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Marinette knew for certain now that it had been five days since she was admitted to the hospital. Somehow, there hadn’t been a single akuma for all that time.
She knew equally for certain that Kagami hadn’t left her side even once. Well, except one time when Marinette had needed to do a number two and a nurse had needed to come in and help her, and had asked Kagami to not come into the bathroom with them. Perhaps the nurse would have felt embarrassed otherwise.
At the moment, Kagami was sleeping again. She was sleeping with her head on Marinette’s arm, and a hand clutched fast around Marinette’s wrist. Which was apparently a thing vampires could do. Maybe it was related to how bats could hang upside down while asleep.
Currently, one of the nurses had just entered the room. A trainee nurse, perhaps, or at least one that hadn’t been in the room before, because Marinette hadn’t seen her and nor did she appear to have seen Marinette. She read the name plate outside very carefully before she stepped inside.
Even so, her first greeting when she came inside was, “Hello, Maribeth. I’m just here to check your vitals.”
Marinette blinked at the nurse. She felt like her vitals were well accounted for already, given how they were still aching. “Um…”
“The tubes and stuff.”
“Oh.”
The nurse moved slowly, like she was experiencing the room itself for the first time. She almost stumbled on a table leg, but quickly stabilised. Then she came across to the opposite side of Kagami’s side and took a close look at Marinette’s free hand, and the tubes going into it. “Hm-hmm,” she said. “Hm-hmm.”
“Um,” said Marinette, feeling just a little bit like something was wrong. “Are my v-vitals okay?”
“I don’t know yet,” said the nurse, pulling at the IV bag a little, with a bored expression that suddenly turned wide-eyed. She spun around, holding both her hands as fists to her chest. “Why? Are you having trouble breathing? Is there something wrong with your heartbeat?”
“No, I just —”
“I’ll check!”
“No! I’m fine! But you said you were checking them —”
“Oh!” The nurse sighed and rolled her eyes, letting her upper body fall backwards a little. “Thank God , I’d hate to have someone die on me on my first day…”
Marinette opened her mouth, then decided not to. Then she thought she had to, since she’d started in the first place. “I — fine, but I don’t think you have to worry about that… I’ve been doing okay for a few days now.”
“Good. Stay that way, please.” Turning around, the nurse started to walk around the bed as she talked. “I’m having a hard enough time getting used to the layout of the building and all the rules, I don’t want to also be responsible for a you-know-what right now…”
At the end of her talk, she was on the other side and right in front of Kagami, with her hands resting on her hips and her eyes restlessly looking around.
“... What are you looking for?” said Marinette.
“It’s an electrical outlet for the bell you ring to — oh, there we go,” said the nurse, and leaned forward. When she did so, she leaned straight into Kagami. She yelped loudly and cursed almost as loud, throwing herself back; Kagami fell off the chair, quiet except for a grunt, and yanked Marinette’s arm. The result was a stab of pain in the gut as it was yoinked out of position and a sting in the other hand as the IV tube was pulled taut, shifting the needle in it; Marinette didn’t scream, but she very much wanted to.
“Oh, my God!” said the nurse. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph! I didn’t see…”
“Gh… I’m okay,” said Marinette. Her insides weren’t, but she figured that went without saying at this point. She lifted her arm back up, now untethered by Kagami, and tried to sneak a peek down at the floor.
That was the downside of Kagami being there. Whenever she didn’t want to be noticed, she just… disappeared into the background, and most of the time — outside visiting hours, and sometimes even inside them — she was just invisible to the medical personnel. This was the first time anyone had done anything like this, but there had been a couple of occasions where a doctor had commented on Kagami’s absence while thinking she wasn’t actually there.
And now Kagami, so rudely awoken, slowly sat up on the floor while blinking. Marinette wasn’t worried about her as such, because she thought a vampire must be more resilient than to be harmed by something so base as the floor, but it was still a relief to see her so — unbothered.
“I’m so sorry,” said the nurse. “I didn’t realise there was somebody there…”
There was no response from Kagami. Not until she looked around and caught sight of Marinette on the bed, at which point she broke into a smiling sigh. “Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning,” said Marinette.
“Er,” said the nurse.
“I have slept very well,” Kagami continued, shifting her position on the floor until she was cross-legged, hands resting on her shins. There was an unusual glint in her eyes. Just for a moment, a droplet of drool seeped out from the corner of her mouth — then she pulled it back in.
She seemed far too satisfied for Marinette to break it to her that she had just been responsible for quite a lot of pain. Marinette’s gut was still throbbing. “That’s very good,” she replied, through slightly gritted teeth.
“Look here,” said the nurse. Who was also at fault, so Marinette was fine ignoring her for as long as Kagami wanted to.
“Have you rested we—” Kagami started.
“Now look here already,” said the nurse, and stepped over to put her foot inbetween them. The gesture immediately got Kagami’s attention; Marinette reluctantly gave hers away too. “I apologised to you, didn’t I?”
There was a beat. Kagami glanced over at Marinette for a moment, and took a deep breath. “You did?”
“Yes!”
“What for?”
“Because I — you didn’t notice?” The nurse looked exactly like somebody had just smacked her very hard in the face with a frying pan, then immediately offered her a bouquet of expensive flowers with an apology card.
Kagami blinked. “I… didn’t.”
“Well, I just knocked you off your chair so you fell on the floor…” said the nurse. The frying pan had clearly knocked away some of her gusto; she had fits and starts of indignance that nonetheless fizzled out into uncertainty, like she had really planned to go on a tirade. “And you — you fell, yes…”
“Oh. That’s why I was on the floor.” Kagami shot straight to her feet, a lot quicker than she probably should have been able to. “I wondered what had happened.”
“And I said sorry for it.”
Kagami blinked again. Marinette frowned; she thought that there was somebody else in the room who also deserved an apology, but she didn’t want to be aggressive about it.
“And when someone apologises, it’s… er, it’s customary to… oh, forget it,” said the nurse, gaining conviction only for the last three words. “That’s all besides the point. It’s not visiting hours right now, so you have to leave.”
The blood in Marinette’s veins froze at the same time as Kagami’s expression. “... What?” said Kagami.
“I said, you have to leave,” the nurse continued, putting her hand on Kagami’s shoulders, like a baby putting its hand onto a hot stove. “We’re not allowed to let the public in outside the specified hours, and seeing as you just caused an accident that put my patient in danger, I’ll have to ask you to go.”
“You’re telling me to leave the love of my afterlife to fester alone?” Kagami replied, a sentence that had so many things wrong with it that Marinette pursed her entire face.
But nothing happened. The nurse either didn’t hear or didn’t pay heed to any of the wrong parts, and instead just responded to the refusal. “I’m telling you to come back during visitation hours. Your friend needs rest.”
“I am not leaving.”
There was a glint of scarlet in Kagami’s eyes, sharper and bloodier than her usual colour. Just below her upper lip, which didn’t snarl but seemed not very far from it, the points of her canines glinted. Marinette had never seen Kagami behave like a vampire before, but the air over her was unmistakable, and something needed to be done before things got worse. “Kagami, don’t —” said Marinette.
“You have to leave, I’m afraid,” said the nurse, and gripped harder on Kagami’s shoulder, like she was trying to pull her out of the chair. “Now come with me, or I’ll have to call security on you, and we don’t want th—”
—at was as far as she got before Kagami, momentarily a blur of rough grey and blood red and sharp, had the nurse pinned with one hand to the opposite wall. Kagami, who was levitating and holding the nurse several feet off the floor by the neck, raised her other hand. It was distinctly bat-like and clawed, and the tone of her voice over the faint clattering of her abandoned chair carried a grave, animalistic doom.
“I don’t have to do anything,” she said. “But you’re right to be afraid.”
“Chrk,” said the nurse.
“I will make you regret trying to separate me from her. Or perhaps… I will make it so you can never try again…” The clawed hand tensed, pulled back, like it was about to strike —
“Kagami!” shrieked Marinette. For a moment, the shrillness of her own voice surprised her, but then she thought about it and found that no, being shrill right now was pretty darn warranted. “Don’t — don’t you-know-what her!”
Kagami turned her head around to look at Marinette. She was — otherworldly, in multiple ways. Before, the vampirism had been apparent only through suggestion, but right now her fangs were clear as day. Her ears, normally hidden entirely by her hair, poked out of the bowl of black with bat-like edges. Her eyes were completely white around the irises, then crimson, then absolute black. Her canines had grown longer, so long that they would dig in deep during a bite before any other teeth even touched the skin. She was pale, and her face was more edged, and she looked simultaneously like a ghost and a living creature.
And she was mesmerisingly beautiful. Even through the terror, even though she seemed to be salivating, Marinette couldn’t overlook that fact. Or maybe it was the terror saying that, but she couldn’t stop her mouth from falling open, or her heart from thrumming with joy.
“She’s trying to take you from me,” said Kagami. The mundane intensity of her voice was almost shocking; Marinette had half expected an infernal and supersonic scream. Instead, it just sounded like regular Kagami, but worked up.
“I… she’s just trying to do her job, Kagami. I don’t want you to — to leave, either, but you can’t you-know-what — I mean, you can’t kill her for that!” Somehow, her heart was still racing happily, not with fear and adrenaline. And all the while she talked, Kagami frowned deeper and deeper.
“If I don’t you-know-what her, I will have to leave.”
That was true. And as long as the nurse was still alive, this might happen again, and Marinette didn’t want that — no! “Kagami! Are you compelling me right now?”
“... No.”
“You are. Stop doing that.” Marinette closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to her temples. “If you… if you can compel people, couldn’t you just compel her so she won’t tell you to leave?” Her heart slowed down immediately. In her memory, she recalled the image of Kagami again. It was… it wasn’t not beautiful. But it was beautiful in a frightening way.
Nothing happened for a little while. The nurse breathed heavily within that while, occasionally retching for air, but she clearly had some opening to respirate. Eventually, Kagami said, “I guess that’s true… but…”
“You can’t just kill people,” Marinette insisted, keeping her eyes closed and her hand in front of her face. “It’s not right to kill people.”
“But… I have to…”
A piece suddenly clicked into place in Marinette’s brain. Kagami was salivating — throwing longing glances. Maybe she really was that upset at the idea of being taken away, but she was also just…
… hungry.
“Kagami. You are not allowed to feed on her,” said Marinette, opening her eyes again. Kagami hovered there, half girl and half bat, like someone who had just been caught with her hand in the tin of jammie dodgers.
“I…”
“You are going to let her go right now, and then you are going to drink blood from me like you so clearly want to.”
“I do not want to drink blood from you!”
Marinette reached up to her collar and pulled it down, baring the side of her neck. Kagami’s expression of indignant protest immediately melted away, and the girl pulled in air deeply through her nose, smacked her lips.
“I think you do,” said Marinette, quiet but resolute. She tapped her collarbone with her index finger, eliciting three small thumps. “And — and I think you should do it.”
Did she really want it? She didn’t know. Not really. She certainly didn’t want a nurse to die, and she didn’t want Kagami to go hungry, either. It had been five days of no blood for Kagami, maybe longer. But whether she specifically wanted to be used like that… she wasn’t sure yet.
Kagami’s grip around the nurse — who seemed frozen stiff with horror — loosened even further. “I… I’m not supposed to drink from you until you’re healed…”
“You’re allowed! And I’ve been on drips for days! I probably have lots of blood now!” said Marinette, with no idea whether it was true or not, but enough urgency in the back of her head to sound convinced about it. She pulled the collar away even further, and Kagami groaned audibly. “So as the — love of your afterlife, or whatever — I am commanding you to suck blood from me, and let the nurse go!”
Which worked. Somehow. Kagami, a vampire with unknown but obviously superhuman powers, with enough strength in her body to overpower adults and lift them off the floor with a single hand, with eyes that could hypnotise anyone, immediately let go of the nurse; the nurse flopped to the floor with a raspy sigh.
The nurse. Who had just seen, and heard, and felt, far too much.
“As you wish, my love!” said Kagami, bowing elegantly. “I will suck —”
“Although, um,” said Marinette, because she could see the nurse eyeing the doorway, “before you do that, can you please compel the nurse to forget everything that happened since she knocked you over?”
Kagami glanced over her shoulder. “Ah. Yes. You’re right…”
The compulsion… happened. Somehow. Marinette registered that something shifted in the nurse’s expression, from the look in the eyes to the tension of the muscles, but apparently all Kagami did was to lift her hand and wiggle the fingers a bit. Then the nurse got up, brushed herself off, and looked around in obvious embarrassment.
“... Well. Um, I don’t know what happened… I must have been really tired. Er… I need to go see other patients… I’ll see you later, Maribeth!”
“Marinette,” said Kagami, waggling her fingers again. “Marinette, my queen and commander, precious gemstone of the heavens.”
“Marinette, my queen and commander… precious gemstone of the heavens,” the nurse repeated, her eyes swirling. “B-bye!”
And then she zoomed out the door, while Marinette sat in her bed and blushed furiously. “Did you really have to do that?”
Kagami turned towards Marinette, her bestial features faded and her eyes back to the ruddy brownish-red they had been before. She looked deathly serious as she replied, “You deserve to feel appreciated.”
“I would feel much more appreciated if you did something different!” Marinette replied hotly, but — she couldn’t deny that she liked something about the moniker. When Kagami had said it, it had sounded warm and intense and adoring. If it had only been the two of them in the room, and if it had been said directly, Marinette would have adored hearing it.
But she could tell — from the way Kagami’s eyes flickered between hers and her bare neck — that she oughtn’t draw this out any longer.
“Come closer,” she said. “You… you must be hungry, if you haven’t eaten at all since you got here.”
Kagami looked down at the floor. “I have eaten. I just haven’t had any blood.”
“Well, you can — you can have mine.” Marinette swallowed. She… wasn’t sure if she wanted this. She wanted to help Kagami, she wasn’t opposed to being with Kagami, she was reasonably certain that she had a reasonable amount of blood inside of her and could bear to lose a little bit of it again, but there was just something about the way Kagami had looked — had burst forward, had changed so much —- that felt dangerous. If Kagami started drinking, what would happen then? Would she want to stop? And would it hurt? Would it cause an infection?
This time, at least, Kagami would get the blood. There was no way around that. Most people in a hospital needed the blood they had inside them already, a lot of them needed even more.
“... Okay,” said Kagami, and bowed again. “My love. I thank you. And I will make sure to imbibe only a little bit. So I don’t you-know-what you.”
She stepped closer. Marinette leaned her head to the side, tugged on the hospital gown to show even more skin for the bite. It would only take a few moments, probably, and then it would be over and Kagami would be okay.
She leaned in. Marinette breathed in through her nose, tried to relax. Her heart was starting to race again. She could see Kagami leaning in, could feel Kagami’s hand on her shoulder and thumb on her ribs and breath on her skin. It felt… good, in a way. Kagami was pretty, in fact incredibly pretty when she was herself, and even though she felt chilly on the skin her touch wasn’t unwelcome.
But then Marinette imagined the teeth and she knew, even though she had to let it happen this time, she was scared of being bitten. Of being a vampire’s blood bag, like Kagami would own her, control her.
For now, she breathed in, steeled herself. She couldn’t do anything else. Maybe she would enjoy the sensation — she just didn’t know yet. Kagami’s breath was so close now. In just a second or two, it would be too late to say no…
“Ahem,” said a voice from the doorway. “I hate to disturb.”
Marinette jumped. Kagami jumped. Something fell over behind the bed. In the doorway stood… Nathalie Sancoeur. Adrien’s dad’s assistant, and Adrien’s surrogate mum.
“If I may interrupt your romantic moment for a little while,” said Nathalie, and Marinette flushed red hot with simultaneous shame and relief. Mme Sancoeur had seen — but she had stopped it from happening. And she hadn’t realised it was a vampire thing. “You have a visitor, Marinette.”
“Oh,” said Marinette. She glanced at Kagami, who looked about as embarrassed as was possible without any blood to flush her face. “Okay.” Then her head cranked over to the next thought in line. “Wait, I thought it wasn’t visiting hours right now?”
“You’d be surprised at how easy it is to be allowed in when you’re the richest man in Paris,” Nathalie commented drily. “Please come inside, sir. You have ten minutes.”
Marinette was about to ask what Nathalie was talking about, because she was still struggling to move from thought to thought, but when she saw that the visitor in question was Gabriel Agreste her mouth fell open. Him — the actual, honest to god, richest man in Paris, the influential fashion designer — the famous acerbic recluse — was standing in the doorway of her hospital room like an ominous lightpole. “Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” he said, halfway clearing his throat as he spoke.
“M-Monsieur Agreste!” said Marinette. She glanced at Kagami again, hoping on some level that she was fantasising and that Kagami would confirm that this was just some weird dream she was having. Maybe a by-effect of having her blood drained — she had no idea. But Kagami looked as surprised as she herself felt.
M Agreste walked up, not too quickly but with legs that were so long he moved fast by default. He stopped at the foot end of the bed, where he turned around to face Marinette, directly opposite her headrest.
Then he cleared his throat again. “Marinette Dupain-Cheng. I come to offer my sincerest condolences to you for the horrible accident.”
“... Accident?” said Marinette.
“The… accident. The reason you’re in hospital right now,” he said. He seemed to not be looking at her, but instead at some spot about five inches above her head. The brooch on his chest jutted forward, as a result of his chest doing the same thing, like he was trying to make himself look big — which he really didn’t need to do, because he was already huge.
“I see,” said Marinette. “Thank you? But why are you offering condolences?”
“Because of my deep concern,” said M Agreste. He rattled it off like it was a practised line.
It wasn’t an answer to the question, either — not really. Why would he go out of his way to visit, when he was such a stiff old codger who never left his house? It wasn’t like he had anything to do with the accident.
“Um, thank you,” she repeated. She glanced down at the brooch again. It seemed vaguely familiar, now that she looked at it. “But why are you concerned for me, specifically?”
He cleared his throat once more. “Because I heard about the accident from my son, who is your classm… he is your classmate, right? Adrien Agreste? Young, blonde, about your age?”
“He — yes,” said Marinette. “He is.”
“There you are. I have deep concern.”
“I had to drag him kicking and screaming,” said Mme Sancoeur from the doorway.
“Nathalie. Please step outside and close the door,” said M Agreste. He didn’t have the good grace to look embarrassed.
Nor did he have the good grace to be honest. Something wasn’t adding up. He was standing there and pretending to be deeply worried, but the accident was five days ago. He had no reason to care about the accident, or about her, other than their very brief meetings over fashion.
“I assure you, Marinette. There were other matters that kept me from visiting you, but… I have deep concern. When the accident happened, and Ladybug selfishly didn’t turn up to fix it… I knew I had to do something.”
“Do what?” said Marinette. It wasn’t just that something wasn’t adding up — it was actively subtracting.
“Show up to give you my regards, because of my deep concern.”
And also, it wasn’t an accident — it was an akumatisation. Stoneheart hadn’t meant to crush her, but the fact that it happened in the first place was an intentional choice by none other than —
— Monarch. The guy who sent out the akumas in the first place. The incredibly tall man with a brooch. Marinette looked up into M Agreste’s face, trying to find out whether he knew something about Monarch. He had to. Maybe Monarch was his brother, or something…
… was what Marinette thought, because her thoughts were still moving through her head on a slow ratchet, clicking in one at a time. But then she saw a second pair of eyes, just above M Agreste’s shoulder. A pair of small and purple eyes, attached to a similarly but more brightly purple head, perfectly kwami-sized.
And she realised where she’d seen the brooch before.
“Thank you for your concern,” said Marinette, before turning to Kagami. “You know how I said you shouldn’t you-know-what the nurse?”
Kagami blinked. “Yes? Why do you ask?”
“You are allowed — no, encouraged — to do it to our esteemed guest.”
“Who are you talking to?” said M Agreste, clearly suspicious. Kagami, like she usually did, had faded so much into the background she was unnoticeable.
“Someone who is very hungry,” said Marinette, smiling innocently.
The blur was over him before he could even finish the first syllable of Nooroo’s name.