Chapter Text
The world is ending.
The sky– once beautiful and blue– now is streaked with a blood red color. Stars have fallen out of the sky and landed across the city. Fire, smoke, and sulfur fill the air like a thick miasma. It is no longer a warning, or a nightmare– it’s real.
Hawkmoth won.
Hawkmoth– Gabriel Agreste– got his hands on the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculous.
And the worst part is…
…
… Marinette had fallen into his trap.
A trap that Marinette feels like she should’ve expected– but never could have imagined. He feinted; he pretended to give up and turn himself in. He told Ladybug and Chat Noir that Hawkmoth was done, that he was struck by the grief and guilt of how much he’d done to Paris. Done to her, done to Adrien– it was a finality.
And she had trusted him. She had always trusted that people could change, people could turn over a new leaf and start again. And maybe it was foolish– by the Kwamis, Marinette was a damn fool, to think that even a twisted soul like Gabriel Agreste would change.
The moment she got close– the moment she took those Miraculouses that he had stolen from her– torn from her ears. Blood drips down her neck and back as she cradles the grocery store bag full of the other Chinese Zodiac Miraculous close to her chest as the world comes undone around her.
The Eiffel Tower shakes and shudders underneath the literal collapse of reality around her. Adrien is leaning against his side, cradling his broken arm close to him. Once Gabriel had gotten the Ladybug Miraculous, it was over for them both.
Gimmi stood before them as Gabriel looked down upon Paris and laughed. The dry, humorless laugh of a man who had sacrificed everything, even the world– and won.
All for what?
The life of a single person?
Marinette can’t find the strength to move. The grocery bag in her arms is soaked through, and she can feel the terror of the other Kwami hiding in their Miraculouses. Not that it would do much to protect them; with the world ending, and all. Rain floods down from the sky. Or maybe it’s just the tears streaking down her cheeks. She doesn’t know.
She turns her head for a second, looking at Adrien, and for a second, she sees him. Gabriel Agreste. Not in cruelty, or the laughing, winning champion in front of him– but the man who had hid away from the world following the death of his wife. The man who was consumed by grief; so consumed, it destroyed the world.
Adrien doesn’t deserve this.
Nobody deserves this. Nobody deserves this ending.
She shudders, again, but pushes herself onto her feet. Gabriel, his coat flapping in the static wind, stares out into the Parisian landscape as the world is literally unwritten for his wish– perhaps it was no longer as simple as wishing for his wife’s safe return. Perhaps something corrupted him along the way. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t care. She pushes herself onto her feet.
Reality ripples and fractures around her. For a second, Marinette feels a year old again, stumbling on her feet as she learns to walk again, muscles weak and tired and heavy.
She has to do something.
Marinette has to do something to stop the end of the world around her. Even if she’s not successful, even if the ever-expansive void surrounding them swallows her and everyone she’s ever loved whole, she has to do something to at least say she tried. She tried to prevent this. She did her best; even if she buckled under the pressure, had no friends anymore, and became Ladybug more than she had been herself in the last year.
Gabriel faces forward to the collapse of Paris around them, Gimmi looking on in what Marinette can only imagine is forced horror as the wish rewrites reality. Bringing back one life shouldn’t end the world like this– yet it is. Perhaps nothing of equal value exists in this world to bring her back, so reality is starting from scratch to make things whole again. Honestly, the who, the what, the why, the how– Marinette couldn’t give a shit about any of it.
She wanted to stop it. For everyone. For Adrien. For her Maman and Papa. For Alya, even if they haven’t talked in weeks. For Nino, for Alix, for Kim, for Chloe, for all her classmates– and even Lila.
Nobody deserves to have this be the end of their story.
Adrien glances up as she starts to move– and she feels him join her side, cradling his broken arm, his green eyes wide at the horror around them. Marinette can’t even begin to imagine what he’s feeling or thinking– this isn’t just a random man, like Gabriel is to her. This is his father . The man who raised him. Their shoulders brush for a moment, and Marinette thinks of what she had once dreamed they could be, a long time ago. Back when her puppy crush on him was nothing more than that– a crush.
Gabriel laughs and grins and turns around. “Ladybug. You are too late. My wish has been granted!”
“I don’t give a damn about your wish.” Marinette snaps back. “Is this what you really want? For the world to be destroyed?”
“You’re a child! You wouldn’t understand–”
“Father!” Adrien interrupts, voice hoarse. His cheeks are just as tear-stained as Marinette’s. “This isn’t right! Mom wouldn’t want this!”
Gabriel groans, narrowing his eyes at Adrien. “This is why I never wanted to have a child. Unruly, spoiled. Adrien, you wouldn’t know that this isn’t what Emile would want–”
“She’s dead, Father! She’s gone!” Adrien yells back, over the cacophony of screams. Marinette’s trying to ignore them.
This isn’t just the end of the world anymore; the Agreste family is unravelling at its seams.
There’s nothing said for a few seconds. Just the sound of glass shattering, people screaming, crying, and a faint melody of disorder and destruction in the air. Gabriel clenches his fists, before storming over to Adrien, and grabbing his son by the collar of his shirt.
“She was never meant to die, Adrien. She never should have died.” Gabriel hisses at his son, before dropping him. “You’ll see. You’ll all see.”
“It’s a rewriting of the natural order, Gabriel, ” Marinette reminds him. “The world is ending, and it’s your fault.”
“Does it matter?” Gabriel bites back. “The world will be rewritten. Nobody will even know what happened.”
“It does matter! The people here matter ! Your son, in front of you, matters !”
Gabriel scoffs– a bitter, bone-deep sound. He shakes his head like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. Like they’re the ones who don’t understand. A crack of golden lightning breaks across the sky, and then stays, frozen in time, illuminating the world. “You don’t get it. You would never get it.”
Adrien hauls himself back up. His body is shaking, he’s still holding his broken arm close to him, the white of his shirt stained red, but his gaze– his resolve– is firm. “No, Father. You’re right. I could never understand how you could trade everything for someone who’s been gone for a long time.”
“She’s not gone,” Gabriel snarls, voice rising. “She’s not! She’s just—”
The ground jolts beneath them. The Eiffel Tower sways, before it starts to lean– not lean, sink. Sink into the decaying, collapsing ground below. Adrien and Marinette yelp in surprise, and Gabriel yells as they slide to the handrails around the top, hitting them hard. Adrien cries out in pain with his broken arm, and Marinette barely grabs onto his good wrist, sliding the grocery bag of the other Kwami onto her other, as the Eiffel Tower begins to tilt like an amusement park ride.
She clings to the twisted rail with one hand, her other arm straining to keep her grip on Adrien’s wrist. The grocery bag of the other Miraculouses slid down her wrist and now clatters against her shoulder.
Gabriel, however– slips. He slips, he falls, and his screams echo for a moment, before they stop.
Adrien holds back a choked sob, and Marinette tries to not look down. Her eyes look up, and she sees Gimmi. Tikki. Plagg.
Maybe…
“Gimmi!” She cries out, her voice broken and raw. “Gimmi, please! Take me– take me, just save everyone else!”
The world shudders, for just a second. Gimmi, floating nonchalantly above Paris, as the world rebuilds– pauses. They turn towards Marinette, hanging off the side of the Eiffel Tower, tilting their head in curiosity. The sort of curiosity a child would find when they pick up a rock and find bugs crawling under it.
The god floats to Marinette’s side, head still tilted. Five eyes blink at her quietly. “The wish was not yours to make.” The god says. “The balance is not yours to offer.”
“I don’t– I don’t care !” Marinette yells back, strained under holding onto the Eiffel Tower and Adrien. Her fingers threaten to slip, and she tightens her grip. “I have to do something.”
“Marinette–” Adrien cries from below. His broken arm hangs loosely in the static wind, pink and purple and yellow against his pale skin. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t want the world to end. I’ll give myself up, Gimmi, if it fixes things!”
“Marinette, no!” Adrien squeezes her hand tighter with his. “Please, don’t…”
“A sacrifice for a sacrifice.” Gimmi hums. It’s loud and Marinette feels it in her bones and in her blood. The god tilts their head again, floating backwards. “A very noble sacrifice.” But it’s noncommittal– more of a shrug, than anything.
Marinette keeps her eyes on Adrien, who looks up at her, tears streaking down his face. He glances over to Gimmi, too. “Take me, too.” He chokes out, half-sob, half-determined plea.
Marinette jerks her head to look at him. “What?! No—Adrien, I’ve—”
“I have nobody left, Marinette.” He says, his voice low. Despite how quiet he is, she can hear him over the storm around them. “My– my home. My dad. He– He–” Adrien shudders, tears silently slipping down his cheeks.
And then, he looks up at her again— and despite it all, the death, the grief, the end of the world around them— she sees it. That small flicker of him— the familiar, ridiculous, beautiful grin.
“I can’t let you do this alone, m’lady.”
Her breath catches. Her heart skips a beat. “Adrien…” She murmurs, eyes wide.
“If we fall,” he says slowly, with that goofy grin again, “we fall together.”
A pause. Another streak of lightning breaks the sky apart, crumbling inky black darkness down onto the streets of Paris. The wind slows down a bit.
Then Gimmi’s voice again—like wind and thunder and silence all braided into one:
“Sacrifices accepted.”
Her hands slip from the Eiffel Tower.
And together;
They fall.
In physics and chemistry, there is a law that all reality must follow— the law of conservation of mass. Mass can neither be created or destroyed— when things break down, they will still exist. The collapse of a whale at the bottom of the sea does not just disappear; the carcass will decompose, and provide fuel and shelter to the beings that live far below.
Things don’t get destroyed. They get changed. Shifted.
The same could be argued for reality. Making a wish to change reality— to bring someone back, to give someone something that was lost and changed— would mean that everything would need to be changed again. The erasing of a sketch on paper, the backtracking of words on a line. Even this sentence— would need to be changed.
This is something Gimmi knows too well. When They can be conscious, when They are together, They know what can be done.
Two children offering themselves up to stop the rewriting of their reality? Usually would not amount to much.
But these two children were not two regular children. Marinette and Adrien. The Ladybug and the Black Cat. Creation and Destruction. Both embodied parts of their own gift— both more than meets the eye. Heroes of Paris.
No. Heroes of their world.
A noble sacrifice. One many other heroes had made before. Only Gimmi could remember them; for sacrificing themselves to fix history erased themselves completely.
But Gimmi remembers.
They remember the boy who once whispered prayers into his yo-yo. The girl who laughed at her nightmares because someone had to bring the world light. A lady knight who took the earrings and stopped the evil king. A trickster boy who donned the ring and saved the day. The heroes who came before. They will remember the heroes who came after.
They will remember when Creation chose a shy seamstress with the weight of a city on her shoulders. When Destruction chose a grieving son with too much love, and nowhere to put it.
Gimmi remembers.
The end curls inward. Reality was devouring itself. The two could have let it happen; embraced the Undoing. They would not have survived as the people they were now— they would be rewritten and changed, too.
But they answered. Two lights in the storm. Two children are not enough—
But Creation and Destruction are.
It will still be a rewrite. Gimmi will have to carefully sew up the loose threads of the tapestry of Paris to keep it from unravelling more. The threads of Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Adrien Agreste will end. But they will not be forgotten.
They take the threads— golden, silken, sparkling in the void— and They must snip them to untangle Paris. But the threads are still long. And have so much more to give. They fold the threads together carefully, and take it to a new tapestry.
Gimmi tucks the souls of Marinette and Adrien into a new tapestry; an old city, haunted by shadows, built upon grief and pain, but full of second chances.
“Tikki and Plagg.” Gummi says to Themself. “You must rest now. But you will see your holders again. I promise you this.”
Gently, carefully, the threads are woven in—
into a new world, and a new story.
And then—
everything
f
a
d
e
s…
Darkness.
All Marinette can see.
Death? The void?
Honestly, it is kind of peaceful, all things considered—
THUD.
CLANG.
SQUELCH.
“...Ow.” Adrien’s voice groans.
Her eyes flutter open to an encompassing of black plastic around her, and the smell of… Fish. And rotting fruit. And the sort of take-out that makes your stomach churn thinking about it. There’s a soggy newspaper stuck to her face, and she peels it off, trying not to gag.
“Marinette…?” Adrien pushes himself up as best as he can in the trash bags, but there’s no good footing underneath. “You’re okay!”
“Adrien, I–” She lets out a breath that turns into a half-sob, half-laugh. Her hand jerks up and accidentally pokes him in the eye, but their hands find each other anyway, clumsy and desperate. “I– I–”
“It’s okay. We’re okay. We’re…” He trails off, brushing rain-soaked hair out of his face. “...Alive?”
“I think so.” She replies. “I don’t… I don’t understand. We sacrificed ourselves, shouldn’t we–?”
There was a twitch against her side. She looked down. One of the grocery bags was still looped around her arm, and with a sudden burst of color, several Kwami burst free—Trixx, Wayzz, and Pollen among them.
“Marinette!” Trixx breaks the silence, flitting around like a squirrel high on caffeine. “That was awesome! You were all– take me so the rest of my world can live, and Gimmi was like, okay, fine, I guess , and it was so cool how you two–”
“Trixx.” Wayzz interrupts the other excited Kwami, before floating closer to Adrien and Marinette. “Are the two of you alright?”
“We’re… Fine.” Marinette’s mouth feels like it’s full of cotton still, and there’s a weird buzz under her fingers. She sits up straight. “Tikki?”
Adrien straightens, too, when he doesn’t see his own Kwami. “Plagg?”
“They are still with us.” Wayzz explains. “But they are resting. Fusing into Gimmi takes a lot out of both of them, especially for how long they were together– and what they managed to do.”
“What did they do? Why are we still alive?”
Wayzz and Pollen exchange a look, before Pollen floats a little closer. “My guardians.” She greets them quietly. “Your sacrifice restored the order of your old world. Because of that, you would no longer be able to live there. Their Eminence, Gimmi, did not see fit to have you two completely remade. So they brought you here to this timeline, where you would be safe.”
A clap of thunder echoes overhead, and what feels like a monsoon begins to pour down on them.
“...Eventually.” Pollen adds, just to be safe.
“So we’re in… Another timeline?” Marinette frowns.
“By the looks of it, yes.” Wayzz adds. “It must have taken a lot out of Gimmi to send you both here, which is why Tikki and Plagg are not present. They are merely recharging in their Miraculous.” He motions to the earrings and ring, which do seem to give off the faintest pulse of soft light. “Until they awaken again, you will not be able to become Ladybug and Chat Noir.”
“But don’t worry!” Trixx hops back into the conversation. There’s an onion ring on her head from where she’d been digging around in the trash. “You’ve got the rest of us! Me, Wayzz, Pollen, Stompp, Roarr, Longg—“
“You do not need to repeat everyone’s name, Trixx.” Pollen interrupts.
“Well, Adrien hasn’t met all of us yet!”
“And he will,” Wayzz assures. “In time.”
Adrien lets out a soft laugh– one Marinette feels like she hasn’t heard in forever, and scoots closer in the dumpster to sit next to her. “It’ll be nice to finally meet all of you properly, then.” He looks over at Marinette, before stopping. He lifts his arm– the one that was once broken and bruised. “Hey, my arm’s fixed now.”
Marinette squints at him. “Cool. Yay. Your arm is healed.” She gestured around them. “We’re still in a trash can. In a different timeline.”
Adrien grins. “But we’re in it together , m’lady.”
She can’t help the laugh that escapes her a bit. Their fingers intertwine again– clumsy, messy, but theirs. Whatever they are, wherever they are– they’re together. That’s what matters most.
“Yeah. Together.”