unbeing dead isn't being alive
-e e cummings
Ah, yes, Adrien thinks to himself. This is what pain feels like.
He probably should have expected this. He knows that he's practically unkillable when he's Chat Noir—he rolls easily out of falls that would've broken a normal person's legs, shrugs off blows that would've left him with a concussion or worse if he weren't transformed—but he also knows that akumas don't play by the rules. When magic clashes against magic, it's even odds which power is going to win out, and there's no way to know for sure until after it's happened.
He knows that they can get hurt, and that's why, every time, his first instinct is to throw himself between Ladybug and the akuma. To take the hit for her.
He knows all that, and yet somehow he still manages to be shocked when he finds himself suddenly on his knees, his mouth moving soundlessly as he flails with all the grace of a fish out of water. This is what pain feels like, he thinks, hot and fierce and unrelenting, making his every nerve ending feel like it's been lit aflame. If ever he thought he had felt pain before in his life, he had been wrong. This is what pain feels like.
"Chat Noir!" Ladybug shrieks. Her voice sounds so shrill and panicked that he feels sudden sharp pang in his chest. Or maybe that's just one of the side-effects of getting impaled with six feet of solid steel. Could go either way, Adrien thinks. Fifty-fifty.
"Oops," he finally manages to say. The word comes out thick and slurred, half-mumbled. There's something hot and liquid in his mouth that's making it hard for his tongue to move.
Blood, he realizes.
The wielder of the greatsword that is currently inhabiting Adrien's chest—a blindfolded teenage girl who has dubbed herself Justice—pauses momentarily, as if she's shocked that she actually landed a blow. Even under the blindfold, Adrien can see that her eyebrows are drawing together as she takes half a step backwards. Adrien winces at the feeling of the sword shifting in his chest, the blade passing all too easily through his flesh. There's an unpleasant shudder that starts in his chest and moves through his entire body when an edge of the sword catches against one of his ribs, metal grating unpleasantly against bone.
Justice's brief hesitation gives Ladybug the opening she needs to end the fight. Adrien can't see it clearly—being otherwise occupied with, you know, dying—but he knows his Lady well enough to fill in the blanks. She finds some ludicrously ingenious way to use her lucky charm (a feather pillow this time), nimbly seizes the victim's infected locket, crushes it easily between her bare hands...
"No more evildoing for you, little akuma," Ladybug says, and the park is washed in miraculous pink light. The sword in his chest dissolves into nothingness and his skin knits back together and his blood is cleansed from the cobblestones until the only sign that he had ever been injured is the faint taste of iron that lingers in his mouth. Chat Noir eases himself up gradually and catches a glimpse of the akuma victim standing with her mouth hanging open in the middle of the square. She catches his eye and freezes like a deer caught in headlights.
Most akuma victims look dazed after the fact, but this girl is terrified. Her eyes have widened into saucers, horror and shock written across her face, and Chat offers her a small smile in the hopes that it will calm her. The girl doesn't seem to notice, rooted in place, shivering alone in the middle of the park.
Chat takes half a step towards her, and the motion finally seems to stir her into action. The girl flees in the opposite direction, clutching her now-unbroken locket to her chest, running on bare feet to the nearest gate. Chat Noir lets her run. Some people want to be comforted after their akumatization, and some of them just need a moment alone. Chat watches over her retreating form, trying to commit her face to memory, until she vanishes entirely from his view.
Maybe it's just as well that the girl didn't want to stick around, he thinks, because by now Ladybug has swiveled around to face him and her eyes are cold as ice. Her chest is heaving and she stalks over towards him with long strides, her hands curled into fists at her side. He knows that look, recognizes the murder in her eyes, but he pretends that he doesn't know what's coming. When she's just a few steps away from him, Chat Noir flashes his most dazzling smile and holds up one hand for their customary fistbump.
He's not surprised when she doesn't go for it.
"What," she growls, her voice dark and feral, "the hell was that?"
Chat sighs and drops his hand. "Bien joué—?"
"Don't!" she snaps. Chat obliges her by promptly snapping his mouth shut. Ladybug steps even closer to him, her mouth twisted into the fiercest scowl he's ever seen her wear, her eyes glittering with rage. "Don't you ever—"
Her voice breaks off in something that sounds suspiciously like a sob. Ladybug turns away from him now, as if she can't bare to face him anymore, and Chat Noir watches in shocked silence as her shoulders tremble. There's that pain in his chest again, and this time he's sure it's because of the quiet hiccuping sounds she's making.
"Ladybug," he says softly. Hesitantly, he reaches out one gloved hand towards her shoulder. When she leans into the touch instead of pulling away, he dares to pull her into a hug. Ladybug rests her head against his chest, sniffling audibly, and he searches for the right words to say.
He doesn't find them. Long moments pass in silence, and even though Chat can't find the right words to comfort her, Ladybug's shoulders gradually stop trembling. Pink-hued twilight fades into a blue-black night, and Adrien's world fades into a colorless grayscale as Chat Noir's enhanced vision kicks in.
Ladybug is the first to speak. "I thought I had lost you," she says, quiet and hoarse. He thinks that her choice of words was probably deliberate.
Chat tightens his arms around her. "You haven't."
Ladybug breathes out slowly, relaxing into his hold. Chat is leaning in closer to the hug, resting his head against hers, when the moment is ruined by the final warning beep from his Miraculous.
Ladybug pulls back abruptly. She's been counting down, same as him, and they both know that they're completely out of time. She pauses a moment, her hands still resting on his arms, and looks him dead in the eye.
"Don't ever do that again," she warns him. All the vitriol has fled from her tone, but something about her voice makes Chat shiver anyway.
Then, with a flick of her wrist, she's gone. Ladybug flies away into the night sky and Adrien is left standing alone in the darkened park as his transformation wears off in a flash of green. Without Chat Noir's night vision, the world becomes darker, nothing but shadows.
Plagg settles onto his shoulder, and the silence is deafening. It's unlike the kwami not to have something to snark about immediately after a fight—or anytime, really.
"You're quiet today," Adrien remarks. "What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?"
Plagg rolls his eyes and floats away. Adrien feels a slight smirk tugging on his lips—he doesn't get to use that pun nearly often enough. "You know," Plagg says haughtily, "you're really not as funny as you think you are."
"C'mon, Plagg," Adrien teases right back. "I know that you think my puns are paw-sitively—"
"No."
Adrien lets out a breathy laugh. "Fine," he says, grinning. "Let's get you home and see if some Camembert makes you feel more a-purr-reciative."
"It won't," Plagg promises solemnly, but he's lying and they both know it. By the time Adrien feeds him a fifth piece of cheese, Plagg is dropping the puns alongside him, and they steadily decrease in quality as the night wears on. Adrien really, really knows that he should be getting some sleep, but Plagg is being uncharacteristically affectionate and they stay up until four in the morning, watching unfunny internet videos and laughing until they cry and pretending that the memory of choking on their own blood isn't haunting their every thought.
Chat Noir has a lot of brushes with death, so neither one of them says anything, but they both know that's the closest they've ever come.
He oversleeps the next morning and has to be roused by Nathalie, who hands him his schedule for the day with a disapproving frown. Adrien barely eats his breakfast, letting a growing pit of guilt gnaw at his stomach instead, and tries to convince himself that he doesn't notice Nathalie's cool, calculating eyes watching him a little too closely.
It's not until he's shuffling out the door that she stops him with a curt call of his name. Adrien stops where he stands, already halfway through the doorway, and turns back to look at her.
"Are you feeling unwell?" Nathalie asks. Her voice a cool and even monotone, dead of all emotion. There's not a single trace of tenderness in her words and her expression is carefully neutral, but Adrien knows Nathalie too well to be fooled by her facade. Nathalie is looking pointedly away from him, her lips pressed into a thin line, and he's filled with a sudden warmth in his chest when he realizes that she actually cares about him. "I can adjust your schedule if you need to take the day off."
Adrien briefly contemplates telling her the truth—or, a version of the truth, anyway—and climbing back into bed. But spending the day moping around at home seems a little too much like admitting defeat, and so Adrien fixes his face with a fake smile and soldiers onwards. "No, I'll be fine," he says. Then he adds on, sincerely, "Thank you, Nathalie."
He's out the door before she has a chance to respond.
He checks his email on the way to school, skimming through the subject lines on his phone. He has seventeen unread messages, and he knows that he really needs to respond to some of them, but there's a deep-seated exhaustion that has settled in his bones and makes even beginning the task seem somehow insurmountable. Instead he navigates to the Ladyblog, and chuckles under his breath when he sees that Alya's already posted a write-up about last night's battle.
He learns from Alya's post that the akuma victim was a collège student from a nearby school, and that the incident had been caused by a disagreement between the girl and her mother after a parent-teacher conference. He frowns, wondering how Alya managed to get such a detailed background on the akuma victim and whether she should be giving out so much specific information, but he reads on anyway. Cats are naturally curious, after all, and Adrien would be lying if he said that he didn't want to know more about her.
He's still reading when he slides into his seat in the classroom. He's just reached the part where Ladybug had appeared at the scene, in all her dazzling superpowered glory, and tricked the akuma into throwing her sword at the fountain in the Place des Vosges instead of the innocent schoolchildren nearby. Adrien feels a swell of pride in his chest at Alya's unabashed admiration for Ladybug. The feeling is unfortunately tempered by the quiet mutterings of the Ladyblogger herself and Marinette in the seats behind him. Adrien only briefly glances at the girls, and sees that they're sitting with their heads close together, both of them wearing pained expressions.
"You still shouldn't have posted those pictures," Marinette half-whispers, sounding deeply bitter. Adrien scrolls through the Ladyblog with his thumb until he sees what Marinette is talking about. He finds it in the middle of the post, three dark and blurry photos of himself taken on some bystander's cell phone. They're fairly graphic, even if they're not very clear, and Adrien feels a slight shiver when he looks at them. Living through that battle had been pretty bad, but looking at his own mangled, half-dead form after the fact is... unsettling.
"C'mon, girl," Alya says, "it's not like he actually died or anything."
Marinette makes a sound in her throat that sounds a little bit like a growl, but their argument is interrupted by the school bell. Mme Bustier wastes no time getting class started and Adrien reluctantly slips his phone into his pocket.
He wishes he could say that he was paying any attention in class that day, but he really wasn't. The morning seems to stretch out for an eternity, and Mme Bustier's normally enjoyable French class feels insufferable. Adrien's almost beginning to regret not taking Nathalie up on the offer to stay home today when finally the bell rings for lunch.
Adrien shoots out of his seat and is halfway to the classroom door before Nino stops him.
"Hey, man, where are you off to in such a hurry?" Nino claps one hand on his shoulder. "You seem kind of stressed this morning."
Adrien flushes slightly and turns to face his friend. It's not unusual for Adrien to eat lunch alone at home, but he should have known that Nino would notice that his behavior was strange today.
"I've got, um, a photoshoot," Adrien lies, giving Nino a pained grin.
"During your lunch hour?" Nino exclaims, brows raised. For a moment, Adrien is terrified that he's been caught in his lie, but then Nino pats him on the back and says, "Man, that is brutal. I hope they'll at least let you eat while you're out."
"I'll find some time to scarf something down," Adrien says, relieved.
He all but sprints into the hallway, and when he's sure that no one's looking too closely, he makes an abrupt detour into an empty classroom. He leans against the door behind him, waiting a moment to make sure that no one has followed him, and searches his schoolbag for his sleeping kwami.
"Plagg," he begins.
The kwami mewls pathetically in response. "Is this really the time? I'm tired—"
"Transform me!" Adrien finishes, and Plagg's words are abruptly cut off as he is pulled into the ring. A few seconds later, Chat Noir leaps out of the classroom window, and is bounding over Parisian rooftops, heading for a small school that sits on the south bank of the Seine.
The Collège Germain Larivière is much the same as his own school, and by the time he lands on a rooftop just across the street, he sees that the students have already begun trickling out for their lunch. He scans the crowd carefully, searching for a girl with long dark hair and a bronze locket on a chain around her neck.
If it were just Adrien looking, he would have had no luck in finding her, a single student out of hundreds. But Chat Noir doesn't rely on luck—it never does seem to work in his favor, after all. A cat's hearing is nothing special, but still manages to be much more potent than human ears. It takes him just a few minutes to latch onto the sound of metal scraping against metal, as one anxious student distances herself from the others, fiddling nervously with her necklace. Chat Noir watches from afar as she brushes away anyone who tries to approach her and begins slowly making her way home for lunch all on her own.
He hadn't come here to talk to her, just to check that she was still doing alright, so naturally she almost immediately notices that something's afoot and looks up to the rooftops. She locks gazes with him and there are those wide, horror-struck eyes again. Adrien curses his bad luck, and gently raises up one hand in a gesture of peace.
She doesn't run this time, but she doesn't come closer, either. After a moment's hesitation, Chat Noir carefully descends from the rooftops, approaching her slowly. The girl fiddles with her locket but is otherwise still.
When he's just a few steps away from her she says, very quietly, "Are you here to arrest me?"
Chat Noir raises one eyebrow and smiles brilliantly at her. "I didn't know that becoming an akuma victim was an arrest-worthy offense."
The girl shifts where she stands, turning her eyes down to look at the ground. "I just thought that maybe," she mumbles, "maybe things were different for me. Because I, um. You know."
Standing here next to the girl, Adrien realizes for the first time that she's younger than he'd initially estimated. She's eleven, maybe twelve years old, he thinks, still more of a child than an adolescent. Briefly, he feels a strange sort of resentment towards Hawkmoth, for using some so young as a pawn in his schemes. Then he pushes the feelings aside and turns up his Chat Noir charm as high as it can go.
"Ah, you are different from the other victims," Chat Noir agrees pleasantly. The girl glances up, her face ashen, and he leans forward to boop her gently on the nose with one gloved finger. "You're much cuter than them."
His words have the desired effect. Her eyes go wide, this time from surprise instead of fear, and then she turns aside, giggling.
"And the fair maiden is even cuter when she laughs!" Chat teases, winking at her. "Truly, this black cat's luck is turning around, Miss..?"
The girl hesitates a moment, but after a pause, she says, "Françoise."
"Miss Françoise," Chat says. He bows slightly to her, very prim and proper, in just the way a hero should bow to a fair maiden. "This superhero is only here to make sure that you are recovering well after last night's incident."
Françoise's smile fades slightly, and her eyes grow distant. "I'm fine," she says quietly, in exactly the kind of way that people say it when they're not fine at all.
Chat Noir offers her one arm and says, "May I walk with you for a while?" Françoise nods loops one of her own arms through his. They begin walking at a slow and steady pace along the Seine, and Chat says sincerely, "I want you to know that what happened yesterday wasn't your fault."
Françoise pales slightly, but mumbles, "O-okay."
"Hawkmoth is," he begins—and for a moment Chat has to pause a moment to contain his pure, unadulterated anger—"the only one responsible for the things that happened while you were under his influence. That wasn't you."
"Okay," Françoise says again, her voice a little stronger this time.
"I also want you to know—and this one is very, very important, are you listening closely?" Françoise nods once, eyes wide. "I want you to know that you can talk to be about anything, at any time, alright?"
She doesn't have any immediate answer to that. Adrien thinks that maybe she doesn't want to talk about it, or maybe she'd rather talk to someone else. He's about to leave her to her lunch when her grip tightens slightly on his arm. He stops walking, and she looks up at him, face pale.
"Anything?" she asks.
"Anything," Chat Noir confirms.
There's another pause for a moment, before she asks, her voice grown even quieter, "Anytime?"
"Whenever your heart desires," Chat Noir tells her. He gently disentangles their arms and unzips one pocket to fish out a small pad of paper and a pen. He scribbles down his email address, an account he made specifically for situations like this, and tears out the page. He holds it out to her and she accepts it almost reverently.
"If you're not ready to talk now," he tells her, "you can send me a message when you are. Does that sound okay?"
Françoise is still looking at the scrap of paper in awe. "I—um. Yes. Thank you."
"The pleasure was all mine," Chat tells her with a wink. That gets her to smile again, and he considers that a small victory of its own. "Well, I've got more superhero business to get up to, but I'll be around."
Then he pulls out his baton, twirls it a few times, and vaults easily up into the sky, waving at Françoise with his free hand. The sound of her soft giggle when she waves back fills his heart with a quiet joy, a powerful reminder of why he keeps fighting.
Chat Noir spends the rest of his lunch break soaring over rooftops and dealing with his twenty-seven unread emails. Most of them are just simple inquiries, people who saw the photos of him on the Ladyblog and wanted to know if he was still alive, but there are a handful that are more serious inquiries. Most of them can be dealt with over email, but a few warrant in-person visits. Chat Noir visits two other ex-akuma victims during his lunch break and makes plans to meet with three more over the coming days. He touches down on the ground in front of the school mere minutes before his next class is due to start, and reaches the room just as the bell is ringing. Nino arrives in class just a few seconds later, earning a stern look from Mme Mendeleiev, and slides into his seat without saying a word. As soon as her back is turned, he's got his cell phone out, texting under his desk. Mere moments later, Adrien's phone buzzes in his pocket.
Adrien frowns and slides his phone out to check the message.
how did it go?
For a moment, Adrien is bewildered, wondering how Nino knew about Chat Noir's meetings with the akuma victims, when he remembers his cover story. Adrien hesitates a second, then taps out a quick message of his own.
Boring, but they got what they needed.
Nino flashes him a thumbs up, then sends another message:
they let u eat, right?
Oops. Adrien had gotten so distracted over his lunch break that he'd forgotten to actually eat. He tries to hide his sudden surprise with a cough and, praying that Nino's observation skills aren't too keen today, lies blatantly to his friend.
Yeah, he texts back, Nathalie brought some food for me.
It's not like he was really hungry, anyway.
His afternoon classes pass just as slowly as the morning ones did, but now they're punctuated by the occasional secret message from Nino. Adrien feels a little guilty every time he checks his phone in class, but the constant stream of positivity from his friend does a lot of lift his mood. By the end of the day, he feels almost normal again.
He wonders if Nino was doing it on purpose, and Adrien can't help but smile at the thought.
After school is fencing practice, then Chinese lessons, and after that he's supposed to be eating dinner but it's the first free moment he's had since lunch, so Adrien makes up a lie for Nathalie (this is becoming a dangerous habit, he thinks) about a sudden loss of appetite and shuts himself up in his bedroom.
"Adrien," Plagg says, his voice unusually stern.
"I just—I need this," Adrien says pleadingly. The kwami says nothing in reply.
Plagg's eyes are hard, but he doesn't fight against the transformation. Adrien slips comfortably into his superhero persona, and Chat Noir all but throws himself into the sky. He tells himself that it's just because he craves the freedom that comes along with being Chat Noir. That there's no motive here other than to feel the wind in his hair and see all of Paris spread out below him in its beautifully imperfect grid, to trace his eyes over its winding streets and crowded plazas and the way the Seine snakes its way through the heart of the city.
He tells himself that he's climbing to his usual haunt on the highest perch of the Eiffel tower just for the view.
Ladybug is waiting for him there, which he can't say is entirely unexpected. She's sitting on one of the metal beams of the tower, her legs dangling over the edge, with her eyes closed and her face turned skywards. She cracks one eye open when Chat lands next to her, and offers him a forced half-smile. He wonders how long she's been sitting there.
"Uh-oh," she teases lightly. "Where's the akuma?"
"No fear, My Lady." Chat waves one hand in a small flourish, and bows slightly in her direction. "All is well in Paris tonight."
"Hmm," she says, and all at once her smile turns genuine. "Then what, I wonder, could a certain black cat being doing all the way up here? Could it be... flirting shamelessly?"
"I would never," Chat says, mock-serious, as he settles down into a crouch beside her.
"Of course not," Ladybug agrees. She closes her eyes again and leans in towards him, ever so slightly, so that her forehead is just barely resting against his forearm. Chat swallows nervously and feels his heart speed up, but says nothing.
"I was serious, yesterday," Ladybug finally says. She's speaking quietly but the world around them is so quiet that even her low whisper cuts clearly across the night air. "You have to stop doing... that."
Chat Noir considers saying something flippant in response, coming up with some clever pun and pretending that he doesn't know what she's talking about. But her lashes flutter and she lifts her bright blue eyes to stare right at him, like she's looking into his very soul, and suddenly he's ashamed that he ever thought about trying to brush her off.
"I can't," he says. There's something strangely painful about admitting it out loud, and Adrien feels like something has cracked in his chest. "I—I can't."
Ladybug's brow furrows. "Of course you can," she says, so full of conviction that Adrien almost laughs. He should have known that she wouldn't understand.
"No," he says. "I would die for you. You know that."
Ladybug hesitates for a moment, biting down on her lower lip. She lifts her eyes up briefly to meet his, then suddenly looks away. There is a storm of thought brewing in her mind, and Chat watches as her expression flickers from irritated to concerned.
"I know that," she finally says, sounding resigned. She leans away from him, now, drawing her knees close to her chest and setting her chin down on her crossed arms.
"I know that," she repeats, her voice growing stronger, "but I don't want you to die for me, Chat." Her hands clench slightly. "I can't watch you do that again. Promise me that you won't."
"Ladybug—"
"Promise me."
He can't make that promise, he already knows it. His tongue feels like sandpaper in his mouth. He won't lie to her, not about this, but he doesn't want to tell her no either. There's nothing he can say that won't feel wrong, no satisfactory answer he can give her while still speaking the truth.
In the end, his silence is answer enough.
"I don't understand," Ladybug says, her voice full of hurt. "Don't you even care whether you live?"
The words come to him automatically—of course I care, Ladybug—and they're halfway out of his mouth when they get stuck there. Suddenly, the whole world around him seems to come to a shrieking halt.
The realization hits him abruptly, like he's just slammed his face into a wall of bricks.
He doesn't care.
On Saturday Adrien awakens to overcast skies and drizzles. It's a rare day of freedom for him—no school, no photoshoots, no lessons—so he lays in bed and listens to the sound of rain pittering against his windows. Plagg is quiet today, curled up on Adrien's chest under the blankets, and if Adrien hadn't known better he might have even thought that the kwami was asleep.
"Hey, Plagg?" he asks quietly, voice tentative.
"Yes, Adrien?" Plagg murmurs drowsily.
"Do you think I have a problem?"
Plagg snorts. "Just one? How optimistic."
Adrien grumbles, making a sound low in his chest, and Plagg bats at him with one paw. "That tickles!" he complains.
"C'mon, Plagg," Adrien says. "You know what I mean."
Plagg hesitates a moment. Almost reluctantly, he rises from his spot under the blankets and float up towards Adrien's face. At eye level, he looks his Chosen straight in the eye, mouth twisted into a half-frown.
"We're made out of bad luck, kitten," he says. "We are rot, and death, and destruction. I would be more surprised if you didn't have a problem."
Adrien lets out a little huff. "Comforting," he says dryly. He honestly doesn't know what else he was expecting.
"I don't do comforting," Plagg says airily. "If you want someone to coddle you, go ask that girl that you like so much."
"Ladybug?"
Plagg rolls his eyes. "I was talking about Bakery Girl."
"Marinette?" Adrien asks, sitting up slightly. "I don't—Marinette's just my friend, Plagg," he says, but he feels his traitorous face flush faintly red. Plagg only smirks in reply.
"Anyway," Adrien continues, turning away, "it's not like I can go over there and—and just talk about my problems with her! She's—she's just a civilian, Plagg. I can't talk about superhero stuff with her."
"You like playing video games with her," Plagg says blithely. He does a flip through the air, then flies over to the window, hovering in front of it and squinting into the gloom. "And hmm, look at that, I think the rain is stopping."
"You haven't been listening to a single thing I've said."
"Oh, I was listening," Plagg says. "I just don't care. Remember to bring your umbrella when you go out."
Adrien glowers at his kwami, but drags himself out of bed and gets dressed anyway. He grabs his phone and checks his email, discovering that he has thirty-two unread emails waiting for him. He thinks briefly about getting started on reading through them. Then he writes Marinette a text message instead, hestitating momentarily with his thumb over the send button.
"Maybe I shouldn't—" he begins, looking up at Plagg.
Plagg ends up sending the message for him, hitting the phone with his nose. "Oops," he says, entirely unapologetically. Adrien rolls his eyes.
Marinette replies five minutes later saying that she'd love to play video games sometime today, and suggests that they meet up in half an hour. And so thirty minutes later, Adrien is sitting next to Marinette in her bedroom, an awkward but not uncomfortable silence between them, as Marinette solidly kicks his ass at Ultimate Mecha Strike III.
Adrien searches for something to fill the silence with that isn't just a steady stream of praise for her video game skills. What had they even talked about last time? He furrows his brow, trying to remember, but the whole incident is overshadowed by the memory of the akuma attack that interrupted them.
"Sorry about last time," Adrien blurts out abruptly. "When, er, Max got akumatized. I didn't mean to lose you."
Marinette lets out a breathy little laugh. It's kind of cute, Adrien thinks, and the thought distracts him from the game long enough for Marinette to win yet another match. Not that she needed the help, anyway. "I didn't mean to lose you either," she says while they wait for the next match to load. "I was so worried that whole time."
Adrien feels something in his chest tighten at the memory. He still finds it hard to believe that Marinette—not knowing that he was secretly Chat Noir—had been so worried about him that she practically begged him to go back for his alter-ego.
Something about the memory emboldens Adrien. Maybe it's because of how Marinette had been worried about his safety, not knowing that he was actually standing right there in front of her. Maybe it was remembering the feeling of her arms wound tightly around his neck, the way she'd clung to him like she was drowning and he was solid ground.
"I heard you got rescued by Chat Noir," he says casually.
"Yeah," Marinette says. He glances over at her briefly to try to glimpse her reaction. Her eyes are still fixed on the screen, and she doesn't seem inclined to elaborate.
"What did you think of him?"
Now Marinette glances askew at him, and Adrien mentally chides himself for asking. She probably thinks that he's weird now, he shouldn't have—
"He's a total flirt," Marinette says, laughing a little. "He's sooo over the top! Always making stupid puns and using weird nicknames and trying to be, like, Prince Charming or something."
"Oh," Adrien says, deflating a little. Maybe he should tone it down a bit.
"But he fights really well," Marinette continues on, ignorant of the Adrien's inner turmoil. "And he cares a lot about civilians. I mean, he saved me even when I was just me and not—I mean—even though I wasn't anyone he knew or anything."
If you only knew, Adrien thinks, but he holds his tongue. He thinks he feels Plagg shifting slightly under his shirt, as if even the kwami is laughing at the irony of the situation.
"Honestly, I think he might care too much," Marinette says, wrinkling up her nose as she twists her face into a grimace. Her eyes are still fixed on the screen, and she's tapping the controls easily, still winning without really trying. "He's so reckless sometimes. I worry about him."
Adrien scoffs—he can't help it—and Marinette gives him a hard look. "He's a superhero," he explains, hoping that he hasn't offended her. "You shouldn't have to worry about him."
"Yeah," Marinette agrees, sounding distant. Suddenly she presses pause, and the match freezes. She turns to face Adrien, and there's something dark in her expression. "But I still worry."
"He can," Adrien begins nervously, suddenly feeling flustered. "He can probably take care of himself."
"He probably could," Marinette agrees, eyes flashing, "if he wanted to."
Plagg nudges him in the side at this comment, and Adrien is inclined to think that his kwami is voicing his agreement with Marinette. A part of Adrien is frustrated—it's not like he can magically just stop his first instinct in every situation from being martyrdom—and a part of him is touched. There are people out there who care about him, people that he'd be letting down if he died.
"I—" Adrien begins, the beginning of a heartfelt statement that would probably give too much away.
His secret superhero identity is saved by a violent tremor that rocks the whole building, cutting him off. Marinette falls from her chair and scattered sewing supplies are knocked off their tables. Outside there's a vicious roaring sound, the hallmark of a freshly created supervillain.
"I should go," Adrien says, leaping to his feet. He holds out one hand to help Marinette up.
"Yeah, me too," Marinette agrees, yanking herself up. "I mean—not go. I mean—you should go—oh wait, no—you should stay here, that's safer—"
"My father will be worried," Adrien lies.
"Oh—yeah. Yeah, that makes sense," Marinette agrees. She glances at their discarded game controllers and offers him a small smile. "Um, rematch later?"
"I wouldn't miss it for the world," Adrien says, and he channels a bit of his Chat Noir side and winks at her on the way out. The sudden red flush that creeps across Marinette's face is everything he could have ever hoped for.
"I don't think that's the way most people act around someone who's just a friend," Plagg says the moment that Marinette is out of earshot.
"Quit it," Adrien says, batting playfully at the kwami. Plagg easily evades him. "We've got people to save. Plagg—"
"Are you sure it can't wait? I was having a lot of fun watching you get all flustered—"
"—transform me!"
Chat Noir arrives on the scene just shortly after Ladybug, who has already taken charge of the situation admirably, battling against a twelve foot tall monster that looks like a cross between a bull and a bear and is rampaging on one of the bridges over the Seine. Ladybug has her yoyo wrapped around the creature, and he roars viciously as he tries to escape his bonds.
There's a woman standing near the railing, the only civilian who run off to hide yet. "Marc!" she calls after the monster, "It's okay, you don't have to do this!"
Chat Noir knows this script so well he finds himself mouthing the words silently along with the rampaging monster. "I'm not Marc anymore," the creature growls. "It's Feargotten now."
With another roar, "Feargotten" manages to wrench the yoyo out of Ladybug's hands, and he begins to shake off the strings that were holding him down. Ladybug's eyes narrow as she looks for a way to recover her weapon, and Chat Noir swoops down from the sky to land beside her.
"What's the plan?" he asks, sizing up the villain of the day. Feargotten looks even bigger up close.
"Distract him," Ladybug commands.
Chat doesn't need to be told twice. He takes a running leap and lands atop of nearby lamppost that takes him almost to Feargotten's eye level. "Hey, big guy!" he calls out.
Feargotten takes a swipe at him, but Chat dodges the blow easily. From there it's a game of cat and mouse, Chat leaping nimbly away from Feargotten's every blow while keeping one eye on Ladybug, drawing him far enough away that she can recover her yoyo.
It almost works. Ladybug sees her opening and darts forward, one hand extended out in front of her, and manages to grab a handful of string. But that's when luck fails her, and Feargotten takes half a step backwards and ends up knocking her clean over.
Ladybug may be amazing, but beneath the spotted suit she's just a normal human girl. Enhanced speed and reflexes can do a lot of good, but even Ladybug isn't immune from the occasional tumble—she rolls out of the fall cleanly, but the momentary distraction costs her. Feargotten whirls to face her and catches her in the side with one furry paw, knocking her halfway across the bridge. This time Ladybug goes down hard. Chat hisses at the sound of the impact, her small body hitting the pavement with enough force to crack stone.
Feargotten draws himself up to his full height, roaring ferociously, claws raised, and rushes at her fallen body.
Adrien knows that they are practically unkillable when they're transformed, that blades will glance off of their suits and explosions will barely rattle them. But he also knows that akumas don't play by the rules, that when magic clashes against magic nobody can say for sure which power is going to win out. And so he finds himself moving before he even has time to think, throwing himself towards a dazed Ladybug who's still on the ground, already prepared to turn himself into a human shield between her and the striking akuma.
In the split-second between when he reaches Ladybug and when Feargotten's claws sink into the his shoulders, Adrien is suddenly reminded of all the reasons why he doesn't want to die. He doesn't want to die because that would make Ladybug cry, and Nathalie would set her mouth into a thin line and pretend that she wasn't upset, and Nino wouldn't have anyone to text with in the middle of class. He can't die because he promised Marinette a rematch in Ultimate Mecha Strike, because he promised Françoise that she could talk to him about anything, because he has thirty-two unread emails sitting in his inbox.
Chat Noir might have superhuman reflexes, but that one split-second isn't enough to change anything. It's just barely enough time to realize that he's made a mistake, to think hey, maybe we both could have dodged this one, and then it's too late, Feargotten's claws have sunk into his back and—andthis is what pain feels like.
"Chat Noir!" Ladybug says sharply, but there's no panic in her tone. Adrien realizes that despite the burning pain in his back, he's not too badly hurt.
"Let's finish this quickly," Chat says between clenched teeth.
Ladybug nods curtly. The rest of the battle passes in a blur for him, everything made hazy and inconsequential by the pain. Then, abruptly, it's over. The bridge is bathed in pink light, healing the shattered banisters and the cracked ground and the gouges in his back. Chat Noir staggers up to his feet and is immediately set upon by a worried Ladybug.
"Chat Noir," she says, slightly breathless. "Are you okay?"
She looks up at him with those wide blue eyes, her cheeks tinged faintly pink from exertion and worry creasing her forehead. Adrien stares at her wordlessly for a few long moments, trying to commit the sight to memory. This is why he doesn't want to die today. He doesn't want to die because dead men don't get to see the way Ladybug's nose scrunches up when she frowns, or the light dusting of freckles across her cheeks that stand out against her blush.
Chat feels a fond smile tugging at his lips and he doesn't fight it, which just makes Ladybug's frown deepen.
Gently, he places his hands on her shoulders and draws her in closer, pressing a soft kiss to her hairline. It is a testament to how concerned Ladybug is that she leans into the gesture instead of playfully pushing him away, and when he pulls back to look at her again, she's biting down nervously on her lower lip. Her question still hangs in the air between them, unanswered, as her wide eyes search his face for any hint of a response.
Are you okay?
"Not really," Adrien admits. "But I think I'm getting there."