Chapter Text
The moment that Marinette first learned of Chat Noir, she was in love.
Well, not in love, love. He was no Adrien Agreste, after all (though she hadn’t even met Adrien at the time of first having heard of Chat). But she was filled with admiration, a part of her amazed by the hero who’d shown up out of nowhere. She’d had a fighting spirit since a young age, and Chat Noir embodied everything that she wished she could be.
That was how she’d felt a few years ago. Now, years later, as the very same Chat Noir pulls her behind a building in order to keep her out of the crossfire of some chemist who’d gone crazy, all she wants is to get away from him.
The movement had been quick enough to jolt her stomach and throw off her balance, a sudden leap before the boy’s arms had been around her, practically throwing her over his shoulder as he jumped out of the way of some sort of brightly-colored explosion of powder. The chemist had yelled something that was lost to Marinette over the roaring of her blood in her ears.
“Careful, Princess,” Chat murmurs, a hint of amusement in his voice, once they’re out of the line of fire, setting her down gently on the pavement.
The moment that Marinette catches her breath, heart still pounding hard and fast in her chest from surprise, she whirls on him. “I- I had that handled!” she gasps. Because she totally had. She’d- she’d been talking that guy down! If Chat hadn’t intervened, she totally could have-
Well, she might have been hit by a burst of some chemical powder or two (her arm is burning from something that touched her, but she’d worry about that later), but she’d been making leeway, at least.
It’s reckless, probably, but it’s always been a hobby. Watching news sites for reports of crimes and showing up to try and take them down herself. Marinette has a natural charm, her father tells her, but for some reason, it’s never helped much in stopping criminals.
She’s run into Chat a few times throughout these endeavors, and she feels like she likes him less every time. His flirty mannerisms outweigh his heroic nature, and though this is the first time she’s ever had him speak to her directly, she’s already remembering what about him lowered her opinion in the first place.
Chat stares at her for a moment, green eyes flicking up and down and taking her in, before bursting into laughter. At first she’s embarrassed, hoping that the flush of her cheeks doesn’t show in the dim lighting, but then the peals of laughter continue and a burning anger starts to curl in her stomach.
The cat must notice her expression after a moment, because he straightens up and tries to subtly cough into his hand to cover his fading chuckles. When Marinette huffs and crosses her arms over her chest, Chat is quick to tug lightly at one of her hands, bending over slightly and brushing his lips against the back of it.
If she wasn’t so mad right now, she might just swoon.
“Apologies, my lady,” he murmurs, a devious smile playing at his lips as he winks from behind his mask. “While I appreciate your most valiant efforts, how about you leave the fighting to the professionals?”
Marinette yanks her hand back, startling the boy. “I can handle myself,” she reiterates, turning on a heel. She doesn’t glance back, starting on her way down the alley and-
“Duck!”
The girl yelps and practically flattens herself to the ground as the chemist appears in the entrance of the alleyway, immediately shooting off some sort of orb that Marinette knows is about to explode. She throws her arms over her head, grinding her teeth together and steeling herself so as to not flinch when the chemicals explode and shake the alleyway.
And then Chat is there again, swiftly pulling her to her feet. Her ears are ringing a bit, and she just barely manages to catch when Chat leans in and says, “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”
It’s a good thing she’s not, because Chat doesn’t wait for an answer before throwing her onto his back, arms securing over her legs. She fights not to yelp again and instead frantically wraps her arms around his shoulders, clinging on for dear life as he goes to effortlessly scale the nearest building.
They’re on top of it in seconds, and Marinette begins to remember why she idolized Chat Noir so much.
… And then quickly forgets that as Chat opens a rooftop door and shoves her into the stairwell, slamming the door and jamming his staff in the handle.
“Chat!” she yells, banging her fists against the door and pressing her face against the small window, watching as the chemist makes his way onto the roof as well.
“Sorry, Princess!” Chat calls, not turning around. His voice is muffled by the door between them, but Marinette can hear the smile in it.
She’s forced to wait, useless and seething, as Chat Noir takes down the villain. When the chemist has been defeated and collapses to the ground, Chat leans down and tugs what looks to be an ink pen out of the man’s shirt pocket. He snaps it in half and a black butterfly flies up from seemingly nowhere. Chat is quick to trap the insect in a small black case and, after a moment, release it, now pure white.
Marinette has seen Chat’s powers in clips played on the nightly news and all over the internet, but she never anticipated what it would be like to see in person.
Her fingertips are buzzing.
When Chat comes over and opens the door, she can see in his face that he’s bracing himself for her to yell at her. That’s what she expects, too, but the first thing that falls from her lips is, “Are you alright?”
Chat Noir blinks, looking momentarily confused before a smile splits his face. “Purrfectly,” he replies.
Marinette rolls her eyes, pushing past him. “What do you do about him?” she calls, gesturing towards the man unconscious on the ground.
“The police will come. I’ve got to-” His words are interrupted by an abrupt beeping sound. Marinette turns around in curiosity, watching as Chat shoots a panicked glance towards the ring on his left hand. He smiles sheepishly as he looks back up, continuing, “That’s my cue, actually. My transformation is about to run out.”
It hits Marinette, then, that Chat Noir is an ordinary person by day. It’s not like she didn’t know that already, but it’s not ever been something that she’s really considered. Chat is a human teenager. Chat is a high school student, just like she is. Chat has friends and a social life and probably binge-watches TV shows and has hobbies and sleeps in on the weekends.
She wants to ask, sort of, but she already knows he’d say no. There’s no point in having a secret identity if you give it up to anybody who’s curious.
“Can you-?” She gestures vaguely towards the edge of the building, hoping he’ll catch her drift.
He does. “Of course, Princess.” He smiles, and within a few seconds he’s near her and she’s climbing on his back again.
Somehow, going down is scarier. Chat leaps with the confidence of someone who always lands on his feet, and Marinette’s stomach drops on the fall. By the time they’ve hit the ground, though, there’s a giggle bubbling up in her throat and it takes her a second to convince herself to release the hero from where her arms are wrapped around him.
“I hope you’ll forgive me for not escorting you home, my lady,” Chat murmurs apologetically, swooping down and kissing the back of her hand once more. This time, she doesn’t pull away too quickly.
“I can handle myself,” she tells him again, a bit more friendly and definitely more teasing this time.
A smile seems to tug at Chat’s lips. “Goodnight, Marinette,” is all he says before he’s gone, leaping onto awnings and making his way back up to a rooftop.
It doesn’t occur to Marinette until she gets home that she never told him her name.
-----
“Marinette!”
The girl squeaks and slams her sketchbook shut, looking up sheepishly and flashing her best friend an innocent smile. “Alya,” she greets cheerily, trying to subtly fold her arms over the book.
Alya doesn’t fall for it, of course, and raises an eyebrow as she rests her hands on Marinette’s desk. “What are you doing?” she asks, voice laced with suspicion.
Marinette feels her cheeks flush, and she stuffs her sketchbook into her bag before Alya has the chance to snatch it away from her. “Just doodling,” she lies smoothly.
Alya doesn’t look convinced, but takes her seat next to Marinette anyways as other students begin to flood into the classroom.
She drums her fingers nervously on her desk, mind still whirring with design ideas. She can’t tell Alya that she was fantasizing about what her suit would look like if she was a hero; she’d never hear the end of it.
Her thoughts are pulled away from her daydreams when Adrien walks into the room, mid-conversation with Nino and gesticulating wildly. She has to cover her mouth to stifle a giggle, and Alya elbows her in the side when Adrien looks over their way, falling silent.
When Marinette freezes, Alya elbows her again, harder this time. Marinette manages to force a stiff wave, which Adrien returns with a friendly smile before taking his seat.
The teacher enters the room and class begins shortly after. Marinette is too distracted to take notes, but she makes a mental note to copy them from Alya later. The inner part of her wrist is bothering her, skin irritated from whatever chemical had hit her the previous day before Chat Noir had stepped in. Although it burns, she continues to itch at it, tugging her sleeve lower and hoping that Alya doesn’t notice.
She doesn’t. But later in class, when they’re pushed into groups and Alya herds them towards the other side of the classroom, Adrien does.
He has enough sense to wait until they’re alone, at least, which Marinette appreciates. When Alya and Nino get up to go turn in their finished project and Marinette is wracking her brain for something to say that won’t sound ridiculous, Adrien asks, “What happened to your arm?”
It’s said so suddenly, so casually, that the words make no sense to Marinette at first. She quickly asks, “What?” before following with, “Oh.”
She looks down at her wrist, where she’d pushed up the sleeve of her jacket without realizing. The skin is red and irritated, small lines scraped across it from where she’d been scratching.
It takes Adrien clearing his throat for her to realize that she hadn’t exactly answered his question.
“I, um.” What does she tell him? That she’d been trying to talk to a villain and convince him to stop being a villain and been caught in the crossfire? If he even believed it, she’d be humiliated. Fumbling for something to say, she forces out a quick, “I burned myself on the stove.”
Something flashes across Adrien’s face, a look of disbelief that doesn’t make it seem like her story was unbelievable but more like he already knew the answer and knew that she was lying. Still, it’s gone as quickly as it appeared and is replaced by a blasé smile as Alya and Nino return to the table.
He doesn’t bring it up again, which Marinette is grateful for, but when she’s packing her bag and getting ready to leave the classroom, he leans in and murmurs a quiet, “Put some ointment or something on your arm tonight, okay? It’ll help with the irritation.”
Marinette is surprised, but doesn’t have much time to react before he’s throwing her a kind smile and leaving with Nino. When they’re out of earshot, Alya squeals and frantically asks Marinette what he’d said to her.
Marinette barely hears her.
-----
Her arm heals within the week, and Paris is quiet. There are no big crimes - not any more than usual, at least - and no big news of Chat Noir.
Not that Marinette was watching for it, or that she even cared. She was still annoyed that he’d stopped her from fighting the chemist herself, even though she’d now admit that he probably saved her, considering the amount of damage that the small attack had done to her arm.
She tells herself that that’s why she wants to see him again, maybe. To thank him. Even though she could have handled herself. Probably.
“Marinette?” her father’s voice asks, jostling her out of her thoughts. She belatedly realizes that she’d been tearing a napkin into small pieces and now the back counter is filled with evidence of her nerves.
She pushes the scraps into a pile before whirling around, pretending that she’d been paying attention. “Yes, Papa?” She flashes an innocent smile.
Tom chuckles, obviously not fooled. “Go get the next batch of cookies out of the oven, will you? I need to reorder the display.”
Marinette rolls her eyes at that, knowing how nit-picky her father is about the display, but nods anyways. She picks up her ripped napkin to dump in the trash before heading for the kitchen.
She’s only taken a few steps before the bell above the door rings and her father says, “Hello, what can I help you-”
The shock in her father’s voice before he breaks off is enough to make Marinette’s blood run cold.
She turns around expecting the worst, and she doesn’t get a moment of relief. A lone man stands in the front part of the shop, hood up to cover his face in shadows as he aims a gun at her father. An actual gun. Not like in the movies, where they hold the gun inside their pocket so that you’re left wondering if it’s actually a gun or not. There’s no doubt that this one is real.
A gun. Not a villain who’s using some sort of magical powers to fight Chat Noir, but an actual weapon.
Who robs a bakery in blind daylight, anyways?
“Empty the register, old man,” the robber growls in a voice too gruff to be natural.
Marinette takes a few quick strides to get by her father’s side, grabbing his arm to tug him back away from the counter. “Papa-”
“Marinette!” Tom shoots her a panicked glance, trying to push her back. “Go, get back, go to the kitch-”
“No,” the robber interrupts, “the girl comes over here.”
Marinette mentally swears and her father protests loudly, but she crosses to the other side of the bakery, curling her fingernails into her fists and trying to calm her pounding heart. This can’t be happening. There’s no way this is happening.
When she’s within reach, the man tugs her back against him, arm wrapped around her throat to keep her from moving as he keeps the gun pointed towards her father. Once he’s confident that Marinette is secure, he nods at Tom, gesturing towards the register with the gun.
“Alright. Alright.” Tom sounds a little frantic, hands shaking as he enters the code to open the register. “You can have the money, just don’t hurt my daughter. Please. Please.”
Despite Marinette’s bad position, her hands are still free, and her mind is whirling with ways that she could take the man down, wrestle the gun away. She could do it. She’s never been in a real fight, never thrown a punch, but she’s been waiting for the day that she could fight crime ever since she was a little girl. This could be her chance, even if it was risky. Even if this man could tighten his arm and twist and break her neck in a few seconds.
“Don’t even think about it, girlie,” the man snarls quietly, hot breath by her ear sending disgusted shivers down her spine.
Her father begins to gather all of the money out of the register, pulling a brown bag out from under the counter and stacking the cash inside of it. He keeps eye contact with Marinette the entire time, and she can see the panic and fear consuming him. She hates it. If she was a hero, if she was like Chat Noir, she could make it so that nobody ever had to feel like that.
She could.
In a burst of inspiration, she drives the heel of her sneaker into the man’s shin as hard as she can, brings her hands up to claw at the arm holding her in place, and throws her body weight to the side in order to twist out of his grasp.
There’s a yelp of pain, a shout of fear, and a gunshot.
Marinette hits the ground as her ears ring.
The next few seconds are a blur as the man swears loudly, rips the bag of money away from Tom, and drives a kick into Marinette’s stomach before he takes off out of the shop. Over the ringing in her ears and the distant sound of her father shouting her name, Marinette vaguely recognizes that she didn’t actually get shot.
Actually, there’s now a bullet-sized hole in the wall, and Marinette is relieved to see it when she realizes that it means her father wasn’t hurt, either. Tom is crouched at her side in a second, pulling her into a hug and frantically asking if she’s alright.
She presses her face into his neck and hugs him back, assuring him that she’s alright and apologizing for acting recklessly. She tries her best to reassure him that they’ll be okay, and they’re still on the floor when her mother returns from the store shortly after.
The bakery is closed, the police in and out for the entire night. Marinette is asked to describe the man’s appearance, which seemed to have been lost to her in the moment of panic.
A detective hands her his card and asks her to call him if she remembers anything else. She promises that she will.
Before he leaves, he smiles and jokes, “If only Chat Noir had been here.”
-----
Everybody at school has heard about the robbery by the next day. It wasn’t a big enough incident to make it on the news, but somebody had passed by and seen the crime scene tape and it’d been spread around class in ten minutes.
Alya refuses to leave her side, arm linked with hers all day and angrily snapping at people to beat it when they crowd Marinette with questions. Marinette forces smiles and assures her that she’s perfectly fine, but inside, she’s still disappointed in herself. She could have gotten her father hurt horribly.
If only Chat Noir had been here. Why does that bother her so much?
She tries to tell herself that it doesn’t, but the moment that school is out, she’s keeping tabs on all of the blogging sites that track Chat’s activity.
After dinner that night - a tense one, as her parents are still shaky and on-guard - she gets a hit. Apparently there was a jewel heist at a shop downtown, and Chat had been called in.
She doesn’t bother to watch the live broadcast online. Instead, she hops on her bike and starts off.
By the time she’s made it, the thieves have been caught and the police are closing off the scene. Chat is talking to an officer, arms linked behind his head and grinning.
Marinette drops her bike off by a building, dangling her helmet over it. She approaches confidently, but an officer stops her before she can get close, informing her that it’s a closed crime scene.
“I just need to-”
“Sorry, sweetheart, you can’t meet Chat Noir,” the officer says condescendingly, sounding like he’s given the same speech a million times. It wouldn’t surprise Marinette if he had.
She grinds her teeth. Don’t snap at law enforcement, Marinette.
The girl steps to the side and waves an arm in the air. “Chat!” she calls, ignoring the officer when he protests.
Please don’t think I’m some creepy fan, please don’t think-
The cat looks up. He says something that she can’t hear from so far away but looks to be her name, if she’s reading his lips correctly. He murmurs something to the officer he was talking to before making his way over, leaping right over the crime scene tape.
The cop who Marinette had spoken to looks sheepish and turns away swiftly.
“My lady,” the hero greets, kissing her hand like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like that’s their ‘thing’ now.
“You remember me,” Marinette says, dumbly, as if that wasn’t already clear.
Chat laughs, starting to walk off to the side and gesturing for her to walk with him. “Of course. You’re a bit of an alleycat yourself, aren’t you?”
She shoots him a glare that isn’t too genuine. Instead of replying to that comment, she tries to get right to her point. “I need a favor.”
Chat stops walking, giving her a confused look. She understands it perfectly; they hardly know each other, so she hardly has any right to be asking him for a favor.
“Um,” he says, rightly, “sure. What can I do for you, Princess?”
Marinette steels herself, flexing her fingers nervously. She looks up at him (she didn’t realize that he was nearly half a head taller than her, jeez), locking eyes and smiling with a confidence that would imply that she wasn’t shaking in her sneakers.
“I want you to teach me how to fight.”