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Even before she landed on the rooftop next to him, Ladybug could see Chat Noir sat on the ledge, his legs swinging carelessly, back and forth, back and forth.
His head was bowed, watching the motion, and he didn’t look up when Ladybug greeted him.
He didn’t spring up off the edge of the roof, didn’t run to her like he always did, and the peppy “evening, my lady!” that shook Ladybug out of many moody spells was notably missing.
Instead, Chat was just sat there, devoid of all emotion.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true.
Ladybug could sense that there was something going on, scratching beneath the surface of his façade of nothingness, attempting to claw its way out into the cool air between them, but she couldn’t tell what it was.
She didn’t have a read on him, the silence stretching out and threatening to smother her as she failed to find the underlying cause of her partner’s distress.
They were supposed to be partners, goddamnit. She’d seen him angry, panicked, hurt, you name it, but never… this.
(Later, far too late, in fact, she’d be able to give it a name.)
Slowly, she lowered herself down to join him, the wind picking up and biting at her fingertips as she pressed them into the tiling to steady herself.
When her quiet prompts didn’t prise a response from him, Ladybug did the only thing she could think of and placed her gloved hand to rest on his knee.
Even when they were pretending they were just friends and nothing more, like those lapses of judgement where their hands did more than touch and their lips did more than brush were just that: lapses of judgement, they had always connected with each other through physical contact.
Ladybug often found that even the smallest connection of their fists bumping after a battle could ground her, and she knew Chat felt the same.
She’d never pried about his personal life (now she was realising that maybe she should have), but she knew he was pretty touch starved.
Chat twitched at the contact, and alarm bells began to ring in Ladybug’s mind.
His movements were jerky and far too robotic, like someone had tried to reprogram him and given up halfway.
She watched as he lifted his hands, balled together and wordlessly uncurled his fist, revealing the bloodied peacock miraculous.
Ladybug gasped. “Is that-?”
“Yep.” Chat chuckled dryly, and there was something dangerous lurking just behind his eyes.
Ladybug swallowed her trepidation. “How did you get it?”
“Let’s just say this blood isn’t mine.”
The confession hit her like a cold bucket of water, and she involuntarily shivered at the sight of the crimson splatter across the brooch.
She knew that this was supposed to be a moment of celebration. It was the very thing they’d spent years striving for: all those excessive lies that had built up like dishes in the sink, dirty and far too quickly, able to be stricken off the record with a simple explanation.
But Chat wasn’t happy.
Finding this had cost him, and if the blood stains were anything to go by, it may well have cost him everything.
“He deserved it,” Chat said softly, like he could hear her thoughts. He crushed the miraculous between his fingers once more, and repeated with more conviction, “he deserved it. They both did.”
They?
Ladybug’s thoughts moved quickly, trying to put together the pieces, but she wasn’t quick enough.
Chat’s wild eyes turned to her for the first time since her arrival, and she saw then just how red-rimmed and pale they were. “Didn’t they?”
All she could do was nod.
He rose then, stumbled, and Ladybug’s heart was in her throat as she watched him almost fall off the ledge.
She briefly considered the possibility that he was intoxicated, but he didn’t smell of alcohol, and he was speaking with perfect eloquence.
Drunk on guilt, perhaps, but not on anything else.
“I should go,” he said, but he made no move away from her, swaying slightly in the breeze.
Ladybug stood up, very slowly as not to spook him, and cupped his face him her hands. She didn’t want him looking out at the skyline; didn’t want him getting any ideas. “Tell me what happened.”
Chat tried to inhale, but the breath rattled in his chest like a failing engine.
“It’s okay,” Ladybug soothed, but her own breathing was growing shallow with panic. “Talk to me, chaton.”
The nickname seemed to break something within him, allowing the emotions that had been raging against his ribcage to burst free and spill out.
”He-he tried to make me. He tried-he tried, but she stopped him. She-she wanted to stop him, so then she made me-then I—” Chat broke off with a sob, letting Ladybug pull him into her chest and hold him, whispering assurances for sins she didn’t understand the extent of, sins she wasn’t even sure it was possible to absolve.
”I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
For a moment, she thought she’d got through to him.
For a moment, she thought he’d listened.
But it was wishful thinking.
“I’m sorry,” he told her, pulling back and gazing at her like he could see the hope he was about to snuff out lingering behind her eyes.
He pressed the butterfly miraculous into her hand and vaulted off into the night, leaving Ladybug stood on the rooftop alone, holding a bloodied butterfly and the ghost of her partner’s embrace.