Just Luck
LadyNoir
"I was doing the same things," says Chat, pacing, "the same things, I was doing the same things."
Ladybug worries if she says anything, she'll break his trance and he'll start thinking about the gash in his thigh, the blood in his eyes. So she doesn't say anything. The world is spinning anyway, her ears are pounding, she can hear the ocean. Waves crashing, white noise. The world feels blue; sedated almost. She doesn't know that she can tell Chat that and not sound strange:
Don't worry. Today, the world feels blue, so it's okay.
Don't worry.
Chat is sunrise, just on the end of empty dark, teaming with life, a thousand shades of blue and yellow.
The door shakes behind Ladybug; she's sitting up against it, someone is yelling on the other side – probably the Akuma's army. Definitely the Akuma's army. The door shakes again; it wants to give under the pressure of an assault. But Ladybug is, if nothing else, lucky, and so it holds.
"Chat," she whispers, "look at me."
His head snaps to her, his eyes are wild. She thinks he might do something unexpected, and she's half afraid, but this is Chat. Her partner. She trusts him more than any other emotion warring with her. He lets out a strangled sob and crumbles, his thigh giving way under the weight of everything.
Ladybug wants to catch him, but if she moves from the door, they'll get in so she watches helplessly as his knees crack against the marbled surface of the floor.
Ladybug knows, as Chat know, as no one else will ever know, what it feels like to watch as people you care about die, to see them alive again. It's the worst part of the job. Her powers can bring back anyone, but the mental scar of it haunts her in her dreams. So she knows how Chat is feeling, being a survivor of an attack, trying to help others.
"You can do the same things as anyone else," says Ladybug, "and things can still go wrong … it's just luck."
When Ladybug sits with him that night, on the cathedral steps, looking for stars which can't be seen, she wonders as she's scarcely allowed herself to wonder before: who is Chat Noir?
Who bares that burden? Marinette would never wish it upon another living soul. She sighs deeply, falls into him, head on his lap, so she can look better at the murky sky, tainted by light pollution. Even at two in the morning the streets of Paris are on fire with the light of lamps. Chat's eyes flicker down to her, curious, and then he grins and the world is blue again, suddenly, and her face is warm behind the mask.
"I can never sleep after fights like these," she confesses, bringing a hand to his face to trace the cut above his eye. It's cleaned, scabbed over. A memory, but it scares her. They're only human, she realizes; and the world is too big for them.
"Me either," says Chat.
I'm back at it again. I've been writing a lot lately ... Nothing of real substance, just ficlets. I don't know what to do with all of them. I'm thinking maybe I'm posting too much, too. I think this makes my 69 story submitted here ... and I mean, I've been around for a few years, but that's still a just ... a lot. Maybe I should work on my actual multi-chapter stories instead of posting so many one-shots ...
Anyway, please leave a comment, let me know what you think! (Of the story I mean, you only have to comment on my ramblings if you want to...)