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For as long as she can remember, Marinette's always had a green thumb and a knack for growing plants that shouldn't have thrived in Paris. It's not like she does anything special, but somehow, under her loving hands and a little bit of extra care and attention, they do. It's like they know her. It's like they love her just as much as she loves them. After she becomes Ladybug, she only gets better at it. Her balcony is a jungle in the summer, and she adores every second of it – coming out of the trap door to be greeted by the smell of lush, green, growing things is one of her favorite moments of the day.
So her tree has always been a mystery to her.
Marinette lets her fingers drift along the trunk of the miniature cherry tree, sighing wistfully as its gentle pleasure sings along her soul. It's healthy. At the very least, there's that. But no one has ever been able to tell her why it needs supports to grow the way that it should. A tree reflects its person, and trees that need this much support often indicate an immunocompromising health condition or certain kinds of cancer. But Marinette's been screened by her doctors every year since her tree began to lean so alarmingly, and there are no indications that she has anything of the sort.
So it's a mystery.
Marinette hates mysteries.
Still, it makes her take care of her body more than she otherwise might, and her green thumb means that she can coax her tree into the full bloom of health, so Marinette tries not to let it bother her.
It was years before she felt comfortable showing Alya her tree – not that she thought Alya would react badly, or make Marinette feel like she can't take care of herself, but the idea of trying to answer questions about it when she didn't even know what the problem was sounded exhausting. Alya understood, as Marinette knew that she would. Her nerves hadn't really been about Alya. The idea of showing anyone part of her soul was terrifying.
She leans in to examine a bud, tracing her finger back along the branch, counting all of the new growth that's come around in the last month since Marinette was accepted to her first choice of university. That's one too many, she decides, and goes back to nip the last bud off. It's a sharp pain, a sting in her heart, and she frowns at the tree. "You know better than that," she says reproachfully. "Don't guilt me about this. You can't properly support all of these and you know it."
The plant grumbles sulkily, a feeling that's very similar to Marinette begging for five more minutes of sleep, or just one more UMS match before bed.
The trees don't talk, but Marinette understands her tree anyway.
"Tell you what," she says, smiling. The tree responds with the faintest feeling of interested, yet wary hope. "It's spring. Go ahead and start blooming whenever you feel like you're ready." She rubs her fingers gently down the branch and brushes a little bit of stray dirt from the trunk.
A wave of thrilled excitement roars through her, and then Marinette feels a steady, solid determination bubbling up inside of her as the tree hunkers down to get ready to bloom. She laughs, making a mental note to keep an eye on the soil – it might need extra water, or fertilizer.
If only all of her plants were that easy to make happy.
Marinette smiles affectionately at her tree one more time and then goes up her ladder and through the trap door onto her balcony. It's late in the evening, the sky fading from a hazy dusky rose into a bruised purple the color of her favorite pansy plant; soon her moonflowers will open, and the gardenias, and the night-blooming jasmine she'd trained to climb the brick wall behind her. For now, Marinette prowls through her garden, looking for bugs, weeds and brown leaves.
"Wow," a male voice says behind her, sounding slightly breathless. "I know I've seen it before, but I always forget how much you've got up here."
Marinette spins, but she's already recognized Chat's voice and her shoulders are relaxing even as she turns. "What are you doing here?" she asks, moving over to the balcony so she can toss her handful of half-dead leaves into the wind. "It's been forever since I saw you."
She winces, remembering the Buttercup speech. Three years later, it seems so stupid.
Not that she'd ever managed to give it to Adrien. Not that she's ever managed to say anything to him about how she feels.
And if Marinette has to remind herself that boys are a distraction that she can't afford way more often when Adrien's around... Well, at least he'll never know how pathetic she is. It's poor comfort, but it'll have to do.
"I actually need a favor, and you're the only person I can think of who might be able to help me," Chat says, watching her carefully. He crouches down on her railing. Marinette will never understand how that's comfortable, but it seems to work for him.
Marinette raises her eyebrows, crossing her arms over her chest. "I don't promise favors until I know what they are."
Chat smiles, the flash of white teeth startling in the dimness. "Smart. I have to go out of the country, and I can't take my tree with me."
Instantly, she straightens up in alarm, her arms dropping. "What? How far away?"
"Over five hundred kilometers," Chat admits with a grimace.
Marinette hisses, wincing at the thought. "I guess that's not going to kill you, but it's going to hurt," she says, her eyebrows knitting together. "Why can't you take it with you?"
"I have been informed that I'm going to be forced to show it to someone there." Chat's eyes are very cold. He sounds frustrated.
"What? That's terrible," Marinette whispers, her hand coming up to clutch her shirt over her heart. She doesn't know what she would do if someone forced her to show them her tree. That's private. There's nothing more personal than someone's tree. "Chat, that's – "
"I know," Chat says tightly, cutting her off. "Believe me, I know. I'm not..." He scrubs his hands roughly over his face. "I'm not in a position where I can say no," he says eventually. "But they can't force me to do it if they don't know where my tree is. Which brings me to you, the most trustworthy person in Paris, and your amazing gardening skills." Chat's face softens, and he's smiling affectionately at her. "If anyone can keep my tree healthy while I'm six hundred kilometers away, it's you."
Hadn't he said five hundred kilometers? Marinette hesitates, and then decides not to ask. It might be identity stuff, and she doesn't want to know that badly. "You're right," she says instead, smiling cockily, leaning her hip against the railing.
Chat laughs. Marinette's glad that some of the light's returned to his eyes. He doesn't look like him without it. "So will you?" he asks, folding his hands together. "I'll owe you one and everything."
"Chat, I'd do this for nothing," she says gently. "No one should ever be forced to expose their tree to anyone they don't want to. That's disgusting."
Chat smiles at her, a small smile, but it's very, very soft. "It's okay, Marinette. I don't mind owing you. Think about it, okay? I'll bring it by tomorrow night." He tosses her a quick salute and leaps away, disappearing behind the rooftops almost immediately.
Marinette watches him go, watches him disappear, and sighs. "What has that cat gotten himself into now?" she asks herself rhetorically.
———
The next day at school, Adrien doesn't come in.
"He has a week-long photoshoot out in Provence," Nino says after he checks his phone. "His dad only told him last night." He shakes his head, sliding his phone into his pocket and hoisting his bookbag higher over his shoulder in a jerky movement. "I kind of thought his old man would lay off as Adrien got older, but sometimes it seems like he's working him harder than ever."
"I think it's time we start coming up with a plan to get him out of that house," Marinette says grimly. "His eighteenth birthday is next fall, but Adrien never mentions it, like it hasn't even occurred to him that he'll be a legal adult with the right to make his own decisions."
"Of course you want to make a plan," Alya says, smiling, as she throws her arm over Marinette's shoulders.
"Well?" Marinette demands, looking from her to Nino. "Am I wrong?"
"Nope," Nino says stoutly, tugging on his cap. "Let's do it. Maybe Adrien hasn't thought about his options, but that's what we're for."
The rest of the day, Marinette makes plan after plan during class, and at lunch, and even in the break and at lunch she's going over different possibilities and coming up with moves and counter-moves.
Gabriel Agreste is powerful, rich, and ruthless. She can't make a mistake in this. Not when it means Adrien's freedom.
The thought occupies her so much that she all but forgets about Chat's problem. She waves Alya and Nino off that afternoon and does her homework with her notebook open beside her, adding ideas when she thinks of them so she can think about their feasibility later, coming up with angles to cover possible counters from his father; it's already evening again by the time she comes up for air.
Marinette's head comes up when there's a very faint knock on her trap door. With her thoughts still half in her notebook, turning over plan after plan, she's off balance; for a long moment, she doesn't know what's happening. No one should be on her roof except Ladybug.
Is there an akuma?
That's when her brain catches up and reminds her that Chat said he'd come back tonight. Marinette knocks on her forehead, annoyed with herself, and then she scrambles up her ladder and opens the trap door for him.
"Hi," Chat says, smiling at her. He's got a large, covered container with him that looks like an old-fashioned birdcage, and he hefts it up in a silent question. "Can I come in?"
Marinette gets out of the way so that Chat can slide down onto her bed and carefully, almost gingerly bring the container down with him.
She'd help, but Marinette's pretty sure that no one wants her to drop anything important. Like Chat's tree. That would be bad.
"Over here," Marinette says, pointing to her dresser. She's cleared off a space next to her tree and rigged a small screen between them, like a miniature version of the privacy screen she uses to change when Alya's over. Chat smiles when he sees it. He hefts the container with ease, though it has to be forty centimeters tall and it's heavy enough that the sound it makes when he sets it on her dresser is a heavy ka-thunk.
"Anything special I need to do?" Marinette asks briskly.
Chat shrugs. "No? It's already tried to pollinate and it shouldn't try to do it again before I get back. It's pretty hardy, all things considered. And like I said, I trust you." He offers her an affectionate smile. "If you need to do something, just do it. I know you know what you're doing."
He flips a number of latches around the base of the dome-shaped container and rests his hand on the top, hesitating for long enough that Marinette looks at him curiously.
"If you don't want to show me, that's okay," Marinette says, tilting her head to try to look into Chat's eyes. "Whatever you're comfortable with."
Chat gives her another quick smile. "Thanks, but I do actually need the carrying case back," he says, laughing with the slight edge of nerves she can see in his eyes. "I've got to pretend I'm taking it with me, after all. And how are you going to take care of it without looking at it?"
"I'll figure something out," Marinette says firmly. Tikki could probably phase into the case and give Marinette verbal reports on how the tree's doing, right? "I don't care about logic, Chat. I refuse to be another person taking your choices away."
Chat surprises her when he throws his arm around her shoulders and gives her a tight squeeze. He leans his head against hers. "That's why I felt comfortable bringing it here," he tells her quietly. "I knew you wouldn't pry."
He sounds tired.
Concealing her concern, Marinette smiles. "I would never pry into your private life," she says, leaning back against Chat, wrapping her arm around his waist. Is he thinner than he usually is? And Chat was already thin – "But you should give me Rena's phone number."
Chat gasps dramatically. "I'm offended," he says, lifting his head to glare down at her. "I'm way cuter than Rena."
"Cute little kitty cat," Marinette teases, squeezing him around the waist. "Like a kitten. Adorable, really."
She's pleased to see that the nerves are gone from his eyes. There's no tension in his arm around her shoulders, and he's cuddled up so close to her that their sides are pressed together all the way down. Flush on the success of teasing him out of his nerves, she grins at Chat even though he's trying to intimidate her into behaving like a normal person. Eventually, he gives up and hugs her to his side again, a smile spreading over his face.
"You're a menace," he says fondly.
"But you're smiling," Marinette points out.
"It's possible that I am also a menace," Chat admits with a sly smile. He drops his arm from around Marinette's shoulders, reaches out, and lifts the cover off of the carrying case.
Chat's tree is a little taller than hers, with a strong, thick trunk and spreading foliage that shivers, even though there's no breeze. Its bark is rough and runs vertical, not like hers, which looks like it's been brushed side to side by a paintbrush. It's the kind of tree she'd expect to see in a storybook, or in illustrations of the kinds of old forests that used to exist when wolves roamed the wilderness. It's the romantic ideal of a tree.
And yet, for all of that strength, Chat's tree is braced by two supports on either side.
Just like hers.
Marinette reaches out to the supports, though she doesn't touch them. "Are you okay?" she asks Chat, giving him a once-over. He doesn't look like he has any of the symptoms that Marinette's been warned about so many times that she could recite them in her sleep, but a person's tree reflects them. Always.
"Yeah," Chat says, flashing her a smile that's tighter than he probably means it to be. "It's not what you're thinking. It just grew that way, that's all. I'm good."
Marinette looks at his tree again, debating with herself, and then she picks up the screen that's hiding her tree from his sight and puts it on the ground.
"I know exactly what you mean," she says, giving him the same kind of smile.
Chat's eyes go wide, full of surprise. He stares at her tree, taking in the humpbacked trunk and the supports she uses to keep it upright. He glances at her, looking her up and down in the most unsubtle way possible. "You, too?"
Marinette nods. "I wonder what it means," she says thoughtfully. "I'm healthy, and I assume you are, too, so... I wonder if there's something we don't know about them yet."
Chat shrugs. "Maybe." He looks at her for long enough that eventually Marinette glances at him and raises her eyebrow in a wordless question. He flushes. "I... I was just wondering why you showed me yours," he says, a little shy. "You didn't have to just because I did."
"It's like you said," Marinette says with a shrug. "I trust you. And I wanted you to know that you aren't alone. Everyone I've found on the internet who needs to brace their tree has lupus or Ehlers-Danos or cancer. I think we might be the only ones who are different like this, and we should be friends, don't you think?"
She turns her head to give him a smile and finds Chat staring at her like the whole world is in her eyes. "What?" she asks, slightly defensive.
"You're right," he says softly. "Thanks, Marinette."
She gives him another smile, this one bigger, and happier, and then she claps her hands together. "All right," Marinette says briskly. "What kind of tree is it? Care and feeding time."
Chat's tree is an English Oak, which makes Marinette give him a surprised look – she'd pegged him for French all the way through, for some reason. "And it's easy to take care of," he says. "I plucked the catkin off two days ago, so it'll be a couple of weeks before it's ready to try anything again."
Marinette gives Chat a very flat look. "Catkin?"
Chat winks back at her. "It's a pollinator," he says. "I didn't name them, though I wish I could have."
It's too soon when he has to go home. Marinette hadn't realized how late it's gotten. She waves him off and watches as he disappears into darkness, blowing out a breath before she turns to go back into her room. Marinette tucks her hands into her pockets to avoid the temptation to touch Chat's tree too much and goes over to look at it again, biting her lip.
"How weird that we have the same thing going on, Tikki," Marinette says thoughtfully.
"Yep," Tikki says, her bright voice sounding strangely sarcastic, for some reason. "It's totally weird!"
Marinette looks at her, but Tikki just smiles and shoves half of a cookie into her mouth.
About two minutes later, Tikki shivers. "Chat left you a message," she says, swallowing hard. "Do you want to read it?"
"It's probably him telling me he'll be out of town," Marinette says. "Yeah, I should probably see what he says. Tikki, spots on!"
Chat's message is exactly what she thought it was. He's going to be out of the country for four days, which gives her the timeframe for how long Marinette will need to take care of Chat's tree. Four days should be fine, even at that distance, she thinks, tapping gloved fingers on the rim of her yo-yo. Take care of yourself, kitty, she types back. No catnip or wild parties, got it? I want my cat back in one piece.
His only response is ;3, which does not fill her with confidence, but Ladybug just shakes her head and laughs before she closes up her yo-yo and detransforms.
"He never changes," she says to Tikki.
"But would you want him to?" Tikki asks, and flies away to her section of Marinette's pillow before Marinette can reply.
The first day goes all right, though Marinette comes home for lunch to find that Chat's tree has shed more than a few of its leaves. They lie sad and discarded on the floor of her room. Marinette picks them up and folds them into a soft cloth so she can give them to Chat when he comes back.
"How are you doing?" she asks quietly, leaning so close to the tree that she can smell it, the wild and woodsy smell that she's always associated with Chat. It's not like her tree – it's not going to answer her. But Marinette has always talked to her plants, and she has no intention of stopping now. It looks all right, she decides. The soil's not dry, the bark is firm and tight, and when she strokes one of the thin branches, it springs back into place with emphasis.
Reassured, Marinette goes back to school for the afternoon and puts the whole thing out of her mind.
When she gets back home that evening, she checks his tree first thing, and she's reassured to find that while it does look like it's drooping slightly, it hasn't lost any more leaves, and it's still whippy, just like earlier. That's a reaction to the distance between them, but all in all, it's a very mild reaction. English Oak is hardy and it can live through some neglect before it starts to show signs of damage. The thought isn't very reassuring in regards to Chat's regular life, but it does mean that he and his tree are going to make it. "You're going to be fine," she says to the tree, very firmly. "I'm going to make sure of it."
Her tree makes a wordless, formless question. Marinette looks over at it curiously.
It's never done that before.
She goes over to her tree and checks it over, too, but there's nothing wrong with it; just like before, her tree is in perfect health.
No matter what she asks it, Marinette can't figure out what's made her tree react that way. She goes to sleep that night still thinking it over in a distracted sort of way, and when she wakes up, it's the first thing on her mind. She stretches and yawns, checking her phone to make sure she's not already late, and then Marinette rolls out of bed to go down and check on the trees.
Her tree is fine.
Chat's is not.
There's a gaping split in the trunk of his tree that pierces right down to the heartwood. The bark is already beginning to peel away from the wound, and there's a slight glistening on the surface of the wound, a mixture of sap and the water and nutrients which is a tree's life. Without it, Chat's tree will die.
Marinette gasps, her eyes wide, her hands over her mouth.
This isn't just bad. It's catastrophic. She's never seen a person's tree this bad, but she's heard about this kind of damage, and it usually accompanies major emotional trauma.
Marinette has never been more tempted to transform and try to track Chat down.
But Ladybug has no reason to be concerned.
That leaves Marinette nothing to do except bite her nails and pray that he's all right – though that seems like an impossible thing, now – and to try to do what she promised to do, which is nurse Chat's tree back to health.
She brings the tree over to her desk so she can work on it, arranging her lamp so she can see the crack more clearly. It's worse than she thought. There's so much of the heart of the tree on display, a wide open and terrible wound that's going to take years to heal properly, if it ever heals at all. Marinette winces, biting her lip. She knows what to do, but...
"Poor Chat," she whispers, curling her hand around the back of the trunk protectively.
"What do you think happened?" Tikki asks, cuddling up on Marinette's shoulder. She sounds concerned, too.
"I don't know, but it must have been bad," Marinette says, her eyebrows drawing together. "Look how deep it is!"
Tikki flies over to grab Marinette's twine while Marinette checks the bark on either side of the split, looking for any decay, for any signs that the bark is beginning to die off already. That would signal really terrible things for Chat's tree and force Marinette to debride the trunk, which she really, really doesn't want to do. Luckily, the bark hasn't started dying yet. That means she can save all of it, if she's quick, if she's careful.
Marinette takes the twine from Tikki's hands and transforms, calling for her Lucky Charm and crossing her fingers that this doesn't count as personal. When the ratcheting strap falls into her hands, Ladybug sighs in relief and gently clamps the body of the trunk together. Next, she winds twine around and around the trunk to keep everything exactly where it is for a while, and then she detransforms.
As far as she knows, that's all of the repair that she can do. A little extra fertilizer and water to encourage Chat's tree to bond back together, and then Marinette's done everything that's in her power to do to help him.
Well.
Maybe she'll cross her fingers, too.
———
She goes to school for the second half of the day, and when she gets home, his tree doesn't look any worse, and there's no sap or liquid trickling from the bottom of the crack, which is nearly invisible after her repair. His tree is already beginning to create woundwood to fill the slight gap. Those are all good signs.
Marinette carries the pot back over to her dresser, sets it down next to her own tree, and brushes her fingers over her tree's trunk in a wordless hello, smiling when her tree tosses its branches in an invisible wind.
Nothing changes after homework and dinner, so Marinette feels reasonably secure in going out with Alya and Nino for pizza so she can present her ideas for the Adrien Freedom plan. Alya brings up several concerns about Gabriel's interference and influence and money, and they toss ideas around for a while while Marinette scribbles notes.
She wants to have more than one plan waiting for Adrien, so that he has some choice over his life. It's easier, sometimes, to choose between several options than to make decisions with a boundless infinity of possibilities and the whole world to do it in. And of course, if Adrien doesn't like any of these plans, or if he has his own idea all mapped out, they'd be delighted to help.
Marinette leaves Alya and Nino with a wave, walking home with a bounce in her step. That was a good evening of planning. She feels confident about the main plans, but she wants to make sure some of her contingencies are solid enough. That'll be tonight's work, she decides, along with homework and keeping an eye on Chat's tree.
Oh, but what can she do about Chat himself? Is he hurt? Or worse? Marinette's mood sours quickly as she thinks about the possibilities, chewing on her lower lip anxiously. His tree is still alive, so he's not dead...
That thought doesn't help at all. She's worried.
It's in that contemplative mood that Marinette arrives home, hugs her parents, and goes upstairs to check on the trees. They're both fine, but her tree is confusing her; Marinette can't understand why it's not making even a single effort to blossom.
"Don't you want to bloom?" she asks it curiously, running her finger along the rim to remove a faint dusting of soil. "You were so excited about it before."
The impression she gets back is a shrug.
"But it's spring," Marinette says, trying to coax it back into the natural order of things. "Do you want me to take you outside? Is that it?"
This time, her tree shakes so violently that Marinette is surprised it doesn't lose a few leaves. It's like a toddler stomping its foot and screaming no no no at the top of their tiny lungs.
"All right, all right," she says, truly shocked. "We'll try again tomorrow?"
It subsides into sulky agreement, though there's something at the edges, just a hint of something else that Marinette can't make out.
Weird.
Marinette glances at her tree more than a few times that night, while she does her homework, while she's checking on Chat's tree – it's doing as well as can be expected, as far as she can tell. Like it's used to this kind of thing.
Marinette doesn't like that thought.
All in all, it's a thoughtful and concerned Marinette that goes to bed that night. She has strange dreams; some of them remind her of that Greek myth with the guy who rolls the stone up the hill every day, though in her dream, she's pushing and pushing with no hope of ever going free, a full-body effort that only gets where it's going in the hardest and slowest way possible. Then she starts to dream about endless, intricate games of cat's-cradle, interlacing and folding her fingers in pattern after pattern to pull the string tight...
Marinette wakes up with a sweet, triumphant sigh on her lips that she's frowning at in the next second.
What was that?
She looks over at Tikki, who's sleeping quietly on the end of Marinette's cat pillow, and noiselessly wiggles her way down to the ladder and slides down to the floor without waking Tikki up. It's Saturday, and she has no plans and nowhere to be, and that means it's time to do some designing, Marinette thinks, stretching long and hard with a bright smile.
That's the perfect Saturday, as far as she's concerned.
Marinette shuffles over to the trees and stops dead, her eyes widening.
Somehow her tree has pulled its pot over the ten centimeters of distance she'd left between their pots in order to sit next to Chat's tree. There's a trench in the dirt, a broken line, as though her tree swam through its own dirt to press against the side of the pot, leaving its own supports behind, so it could reach out to Chat's tree and pull it closer. Their trunks are leaning up against each other, and her tree is growing and pouring itself over the wound in Chat's tree, covering it like a bandage. It's also intertwined their branches to the point that Marinette doesn't think she could undo it without significant pruning.
Now her dreams make sense.
"You were planning this, weren't you?" she accuses, testing the place where the trunks join together with her fingertips to find it disconcertingly solid. It's not a matter of peeling it away, like a bandage. They've inosculated overnight. Breaking them apart is going to do damage to both trees, and Marinette isn't sure Chat's tree can handle that, on top of the original wound.
Her tree hums sleepily, contented and smug, like it's dreaming after a good, solid day's work.
It must have used everything that Marinette gave it for this year's blossoming to do this, Marinette thinks, testing one of her tree's branches and finding it as healthy as ever. She's a little awed by how much sheer effort this took. She hadn't thought that she was this determined.
What is she going to tell her parents?
Actually, never mind that – How the hell is she going to explain this to Chat?
———
When Chat knocks on her trap door, Marinette sighs, steeling herself and reaches up to open it for him. He peeks over the edge with a smile that's a little shaky around the edges, but it firms up and becomes brighter when she waves him in. "Hey," he says cheerfully. "Everything go okay?"
Marinette winces. "Everything's okay, but we do have a problem," she says, scrambling down her ladder and picking anxiously at her thumbnail while he follows more slowly, casting her worried glances over his shoulder until he reaches the bottom.
She gestures at their intertwined trees. Her tree left its braces behind during the move, and Chat's tree let its supports fall sometime today; now they're standing tall and strong with only each other as support. Chat's eyes go so wide that they look nearly round.
"What happened?" he asks her, without taking his eyes off the trees.
"I'm not totally sure," Marinette admits sheepishly. "But the day after you left, your tree's trunk cracked really badly – "
She watches Chat's eyes darken, his mouth tighten, until he's as somber and unhappy as she's ever seen him. "Oh," he says, biting off the word. "That."
"Are you okay?" Marinette asks tentatively.
Chat opens his mouth with an easy smile, and she knows, she just knows that he's going to lie to her. Marinette nails him with a hard look. Chat hesitates, but then he sighs and deflates, allowing the fake smile to fall away. "He wasn't happy that I left it here in Paris," Chat says, gesturing at his tree. "He was even more unhappy that I managed to trick him when I made him think I brought it with me. And I needed to do something while we were there, but I felt like shit because I was so far away from it, so the thing didn't come out well. So, that first night we had a huge fight. And..." Chat sighs, rubbing his forehead. "I don't want to say what he said to me," he mutters.
Marinette drifts closer, desperate to comfort Chat in any way that she can. "You don't have to," she says quietly. "I'm sorry, Chat. He should never have done this. Any of it. It's cruel."
Chat gives her a little smile. "Thanks," he says, just as quietly, and then he tilts his head at the trees. "So I guess that's what made my tree crack. But how did this happen?"
"I don't know!" Marinette says in an agony of irritation. "My tree's been acting funny, but it's spring and it wanted to bloom, so I thought it was just that. I had these weird dreams last night, too. I thought it was because I've been worried about – well, about you and another friend – but also, I put your tree closer to mine than I should have after I repaired it, I guess," she confesses with a wince. "Maybe that's why?"
He brushes his gloved fingers along one of his own branches, but it's so tightly twined with one of her tree's branches that Chat touches that, too. Marinette feels the touch along her nape and her shoulder, like a shock, like a soft and tender brush against her skin, and it makes her gasp in surprise. Chat looks over at her, his eyebrow raised, and there's a funny smile on his face, one that almost looks self-satisfied.
Marinette looks at him, her eyes wide. "That's only supposed to happen when..."
She can't bring herself to say it. She can't even bring herself to think it.
"When people move in together or get married," Chat supplies, his smile growing. "It's okay. I know I'm irresistible."
He winks at her, and it's so much like their patrols together that Marinette automatically rolls her eyes and shoves his face away with her whole hand. "Not tonight, alley cat."
She realizes her mistake immediately.
Wincing, Marinette looks up at Chat, who's looking at her with wide, shocked eyes, which are darting from her face to her earrings to the tiny purse that's currently lying on her desk.
Sometimes she wishes Chat weren't so smart.
"Stop thinking whatever you're thinking, right now," Marinette says in a warning tone she knows Chat will listen to.
From Ladybug.
Marinette groans, slapping herself on the forehead and closing her eyes. "This is all your fault," she informs him.
"I'll take the credit for that," Chat says breathlessly. "Is it really you?"
She opens her eyes a little hesitantly, but Chat's just looking at her with the whole world and all his heart in his eyes, like she's everything. He's never looked at Marinette like that before – but he's never looked at Ladybug like that before, either. This is new.
Marinette sighs. Then, she smiles. "Hi, kitty."
Chat bounds over to her and grabs her around the waist, swinging her around in circles, beaming up at her with delighted eyes and his ears cocked high. "I was right, I was right, I was right – " he carols.
Marinette whacks him on the head. "Not so loud!" she hisses. "My parents aren't deaf!"
Chat winces. "Sorry," he says, setting her down gently. He spins in exuberant circles a few times, his tail twisting along behind him, and Marinette has to smile.
This is terrible and they're probably all going to die, but Chat's happiness is contagious.
"Okay, okay," she says, poking him around shoulder height, though she's pretty sure she gets his chin at least once. "I'm glad you're happy with me, but we've got to do something about this."
Chat spins to a stop facing away from her, looking at her desk and the wall beyond it, lit by her computer monitor. He freezes in place, his shoulders stiff. Out of nowhere, his tail points straight up in a shocked and happy exclamation and he whirls to face her. He puts both hands on her shoulders and leans in to look Marinette in the eyes with so much intensity that Marinette freezes in place.
"I think at this point, the smart plan is to leave my tree here, and that means I'm going to be over here a lot. So I'm going to show you who I am," he says seriously.
Marinette bites her lip, thinking. He's right. He needs regular contact with his tree. There's a lot of reasons she shouldn't know who Chat is, but there's two or three reasons that say she should already know who he is, and one of them is that she's irredeemably curious.
And she's the Guardian and it's probably already too late, but those are just details. Marinette wants to know. That means it's only a matter of time before she slips up and thinks too hard. He might as well tell her now.
Chat smirks down at her. "And then I'm going to ask you out for ice cream."
She frowns up at him, opening her mouth to argue, but he puts one finger on her mouth. "Wait," Chat says, a thread of laughter in his voice. "Wait until afterward. You don't want to say something you can't take back."
"I doubt that," she says, giving him a narrow-eyed look. "But fine. Wow me."
Chat smiles wider than ever, though it's so happy that Marinette feels like she's getting sunstroke just from looking at him. "Claws in," he says softly.
She's seen Alya detransform, so watching the transformation unravel from the outside isn't a new experience for her.
But this time it's Adrien under the mask.
Marinette stares at him, her mouth open, her eyes so wide that they feel like black holes in her head.
It's Adrien. Her mind repeats that, over and over again, like it's stuck there. Like she's stuck in this moment, experiencing it again and again until she somehow manages to understand that Chat is...
No.
No.
It can't be. It doesn't make sense!
Adrien smiles at her, and while it's smaller and more gentle, the same happiness is still in his eyes. She starts to see it then. "I'm really glad you're Ladybug," he murmurs. "And I'm really glad to find out that it's not just my father's fashions you like."
Marinette gasps, her heart pounding, and her eyes flash toward her wall of photos – and then to her computer monitor, which is still showing her desktop wallpaper of hearts around Adrien's face –
He laughs, hugging her tight. "It's okay," he says in her ear. "Come on, bug, everything's fine. Do you want to get ice cream and talk about it?"
Marinette nods jerkily, even though her face is smashed into his shirt and his surprisingly firm chest.
"Then everything's perfect," Adrien says, resting his chin on her head. "And so are we."
"This explains a lot," Marinette says into his chest. "I was really worried – about both of you. I think that my tree might be trying to protect you."
Adrien laughs, a bright, shocked note. "Really?"
Marinette nods again. She doesn't nuzzle her face into his chest, though she desperately wants to, but Marinette does take note of how this feels so she can replay it later, when she's not dying of shock.
"I love you," Adrien says into her hair. "I'm so glad you're my lady."
"I love you, too," Marinette says shyly, pulling away to look up at him. "I'm really glad you're okay, kitty."
He rewards her with another bright smile. "I'm so much more than okay."