Chapter Text
Marinette was walking past an alleyway when she heard the crying.
The alleyway wasn't exactly anywhere important or special. Just a dark, dingy place with a dim orange light spilling from a window four floors up and a couple of bins, tipped over with their contents sprawled across the ground like butter across bread.
Except.
Except.
There was a man there, crouched low with his head in his hands. Marinette couldn't really see what he was wearing or even what he looked like - just vague impressions of blond hair and a (possibly grey?) long-sleeved jacket - but she could see that he had his head in his hands and he was sobbing wretchedly.
Casting the free, open, safe air behind her a wistful glance, Marinette steps into the alleyway.
"Um," she says hesitantly. If this turns out to be a con and, by extension, a robbery, she can't exactly turn into Ladybug and kick his butt. "Are you okay?"
The guy lifts his head slowly and blinks at her. "Do I look okay to you?" He hisses.
Marinette takes another step forward. She's more confident this time - if he is a criminal, she can just beat him as herself, give an anonymous tip to the police about a robber lying unconscious in an alleyway, and scram when she's sure they're on their way. "No."
Eyes flare a dangerous green, and the man unfolds himself slowly. He's taller than she thought he would be, considering the tiny size he managed to make himself curl up into.
Marinette takes half a step backwards.
He smiles ominously at her and takes a step forwards.
She hears the thump of his boot hitting the ground.
The light above goes out.
A heavy body hits her, full-on, and Marinette falls, screaming to nobody and spinning in a whirlpool of cat's green eyes and black leather and claws, claws, claws -
She wakes up gasping, clutching at her heart and staring, wide-eyed, at the familiar wall opposite.
She's in her room, not an alleyway, and there's a familiar red blob floating in from of her face worriedly, saying "Marinette!" over and over again.
Tikki's tiny face relaxes slightly when Marinette's eyes focus on her. "There you are. I was getting worried."
"Sorry," the girl says, and bends her legs so she can wrap her arms around her knees. "Nightmare."
"A bad one," Tikki says, and there's the worry again.
"You were watching?" Marinette asks, even though she already knows the answer. She knows all possible versions of the answer.
"I can't read minds, Mari," she says, giggling at their inside joke.
"I know," she smiles, then sighs and lets her gaze flicker away, to where they'd been before. "It's just. . ."
"It's just what?" Tikki prompts gently when Marinette just trails off.
She shakes her head. "It's just a dream. It doesn't matter."
"Alright." Tikki says, the still-present concern in her eyes being engulfed by a mischievous twinkle. "Then I guess you should get up before you're later than you already are."
Marinette almost falls down her ladder, scrambling and skidding around the room in a desperate attempt to look presentable at least without wasting any time whatsoever before suddenly clocking the view from a window and screeching to an abrupt halt.
"Tikki," she says, slow and dangerous, "it's dark outside."
Her gaze moves to her clock, and then slides to glare the kwami, who has her tiny fingers clasped over her mouth in a desperate attempt not to laugh.
"Tikki," Marinette hisses poisonously.
"Yes?" The little bug asks innocently.
"It's half past one in the morning!"
"Oh, so it is."
"Why, you little -!"
@#£%&**&%£#@
It was Chat Noir's night to patrol, so to say that he was surprised when Ladybug swings into view, spots (ooh, good one, Plagg whispers in his mind) him, and does a double take before swinging over would be an understatement. Yeah, he should have packed up and gone home an hour ago (they'd agreed, when they had come up with the idea, that each patrol shift would end at half past midnight), but he wasn't tired in the slightest, neither was Plagg, and so they'd made a silent agreement to just sit and enjoy the view and the freedom for a little longer.
"I thought it was my night to patrol." He says when Ladybug's within earshot, his words a belated echo of his thoughts.
"It is," she says simply, and flops down next to him with a huff.
"Can't sleep?"
"Not any more," she tells him. "For tonight, at least."
He hums enquiringly, but he thinks he knows the answer she's going to give. He has them, too. One of the less enjoyable side effects of being a hero.
"Bad dream."
He lets his lips quirk up into a wide smile. "What a nightmare."
Ladybug snorts loudly (and involuntarily, if her tiny blush is anything to go by), and a bunch of tension he hadn't noticed before releases from her shoulders. "You're a menace."
"Purr-lease," he grins. "You'd be feline lost without me."
She rolls her eyes but doesn't say anything to deny it, starting to kick her legs idly. Chat lets his gaze travel to her feet, moving like a pendulum against a dizzying view straight down the Eiffel Tower (they're sitting near the top, just under the viewing platform), for just one minute before he pulls it back to the view.
It's quiet up here - just them and the wind, voices if they're speaking and whistles if the wind is blowing hard enough - but Chat can see the hustle and bustle below them, people as small as ants and cars as small as beetles, all running around in the never-ending rat race of life. He can smell things, things like bakeries and paint, if the smell can make it past the wind and the altitude, but it's mostly the smell of metal coming off of the tower and the smell of the world coming from the wind as it meanders past him on its own perpetual journey. He can taste a tang of metal and a certain outdoorsy crispness in the air he can't find anywhere else in Paris than up here.
This is one of the reasons Chat likes it up here.
He's not afraid of heights - he guesses Ladybug isn't either - so it's fine for him to sit on the very edge of one of the rebars so he can reach out and touch something that's caught his interest or stand with his back to the possible fall as he watches the view of Paris at his back from his spot on the opposite side of the tower.
"Penny for your thoughts," he hears, and he glances sideways (decidedly not jumping, thank you very much) to see Ladybug's eyes on him. There's curiosity in those sky blue depths and a light smile playing at her lips.
Chat feels a snort escape him. "I've only ever heard three or four people use that phrase. You're so old-fashioned."
She smiles wider. Teasing. "Says the guy who fights partially with a stick and partially with puns?"
He laughs. "Touché."
Her gaze turns serious. "But, seriously, is there something bothering you?"
"No," Chat answers honestly. "I was just. . ."
He trails off. Ladybug looks like she's having a moment of déjà vu, but he doesn't think much of it, too preoccupied with organising his words.
"You were just what?"
A shake of his head. "It's just nice up here, y'know? Just the wind and us. The tourists' buzzing is blocked out by the soundproof glass. The city's noises can't reach us. It feels so. . . intimate, for want of a better word. Like there's only honesty allowed up here and we came up here knowing the rules but still with secrets to tell.
"I like this place," he continues softly. He's not looking at his partner. "There are four sides to the tower - four spaces to purr-ch and four perspectives to watch everything from. I like that. I like this. I like you. I like the wind. I like the sky. I like a lot of things, but none of it takes my breath away like this view does. And it does. Every single night."
"It's the altitude," Ladybug says dryly.
He huffs out a laugh. "Hm. Maybe. But that doesn't change the fact that I think about this spot when I'm stressed or panicking. I think, if you can get through this, you get to go and sit on the Eiffel Tower as Chat Noir, leather-clad superhero with an alter-ego everyone simultaneously does and doesn't care about."
Blue eyes narrow. "What does that mean?"
Chat waves a hand dismissively. "It means that you owe me a penny."
Ladybug seems distracted (for now). She blinks at the sudden change in conversation, her head actually moving backwards a little bit in surprise. "Why do I owe you a penny?"
"It had better be a shiny one," Chat warns, face pulled into a serious expression. "My thoughts are worth more than some poor deformed penny you've been sat on all day."
"I - what?"
He laughs at her confusion and pole vaults off of the tower.
@#£%&**&%£#@
Neither Chat nor Adrien saw any sign of Ladybug over the next week. By the fourth day he wasn't ashamed to say he was worried, and by the fifth Plagg was actually joining in on his fret-fests. He and Ladybug met each other practically all the time on patrols - even though they had divided nights between them so they could get on with the lives behind the masks, the one not on patrol would quite often come and join the other just for the sake of spending time with them and having a lighthearted conversation.
"Maybe she's sick?" Plagg suggests weakly. The kwami's taking the optimistic route on the situation today, Adrien notes dully.
He waves a hand in dismissal of the idea. "Remember a month or so ago, when she came and helped me out with an akuma even though she had a fever and was almost constantly sneezing? Ladybug's too stubborn to "slack off over just a simple cold" - she said so herself. There's something wrong."
Plagg's face crumples a little. Adrien feels guilty, but hey, it's the truth, and a Miraculous and its chosen holder make a silent agreement to not lie to each other about big things (like their partner in crime going missing, for one such example). "D'you know if she's even been doing her patrols?"
Adrien drags one hand down his face and flops backwards on the bed. "You know as much as I do, Plagg."
The kwami huffs and lets gravity pull him down onto Adrien's stomach.
There's a long companionable silence, which would look relaxed enough to an outsider in and of itself but has a certain tension in the air to one who even knows the two vaguely well (nobody, essentially - well, maybe Ladybug, but she's both missing and unaware of what he looks like when he's not wearing tight black leather).
After a long while of worrying without speaking, Plagg hesitantly offers a quick check to see if they can catch Ladybug - it's her patrol tonight, after all, and Adrien takes him up on it.
Chat Noir goes to the Eiffel Tower first, just like he always does at the beginning (and usually multiple times during) of a patrol shift. He thinks back to he and Ladybug's conversation, a whole week ago, and smiles crookedly at the four sides of the tower and the viewing platform near the top.
She's not in any of the places he usually sees her - no trace of her on or around the Eiffel or the Louvre, and she's absent from the area around the bakery Marinette's family owns (he's still not sure why he often finds her hanging around there) - and Chat had almost given up. It was past midnight, he'd combed what must have been most of Paris by now, and there was a quiz at school tomorrow.
Wait, hold up, Plagg says abruptly as Chat uses his baton to swing past a window. It must be some sort of testament to their relationship that Chat doesn't even question the little black kwami's orders any more - they're not given often or lightly, and he's learnt that Plagg has had far more experience anyways.
"What is it?" The superhero asks. If he's a little snappier than usual then Plagg doesn't mention it (or seem to notice at all, for that matter - they're both tired, then). "This is just a big block of offices."
No, there's something. . . Plagg hums, the sound a mixture of curiosity and alarm. You know I told you I can feel other kwamis?
"Yeah," Chat says, hope colouring his words. "You feeling Ladybug's?"
Ladybug's kwami's name is Tikki, the black cat corrects, gentle but distracted. Chat feels a surge of fondness, exasperation, fear, and anger flood across the bond. And yes. I lost her for a couple of days - that's why I got worried too, by the way - and she's suddenly popped up again, which would be reassuring if she wasn't -
"If she wasn't what?"
If she wasn't telling us to go and save both our pelts.
Chat wrinkles his nose at the idea - Plagg laughs (Chat hadn't noticed that neither of then had done much of that over the last couple of days until now) at the wave of mild disgust and offense - and moves a little closer to the building. He can see a handful of desks and a whiteboard through the windows.
"She's in there?"
Somewhere, Plagg answers, and if Chat didn't know how little effort the kwami expends on a daily basis he'd say the thing was excited. Going in, kid?
Chat lets a his lips curl up into a feral-looking grin (he can see his reflection in the glass). "Duh. Any ideas?"
This is your show, kiddo. Plagg says dryly. Go crazy.
Kick their asses and teach them not to mess with us or Ladybug goes unsaid.