happened, and Adrien sighed in relief.
“Sorry, goodnight?” Plagg mocked. “You ruined a perfectly good badass moment with sorry, goodnight!”
Adrien clenched his eyes shut and pressed his fingertips between his brows. “I know, shut up.”
A couple of months later, Chat Noir was becoming a familiar nuisance to the citizens of Paris. When Adrien was straining under the pressures of his school or work life, he used the guise of Chat Noir to blow off steam with no consequences. Ladybug always arrived to get him under control before he caused too much damage. For some reason, she always let Chat Noir go after subduing him. He was starting to wonder if she liked their game.
Because he definitely did. The more he crossed paths with Ladybug, the more his motives changed. At first, it was fun being Chat Noir because he was free to do as he pleased and causing havoc was fun. This was still fun. But lately, he looked forward most to having Ladybug’s undivided attention.
“If you want to see Ladybug so bad, why don’t you do what you’re supposed to and team up with her already?” Plagg suggested once he started catching on.
Adrien turned that idea down for the tenth time. “I told you I don’t want a second job.”
Plagg kept bringing it up, but didn’t seem committed to doing anything more to convince Adrien. He liked not having to do any real work to do either. Stirring up trouble was all it took for Ladybug to rush to them, every single time.
Until one day, she didn’t.
Adrien had watched Bonnie and Clyde on mute while trying to fall asleep one night, and kept that idea tucked away for future chaos to orchestrate. He felt glamorous as hell blazing into a bank and demanding everyone to get down. Most Parisians knew his capabilities by now, and the fear of his abilities made the situation far easier than Chat Noir had expected. He took his sweet time cleaning out the vault, then cataclysmed his way through the back. Ladybug was nowhere to be found.
“No, no, no, no, no,” he muttered under his breath as he snuck across rooftops, lugging a stupidly heavy bag of cash that he didn’t need or want. He could hear something like gunshots in the distance and his ring was beeping and he hadn’t planned this far ahead. He wasn’t supposed to actually succeed at this. The transformation wore off before he made it somewhere safe (not that he could think of anywhere safe to hide a sack of stolen money), and he found himself in the worst possible situation.
“Oh my god, this is so bad,” Adrien continued speaking to himself, circling the bag of money that he was terrified to touch with ungloved hands.
“Isn’t that the point?” Plagg grumbled, flopping tiredly onto the bag.
“I didn’t plan to actually succeed, I have no idea what to do with this extremely incriminating evidence that I’m Chat Noir!” His fingertips ran through blond hair, twitchy with nerves. “Where the hell is Ladybug?”
That question answered itself when the sound of gunshots started up again and something flashed at the corner of his eye. It was fireworks, not guns, a rapid succession of them bursting in the sky. Far too many to be normal.
“For once, you’re in luck. Looks like she has her hands too full to think about you,” Plagg mused.
Wrong. This was a terrible consequence disguised as good luck. Now, a bunch of innocent people lost their money all because Ladybug didn’t show up. Okay, no. It was mostly his fault. Probably even all of it. But still, it could have been avoided. “Plagg, transform me back.”
It took a few minutes for Plagg to recuperate the energy to do that, but soon enough Chat Noir was bounding toward the source of the explosions in the sky. He found Ladybug sprinting across the clear roof of the Grand Palais and chased after her. He landed on the glass panels with a hard thunk, which Ladybug whirled around at the sound of. Her yo-yo clocked him on the side of the head before he’d even realized she shot it.
“Chat Noir, what are you—Are you part of this?”
“Do that again and I might be,” he groaned, clutching at his head. “Some pretty awful crimes happened while you’re chasing after one pyro.”
“I’m not the police,” she snapped, ducking low at the sound of a firework soaring toward them.
The fiery pink missile shot over her and barely grazed past Chat, as the one responsible for it landed on the glass roof alongside them. It was a boy calling himself Skyrocket, who gunned fireworks at them out of two neon yellow shells strapped to his forearms. “What’s this,” he said, eyeing up Chat Noir. “Another miraculous?”
Chat ignored him, and turned back to Ladybug. “You don’t understand, I robbed a bank!”
“Brag to someone who gives a—” she abandoned that thought in favor of barrel rolling away when Skyrocket fired off another round, this time pointing one arm at Ladybug and one at Chat.
Over the sound of fireworks blasting and the chaos of scrambling across the glass rooftop to dodge the one aimed at him, he only vaguely heard Ladybug shout, “Lucky charm!”
Adrien didn’t follow news on Ladybug very closely. He realized in this moment that he didn’t actually know what her ability was. When bursts of searing color flew past him and exploded at a safe distance, he looked to Ladybug with eager curiosity. She stood still, giving a puzzled look to a large polka dotted bucket that materialized in her hands.
“What are you supposed to do with that?”
“I don’t know?”
“Seriously? That’s the most useless power ever!”
“Have you done anything useful in your life?” she countered sharply.
He proved her wrong by saying “Cataclysm,” and touching the roof beneath them. The glass under their feet cracked, then shattered. The next volley of fireworks skimmed over their heads as they dropped through.
The landing was rough, but they both made it on their feet. Ladybug’s eyes bounced rapidly around what seemed like every corner of the Palais.
“The akuma is in one of the firework shells on his arms,” she said. “I need to break them open.”
“And how are we supposed to do that without him blasting our hands off?” Chat asked.
“I was talking to myself,” she answered dryly. Chat Noir narrowed his eyes at her, until the corner of her mouth curled into a smirk. Something about it made his breath hitch. “But if you’re offering, you can help by keeping his eyes on you.”
Ladybug ran off without waiting for him to decide to take the offer or not. She didn’t really need him. His ring sounded, warning him to get out of there.
He could have left her. He intended to leave her. But curiosity pulled him back. He’d never seen Ladybug in action against someone that wasn’t him. So he jumped in Skyrocket’s path and toyed with him, taunting mercilessly. Until a firecracker hit Chat straight in the chest, and the force of it caused him to black out for a few seconds.
When he began to slowly regain his senses, he was on the floor. Skyrocket had him by the wrist, reaching for the miraculous ring. On his back, Chat Noir’s peripheral vision detected movement across the ceiling beams—A blip of red. Then a downpour of ice cold water splashed over them. That snapped Chat back to his senses quick.
“Break the rockets open!” Ladybug ordered from above.
Despite his ears still ringing from the last blast, Chat Noir swung his free hand up toward the firework shells strapped to his forearms… But flinched the moment that Skyrocket aimed a blast straight at his face.
Nothing blasted, though. Chat Noir and his opponent blinked in equal confusion.
“The rockets!” Ladybug reminded him, her voice suddenly at their side after she leapt down.
Chat Noir swung his claws again, and they shredded through the rockets as easily as butter. The water had soaked through the shells, rendering the opponent’s weapons useless. The lady was clever.
A black butterfly fluttered out of the broken fireworks. Chat sat up to watch in silent curiosity, but a sudden awareness of a ringing sound pulled his attention down to his ring. There was only one claw left. He jumped to his feet and ran off while Ladybug did… whatever she was doing.
After transforming at a safe distance behind a bus stop, Adrien looked back toward the Grand Palais just in time to see a miraculous light wash over it. The broken glass roof was mended, all of his damage undone. He hadn’t thought about the consequences to one of Paris’ landmarks in the moment he used Cataclysm, while caught up in bravado and having split seconds to react to threats. He would have felt awful about it if it wasn’t for Ladybug.
But she was here, and she had the power to set right everything done wrong in seconds. So he could relax and do as he pleased.
The next time there was an akuma attack, Adrien resolutely ignored the smug grin on Plagg’s face when he turned and said, “Claws out,” a little more eagerly than he intended. He was eager to see the surprise on her face when he arrived on the scene. He was just as eager to see a triumphant smile beaming just for him when she said “Well done!” at the end of it all. He hadn’t received this kind of praise in years, after overachieving became ordinary for him. Affirmation this enthusiastic was so rare for him. No one congratulated him like this since he was a child, after everyone began to assume it must have been effortless for him to be good at everything.
“You can let him go now,” Ladybug laughed, looking toward the teenager Chat had clutched by the shirt.
Chat Noir gripped him tighter, pulling the guy up to his feet. He was shorter, so his toes barely brushed the floor when Chat straightened up.
Ladybug’s grin faded upon realizing that he wasn’t letting go of the victim. “Chat…”
He took a step toward the ledge, and Ladybug gasped a soft, “No!” before he swung the victim over the edge and let go. Without a split second of hesitation, Ladybug rushed past him and dove after the teenager. A split second too late, she saw what he’d done. The guy had only fallen a few feet down and landed on a top floor balcony that had been out of her line of sight.
“You asshole cat!” She shouted through the wave of relief crashing over her. She hoped to hear a laugh from over the roof, but only silence responded. He was gone.
Chat did what he could to keep his relationship with Ladybug complicated. He began to help her more often than not, then sabotage himself before either of them could get comfortable. A cycle of building up trust then damaging it, so that they could start from square one. Ladybug was paranoid at first that he was showing off in front of her as some kind of threat. When months dragged with no real harm done beyond Chat Noir’s petty chaos, she started to put pieces together.
At the same time, he was pulling together pieces of her. Most were missing. He didn’t know her name or age. He knew none of the things he’d been taught were most valuable in a person; her social class, her lineage, if she was old or new money. For the first time, it was clicking that none of these things were important. He perceived that she’s smart, and strings together ideas quick as lightning. By watching her make sense of Lucky Charm, he saw her being creative, intelligent, and resourceful. Any private facts about her life seemed unimportant compared to what he was steadily discovering each time Chat Noir collided with Ladybug. Her wit, her confidence, her daring. The things that made her laugh despite resisting it, the things that made her clench her jaw in anger. He knew that she liked him. Not in the sense he hoped she would, but platonic liking was still enough to make him feel cared about.
She didn’t let his offenses slide just because he would lend her a hand sometimes. If she wasn’t busy with an akuma, Ladybug always came when Chat Noir needed her. She knew as little about him as he did about her, and yet the only thing more important than him was Paris itself being under attack. On the night he terrorized the Louvre, she trapped him in an alley behind a Chinese restaurant. As he ran, his air was cut off, stopping him in his tracks. He clawed at his own neck in animalistic reaction, but only left rough, red scratches over the skin. The material of her yo-yo was unbreakable, and choked tighter when she tugged it back. His shoulders collided with her chest and he found himself fighting off a very surprising reaction to this situation.
Ladybug must have been on tip toes, because her chin grazed his shoulder when she asked, “What did you take?”
Her voice was flat, neither angry nor amused. Maybe tired. They had a rough akuma experience the night before. The cords were too tight for Chat Noir to reply with anything but ragged gasps. Uncomfortable as it was, he found it exciting. He didn’t need to know this about himself. The strangle went slack as Ladybug spotted a bundle he’d dropped at his feet when she first roped him.
She released him to reach for it, while he doubled over to take desperate gulps of air. What she picked up was a shred of red fabric that looked as if it had been torn right off a curtain, wrapped around something quite small.
“I was going to give it to you anyway,” he said once he caught his breath, which she responded to with a click of her tongue. “No, really!”
“You keep doing this. You know I’m just going to return it,” she said. Despite it not being the first time, she was unable to resist the curiosity to look at what was beneath the scrap of cloth.
“It’s the thought that counts,” Chat Noir smiled, watching her unravel the diamond he’d taken. Even in the dim alleyway, it glittered brilliantly.
It didn’t seem to spark any interest whatsoever in her. “I wish you would just use your powers for good, not this.”
“It’s the regent diamond.”
“What!” She looked down at the gem in her hands with newfound amazement, just the reaction he’d been hoping for.
“I do use my powers for good, too,” he pointed out.
Ladybug rolled her eyes, wrapping the precious stone back carefully. “You know what I mean.”
“Is it not good enough?” he provoked, lowering his voice.
She looked up at him, her gaze tender despite his brusque tone. “I appreciate that you try. Just, it doesn’t have to be like this. Why can’t you let me trust you, without trying to spoil it all the time?”
“With the things I do, you shouldn’t trust me.”
“That’s for me to decide. It would be so much easier if we could just be partners, keeping Paris safe together,” she said wistfully. Her eyes were so bright and so sincere and for a flicker of a moment Chat Noir felt like he could do anything for her.
“Absolutely not,” he said firmly. “I’m not selfless the way you are. I have a life, one that doesn’t make time for going out every night to fight for strangers who will only think of themselves in the end.”
Ladybug listened with gritted teeth, though her expression remained inexplicably sympathetic. “You think I don’t have a life when I’m not Ladybug? You think I don’t steal? Or lie every single day?”
Honestly, he didn’t. The admission of this left Chat Noir speechless as he tried to process what it meant about her. Ladybug had advanced on him as she spoke, stepping right up to his face. “There’s not an application process to be a hero, no one’s doing background checks on us. You do it or you don’t, and it’s driving me crazy that you’re floating in between!”
He straightened his posture so that he could look down on her, faking some kind of upper hand.
“And what are you going to do if I won’t help you? Take my miraculous and turn me in?” He asked tauntingly, although at his core he was genuinely afraid of it.
Ladybug’s face twisted into an offended grimace. “I would never! Not as long as you aren’t harming anyone. Which—I’ve noticed—you never do when it’s not self-defense. You don’t even want to take my miraculous. It’s always these mild crimes and I don’t know what you want from me.”
Her affronted scowl had gradually shifted into a puzzled frown as she spoke, pink lips dragged down by his burden. It was his fault, and he couldn’t change that. He could only say something he thought would make her smile. “How about a kiss?”
She raised her eyebrows. Then, her hand came up between them and he watched her pop a series of four kisses against her knuckles. With no warning or hesitation, she curled it into a fist and punched him in the jaw. The hit snapped his head to the side and sent him careening. His cheek hit the alley wall, scraping the skin.
“Augh!” He groaned, flashes of white exploding behind his eyes. “You’re a terrible kisser!”
“Not into bad boys!” Ladybug said, throwing her yo-yo out and grinning at him.
His heart was pounding, the cut on his cheek tingled and stung. She might as well have kissed him, if this is how it affected him. It occurred to Chat Noir that he might be in too deep when the girl can pound his face and make him like it.
“Well, I’ll see you at the National Bank tomorrow at midnight!” he shouted to her as she swung away.
He couldn’t wait one more day to see her. He had it bad. It was too obvious to deny at this point. It was repetitive to do a bank again, but that was the first thing to come to mind when he had only a split second to decide where to tell her he’d meet her.
He wanted to avoid a repeat of the last disaster when he accidentally succeeded. It was the first bank he thought of because he’d been there a couple of times, accompanying his dad on errands. At least by taking from the Agreste private vault he would have nothing to feel guilty about.
Not that he had to worry about that, because she awaited him on the building’s rooftop this time. The bank was a historic building with baroque sculptures integrated into the exterior and an aged bell tower at its peak. At the sound of his landing on the rail of the bell tower, Ladybug looked over her shoulder, unfazed. She was leaning one side on an aged column, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.
“It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it, ma belle?” He flicked the ancient bell hanging between them for emphasis.
Ladybug had no reaction whatsoever, as if she hadn’t heard him at all. “I need you to tell me why you keep doing this. Stop making a joke out of it when I’m seriously trying.”
He couldn’t help feeling offended his pun was unappreciated, and flipped to the defensive. “Trying to do what, make me your minion?”
“Don’t antagonize me,” she said firmly, her tone so commanding of respect that he almost apologized on the spot. “I know you don’t think of me as an actual person, but I do have a real life. I’m stretched so thin between my private responsibilities and protecting Paris and now, on top of it all, being at your beck and call whenever you’re crying for attention.”
Chat Noir started to retort, “I didn’t think you were expecting—”
“Expecting applause?” she spoke over him. “I wasn’t, because thankless work is Ladybug’s entire life story. I’m not asking you to appreciate what I do for you, I’m asking you to understand what it’s like for a teenager and cut me some slack.”
She paused, waiting for Chat Noir to say something. But something repulsive was dawning on him, rendering him speechless.
Ladybug’s voice softened as she told him, “I kept thinking it’ll get old for you any day now and you’ll stop it, but I’m starting to think that’s not going to happen. I’m under a lot of pressure and I’m going to slip if nothing slows down.”
It had gotten old for him a while ago. He only kept doing this for her attention. He was so swept up in escaping the pressures of Adrien’s life that he didn’t stop to consider how it affected Ladybug.
“I’m a jerk,” he gasped, horrified.
Ladybug raised an eyebrow. “That’s the image you’ve been diligently curating, yeah.”
No, it wasn’t even the fake image. Without putting on any airs, he had been thoughtlessly acting as selfish towards her as the people around him who make Adrien’s life miserable. He wasn’t different from them. And here was Ladybug, standing up to him with a spine of lead, the way he never had the backbone to do for himself.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize…” he was too appalled by himself to even admit it out loud.
She let it slide by saying, “I know you didn’t. Most people who need my help don’t realize anything until the aftermath.”
“I’m not… I never wanted to be this kind of person.”
Ladybug’s crossed arms slid apart, dropping to her sides. “Then stop being one. No one’s holding you responsible.”
“You should, though,” he insisted.
She averted her gaze from his, turning her head to look at the view from the bell tower. “I’m all about chances, if you haven’t noticed.”
She glanced sideways, looking at him from the corner of her eye. He brought a hand to his chest and bowed deeply before her. “I’ll do anything you want for another chance. I’ll be at your service until I make it up to you. It is I who is at your beck and call now!”
When he straightened up, his head knocked into the bell, setting it off. Ladybug’s hand covered her mouth to stifle a laugh. Any embarrassment he should have felt was drowned out by the wave of gratification that came from being the reason she smiles. “What’s the first order, My Lady?”
“Here it is: Tone it down.”
“No.”
Ladybug clicked her tongue, propping her hands on her hips. “Why even ask, then?”
Because he didn’t need to ask to know what she wanted. As much as he had been fighting it, it’s something he wanted more badly than her. He supported her
He stopped causing trouble, out of respect for Ladybug. With all the stress that came from maintaining a hyper-perfect image as a celebrity and model student for his friends and family, he thought it would be too much to take on the responsibility of another persona to uphold for an adoring public. They forgave him, but never truly forgot. The extra media scrutiny turned out not to be so much of a burden, since anytime a critique of Chat Noir acting less than perfect came up, there was always someone arguing “He could be so much worse, though, so he’s actually doing quite well.”
It was exactly what Adrien always wished could be the case in his personal life.