Chapter Text
“So three wishes,” Marinette says, her voice laden with skepticism.
“Ah,” the cat---the freaking cat, size of a bread loaf, ears, tail, beautiful green eyes, claws, jet-black fur, squishy black jellybean paw pads, the cat---says, holding up a paw. “Wrong. As many wishes as you care.”
“What’s the catch?” Marinette says after a moment.
The cat blinks slowly at her, then yawns.
“Oh, don’t give me that,” she says. “Magic wish-granting talking cats don’t pop up out of nowhere and offer some poor baker’s daughter anything she can think of with just a simple wish. There’s got to be a catch.”
“Or I could just be a very convincing hallucination,” the cat replies.
Marinette scratches the cat behind his ear; he leans into her touch with a low purr.
“You don’t feel like a hallucination,” she says. “And, well, I thought hallucinations usually aren’t this coherent.”
“True,” the cat says. “For everything you wish for, you must deliver unto me something in return of equal value.”
“Okay,” Marinette says. “That’s it, that’s the only condition?”
“Yes.”
“And who decides what I need to repay you?”
“You may offer if that pleases you,” the cat says. His tail flicks back and forth, once, precisely, green eyes half-lidded, unblinking.
“Okay.” Marinette thinks for a minute. “Make my parents’ business---no, I’m sorry, I wish that my parents’ business were successful.”
“Such a big wish so suddenly,” the cat says.
“The wish is made,” Marinette says. “So you need to do it. No takebacks.”
“So long as you can offer something of equal value,” the cat says. “Shall I name it or shall you?”
Marinette looks at him for a minute, then shakes her head. “I can’t think of anything,” she says. “Go ahead.”
“Make for me,” the cat says, “a place in your home.”
Marinette blinks at the cat. “Uh. Done.”
“And done.”
A number of, well, miraculous things happen. The loan her parents had been trying to get for half a year is approved, and they move to a corner-store bakery right next to Notre Dame. Somehow word about the quality of her father’s baking spreads so widely that on opening morning the line stretches twice around the block, and fails to abate the next day, and then the next week, and then the next month. The website her mother sets up crashes twice in the span of a week from the number of people visiting. So on and so forth.
They look at her askance when she shows up one day in the middle of their moving in with a large black tomcat cradled in her arms, purring comfortably.
“Where did you find that, dear?” Sabine says.
“Alley,” Marinette says. “Can I keep him?”
“No, Marinette,” Sabine says. “You don’t know where he’s been.”
Tom reaches over and pats the cat gently on the head. The cat in turn bats playfully at his fingers with a paw before leaping out of Marinette’s arms and padding over to Sabine, butting his head against her leg.
“Pretty tame for a feral cat,” Tom says. “Maybe he’s someone’s pet.”
“We’ll put up some signs, then,” Sabine says. “Marinette, he’s your responsibility, make sure he doesn’t get into anything or break anything valuable.”
The cat doesn’t, and nothing comes of the LOST CAT FOUND signs that Marinette spends a day putting up around the neighborhood, and soon enough Adrien is a regular fixture in the Dupain-Cheng household, with, after some insistence from Marinette, his own plate at the dinner table and his own little bed in Marinette’s room.
Adrien pads up to the foot of Marinette’s loft bed and mrowls. When no response is forthcoming he leaps up, scrabbles briefly, and climbs up the ladder.
Marinette is curled up on her bed, shaking quietly.
“What’s wrong---”
“Go away,” Marinette hisses, swiping at Adrien, who leaps up over the clumsy blow, flicking an ear.
“What’s wrong,” Adrien repeats, dragging at her blanket and pulling it up over her before curling up against her.
“Ah,” he says after a moment’s thought. “Chloe again?”
No response from Marinette.
“Chloe again,” Adrien says, resigned.
“Can’t you just,” Marinette says, “make her go away? Leave? Forever?”
“I could.”
“What would the price be?”
“Too high for you,” Adrien says.
“Some magic wish-granting cat you are,” Marinette says.
Adrien’s purr redoubles.
After a while, Marinette says, quietly, “I have a wish.”
“Yes?”
“I wish that I’d have a friend,” she says. “Someone who’ll stand up for me. Stand up against Chloe. Someone who’ll care for me like I care for them.”
Adrien is quiet for a long while, purring. Then, he says, “I can do that.”
“What price?”
“Such a wish has a high price, Marinette---”
“What price?” she repeats, her voice coming out harder.
“You must give of yourself to everyone,” Adrien says. “A little piece of your soul, given in good faith, to all you meet, be they your worst enemy.”
Marinette gives a little hiccuping laugh out of sheer reaction. “Thought I had to pay you the price.”
“It is a price.”
Another long quiet, punctuated by Adrien’s low purring.
“Done,” Marinette says.
“Done,” Adrien says. “Sleep, Marinette.”
“We have a new student with us today!” Mme. Bustier announces the next day. “Everyone, please welcome Alya Cesaire.”
Marinette sits, curled up against the cold, in her darkened one-woman apartment, the detritus of her life scattered about her: paintings, vases, her business degree tossed carelessly on the coffee table, half-buried below fabric samples, a small, sleek laptop off to the side. A picture of her and Alya and Nino placed reverentially on a bookshelf, a small sparkling diamond ring on Alya’s finger. A bottle of wine abandoned beside that.
Adrien pads out of her bedroom and leaps lithely onto the small couch beside her, her arm shifting automatically to allow him space to slip up next to her, purring.
They sit like that for a while, staring out of her picture window, Marinette’s fingers stroking gently over Adrien’s back.
“Adrien,” Marinette murmurs quietly.
“Yes?”
“You’ve been good to me,” Marinette says, “very good.”
Adrien’s purring takes on a distinctly smug tone.
“And you’ve always been there for me,” Marinette says.
“Yes.”
Marinette’s fingers still on Adrien’s back, and he looks upwards towards her, flicking an ear.
“So I need to offer something of equal value, right?” Marinette says. “That’s how it works.”
Adrien blinks, once, slowly.
Marinette leans down and presses a kiss to the crown of Adrien’s head.
“I give you my heart, Adrien,” Marinette says. Her voice carries no melodrama, no ringing conviction. Just a quiet, solid statement of truth, calm and even, constant as the northern star. “For as long as I live you’ll be a part of my life. You’ll be loved. You’ll be cared for.”
Adrien butts his head gently into the underside of Marinette’s chin.
“I give you my heart,” she repeats.
They sit like that as the stars wheel overhead and the moon sinks below the horizon, until Marinette falls asleep.
“For every wish, a price. Something of equal value,” Adrien murmurs to himself.
Something of equal value.
Adrien thinks on it for some while.
Then he wishes.
Her neighbors are woken at around six by her scream when she wakes to find a young, lanky, tousel-haired man sprawled, asleep, on the couch next to her.