Chapter Text
i.
For some time, he waded through thick, oily darkness. It clung to his feet and legs; it streamed into his nose and made breathing nearly impossible. When he attempted to push it apart, like curtains, it seeped through the gaps in his fingers and flooded back in, seemingly faster than before. He felt like he was burning, or drowning, or maybe both. But still, he kept going, because he couldn’t bear to think about what might happen if he stopped and sat down and let the darkness consume him.
When he stumbled through the last of the dark, onto the solid ground of a busy street, he wanted to weep with relief. When the tears didn’t come, he didn’t question it, but continued to move, trying to engage passersby so he could figure out where he was. But after the first dozen people refused to speak to him, or even stop to look at him—even when he stepped right in their paths—he realized he had entered a new kind of hell: these people were ignoring him because they could walk right through him. It was only then that he looked down at his own hands, only to see that there were none. For whatever reason, he was no longer of this Earth.
---
Marinette Dupain-Cheng couldn’t quite explain why or how she ended up in these kinds of situations so often.
If she could, she would long ago have been able to provide Mme. Bustier an excuse for why she was so frequently tardy to class. Her best friend, Alya Cesaire, often liked to say that Marinette’s empathy got her in trouble. Marinette liked to say back that it also helped her make friends, brought about good luck, and typically served as an excellent moral compass.
At this point in time, Marinette was inclined to agree with Alya.
“So, I take the left turn down by the lamp post, and then I…” The old woman, a whole head shorter than Marinette and hunched over a small notebook in which she was writing down the short set of directions Marinette had given her, peered up at her through thick spectacles. “What do I do again?”
“Ah…” Marinette checked her watch. She pursed her lips. It would only take her a few minutes to walk the lost woman down the street to the bank she was searching for, but it would make her five minutes late to class—and that was if she sprinted there. But what if the woman took the wrong turns, and got lost, and then couldn’t find her way home? And five minutes wasn’t really all that late, all things considered…
“You know what? I can take you there myself,” Marinette blurted out.
“Oh, really?” The woman looked delighted. “Are you sure?”
“Yes! I don’t mind at all,” Marinette said, smiling back at the woman. “Let me just…” She quickly pulled out her phone and tapped a text message to Alya:
What are the odds Mme. Bustier will excuse my tardiness because I’m walking a lost old lady to the bank down the street?
In typical form, Alya’s response came back in record time. Literally negative. You are too much! Are you really going to risk detention for this?
Marinette sent back an emoticon with a sheepish grin and a sweatdrop rolling down its forehead before shoving the phone in her pocket. She looked down at the woman, who looked expectantly back up at her with hopeful eyes. Marinette’s heart warmed at the sight. Detention or no detention, that made it all worthwhile, she thought.
“Shall we, then?”
--
He’d been here for several nights, watching the sun rise and fall, perched atop a tower that he just knew he’d seen before. It felt like he had only been here for seconds, but he knew better; he recognized a loneliness inside of him that could only result from having been alone for a very, very long time.
But tonight was different from the previous nights. There was something in the air. He couldn’t explain it, but then again, he couldn’t explain many things.
It had taken him quite some time to recognize that he had no idea who he was anymore—or what he was. And he had no idea how he’d gotten here, as if someone had taken a black marker and dotted out parts of his memory.
He paused in his survey of the city when an unfamiliar light caught his eye. There—in a nondescript alley—there it was. A glow, as if something were lighting up that whole area. He knew then, instantly, more certain than he’d been of anything since he’d become this…thing, that he needed to follow it. He blinked once, just to make sure it wasn’t his imagination, and when he saw that it wasn’t, he jumped from his perch, urging himself toward the light.
---
Marinette climbed into bed and pulled the covers over herself, enjoying the soft breeze from the open rooftop window overhead. It was late summer, one of the only times of the year where the weather permitted her such a luxury. Sleep washed over her quickly, ushered on by the breeze that floated in, out, and back in through the window like a wave.
Somewhere between waking and sleeping, Marinette felt the distinct sensation that someone—or something—was watching her, and she jolted awake, sitting up and clutching the covers over herself. She looked around, and when she saw nothing, the sensation eased. This had not been the first time she’d been awoken by the vague beginnings of a bad dream, and she sighed before turning on her side, facing the wall.
Not half a minute later, she felt the sensation again—a tingling, prickly feeling that ran all the way down her spine—and she sat up once more, slowly this time, debating for a moment whether she should turn around at all before she finally held her breath and forced herself to do so.
In the darkness, with only the sliver of moonlight that crept in through the open window to illuminate the room, Marinette could very easily have been imagining what she saw. But when she blinked, the pair of large green eyes floating at the edge of the loft did not disappear, but rather blinked back.
That was all it took. Marinette let out a noise that was a cross between a gasp and a scream and scrambled backwards on her bed until she was pressing herself against the wall.
“Wait!”
And it could talk! The thing had a voice! On impulse, Marinette reached for whatever was nearest her—an old teddy bear, in this case—and held it out before her as threateningly as she could. She refused to die this way or this young. She had only been kissed once! And it hadn’t even been that good!
“Don’t come any closer!” she rasped.
But whatever creature bore those eyes, so cat-like in the dark but almost certainly human, paid no heed and approached her slowly, until Marinette could see that the eyes were not floating in plain air. Rather, they came attached to a clear, dark, almost watery translucent figure. She couldn’t decide if this made it worse or better.
“You—you can see me?” the thing said.
Marinette gulped, surprise slowing some of the rush of fear that was flooding her veins. Its voice was decidedly not menacing, but rather timid, she thought. As if it didn’t quite want to bother her.
It leaned in more closely, and Marinette tried to imagine a face to go with the voice and the large eyes—mildly less frightening, now that she’d heard it speak.
“Can you hear me, too?” it asked, and this time, it sounded hopeful.
Slowly, Marinette nodded, not sure how to react.
A joyous laugh made Marinette drop the teddy bear in surprise. It sounded so human.
“So I’m not totally invisible!” it cried. “You have no idea how happy I am, I could seriously kiss you right now—” it drew closer.
Marinette’s body, perceiving the dark, shadowy, unearthly thing so near her, told her to scream, to scramble out of the bed and run, and every muscle in her body tensed as if she were about to sprint a leg in a relay. But her brain, a totally different creature, was perplexed—and almost curious—at the very not-malicious, cheerful voice the thing emitted. The confusion helped to staunch the flow of adrenaline and fear, enough so that she could react in time to throw a hand up over her face to block it from coming any nearer.
The thing stopped, eyes widening. “Oh—sorry! I didn’t mean it like that, I just—”
Confusion was winning, the fear slowly ebbing away and no longer paralyzing her. Marinette sat up straighter, although she realized she was still pressed against the wall. Now that she found that she could speak, she resorted to the most practical thing to say. “W-Whatever you are, get out of my house and never come back!”
“No—please, look, I know I am probably scaring you, but I swear, I don’t want to hurt you at all—in fact, the opposite! You’re the first person who’s been able to see or hear me in days, and I have no idea how this happened to me, and I really need your help. Please.”
Disembodied though they were, the shadow’s eyes were quite expressive. Marinette could see the pleading in them, and she watched without responding, her heartbeat slowing down bit by bit, as the shadow seemed to grow smaller in her silence.
Marinette swallowed hard, wondering why on Earth she was engaging this spirit-creature-shadow-thing when she should have been—still was, a little—frightened out of her mind. But it seemed so earnest, and human, and frankly, pitiful.
“Do you—do you know what you look like?” she blurted out, and she had no idea why that was the first question that came out of her mouth when she had so many others.
The shadow turned its eyes, which had been downcast, back up towards her. “Um—I just know I’m not visible. I can’t even see myself.”
Marinette pursed her lips before speaking again. “To be honest,” she said in a small voice, “you look kind of terrifying. You’re just… a shadow-thing. With eyes.”
“A shadow-thing?”
Marinette nodded. “Like I can see right through you—but there’s darkness where you’re standing.”
“A shadow-thing,” it repeated, eyes looking upward, as if trying to recall a memory. It began to mutter, almost certainly to itself and not to Marinette, as the eyes squinted. “I had no idea! It sounds kind of cool. It could be worse, I suppose. I could have been like, a pink blob.”
Marinette rubbed her eyes and frowned. Listening to the ramblings of a spiritual being was not something she’d ever imagined herself doing. At the very least, the inane blabber made her all but certain he wouldn’t hurt her.
The eyes turned back towards her. “I was human, you know. Before I became this shadow-thing. I was a boy. I think I was young.”
“Do you not remember?” Marinette asked. She felt her shoulders ease up, and she realized only then how tensely she had been holding her body.
“No. I don’t remember anything about myself, really. I just know that I was different from what I am now.”
“So not even a name, then?”
The thing—the boy, Marinette supposed—squinted again. “I—I feel like it’s on the tip of my tongue, but… I just can’t remember,” it admitted, voice low.
Marinette chewed on the inside of her lower lip, fighting against what was bubbling up inside of her. I am not going to feel sorry for a ghost!
But it was too late. She wasn’t sure how someone could manage to look sad when he didn’t have a face, but the boy had done it. She felt a pang of pity for him before she could stop it.
“Well, hey—everyone deserves a name,” Marinette said. “I can’t just call you shadow-thing forever, can I?”
The boy’s eyes lit up, bouncing a bit, and he moved closer towards the bed. “‘Forever’? Does this mean I get to stick around?”
Marinette frowned. “It’s not like I can physically push you out of here to leave.”
She hesitated before leaning forward on her knees and reaching a hand out to touch the very edge of the shadow, seeking to test her theory. It went right through the darkness, the wateriness of him seeming to ripple and shimmer where she ran her hand through it.
“I won’t bother you too much. I promise! I’ll stay quiet and out of your way most of the time and give you privacy. I just—maybe… Whenever you have a little time in the day—I could pop by and… we could put our heads together and do some research into what happened to me?”
“And you’ll—you’ll leave me alone after this is all over?”
The eyes bobbed up and down quickly—a nod.
This is crazy. What are you doing? Marinette chided herself. Don’t make deals with demonic creatures! Haven’t you learned anything from the movies?
But she could hardly call the spirit before her a demonic creature. It was more like a lost puppy, she thought. Or…
“Chat Noir.”
The eyes tilted at a slant, and Marinette realized the boy was cocking his head.
“Until we can figure out your real name, I’m calling you Chat Noir. Chat for short.”
“You’re naming me after a cat?” the boy sounded unimpressed. “Not even a real human name?”
Marinette pursed her lips, mildly irritated at his brashness. She thought it was a cute name, really. “Well, you aren’t totally human right now, and your eyes glow, and you remind me quite a bit of this cat that followed me on my way back from school today. So, it’s going to stick.”
The boy was silent for a moment, and then he said, that same cheery tone suddenly infused back into his voice, “Chat Noir, at your service. And you?”
“Oh—me?” Marinette was surprised for a moment—she hadn’t contemplated the need to introduce herself to a ghost. “I’m Marinette.”
“Enchante, Marinette,” Chat said smoothly.
Marinette snorted. “Don’t get carried away. Now can you let me sleep? I get back from school at five tomorrow, but I have to eat dinner and do homework. I’ll leave my window open for you when I can talk.”
“Oh, I can phase through walls and windows, I think, so you don’t need to do that—”
“Good for you, but I need my privacy. No sneaking in unless I’ve got my window open! Got it?” Marinette said, and she almost smiled at how Chat seemed to draw back shamefully before recovering just as quickly.
“Got it. Thank you. You have no idea how much this means to me. Have a good night, Marinette! I’ll see you tomorrow!”
With a turn of the eyes, the shadow was gone. Marinette hardly slept a wink for the rest of the night.