I've been aching to write a short Miraculous story for months now. Oh golly that show. I love it, but simultaneously I'm disappointed in the way the episodes flowed. Marinette and Adrien are such cute, fun characters, but the plot takes so long to go so short a distance that it's almost breathtaking how weak the storyline is.
I've watched all of the first season. Started the second, but never got around to anywhere farther than maybe episode 5. It just couldn't hold my interest.
So this story's going to be a bit of an AU from the actual show. It's 2nd person, which I know is weird and strange, but it's the voice I really wanted to tell this story in, haha. Why? It just... it feels a lot more real to me, more like I'm putting the reader inside of the story. It feels right, that's all. If you hate it then you don't have to read it xD
I'll also be revising a lot of the scenes that either were implied but never happened or just inexplicably never came up in the show because why did these things never happen.
Who Is She
1: Masquerade Self
It's dark, hours after your curfew. Your eyes struggle to shut, and you sit curled up atop a roof, gazing over the city you protected, saved, today.
There is a shadow clinging just over your shoulder, and you feel it, but whenever you glimpse the direction of it, there seems to be a ripple, and the figure containing its form has gone missing. The hour only grows longer, later, but you can't get your feet beneath you, can't find the urge to get up and go home. Home...
What's a home when your family doesn't even know you, not truly, any longer? You feel the secret lodged inside of you, and your heart shudders.
Tikki's voice, a soft hum, laces your mind: We should leave soon, Marinette. I'm tired too. I don't know how much longer I can grant you our powers. She's soft, strawberry sweet.
Right. Sorry about that, Tiki. I guess I'm just that tired after the whole... endeavor... You release a breath and stare into the spiraling darkness of beyond.
Why were you granted this power?
"Ladybug."
You jolt. "Y-Yes?!" Finally you look back and the shadow lets you see him. "Cat Noir! What are you still doing out here? D-Don't you have a curfew?"
His kwami, whatever it is, retains the same identity-obscuring powers as Tikki: you can sense luminous eyes, and you catch creamy skin and hair that flounces in the wind, but you cannot pull these pieces together and construe a person. Cat Noir's voice is oddly deep, rich, wrong for his form. You wonder how he hears you, sees you. But all you know is that he doesn't. Nobody does.
"Heh. Don't you, milady?"
To the smirk in his tone, you bristle. "Well... of course. But I'm just..." You fold your knees up to your chest and hug them. Tikki's gentle tone reminds you that you don't have much longer before you need to leave. "I can't get used to this, is all. Can... you? We... We started at the same time, didn't we? It's only been a week, but I hadn't seen you until I..."
"Yeah..." Cat Noir hesitates. "Yeah." He gives a little shrug, and his cat ears twitch. The mask over his face offers just enough shadow to distort his features, more feline than man. "Pretty nice of whoever it was to give us a partner, eh? We really lucked out."
You nod, hesitant, then sure. "Cat Noir..." Carefully unfolding your legs, sleepy and prickly, you stand. When you face him, your fingers twist around the back of your head, to the earrings. There's a gasp in Tikki's throat. "Would it help if you know who I am? Then—Then we can keep up with each other. In the real world."
There's a starburst in your heart that threatens to explode.
Someone else needs to know. Someone else, to bridge the growing distance between who you thought you were and who you're becoming, the distortion between Marinette and Miraculous Ladybug.
But he freezes, and he falls back. "N-Nonono! Now? It-It's only been a week! Give me s-some more time, sheesh... I-Isn't this real enough for you?" He throws in a laugh, forced, awkward, and nearly falls off the roof. "L-Listen... it's late. I gotta go now, before I freak my, uh, parental guardians out any more than we potentially have. I'll, uh, I'll leave first. So you don't have to worry about me seeing you."
"C-Cat Noir..." you mumble into the ever-darkening sky. But then he's gone, and then it's just you and your quickly-depowering suit.
Quickly you hop off the rooftop and out sails your yo-yo, twisting into niches between walls and in poles and speeding you home.
By the time you've landed on your balcony, the earrings have lost their strength and Tiki has fallen into your hand, asleep as suddenly as she appeared. You carry yourself on stone-heavy feet down the steps and into your room.
Your parents don't know. The distress call came after they had already tucked you into bed, their faces tender with a love for a daughter they don't even know any more.
Nobody does. Not even Cat Noir wants to... What does that say about you? You curl up in bed and you let Tiki curl up by your head, and you feel the pressure in your chest as it pulsates and throbs, a second heart, like a moon threatening the very tides, cloying your emotions, swelling the sensation of loneliness as you stare at the ceiling and ask yourself, again and again and again.
Are you Ladybug or are you Marinette? Are you a high school girl or a superhero figurehead?
Who are you if the only other person capable of sharing your identity, keeping it a secret, doesn't want you?