I.

Plagg once told him that Chat Noir was walking destruction.

At the time Adrien was too fascinated by this new, unexpected escape from his father's increasing restrictions to pay much attention. The earth could crumble to dust with every step so long as he could move beyond this house of perpetual mourning. It wasn't until he first felt the dark, pulsing energy of Cataclysm humming through his veins that he understood it just might.

He didn't care.

Not when it meant he was running free across the rooftops of Paris like he was born to be wind. Not when every leap and tumble and fall would catch a flash of bright, bright red.

For the first time in years, he felt the aching thrill of not knowing.

Those nights with Paris weren't the product of careful planning. Crashing gracelessly to the ground when his baton failed to find purchase was not a part of his scheduled adolescence. And he hugged close every bruise and careless scrape recognizing the gifts his father forgot.

Black cats are bad luck, or so the saying goes.

But Adrien could never truly feel unlucky when he had the wind and Paris and red.

Ladybug was a beacon he would follow after all the lights burned out.

It's what led him to the river that night as he crouched low on the head of a pleasure boat and watched his classmate subtly wave him off with an unsettling, familiar confidence.

It was a familiarity that was misplaced.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng was many things, but familiar wasn't one of them. She was kind and she was nervous and she was brave. But she wasn't familiar.

Adrien shrugged off the trailing regret that always accompanied thoughts of his shy classmate.

Selectively shy, he quietly added as he watched her lean in closely to an akumatized Nathaniel. There was something about her pretty wide-eyed smile that sank him.

Marinette, it seemed, was very comfortable with danger.

"Can I draw you something special for your birthday?"

Her arm brushed against Nathaniel's as she slid even closer, her delicate fingers already reaching out for his stylus. Marinette, he was discovering, had this way about her that made him wonder if she ever heard the word no.

He should have known it was all too easy.

After all, Plagg had warned him.

From one second to the next, Adrien watched as Marinette snatched Nathaniel's stylus and leapt out of his reach.

"Chat Noir, now!"

There was a fraction of hesitation as that misplaced familiarity flared up again like a spark in a storm. If he had been thinking clearly, he might have told her to break the stylus. As it was, he only managed to throw down his baton, trapping a heartbroken Le Dessinateur on the bench below.

"I actually thought you liked me. But you're just like Chloe!"

This was apparently too much for Marinette. "Seriously? Come on!"

Before Adrien had time to react, Nathaniel kicked his baton out, knocking the stylus out of Marinette's distracted hands. He watched as it flew up, up, up briefly illuminated by the false moonlight before Nathaniel reclaimed it with spurned fury.

Adrien launched himself at his classmate, poised to strike, but was met with a glass barrier as he slammed down to the deck of the boat, breaking his fall on Marinette's back.

Ouch.

"Chloe is going to get a lesson she'll never forget."

He watched, helpless, as Nathaniel launched himself onto a nearby bridge and disappeared into the streets. Marinette was already pressing up against the glass searching for weak points in its design. Adrien barely had time for frustration to set in before the deck listed beneath their feet as the boat began taking on water.

And everything had been going so well.

"We've been penned in!"

Panic started to buzz at the edge of his awareness as he slammed his baton against their prison. He was acutely aware of his classmate trapped beside him and wished more than anything for a vision in bright, bright red.

Looking back he would attribute this desire for registering the vibrant blur of color that caught his eye. Whirling around, he focused in on the small, red and spotted creature blinking up at him over the lip of Marinette's purse.

Suddenly, Adrien found it impossible to keep his footing and he fell ears over tail with a graceless oof.

So much for cats landing on their feet.

Marinette, despite their circumstances, seemed to be fighting a smile.

Or a smirk.

He opened his mouth to speak only for air to come out.

She reached down to lend him a hand. He ignored it as he scrambled to his feet.

"What was that?" His voice felt like sandpaper in his throat.

Her amusement gave way to confusion and then a pale sort of horror as she realized just what he was gesturing towards. The red creature had already disappeared when Marinette let out a sound he could only describe as a squeak as her hands fumbled with the clasp, snapping the purse shut.

There was a creeping panic spreading across her face that Adrien couldn't attribute to their current predicament.

The world seemed to dim and fade away. Chloe, the akuma, their impending death-by-drowning – it all fell into static nothing. Everything was Marinette and her purse and whatever bright, bright secret she was hiding.

He didn't realize he was reaching towards her side until she slapped his hands away.

"Chat Noir, the boat!"

Ah. Right. The boat.

He didn't have time to react before she was grabbing his baton out of his hands. There was no hesitation as she positioned it vertically against the glass ceiling.

"Like this, then extend it."

The confidence with which she directed him hit him like fireworks. He paused, staring down at her, cataloging everything from her pale, worn flats to her wide, glittering eyes. She was pink from ear to toe but he was starting to suspect there was something brighter underneath.

Marinette's eyes flashed then and her huff of frustration was as familiar as his own name. She grabbed his arm and pulled it to her waist before throwing her arms around his neck. Adrien's entire body lit up like so many sparklers as his hand absently pulled her closer in stupefied wonder. It wasn't until her fingers pinched at the sensitive skin beneath his ear that he realized what was happening.

"Go!"

His grip tightened on Marinette, pulling her closer as he extended his baton, releasing them from their would-be tomb and vaulting them onto the safety of the Left Bank.

His feet hardly touched ground before she was scrambling out of his arms. By all appearances she was trying to put as much distance between them without making it seem like she was trying to escape. Her eyes briefly met his and then skittered away.

For his part, Adrien's entire being remained fixated on her as the world reeled around him. He tried to blink away the sweeping darkness that threatened to overwhelm everything except Marinette.

Had she always been this bright?

"Marinette…"

She cut him off- her voice louder and higher than usual.

"Thank you for the save Chat Noir!" Every part of her seemed to come alive with nervous energy as her fingers danced from her pigtails to the hem of her blazer to her purse. She was slowly edging those faded pink flats further and further away. "But I guess you should be going now."

That jolted him out of his stupor.

He started to move forward but her panicked wide-eyed flinch made him think better of it. She looked like a deer staring down an oncoming truck. He held up his hands as a sign of submission. "I just want…" He swallowed. Well really, he wanted a lot of things.

"What was that?" He said, trying again.

She fiddled not so idly with her bag. "What was what?"

Adrien rolled his eyes as a wave of exasperation broke through the oblivion. He clung to the feeling, grasping onto anything that could ground him in this moment.

He felt something like courage and stalked forward.

"What's in your bag, Marinette?"

"It's nothing Chat." She said and this time there was something familiar about the way steel edged its way into his name. Chat. "Leave it alone."

But he couldn't. Not when he stood on the edge of the world and stared down into the yawning abyss. Here was a blinking distant light and he would follow it through every dark, unexplored corner of the unknown.

They were less than a foot away from each other now and his fingers itched to reach out and uncover all of her secrets.

"Don't you have an akuma to fight?" She tried, a little desperately. She was still avoiding his eyes and it was this Marinette, this panicked, nervous, blushing girl that settled everything.

"It can wait."

Slowly, Adrien reached for her hand, relishing in the slight twitch of her fingers as he brushed his lips against her bare knuckles. He was close enough to count the freckles on her nose and see the pretty flush steal across her lovely, lovely face. A face, he was slowly realizing, that was more familiar than it was unknown.

He miscalculated, however, when his hand slid slowly from her own and towards the purse at her side.

Marinette ripped herself out of his grasp with a ferocity that would have surprised him only an hour before. Gone was the Bambi-eyed surprise, abruptly replaced with a flashing outrage that told him more than words ever could that he'd overstepped his bounds.

"I said, leave it alone Chat."

But Adrien wasn't listening as he felt a heady giddiness rise up within him like helium. He reached for her again.

"Chat Noir!"

This time there was no mistaking it.

Marinette whirled around in a flushed, blazing fury that had him staggering back. From her slightly mussed hair to her pink-slippered toes, she dripped of authority and defiance and her. Like a blinding flash as damning as any red and bright and magic, Marinette Dupain-Cheng stood out like the beacon he now knew she was.

"Go find Chloe."

And because he would follow her to the ends of everything, he did.

AN: Submission for MariChat May's Day 10 - What If? prompt.