A/N: Trying out a new idea.
"Chat!" She comes to, gasping, and bolts upright in her bed. Her bed? No, there's an akuma in Paris, and she had just seen Chat running down Blade-eater's sword. He'd been cut in half, but she would resurrect him again with her Miraculous. She's done it before.
Marinette palms her hip and freezes at the lack of a yo-yo. Fuzzy felt and elastic bands meet her fingers. Even peeling back the covers and her pants – pants? – don't reveal her scale-mail suit and weapon. There are no earring holes in her ears. Tikki is nowhere to be seen. Paris is not outside her window. In fact, the blaring neon lights in non-Roman characters lead her to believe that she's not even in Europe anymore.
Instead, a glass of water sits beside her bed near a bottle of painkillers. There's a note – scratchy handwriting wishes her good luck for her anatomy exam tomorrow. But she hates biology. She'd failed that anatomy exam, switched to computational modeling, and found work in Paris.
The room is lit up by the night sky. A girl in another bed, twin-sized just like hers, snores quietly. Christmas lights and Polaroid photos adorn her wall, and Marinette slaps a hand against her own corkboard of photos and important dates.
The dream is excessively detailed. Her bed is just like it was ten years ago. Her roommate even still has that cowlick on the back of her head Marinette remembers seeing before that awful anatomy class. It had been shaved off in commemoration of their mutual pain the very next day. The glass of water, the expiration date on the pill bottle – they are all exact matches for that night.
Why, she can even count her own fingers! One, two, three, four, and – and five. Five. She counts her fingers again. And again. Dreams don't let her see the wrinkles on her fingers and count them all the way to twenty and back down again. But she could do all of that and more before she was placed in this bed. Is she dreaming or is she awake?
Marinette blinks her eyes again, scans the room, and reads ten pages of Macbeth she pulls from the shelf. She rakes her eyes over her body in the bathroom mirror and notes the individual freckles imprinted on her back in the shape of a dragon. She sorts toothpaste labels, rubs fingers on the cool tiles, and even runs the sink water.
She flicks on the light, and then – then, she knows what she is seeing is real. There are no scars on her body. No ropy, twisted, jagged bits of imperfectly healed flesh curving around her arms, scoring her legs, pricking her eyes and her nose and her lips. Her skin is milky and smooth, and that is when she knows she is awake. Because there is no technology that can remove scars fully, nor has technology been able to switch personalities.
Marinette scrabbles for her phone. It's on her nighstand. Alya is not in her contact list. Nor is Adrien, Mylene, or Ivan. Her boss is not in her phonebook. There are no work emails nor evidence of the journal papers she's written over the years online. According to Facebook, she's a mere college freshman muddling through classes during a quarter abroad.
Ladybug does not exist in Paris. Nor does Chat Noir.
The last ten years of her life have been a dream.
She blacks out.
When she comes to, her roommate is shining a bright light into her eyes. "Marinette? Marinette!" Alexandra? Alexandra shakes her shoulders. The entire thing felt like a dream. "Marinette, if you don't get up slowly, I'm going to take you to the hospital."
Hospital? They couldn't take her to the hospital, she'd be committed as a psychiatric patient. She couldn't live out the rest of her life in a ward. "No, no, I'm – I'm fine." She pushes herself up and off the bed. "Must've needed my sleep too much last night." Marinette wants to laugh at herself. Of course Chat Noir and Ladybug were real. Thinking that the last decade of her life is a dream is hilarious. No, what was true was that last night was a dream.
"It's not that, Marinette. I found you writhing from night terrors, and your eyes – there was data scrolling across them when you opened them, and the numbers wouldn't stop. I've tried waking you up for ages already, and even bright lights didn't do the trick. What happened?"
The analog clock flashed 8:00 AM. "God, Marinette, I don't even know what to do. You've got an anatomy test right now!"
"Now? I'm a data scientist," she says, and looks out the window where glaring neon Chinese characters blared at her. Last night was real, and she's awake right now. She counts her fingers. One two three four five. She's awake.
"Sorry, I meant, I do have that test! Gotta go!"
She picks up her bag where it was hanging on a hook and rushes out of the dorm building and onto campus.
Fuzzy details of that test were coming back to her. Marinette hooks a right, hangs a tight left, and dashes into Room 501 just as the teacher is handing out the tests. Mr. Chimie is just as grumpy as her memories – memories? – say.
This time, though, the answers pop right into her head. A deep gut feeling assures her that she's right, and she speeds through the test. Even Mr. Chimie nods when he looks over the test; his approval meant that she did exceptionally well.
Huh. Anatomy was still disgusting, but the test wasn't as bad as her fake? no, her dream said it had been.
She heads off at a jaunty pace, plugging her headphones and purchasing a green bean popsicle to commemorate her victory. Marinette's happily licking away at the red bean center when there's a tap on her shoulder. The instinct to whirl around, battle stance at the ready, arises and she ruthlessly crushes it before turning around. She had to appear normal.
Two men in charcoal suits stand before her. One withdraws a wallet and flicks it open, exposing a police badge while he talks quickly, looking deep into her eyes. Marinette maintains eye contact and smiles.
"What can I do for you, officer?"
"Miss, there've been some disturbances lately. Have you experienced or seen anything odd or out of the ordinary within the past twenty –four hours? It's of utmost importance that you tell us for national security."
She inhales and slows her heart beat down. "No, sir, not a thing. Everything's been just fine."
"Nothing unusual at all?"
"No, sir."
"Thank you for your cooperation."
He strides off, partner in tow, both palming badges and patting their hips. She ducks behind a building and observes a blond boy being questioned. No one else in the courtyard is stopped.
Marinette waits until the men are out of sight, and then walks, shoes molded against the ground, and deliberately bumps into the blond.
"Sorry, so sorry," she babbles, and picks up the books that she dropped. She swipes a textbook that isn't her own – an excuse to find him later – and looks up.
Adrien's wide green eyes stare into her own. The men in the suits turn at the commotion, and begin to head back towards them.
She stands up straight, and then pretends to stagger into his side. "God, hey, jeez, I don't know what's wrong with me today." She stumbles again, letting the weight of the books drop her down, and then suggests, "Why don't we get some tea?"
She knows that he hates tea, but there was no time. They had to go now. She glances down at the cover of his textbook. "You're in my anatomy class, right?" We've got to go, she mouthed, and then jerked her head northeast, in the direction of a chemistry classroom.
"Yeah! I remember you." He dimples at her, playing along. "You've got to help me with this homework assignment."
"Definitely!" She loops her arm into his. Marinette pretends to take in the glistening sun with a panoramic view, which reveals the government agents walking away. Good. They rush to the nearest boba place, packed with students and filled with the jabbering of multiple different languages, thanks to the location in the foreign language department.
No one would mark them strange here.
Adrien's face is ten years younger. He looks just like he did the first day she met him, right after a failed anatomy test and a black box sitting on the kitchen counter.
"I'll have an earl grey milk tea."
"The oolong, for me."
So he was disgruntled as well. Oolong was reserved for special occasions of frustration, and Adrien never added milk or sugar. Chat was very much the same.
"I woke up this morning and nothing was the same."
"I had code in my eyes this morning."
Facts fit together like missing puzzle pieces, glued and melted together so they couldn't ever be taken apart. A government experiment gone wrong. Spies to check up on their work. A dream, ten years long, scarily accurate and precise, and a life ahead of them that they already took the first steps on. A path erased but not forgotten.
Marinette remembers everything: each time she had to resurrect Chat, meeting Adrien that first day, discovering their identities. Reconnecting in their civilian identities after college, moving in together, arguing over which fish to take care of.
Maybe everything but him had been a dream.
She leans forward and kisses him, only to have Adrien jerk his mouth away.
"Marinette," he says gently, "in my dream, you have always been my partner. Nothing more, nothing less. But I've always been in love with Ladybug."
"But I am Ladybug," she insists.
He shakes his head. "We never revealed ourselves to each other, but I'd know her by sight. And, I have to say, I don't think Marinette was you."
"Ah." So perhaps the dream wasn't as real as she thought. "Sorry. I thought you were someone else for a moment."
Suddenly, the syrup stand exploded, sending galaxies of spun sugar flying into the cosmos. A man in a wacky costume darts in and begins to rifle through the cash register. Marinette's vision spins, focusing in and out on the droplet of sweet blue raspberry on the thief's shoulder, and turns white.
She wakes up two hours later in her dorm room, textbooks neatly stacked on the counter and a text on her phone.
Hi! This is Adrien.
The TV is on. Apparently, some sort of masked vigilante in a ladybug costume, no less, had successfully utilized a yo-yo to prevent arson and damage to a boba shop.
A/N: Please let me know what you thought in the comments.