"You are Ladybug, child. This is Chat Noir. You will do great things together. Now pass the time, and we will come when we are ready," the mysterious lady that Marinette woke up to walked away and into the darkness surrounding the place.

She looked to the boy supposedly named Chat Noir. It was a weird name for a boy the same age as her. He looked up through long, tangled bangs and she moved closer to see his face. The single light bulb didn't have enough light to make his face clear, but she realized there was black, black paint covering the top half of his face. She touched her own face where she assumed his paint started.

"You're painted too. Red and black spots. I assume that's why she called you Ladybug. I'm Chat, just Chat to anyone but them. That was Tikki, the female leader. Her husband, Plagg, is the other owner-" he flinched before changing his wording- "Leader. They are leaders and not owners, understand that now. Your name before doesn't matter anymore. Chloé, Manon, whoever you were is not you anymore. It's best to lock it up and bury it."

Marinette, Ladybug, went to reply but closed her mouth instead. She shook the bars keeping her from leaving the small circle of light slowly swinging above her.

Ladybug became friends with Chat over time, and when he started flirting with her, it took her all the strength to resist returning the replies. It was nine years that they spent in solitude together, only being let out by the two people that put them there first. Ladybug and Chat were let out every so often to bathe and be repainted. Occasionally, their captors gave them new clothes when they grew out of a pair or wore them to ruins.

As the pair grew in their small cages, Chat became hunched over more and more. Ladybug learned how to curl in a position so that her entire body would still fit on the ground. The two of them slowly watched the other lose the fat clinging onto their body, wondering what it was like for themselves.

Everyday, Ladybug silently reminded herself who she was. My name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng. I was six years old when Tikki and Plagg kidnapped me. My parents are named Tom and Sabine. My mom is from China. She would repeat it time after time while laying down. Chat would never know, but she would always remember.

"My lady, why do you curl up on the floor like that? You always mouth something, the same thing. This light won't let me figure it out, but I doubt it's cat puns," he grinned at her, breaking her out of the trance.

"Huh? Sorry, Chat. I just, think about everything and put into my mind. I unlock it sometimes so I can remember if we can get out." Ladybug was around fifteen years old, she was six when they kidnapped her. Tikki and Plagg, the man who took care of Chat's needs, only announced the year each time they asked. She tried to keep dates, but nobody visited them day to day and the light never changed anyway. The single bulb went out multiple times, but it was hard for both of them to keep count, because they were given medicine that fogged up short term memories. Ladybug and Chat Noir couldn't tell you what they did yesterday, even if they didn't only stay locked up.

One day, sometime when the two assumed they were about fourteen, Tikki and Plagg both came in. She had never seen them together, but when they walked in it looked like they were never able to part. Plagg's arm was slung over Tikki's shoulders, and Tikki hung onto his hip with her own. Tikki was dark-skinned, with black hair and a taste for bright red clothes and lipstick. Plagg was a very light shade of sun-kissed. His tan hair was styled with flair and didn't match his black suit and blacker ties. Where Plagg was styled, Tikki let loose, where Tikki was punctual, Plagg was casual. Complete opposites couldn't attract as much as they did.

"Hey, bug-cat, sit up and listen." Ladybug slowly raised her head, looking through overgrown and tangled bangs. "We are upping the dosage on your meds, and if you don't like it, consult with your mind. I know we've been a bit 'lax about the actual taking of meds, but now if you don't-" Plagg cut off with a smirk.

"I will personally cut you up like a fillet until you do," Tikki smiled as she leaned ever closer to Plagg. Ladybug wanted to throw up, she could barely remember anything but endless days of the light above her, Chat's puns, and the constant cramps of being curled up.

"Okay," Chat murmured as she contemplated, "We'll do it, but just, can't we see the sun once?"

"No," Plagg and Tikki said at the same time, making Chat flinch. Ladybug simply sat let her head sink back down, broken. How could she remember who she was, if all they did was up the meds that made her forget what she kept repeating?

"Bug, what do you say? Will you take your meds like a good bug?" Ladybug grunted what they assumed was a yes.

Time passed in the cages, about a year from the approximations of Ladybug and Chat, before they saw the couple at the same time again. They walked in in usual attire, still attached at the hip. Ladybug stopped raising her head to visitors about six months ago, and Chat stopped three months ago. They both sat up when they noticed more than one person had entered.

"Bug-cat, let's go," Plagg clapped his hands twice as Ladybug started to close her eyes. "Up and away. We are gonna tell you a couple things then you can vamoosh. Run away and look at the sun 'til you're blind."

Chat looked hopeful as Ladybug still worked on processing this information. Tikki and Plagg each opened one cage and let the two teens crawl out. They stood slowly, being careful and supporting the other's small weight with their own small weight. They walked out of the circle of light that made up nine years of light, and into the adjacent hallway that they had only taken to go to the bathe and repaint area they had visited. They went past that room and into a small room with a desk and four chairs, two on each side.

Tikki and Plagg each had a swivel chair, one in black and one red and black polka dots. The seat Tikki indicated for Ladybug to use matched her own, and Chat's seat was black with a green pawprint. Ladybug sat down and looked at her bare feet, the cool concrete was a wonderful feeling because it was something. She had sat in that cage for so long, even before the added more meds, without feeling. Only breathing, repeating the mantra of who she was, and surviving on the bare minimum.

"So you are each going to be let out of the same van, both across town. One of our drivers will escort you to the destination. Then you can open the door and be free," Tikki explained quickly as Plagg wrote down things.

"What's the catch?"

"What was that, bug? A catch? We will call you when you're needed."

"You kept us here, for nine years. To let. Us. Go? You're kidding me," Chat said as he began to simmer.

"You don't know our names. Only what we look like to you, and you have no memory of where this is. I think we'll be fine," Tikki smiled as she stood.

They followed Tikki and Plagg to a young woman with brilliant orange hair who took them to a moderate sized car. "I'm Trixx. Get in the car, don't talk, and get out when I tell you to."

Ladybug didn't hear another voice until they stopped at a park. Trixx yelled for Ladybug to get out and that Chat Noir would have a while longer before she could never see him for a long time.

Ladybug slid open the door and blinked, the sun was shining on her face for the first time in nine years. A track of tears ran down her cheeks, and she could feel her nose becoming runny.

"Shut the door, and go away," Trixx said from inside the car. She slid the door shut and the van took off. Families with their children looked at her standing there, when she realized what park she was at. This was the park across from her family's bakery. It had just started to become popular when she went to the park alone like most days, only this time she didn't come home.

Ladybug blinked once, twice, then walked once around the perimeter of the park. Then she walked around the park once more. Then she decided she was ready to face her parents. She walked to the nearest sidewalk then walked around the park until she was across the street from her home. Where she was Marinette.

Crossing the street, Ladybug held her feelings tight. She wasn't going to come in crying, that would only confuse them. She opened the door, and a bell rang above her. She saw her mom, Sabine, facing away from her and picking up leftover pastries.

"I'm sorry, we are closing early today. You can come back tomorrow if you want-" Sabine cut off as she saw the girl with hair so much like hers and broken blue eyes that used to light up so much.

"Mom?"

"Mari? Marinette?" Her mom's sob broke out. Marinette slowly walked towards her and hugged her mother jerkily.

"My name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng. I was six years old when I was kidnapped. My parents are named Tom and Sabine. My mom is from China, and my dad is French. They work in a bakery," she breathed in and let go sharply when she realized her mother didn't smell the same. She didn't smell like chocolate filled croissants anymore, but something tinged with metal, someone full of grief.

Tom Dupain walked down the stairs to help Sabine with the final cleanup of the day, but froze when he saw her hugging a girl who looked too painfully familiar to have comprehensible thoughts. At first, he didn't believe it could be his baby girl. It had been much too long, and cases that never got solved had to be closed off after so many months.

"Dad?" Marinette whispered as her mom loosened her grip. "Dad!" She ran to him and held fast. They had a special bond and she realized he still smelled like the flour and dough they used for most pastries. For her, it meant he still had his wide, callused hand that kneaded dough early mornings and late into the night. It meant he hadn't changed from her nine years of locked away memories.

"What day is it?"

"It's the twentieth of May, 2016."

"Mom, what day was it when I disappeared?"

"The twenty-first of May, 2007."

"That's… under nine years. To the day, tomorrow it will have been exactly nine years." Marinette thought about why it was today. It wasn't a coincidence, but Chat had been there for a while longer than she was there.

Tom walked out from his bedroom and finished hanging up with somebody on the phone. "Yes, okay. I think so. Of course, bye. Thank you. That's was the police office. There will be some officers here soon, that's okay, right Mari?" He questioned her, but she was ready.

"Of course it is. I'm happy to tell them all that I can fully remember. They put us on some kind of medication to stop our short term memories, I think. It all blurs and I," Marinette took a full breath in and a shaky breath out.

"Can I see my room?"

Tom pulled down the ladder that accessed her room and moved aside. Marinette climbed up into the room that she remembered. Everything was still there, except her toys from back then were cleaned up and tucked away. Everything had a fine layer of dust, showing that her parents couldn't bear to get rid of anything or look at it either. She wondered if any visitors knew what this space was for after she disappeared.

She noticed something on her bed, multiple newspapers stacked up, each with a different amount of dust between each layer. At the bottom, was two days after she was kidnapped, announcing she had gone missing on the front page of the newspaper. There was a short article on who she was, her defining features, where and when she had gone missing, and who to report it too. Ladybug remembered this, not Marinette. The Ladybug side of her remembered when Tikki came in laughing and read this exact article about her. She cried then, but she wouldn't cry now.

Chat never had an article read to him about him. He said his parents probably didn't care enough about him to notice he went missing. Instead Plagg made up a fake article about how dumb he was of a child to go three blocks away from his home all by himself and ridiculed him on how they wouldn't be having this conversation if he hadn't been that stupid in the first place.

Marinette thumbed through all the articles, each one getting closer and closer to the current year, but the last article was from four years ago, on the fifth year anniversary of her going missing. She tucked the papers somewhere her mother wouldn't throw them away and went back downstairs.

Her thick socks muffled her steps, and when she got downstairs she found her mother making hot chocolate over the stove for her when the doorbell rang. She knew it was the officers coming in by the quiet murmurs of conversation police use. Sabine poured the warm drink into a mug and put it into her hands.

The two officers followed her dad through the door, and they looked her up and down.

"Don't look at me like that, please sit down and I'll testify or whatever you want."