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“More like… keeping a huge secret?” Ladybug pursed her lips and bit her tongue. If she kept them open for too long, she feared she may spill her guts all over the floor. Whether metaphorical or not, she didn’t know, and she certainly didn’t want to risk either. Her shoulders fell.
“A secret… so heavy, that you really want to share it right this minute because it’s too much and you feel like crying, and you just need someone to comfort you?”
Chat Noir’s eyes were soft, sympathetic. “Yes, I’m familiar.” He spoke delicately, kindly, all of the things Ladybug felt like she didn't deserve but craved.
Ladybug’s hands shook. She inched closer to him, keeping her teeth clamped on her lips. She rested her head on his shoulder. Silently, she went through the checklist in her head of everything she had ever lied about.
She thought about when she was eight, wandering into her mother’s closet and seeing the Qipao she had worn for Lunar New Year sitting on the hanger. She remembered how she stared up at her mother when she wore it with stars in her eyes, hoping one day she could be as beautiful as her. She slipped the dress on and admired herself in the mirror, only to scramble it off mere seconds later when she heard delicate footsteps dancing outside the bedroom door.
In her frenzy, she’d torn the dress. Just a little, not even enough to be noticeable to anyone except her, but to Marinette, it was like she had torn the fabric of time. She disappeared into her room and fired up the sewing machine she had just gotten for her eighth birthday in an attempt to repair it, only to tear it further each time she screwed up a stitch.
In the end, her lie had spiraled so far out of control that the Qipao went from easily reparable to irreparably changed. If Marinette had just told her mother, she knew her mother may have been upset, but she ultimately would have just held Marinette close and told her…
“It’s okay, my love. what’s broken can always be fixed.”
Was her mother right? Or… was her love between Adrien damaged forever by the secrets lingering in the air between them? How long could she keep up the act? Surely, something would have to give eventually. The guilt, the lies, the breach in trust… it would all come to light one day.
Eventually, her mother found out about the dress. It wasn’t until next Lunar New Year, but the wound of the guilt remained raw and open and stung just as badly as the initial fib when provoked. It flooded her bloodstream and made her palms sweat and eyes well up, and the world felt like it was closing in around her. Marinette crumbled to the ground, and her mother scooped her into warm, loving arms and whispered…
“What is broken can always be fixed.”
“...Ladybug?” A voice called to her.
Ladybug blinked her eyes open, through the darkness. Her lungs felt sore and tired, but the warm arms around her felt so inviting. She looked forward to familiar black leather, then up at Chat Noir who was staring at her with so much concern it made her feel ill. She pushed him away once she grasped her bearings, suddenly needing the physical distance between them.
Her face felt cold and raw in the open air. Her eyes stung. She touched her cheeks. How long had she been crying? She couldn’t remember when it started, but it felt like she’d been wailing. And from the way Chat looked at her, the wet spot on his chest, and the soreness in her throat, she must have been. Strange. She hadn’t cried that hard since she was a child.
She longed for the warm embrace of her mother. For her to tell her anything that’s broken can be fixed, and for it to be true above all else. The image of Gabriel hung heavy in her mind, and held her legs firmly in place. Adrien… didn’t get his mother or his father. He didn’t even get the grace of knowing who his father really was. She didn’t deserve the comfort he should have, not with the ways she’d taken advantage of her mother’s kindness so many times. Not with the way she hadn’t spoken a single word of truth since she was fourteen and chose to become Ladybug. Her mother never knew where she was actually going during the day, when she was actually coming home… the amount of times she was unaware of when Marinette would ever come home…
And the fact that there were so many times she almost didn’t.
Something visceral in Ladybug’s chest ached. The guilt crept up her neck again. What if she laid everything out, right there and then? What if she purged the whole burden from her chest, spilled it all to Chat Noir. Would the universe end? Would Chat Blanc unfold again? It wasn’t like she knew what happened to the Miraculous of the Butterfly, anything could happen. Her throat felt like it could close and swallow her whole.
Ladybug steeled. The burden on her shoulders weighed heavy. She could feel herself collapsing under its weight.
“Chat, I… you can keep a secret, right? Can I trust you… to keep a secret??”
“Yes,” Chat whispered, reverent. “You can tell me anything.”
Ladybug paused for a long time. She closed her eyes. Just a little, she silently begged the universe. Just let me unload a bit of this burden, please.
“I lied,” Ladybug hung her head. She couldn’t look Chat in the eyes, not then. “To everyone. To Paris, to my family, to my friends…” She choked through her words. The back of her throat felt like it was burning, but once she had started, she couldn’t find it within herself to stop. The words poured out of her, like a faucet. No, more like a frozen pipe finally bursting under the pressure of cold winter air. “I’ve been lying so much, for these past two years, I… I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
For once, Chat Noir listened silently. He didn’t interrupt with any sort of sly remarks, or comfort, or encouragement. It made that sick feeling in Ladybug’s stomach twist and tear and scratch at her throat. She hated it. She missed the person she was before she knew what she did, hell, before she became who she was. It was all so much, too much, and she needed to purge it from her body before it consumed any more of her.
“I lied… about Monarch.” Ladybug curled under the weight of what she had just said. “About Gabriel Agreste. He… he wasn’t a hero. Not until… the end.” She choked through her words.
Chat Noir still sat patiently, listening in silence. And Ladybug still couldn’t bring herself look him in the eye, but she could see the way his legs stilled and twitched with tension while she spoke. Something about it made her tense, too.
“Gabriel Agreste didn’t fight Monarch, he…” Ladybug shut her eyes again. “He was Monarch.”
She braced herself for a moment, clenching her fists and holding them to either side of her face, before daring to open one of her eyes. The world… didn’t explode. Bunnix didn’t appear and drag her into the burrow, and no category four akumatization event began to unfold in front of her. Once she was sure to check all angels, thrice to make sure she didn’t miss something catastrophic, she finally turned back to Chat.
Who looked… angry? Confused? Hurt? Disappointed? Upset? Some emotion that Ladybug couldn’t quite place, but whatever he it was, he was definitively distant. His lack of reaction didn’t bring the relief she was hoping it would. She expected him to be shocked, or to yell at her for lying to everyone. Instead, he looked… sullen. Sunken in, like he had just taken on the full weight of her burdens, too.
And he had, in a sense.
But Chat trusted her. He trusted her decision, and that just hurt more because she wasn’t sure she trusted herself.
“Why?” Chat finally spoke. His voice was quiet, strained. Heavy. Ladybug tried to meet his eyes, but he shut them quickly. “Why lie?”
Ladybug choked out a breath. She’d been asking herself the same question.
“Because--” She sighed. “It was half true. Yes, he was Monarch, but… he did sacrifice himself in the end. He did defeat Monarch. He… he tried to be better--” Ladybug clenched her fist to her chest.
“After years of tormenting us!” Chat finally cut her off. There was a bite to his tone, a hiss of venom that fizzled under his breath.
Ladybug jumped back.
Chat’s eyes narrowed. “Why? Why protect him? The world deserves to know exactly who he is!” Chat pointed out to the cityscape of Paris. His body trembled as he spoke
Ladybug flinched. She couldn’t blame Chat for the anger he felt. In fact, she’d expected it. Hell, she’d lived through it. The way he trembled like he was restraining himself, however, scared her. Not because she thought he’d hurt her. But because she knew he wouldn’t. She knew that he trusted her. She knew that… no matter how he felt, he would trust her decision. Even if he thought she was wrong.
And that... that scared her. Who would keep her in check, if not her own partner?
“His dying wish…” Ladybug whispered tragically. “Was that his son never find out the villain that he was. That he… would remember him as a hero.”
For a brief, fleeting moment, Ladybug could see shock flood across Chat’s face. As soon as she caught a glimpse of it, though, it was gone. She watched carefully as he took a deep breath, eyes closed, body still trembling. He stood up slowly.
“A man like that, that… controlling… could never be a hero.” Chat shook his head. He extended his staff. “I doubt his son remembers him as one.”
Panic shot through Ladybug. What was he about to do? Did she make the wrong choice? Would he go tell everyone himself? She just wanted a little bit of the weight off her shoulders, just enough to make her feel a little bit less like she was dying.
Was it too much to ask? To be a little selfish, just for once…
“Chat--” Ladybug reached out. “Please--”
“Don’t worry.” Chat shot Ladybug a weak, shaky smile that only served to reopen the pit in her stomach. Her legs felt like jelly. “I won’t tell anyone. I swear.”
“But--” He choked out,. “I think his son deserved to know the truth.”
Ladybug wanted to defend herself. She wanted to tell him all of the reasons why she agreed to it, how she didn’t want to cause Adrien unnecessary pain by telling him who his father really was. She could only imagine finding out that her father was a supervillain. Her father, who used to carry her around in his apron pocket while he made pastries. Who sang her to sleep when she’d have nightmares, who comforted her with warm loving arms when she was sad, and who vowed to protect her from the horrors of the world forever. As a villain? She would be devastated.
But Adrien’s father… he wasn’t like hers. He was strict and controlling and disgustingly manipulative in ways a parent should never be. Adrien never had an ounce of control over his life, nor the protections that Marinette did, nor the warmth of his father’s loving arms. It probably wouldn't have destroyed him the same way it destroyed her.
Did she step out of line by making that decision for him? No, by allowing his father to make that decision for him?
“Thank you for trusting me, M’lady.”
Ladybug screwed her eyes shut tight. When she opened them again, Chat Noir was gone.
She curled up on the centuries-old rooftop and stared out into the sunset. She remembered the Qipao again, how her mother praised her for the stitchwork she did to fix it instead of reprimanding her.
She watched her mother handle the whole thing with grace. She reached out and touched the fabric, screwed her eyes shut, and took a deep breath. On the inhale, she could see her mother shaking. On the exhale, the shaking stopped.
Ladybug tried to breathe the moment down. She shook with the inhale.
“Sweetie, why didn’t you tell me you ripped it?”
“I wanted to fix it myself.”
“You did a wonderful job… but you should never feel ashamed of asking for help. You don’t need to handle everything on your own.”
She shook with the exhale, too. And with the next inhale, and the next exhale. She didn’t quite have her mother’s grace when handling her emotions yet. Not when she felt so small that her sobs seemed like they would envelop her whole.
She hoped she did the right thing.
She would admit, though, after talking to Chat…
Her shoulders felt just a tiny bit lighter.