Chapter Text
Bug Noire swallowed against the bile in the back of her throat.
“Your father was… was a hero.”
Looking back, she remembered knowing she had to lie. She had to. For Adrien’s sake. Regardless, her heart threatened to careen out of her chest as her lips formed around the words.
She had expected the wave of anguish to engulf her when she saw Adrien’s eyes. But she didn’t expect the ferocity that followed as the shaky hand she extended to him was batted away before she could even figure out what to do with it.
“Why didn’t you save him?” Adrien had demanded.
She’d replayed this moment in her mind’s eye every morning, every night, every day since her final battle with Monarch.
“This is impossible—”
Guilt wound its way around her heart, her lungs. The stark white room left nothing to focus on but the brokenhearted boy in front of her.
“You have to be wrong!” Adrien gasped.
Your father was a hero.
Your father was a hero.
Your father was—
_____
Not a hero. Deep down, Marinette didn’t feel like she deserved to be called that. At least, not anymore.
In recent months, she had already begun to feel swallowed by doubt and uncertainty around the choices she made as Ladybug. While they were borne of good intentions, she couldn’t ignore the impacts they had—some good, some bad—nor could she help but wonder what it all said about her as a person.
And never were those feelings more inescapable than now. Now that her battle with Monarch had come to an end, all she could do was ruminate on the lies she told afterward, which were a mangled mixture of right and wrong.
Taking a shaky breath, she turned over in bed and willed her memories of that day to stop playing on sickening loops every time she closed her eyes. But for every thought she wished she could banish, another was close on its heels.
Guilt chased her. Sleep never caught up.
“Your father was a hero.”
“Why didn’t you save him?”
Marinette didn’t bother squeezing her eyes against the press of fresh tears. Another sleepless night meant another night of crying; she was resigned to it at this point. This time, though, she would at least try to cry quietly, to press her cheek into the pillow and let her face contort with silent sobs that made her face ache.
The first few nights after the battle, Tikki had awoken to the sound of Marinette’s sniffles and gasps and tried to calm her down. To her credit, Tikki had really tried her best—reassuring Marinette, cuddling her cheek, telling her stories of past Ladybugs the way one might tell a young child a bedtime story.
But it didn’t matter. Marinette’s bitterness toward herself was not only too great to be assuaged, it was growing.
So she tried not to wake Tikki anymore.
“The ultimate weapon that saved the universe wasn't this thing, it was what's in there,” young Bunnyx had said after they had pursued the new butterfly holder. She gestured to Marinette’s forehead with a trusting smile.
Her mind.
Perhaps her mind had helped save people many times over, but it had also hurt people. And now, Marinette felt as though her mind were betraying her, as well.
After at least another hour of lying awake, of wiping at her damp cheeks and begging her body to give her mind to the reprieve of sleep, she got up and took some NyQuil. She would force herself into sleepiness, if that’s what it took.
After lying back down, she pulled the covers back up to her chin.
Your father—