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The shriek. Again.
Kagami threw herself out of bed. It was her — it must be her. She walked up to the window and pushed her hands against it, her breath striking fog onto the chilly glass. Waiting, hoping, listening, hopefully not dreaming…
Then it came a second time. The banshee’s wail, her wail. Someone in Paris was dying, soon, and the keening would continue until the someone had died. And then Kagami’s chance would be lost.
She wouldn’t lose it this time. Hurriedly, she wrenched off her pajamas and night socks; she didn’t care that she might technically be visible for anyone watching her window, because almost nobody would be up at four in the morning. Her warm tights, her trousers, her undershirt, her sweater, she needed heat and mobility more than she needed style. She had no time to lose.
When she ran out into the street, they were strangely empty. Maybe the banshee’s wail was keeping them inside. After all, it was well-known by now what it meant. A year of shrieking ahead of every death was not a long time in the grand scheme of everything, but it was enough to leave a mark. Even though it didn’t start at a consistent time ahead of every death, it always ceased exactly five minutes afterwards. And the source was always near where the death would happen.
Another wail. From the west, almost exactly. She turned and ran, searching for the mound. Or more accurately, the person sitting on it. The banshee, the fairy woman, the one who cried at every deathbed.
Banshees were supposed to be connected to their targets by family bonds. They cried whenever someone of their kin were about to die, keening on a fae mound out on the wolds or fens. They were beautiful, or terrifying, they were young or old, short or tall. When royalty or nobility died, it was said that multiple banshees could appear to wail over them.
Fairy tales were always so unreliable, until they collapsed into reality. This banshee of Paris was alone, and there were no mounds for the fae folk to sit on. She was young, beautiful, short, just like she was in life. But she had no family, because it had long since been erased.
That horrible, horrible day just over twelve months ago — when Kagami was locked up in a technological cage in London — Marinette had fought alone against Gabriel Agreste. Nobody knew what happened in there, except Gabriel himself. The only thing she knew was that somehow, Marinette lost. And the only reason she knew that, was everything that had happened afterwards.
Firstly, Gabriel had emerged. Healthy and tall, with his Émilie at his side, he said that he had uncovered a conspiracy: that Ladybug had secretly been Monarch all along, that she had created him as a fake identity, just so she could pretend to be a hero. That there was no plan to steal the Miraculous, because she already possessed all of them, and everything was just a sick game to her. That he had defeated her and recovered the Miraculous, ensuring peace for Paris from now on. And he ‘proved’ his lie by transforming into a new ‘hero’ live on TV, a mockery of a Ladybug costume that cast a cure to cover the entire globe.
Next, Marinette’s family had disappeared. The cause wasn’t obvious at first; Gabriel had only brought back Émilie, after all. But then, other changes appeared: Tomoe had regained her vision. Gabriel was now the heir to the Graham de Vanily fortune, not Émilie. Nathalie had been completely healed of her injuries. And it soon turned out that both Émilie and Amélie were pregnant again. Somehow, Gabriel had shaped his wish so that he got his wife, his health, his reputation, and his wealth in return for Marinette and her parents.
Kagami ran further. There weren’t mounds in Paris, but there were hills and rocks. There were graveyards. Myths changed with the times, and she didn’t know how this one had changed, but she was going to find out.
The third thing that happened after Gabriel’s victory was… that he revealed Marinette as Ladybug. And therefore, as the villain of the lie he’d constructed. She was a cruel sociopath who wanted to destroy the city, but also have it revere her as a saviour. With her family gone, too, she was also an interloper: a sinister stranger, someone who had no connections. It was possible to turn her into anything when she didn’t have a family: a spy, a habitual criminal, a literal alien, or just a monster.
Less importantly, but frustratingly nonetheless, Kagami and Adrien had been forcibly engaged. The idea that they loved each other was as false as the lie that Marinette was evil, because they both loved Marinette. And neither of them believed a thing Gabriel said about her. How could they? They both knew who she was. And through his lies, they also knew who Gabriel was.
Parisians did not. They quickly turned on their Ladybug when told the most basic lie about her, just like they’d turned on her after Gabriel told them through their Alliances that she and Cat Noir had kidnapped Kagami and Adrien. A mass of people was a fickle beast, and while people asked questions, those questions died as more and more time passed without akumas. And the television news, the papers, the politicians, the voices of online media, all came to trust Gabriel’s fakery.
Others knew the truth, too. Alya, Marinette’s other best friend, remained steadfast in her defence of Ladybug. But her website the Ladyblog quickly became seen as a teenager’s crackpot conspiracy theorising, despite its previous reputation as the best source on everything Ladybug. At best, Alya was seen as a sympathy case who got suckered in by the evil manipulator Marinette.
Luka, Marinette’s ex, also knew her identity and remained trusting towards her. He said he knew Gabriel was lying, but he didn’t dare to speak openly of it. He also said the master of the Order, a man called Su-Han, had always disapproved of Marinette being the Guardian. When Gabriel emerged with his tall tale, Su-Han had bought in and put the Order’s support behind Gabriel, because he somehow found that story more compelling than the thought of a teenage girl being the rightful Guardian.
Lila — a girl that Kagami in her stupidity had once considered a friend — knew perfectly well that Gabriel was lying. She claimed to have figured out he was Monarch a long time ago, but she had no interest in telling anyone. In fact, she said she found the situation to be very funny, because she had hated Marinette more than she could ever want to take down Gabriel.
Émilie and Nathalie knew too. Of course they did. As did Amélie, Félix’s mother. But they were complacent, happy to see the end of Monarch’s active reign and about being back together as a family. Uprooting everything now would only jeopardise what they had, with no guarantee that they could ever have peace again. Not only that, Émilie and Amélie now both had daughters of three months, children that couldn’t be blamed for anything but who would be completely erased if the truth came to be widely known.
And Kagami sympathised to a degree. But it was monstrous that Marinette needed to pay the cost of their peace. It was monstrous that Gabriel was allowed to walk free, the only consequence of his evil being the impossibly slim chance that his ruinous self felt any sort of guilt.
The shriek sounded once more, and Kagami adjusted her direction, towards the riverside. Towards the school. The banshee watched over the passage of dead. She was the gateway between life and death. And Kagami had to see her.
Even Adrien and Félix had given up. Maybe it was pressure from their families. Maybe the wish itself had whittled away at their convictions, like a provision from Gabriel’s mind. Maybe Émilie was enough of a motivation for Adrien to relinquish the truth; maybe being allowed to keep the peacock was enough for Félix. They both knew what really happened, but they had lost the will to protest.
Kagami couldn’t sympathise with that. But she knew their choice was the most sensible. After all, the three of them were just three homunculi whose creators could kill them in a flash if they wanted to. The entire world believed the lie, and their voices were thin. If they shouted, they would be dismissed as confabulators, as being the same as Alya and her Ladyblog. It was the smartest choice, because the alternative couldn’t lead anywhere except despair.
But Kagami wasn’t smart. She was a ball of emotions that she had never been allowed to release. She constantly felt them jab at the inside of her skin like spikes, waiting to burst out. And she might not have Alya’s bravery, but she would rather die than accept this new reality without a fight.
She ran, and she ran, and she ran and ran, and the shrieks she followed got more and more deep and pained. They sounded so much worse than anything the banshee had done before, like this was a death that was extra important, or perhaps extra painful. The voice trembled, broke, sheared like poorly cut fingernails across the soul. It used to be such a lovely voice, so reassuring and warm and energetic, until Gabriel’s wish sent everything to hell. Today, it sounded like the wailing of a thousand dead.
And then —
She knew where she was. By the waterside, by the school that used to be Marinette’s. And… by the house that also used to be hers. The keening had come from here, somewhere. The question was just… what the banshee would count as a mound.
Kagami had only seen her twice before. Deaths happened reasonably often nearby, but seldom at opportune times. The last time she saw her was while she was floating away into the sky, having just finished her wailing over an elderly woman’s death. Kagami had run to find her, but she was too late, and only caught a glimpse in the following silence.
Another wail. Kagami turned around, and suddenly everything made sense. The old bakery, the old Dupain-Cheng residence, the old balcony… of course. New residents had moved in, a chain bakery had opened downstairs. But the place was still a burial mound to the family who lived there, to the two who had been erased and to their daughter, who now only existed as an evil lie.
Putting her foot against the wall and hands around the gutter downpipe, Kagami scaled the wall. It was an easy climb, because she knew what she would find up there. And when her eyes came high enough, and yet another scream rang out across the rooftops of Paris, she saw what she had come to see.
She flipped herself over the wrought-iron fence and landed on both feet atop the balcony. “Marinette,” she said.
The banshee turned. She looked like her once-living self, but her hair flowed loose like it was floating in unseen water. Her clothes were exchanged for a grey, ankle-length tattered dress that also flowed loose, and almost seemed to glow in the silvery moonlight. Her eyes were red, raw, dripping with tears. “Kagami,” she replied.
Despite everything — the voice, the tears, the perversion, the terrible thing that Marinette had been reduced to — Kagami’s heart still leapt. “Marinette. I need to speak to you.”
“No. You must go. You — you have to go, before it’s too late.”
“I won’t leave you,” said Kagami. Resolute, she stepped forward. “Marinette… I’m so sorry for what happened.”
Marinette shook her head. Tears splashed into droplets from her face. “No… what happened was the right thing. I wasn’t right to deny Adrien his mother… Tomoe her eyes… Nathalie her life. Monarch is gone, and everyone is happy.”
“I’m not happy,” said Kagami.
“You should be.”
“Alya isn’t happy,” snapped Kagami. “Luka isn’t happy. Adrien and Félix aren’t happy. Émilie and Nathalie may have convinced themselves they’re happy, but deep down they are hurting.”
“That’s still a small number of people, compared to all of Paris.”
That. That was the part of Marinette that was impossible to love, because it was the part of her that spoke without love. It was the part that lay locked in a metal cage of its own design, impervious to all outside influence.
“Doesn’t our happiness matter? Doesn’t yours? Doesn’t it matter that tens of thousands of people now have their happy memories of you broken?” Kagami stepped closer again, so close that she was only an arm’s length away from Marinette. “Doesn’t it matter that all your friends had a significant part of their happiness tainted?”
“And Adrien? Wouldn’t his happiness be tainted if he learned of Gabriel?” There was no force behind Marinette’s voice; it wasn’t a wail or a scream. It was the near-whisper of someone who wanted nobody else to hear. Even so, tears kept pouring from her eyes, an endless stream of mourning.
“Adrien already knows.” Marinette’s expression didn’t change. “He figured it out when Gabriel started lying about you.”
“But Paris? All the people who would be devastated to learn about his betrayal?”
His betrayal? The city didn’t care about him one bit until he emerged with his lie. He had alienated everyone except a small group who were already aware of his secret. Maybe there were people who liked him because of the Alliances, because of his fashion, but that wasn’t a close personal bond. He was at best a vague positive memory — compared to Ladybug, who had saved the city hundreds of times, who shone like a beacon across everyone in the city.
No. Not Ladybug. Marinette. “The people of Paris tolerated him at best. They were devastated when he lied to them about you, because you had given them hope. Friendship. Safety. You were the light glowing behind Paris’ eyes.”
“Ladybug was just a figurehead.”
Kagami grabbed Marinette by the arms. The arms were solid, firm, and yet they felt distant, like what she was touching was really somewhere else. “I don’t care for your opinions!” she barked, so loudly that people must be able to hear it across the street. “Not when they are stupid. If you won’t listen to what I say about Paris, then listen to what I have to say about me. You were the light glowing behind my eyes. You were the reason I kept myself together. You were the reason I started to dream of bigger things.”
Did Marinette weep even harder now? Her bloodshot eyes were swimming with tears, but they all disappeared when they hit the neck of her dress. Or no: they were merging with it, like a glimmering coat above the cloth. They were what shone in the moonlight. Tears of the moon.
The first time Kagami saw the banshee… was in the back of the Agreste yard.
It was the day after the big lie, when Tomoe brought Kagami to the mansion to arrange for the fated engagement. Long past midnight, she woke up to a dark and quiet house, but she could hear an insistent wailing outside. It was so loud, so terrible, that she thought it strange nobody else had woken up — but maybe they were just sleeping more heavily than her.
With feet both silent and cold, she skulked until she found a window to the back garden. And there, she froze to a standstill when she saw.
It was Marinette, dressed like now, crying like now, brushing her hair as she keened a wordless lament over herself and her parents. The moon was full, pouring its shimmer over her dress, twinkling in her river of tears. And Kagami, watching, felt arrested to the point where she could barely breathe.
Her hope only lasted for a moment, though. Marinette was gone, or Gabriel wouldn’t have her earrings, or Gabriel wouldn’t have been walking free. This Marinette was just an apparition, a ghost, a memory. Perhaps she was even just a dream.
But Kagami wouldn’t be deterred. If Marinette was there, if there was even the slightest chance of speaking to her again, of spilling out all the words that had so far been dammed up by reluctance and fear, Kagami would take it.
When she opened the door to go out, though, the banshee fled. The only contact they had was a brief moment as their eyes met, and the banshee’s widened, and then vanished. Ever since then, she had followed the cries in the night, hoping to get the chance that was now in front of her.
“Marinette. I love you. Even if you think it’s for the best that you’re like this… I could never. I love you more than I can say with words.”
“You’re… that’s just a delusion,” said Marinette. Her gaze was downturned. “I’m the girl who destroyed Paris. Nobody could love me.”
“Then I’m nobody.”
“Kagami… haven’t you wondered who I’m crying for?”
A hesitant question, packed with even more meaning for it. “The dead and dying,” she replied. “Yourself.”
Marinette paused. Swallowed. But she didn’t pull herself free. “I cry… for a specific person who is about to die. I make sure they can hear me, and I wail until they’re dead. People die all over Paris, all the time… I can be by all of them, at once. And then I flee.”
“Yes,” said Kagami. Most of that was either common in banshee folklore, or just the natural conclusion of what Marinette was. Although… to hear it confirmed that Marinette was indeed crying for all of Paris, all the time…
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” said Marinette.
“I do. You are a banshee. A woman who died far too young, and got called by the spirits to keen at her family’s deathbeds.”
Marinette’s eyes widened. Her mouth opened, then closed. “No… that’s not it…” she said, eventually.
“You’re not a banshee?”
“I — I am. That’s not…”
Kagami let go of her and turned around. The balcony looked much the same as it did when it was Marinette’s, but the flowers had all withered and the sun chair was patched with grey rot, like nobody had come up here after her death.
“You’re keening on your family’s burial mound,” she said. “Just like you did that first night. You are tied to your family’s deaths.”
Marinette sighed. “No. That first night… I cried for Paris. I cried because of the hope that died. All the friendships and dreams that were killed. All the love that was strangled when the image of Ladybug crumbled.”
Love…
“So —” Kagami whirled back around, staring Marinette in the face. “So you do agree? You don’t think it’s for the best that this happened?”
“I don’t.” Marinette squeezed her eyes shut, which did nothing to stop her tears. “Of course I don’t. Of course I wanted Paris to be different. I wanted everyone to have hope. I wanted Adrien to be free, and you. But I failed to stop him, and there’s no way of fixing things without screwing things up even more. It’s better if I’m the only villain.”
Love. Twisted and bent, but still love. All this time, Kagami had thought Marinette was reborn as fae because of how the city betrayed her — but of course that wasn’t Marinette. A girl who carried the burden of Ladybug for an entire year, not because she wanted fame or glory or respect, but because she wanted to do what was right. Because she wanted to help the city she lived in and stop it from crumbling under Monarch.
Marinette loved all of Paris. So obviously, her bond would be to all of Paris, and not just to a family that was now erased from existence. That was how the myth had changed. The first banshee in over a hundred years was undeniably crying for herself, for the crime that was committed against her, but she was also crying for a family that spanned millions of people and a thousand square miles. She was reborn as a creature of grief, but that grief was born from her love.
“Kagami,” Marinette continued. “You have to stop following me. You have to leave me alone.”
Kagami found herself momentarily at a loss for words. Not just that, but also a loss for breath. She swallowed, inhaled, to give herself the force she needed. “… No, Marinette. I can’t leave you alone.”
“You have to.”
“You don’t deserve what happened,” Kagami said, pushing her voice stronger again. “You deserve to be recognised for the hero you truly were. That’s why I can’t leave you alone, because you shouldn’t be alone. And… and I don’t deserve to be alone.” She could feel her own tears building up now, slow but heavy and burning. “I don’t deserve to be put away in a box. I don’t love Adrien, but I have to marry him. I don’t want Gabriel or Tomoe to control me, but they do. I don’t deserve to live in a world without you.”
Marinette clenched her fists. “No, Kagami… you don’t get it. I’ll ask you again… have you wondered who I’m crying for?”
“You just said,” said Kagami, sniffling. “All of Paris.”
“No. Who am I crying for tonight? This very moment?”
Kagami blinked, blurring her eyes with tears. But even so, she recognised the intensity of Marinette’s stare. How sharply focused it was, straight at her.
“… You’re crying for me.”
Marinette nodded. “But it’s not too late. Go back… go home. Go anywhere except near me. You must live. You have to forget about me and let me be the girl who ruined Paris. The one who torments the dead. If you don’t… you will die.”
Was this the conviction that allowed Marinette to keep that metal box inside her? To section off a part of herself and make it impossible to love? To push everyone aside so that her body would take all the spears that would otherwise hurt everyone else?
If it was… it was still the worst part of Marinette. Something that couldn’t be loved, also couldn’t love. Even in death, she was locked in a cage of her own making.
“Then kill me,” said Kagami. “I’d rather die than leave you.”
“Kagami —”
“I don’t deserve to live in a world without you. Nobody does, but especially not me. If you truly love the way you say you do, you know the right thing would be to free me from this prison that my life has become.”
Marinette frowned. She frowned, and cried. But Kagami thought she still looked beautiful, in spite of everything.
Then Marinette rushed forward and pushed her with surprising strength. Over the railing, over the edge of the roof, down, down, towards the empty street below.
If Marinette had been reborn like this out of love for Paris… then Kagami would also be reborn, out of her love for Marinette. Whether a banshee, a baobhan sith, or a vengeful spirit, she would return to destroy Gabriel Agreste and give Marinette her flowers. Somehow, her emotions would set the world right.
Marinette’s piercing wail started again, even stronger this time. Kagami closed her eyes and welcomed it.
She burst her emotions across the pavement, and then she was free.