IMPORTANT NOTE! With the help of a very awesome beta reader (thank you rijstkokerwritings/ming85) I have, for lack of a better word, revamped Tikki's character in this au. She was the only part of this story that I didn't really have a proper grasp on, but now I definitely do. So I've (minorly) rewritten her previous scenes, and her future scenes will be a bit more… well, you'll see. Sorry to retro-edit on you guys. I would normally never do that but this story will be better for it. If you're curious and wanna reread Tikki's scenes with their new touched-up flair, she can be found at the very end of Ch1, at the very beginning of Ch4, and in the direct middle of Ch6.

Another flashback chapter. Longest chapter yet BY FAR, but I'm sure you guys love long ass chapters.

Ladybug and Chat Noir

(Ten years ago…)

Two weeks.

In the master-bathroom mirror Gabriel stared himself down with purple canyons beneath his eyes, unwilling to do anything more to prepare for the day beyond getting dressed and splashing his face with cold water. He looked as gaunt and lifeless as he felt.

Two weeks my wife has been dead.

Gabriel leaned over the counter as the wave of agony washed over him afresh, and waited it out as best he could. It was the same every morning. A few minutes alone in the privacy of his own room as he came to terms with reality. When he finally emerged from his bedroom it was to the sight of his barely-in-her-twenties assistant waiting patiently with a cup of coffee and a newspaper, leaning against the wall with her eyes on the front article.

"Good morning, sir," she said, and straightened instantly When she had handed over his coffee and paper, she lingered. A question tugged at her lips.

"Yes?" he said dismissively.

Still, she hesitated. "Chloe Bourgeois came by again this morning. Is Adrien still…?" Nathalie bit her lip, unsure how to even phrase the awkward question. She hadn't seen head or tail of Adrien Agreste since the day of the funeral when he'd disappeared into his roomㅡthe day the spirit of destruction reappeared out of nowhere and shook Paris to its core. No one but his father had seen Adrien, and Gabriel had been directing her to turn away any and all visitors or friends or tutors that sought after him, even that blonde huffy model girl.

"I'm afraid so," Gabriel answered tiredly. "Adrien is not yet ready to return to his studies, nor is he interested in visitors. I will inform you when he is. Please assume until further notice that he will not be seeing anyone."

"Please sir," Nathalie implored, running to catch up with Gabriel, who had begun the brief trek to his office. (It was a lot closer in this temporary rental where he'd taken up residence after the Agreste mansion had burned down. Contrary to the world-famous mansion, this gingerbread-style house in the hills was only two stories and two bedrooms, with one office upstairs. Anything larger would have magnified the echoing loneliness he felt into something unmanageable.) "If I could speak frankly for just a momentㅡ"

"You may not."

"It's not healthy for Adrien toㅡ"

"Mlle. Sanceourㅡ"

"I don't care if you fire me!" Nathalie exploded, an out of character action which startled the detached Gabriel so thoroughly that he spilled half his coffee down his black button-up. "Just listen! I may not have been here long, but you ignored Adrien for three straight days after Jacqueline's death," (Gabriel cringed away from her at this point, but she was undeterred), "and he was hurt so badly by that and then the world went to shit and he must feel so lost and alone and I just, I'm worried about him, sir. It's not healthy for him to isolate himself this way. Please, tell him to come out of his room. Please ."

Normally a speech such as this would have awoken Gabriel's fury. But as it was, Nathalie's righteous wrath served only to remind him of his late wife. His Jacqueline. She would get so up in arms over Adrien, sometimes…

After a cautious clearing of the emotion from his throat, he answered, "Thank you for your concern, but I promise you that I am far more worried about Adrien than you are. And I mean that in the sincerest possible way. I am doing everything I can."

"It's been two weeks," Nathalie repeated, her feet stuck in place on the floorboards as Gabriel resumed the walk to his office.

"I know," Gabriel replied ruefully, though mostly to himself.

Two weeks my son has been missing.

Two weeks I've lied to the world about his whereabouts for fear of connecting him to his crimes.

Two weeks I've pretended not to know that he too has been taken from me.

Gabriel had just turned the silver handle on his office door when a crash sounded up from the stairwell, like ceramic shattering against hardwood. "Adrien!" he heard Nathalie gasp, and Gabriel's heart may have stopped. It was on nerveless legs that he carried himself to the top of the stairs to look down from the balcony onto the spacious front room. Downstairs, Adrien stood in the open front door as if he had never left, silhouetted in shades of gold against the glaring morning light that peeked into the foyer from beyond the hills.

A flickering image of the The Pieta flashed in Gabriel's mind, stained forever now by shadow and fire.

"I didn't know you went out!" Nathalie was spluttering. "I didn't even see you come out of your room. But I'm so glad you're finally up and about! Can I make you something? Anything? What do you like for breakfast? I'm afraid I'm not much for cooking, but I can try…"

Adrien was the picture of confusion and anxiety as Nathalie fussed over him and tugged him inside to shut the front door. He had no idea what she was talking about. Didn't she know he'd been MIA for fifteen and a half consecutive days? Shouldn't she suspect him of being the Reaper? After the angel girl had let him go, he'd granted her wish. The plan was to disappear forever. In fact he'd gotten as far as St. Petersburg before a haggard picture of his father had caught his eye on the news and dragged him by the heart all the way back home. After the initial terrifying check to see if he'd killed anyone, whereupon he'd discovered with incredulity that not a single fatality had occurred, he was sure that the fact of his disappearanceㅡthe only disappearanceㅡwould have implicated him as the culprit beyond a shadow of a doubt. It was practically suicide to come back here.

So why on Earth was Nathalie behaving as though he'd never been gone?

"Adrien," Gabriel said from halfway down the stairs. He'd meant it to sound stern, or authoritative. But it came out all wrong. Like a question. A plea.

Adrien didn't know what to say. What was there to say? He didn't even know why he'd come home. He was still convinced he was supposed to die that day at the hands of that girl, and that everything beyond that shimmering minute when he'd first opened his eyes to the feeling of steel on his throat was stolen time. He knew he looked like quite a sight. He'd never looked less like an Agreste than in this moment, disheveled and dirty and still dressed in the warmer layers that Northern Europe had called for, and wearing a backpack with a dormant evil spirit inside.

"Père," he began uncertainly.

"Thank you for joining us." Gabriel cut off whatever Adrien was about to say as he crossed the room toward his son. "I was beginning to fear you would never emerge from your bedroom again."

"My…?" Adrien frowned, eyeing Nathalie in the kitchen where she was rummaging through the fridge. If she'd noticed that he was dressed for travel, she hadn't let on. "My room?"

"You'll want to call Mlle. Bourgeois, as she came by again just this morning to see how you were feeling. We told her you would call her when you were ready."

Something warm blossomed in Adrien's chest as his father's pointed expression finally struck a noteㅡa string that hung dead-center between pain and happiness. His father knew . Yet, despite the overwhelming tidal wave of reasons not to, against all rational thought, Gabriel's response to that knowledge had been to cover up his son's tracks, and not to write him off or rat him out or disown him. Adrien threw himself at Gabriel before he had even finished registering the fact that his father knew and still loved him anyway. His father knew and still loved him anyway.

Gabriel stumbled backwards at the sudden weight, but wrapped his arms around his son. "I'm sorry," Adrien sobbed, "I'm sorry, papa. I didn't mean to, I'm so sorry."

"We will get through this," Gabriel assured him, and he could have been talking about Jacqueline's death for all Nathalie knew, who had gone very still in the kitchen between one moment and the next. "We always do."

.

.

For six solid months after the attack ( Le Jour de L'incendie, they were calling it) Marinette travelled around the city after school in her full transformation (more often than not with Alya tagging along and filming), fixing the disaster her enemy had left behind. That first day, as she fought to stop that boy, creation had been an unwieldy weapon she was powerless to control. It seemed completely random, the things she was able to create versus the things that refused to materialize no matter how hard she envisioned them appearing in her hands.

"You can only create things that you understand," Tikki had explained that first night, as Marinette relived the battle in a twisting nightmare and woke sweating and gasping to find her new spirit laying next to her in bed.

"Wh-what?" With the nightmare still encroaching on her reality and sleep still heavy on her eyelids, Marinette pushed herself up onto her elbows.

"You talk in your sleep," Tikki said softly. The spirit lit her dark attic bedroom like the full moon at its zenith. "You were talking about the pistol you tried to make while we were chasing them through the city today."

We. Them. It was hard for Marinette to accept that today's battle was really two on two when she had felt so utterly alone with that boy. The moment when she tried to make a gun was a moment of insanity; he'd almost touched her with those deadly hands of his, and she was scared. Desperate to bring the fight to an end. But instead of the pistol that she was imagining, the thing that had landed in her hands was a squirt gun . Maybe that would be funny in retrospect, a few years down the line. But in the battle today it had been terrifying; a horrific reminder that she had no freaking clue what she was doing.

"The reason it didn't work is because you don't know what a gun is made out of," Tikki went on. As the spirit spoke, she waved her hand in the air above them, sending a wave of light off her hand into the dark and morphing it into the shape of a handgun. As Marinette watched the lightshow in awe, the gun fractured and separated into several dozen geometric shapes."There are so many different kinds of metal involved in a tool like this, and tiny intricate mechanisms. It's a sum of parts. To create something like this you first need to know what kinds of metal to create, and how they fit together."

Fascinating. None of Tikki's previous chosen had ever spoken much of the actual process involved in the art of creation. Marinette had never expected it to be so scientific. "So that's why I had no problems making swords," she realized. They hadn't been artisan by any means, but they were sharp, and that's all that had mattered.

"Exactly. Or that yo-yo," Tikki added, and the shining gun components merged to shift into a little yo-yo that spun in the air above them.

Marinette glanced at the spirit, trying to decipher the faraway expression on her face as she played with the yo-yo made of light. She hadn't commented yet on Marinette's decision to let the boy go; instead she'd spent the evening introducing herself and comforting Marinette as she soaked in the traumatizing events of the day.

"I'm sort of glad I didn't figure out the gun, anyway," Marinette murmured. "I just panicked. I don't think I could ever shoot anyone, even to protect myself." Not even him.

"Maybe not to protect yourself. But you'll be surprised at the things you're capable of in the name of protecting the innocent." The yo-yo twisted shape again, and in its place was a familiar pink flower. Tikki beckoned it toward her and poked it, whereupon it rippled like water and dissolved into the air. The room darkened a few shades in its absence. "Their powers don't work like ours, Marinette. They can destroy anything they want without understanding it at all."

The warning in Tikki's voice was clear.

Once Marinette started reading up on architecture and requested in depth blueprints and photographs of the buildings and public spaces she was repairing, Paris embarked on its long, slow recovery. It was taxing, and she didn't do it alone. Construction companies handled the brunt of the footwork, while she focused on the more artistic features that the boy with the green eyes had destroyed. The things only she could fix.

As she worked, she wondered. She thought about the fear and confusion in his eyes when he said, I blacked out. How much of this destruction was the boy, and how much was Plagg?

Her parents figured out that she was the new conduit for the spirit of creation on the second week. As hard as she'd tried to keep it a secret from them during her waking hours, she had a penchant for creating things in her sleepㅡnamely pink flowers that spilled out through the trap door onto the stairs. It was probably better that they knew, though, since she would be spending every moment of her free time for the next six months restoring the city. Her thorough absence from home would have been impossible to explain.

The second sighting of the boy (she refused to call him Reaperㅡshe didn't care what anyone else called him but she wouldn't assign the name of a dead mass murderer to a boy who hadn't killed anyone) passed uneventfully. She woke to a call from Alya at six in the morning almost four weeks after Le Jour de L'incendie, informing her that he'd been spotted in an alley downtown. He touched nothing and spoke to no one and vanished again into the night.

Apparently.

Even after the fourth sighting, Marinette was convinced that the hype was mere paranoia from scared citizens. That was, until the fifth sighting.

The fifth sighting was Marinette's.

When it happened, she was following a young boy that had been possessed by an adrenaline spirit. The spirit was benign and the boy no more than an energetic troublemaker, but she still had to ensure he didn't accidentally hurt himself (or anyone else) while the possession ran its course. She was about to take action and attempt to remove the spirit herselfㅡsomething Tikki had explained to her but she had been nervous to tryㅡwhen she saw the unmistakeable silhouette on the far side of the parking lot. Even in the dead of night he still stood out as the blackest thing on the block, with only his eyes showing through the veil. They caught a glint from the streetlamp above him. Before Marinette could even form a coherent thought, let alone react, the boy bolted.

So, the shadow with green eyes was back after all.

"I'm telling you, I really don't think he's a threat, Alya." On a sunny Tuesday a few months after Le Jour de L'incendie , Marinette sat perched in a hardwood chair in the school library, pouring over her biology textbook in a desperate attempt to catch up on her studies. With the amount of damage left over from that awful day waning, these precious moments of spare time were on an incline. (A barely perceptible incline but an incline nonetheless.) Too bad they had to be used for cramming.

Alya, who was not studying at all but rather messing with the html on her up and coming blog, almost crushed the soda can in her hand. "Not a threat? Are you high? "

Marinette was so exhausted from her nightly excursions in building repair that she did feel a little loopy, but she duly left that information out. "I'm serious, Al. You weren't there. You didn't see how shocked and guilty he looked when he came to. It was like he wasn't even there until that moment." As much as she'd tried to explain it, Alya never seemed to grasp the true magnitude of the difference between the dead 'Reaper' and the new kid. After all, it was mostly intuition. It's not like Marinette had any proof (beyond the fact that he'd saved her life, but nobody else saw that) that this guy wasn't like his predecessors. But that wasn't going to stop her from hoping.

"I don't think it even matters what his intentions are, or whether he was mentally present for the attack," Alya said, and glanced around furtively at their peers at the other library tables before lowering her voice to a tender whisper. "The point is that you got Tikki and he got Plagg. You got Tikki because you're a powerhouse of love and creativity and goodness and… and there is a reason he got Plagg. Y'know?"

Marinette sighed and turned another page of her biology textbook. She wasn't absorbing any of it. "I know."

Frowning, Alya tried to assess the intense look on Marinette's face. "Why do you keep bringing this up, anyway? This is like the fourth time you've brought up this subject this week."

Because for the last three months, that boy has been following me on my nightly rounds.

There was a lot of middle ground between 'active murderer' and 'harmless,' and Marinette was starting to feel desperate to know exactly where on that spectrum this mystery boy was.

"No reason," Marinette lied.

.

.

Why was he following her? Adrien asked himself that question every night.

While he was rather good at staying hidden in the shadows, every once in awhile he wasn't quick enough and he was sure that she saw him. But she never called out, or stopped, or gave any inkling of acknowledgement of his presence. Whether that was a good sign or a bad sign was beyond him.

At first, he was mainly going out transformed as form of exercise. While he was on the run he'd decided to never transform again, but all that accomplished was to make him almost lose control when he and Plagg got into a screaming match just outside Warsaw. When they merged during that argument by accident it was all Adrien could do to keep from blacking out again. So he'd started 'exercising.' Transforming and running around for short periods of time. Just to get it out of his system. Destroying a few things here and there. Namely he visited the Seine and fished trash from the river and disintegrated it, because he was scared of being seen, and because he wasn't sure what else he could morally let himself destroy without falling back into that canyon of self-hatred that he'd only just begun the long climb out of. He wanted to be good. He was trying to be good. So maybe that's why he was so taken with Ladybug.

Sigh . Ladybug.

That's what they were calling her now. Some girl had coined the superhero-esque title on a popular 'spirit coverage' blog not too long after Le Jour de L'incendie , and the name had immediately stuck. It was so fitting, too. Ladybugs represented luck and prosperity in western culture, and were attached to overwhelmingly positive connotations. Sometimes she would put little black spots on the mask she wore to hide her identityㅡthe only piece of fabric visible through the veil of unearthly light that covered the rest of her clothes and her hair. Lady luck.

No one felt more more lucky to have her than Adrien.

Meanwhile, everyone was still calling him Reaper. He'd managed to avoid direct contact with anyone while transformed, so far, but he still heard the name as he went about town as the civilian Adrien. On the news, in the paper, on the streets, on the blog he perused daily to see what girl who'd saved him was up to. To say the name 'Reaper' hurt him was an understatement of unfathomable proportions.

He didn't know what he was hoping to glean on the nights when he followed Ladybug on her rounds. Sometimes she was fixing another building he had wrecked, or a statue, or a courtyard, or a garden. With a determined set in her shoulders she would lay blueprints out on the front lawn and pour over them for hours, fixing the damage he had wrought upon Paris brick by brick.

Sometimes she would set out after a reported possession. The blog would document her movements, and Adrien would find himself slipping away from the smothering silence that plagued his house, hoping for a glimpse of her. On those nights it was always harder for him to stay hidden in the shadows, because although some possessions were meek and short-lived, an equal amount were violent and dangerous. Adrien watched her learning how to use her powers from the shadows, from rooftops and in alleys and behind buildings. He watched her growing. Getting stronger. Getting faster, and smarter, and better. He yearned after her secret.

What is the difference between you and I?

What makes you so good?

.

.

"Tikki?"

On cue a ladybug crawled out of Marinette's purse as she dropped it onto her desk, and paused next to her open sketchbook, its wings flicking. Ever since Alya had coined the name 'Ladybug,' Tikki had taken to using the titular spotted bug as her dormant form. It was useful for when she needed to take Tikki with her into public as a civilian, and also made it so Tikki could hang out in her terrace garden while Marinette was at school without fear of being seen.

"Tikki, what happened to you and Plagg?"

The question had been present in Marinette's mind for her whole life; it was constantly posed by scholars and touched on by teachers and pondered after with friends late at night when the world was quiet. But ever since the day she met Tikki and that boy, it had been positively burning her from the inside out. It was personal now, and the answer was vital. After another brief wing flick, a burst of light filled Marinette's room and blinded her. When she lowered her hand from her eyes, Tikki's shimmering human form set atop Marinette's desk with her legs crossed, gazing down at Marinette thoughtfully.

"Y-you know," Marinette said, shying away from Tikki's gaze. Even six months later, she was still getting used to the spirit's goddess-like appearance. Sometimes it was overwhelming. "Why did he turn against you four hundred years ago? Before that you guys were like… partners, right?" This was a touchy subject, Marinette knew, and she was treading on thin ice.

"We were more than partners," Tikki finally said. Her round cheeks grew rounder as she pouted, her semi-translucent fingers toying with the hem of her dress. Two strips of light separated from it and became two fish that circled each other in the air above Marinette's sketchbook. "We were yin and yang, Marinette. We were like one. We've been two halves of one whole since time immemorial..."

The accidental slip from the past tense to present tense did not escape Marinette. Perhaps there was hope after all. Perhaps yin had not quite given up on her yang.

"So what happened?" Marinette breathed.

The fish went on circling. "Things changed."

Of course that was not an answer at all, but Tikki said it with such throwaway finality that Marinette decided she could live with that answer for awhile. However, she still had one more pressing question. "Do you think," Marinette wondered, "that you'll ever make up?"

Surprise cut through Tikki's trance. Her eyebrows shot all the way up, and the glowing fish crashed into each other and popped.

"I'm asking because Iㅡ I really don't think Plagg's chosen is like the others this time. He hasn't killed anyone and he hasn't destroyed anything since that first day and he's nothing like the Reaper or any of the others. I don't think he wants to hurt me at all. Tikki, I think maybe Plagg chose someone good . Please tell me it's possible," she begged.

Please. I don't want to hurt him either, Tikki. I don't think I can.

Shaking off her brief astonishment, Tikki wrinkled her nose down at her own chosen. "So that's what this is about. Listen. You're optimistic and pure of heart, Marinette, and I love that about you. It's part of why I chose you. It's true, that Plagg's chosen is supposed to be your other half, just as Plagg is supposed to be mine. So I can't blame you for thinking like that, especially since his chosen seems uninterested in causing people harm. It's only natural. But," she sighed, "it hasn't been like that in a long time, Marinette. And I have no reason at all to believe that this boy is any different."

At that, Marinette could only frown and pull her sketchbook toward her while she tried to think of a response. Idly she picked up the powder-blue oil pastel and continued shading the dress she'd left half-drawn on the page the last time she sat here. Maybe Tikki was ancient, and maybe she was wise, and maybe she knew far more on the subject than Marinette ever could. But Marinette didhave a reason to believe this boy was different. She had about a hundred of themㅡall starting with that flower that he'd plucked from her hair.

And, as fate would dictate, reason number hundred-and-one was to come the very next day.

.

.

The instant he saw it on the news, Adrien knew this spirit was trouble. It was one of those spirits. A violent one. The kind that came around only once a month or so. In most cities the police would take care of quarantining it, or the fire department if it required search and rescue of civilians, or in the most extreme cases, the army. But Paris had Ladybug, so she was the first responder now.

It was stupid to go out transformed when it wasn't dark yet. So he headed downtown as Adrien, keeping one eye on the Ladyblog as he rode the subway toward the battle, and switched to walking once the train went on red alert and shut down. He watched wave after wave of water crash over the city block on video, sweeping Ladybug away.

"Some sort of river spirit," the mod of the Ladyblog could be heard saying on the livestream, from her vantage point on some balcony nearby. "Very violent. Stay away from the area. High risk of drowning."

High risk of drowning.

Adrien's gut twisted as yet another wave washed Ladybug down the street. He did not like this.

When he finally arrived at the correct arrondissement , the battle had been going on for nearly forty-five minutes. In the few brief glimpses that the Ladyblog's livefeed captured of Ladybug, she was seriously struggling. Sure she could create almost anything under the sun, but that didn't help when the spirit washed away everything she created with tidal wave after tidal wave that crashed down on her with unrelenting force. Adrien didn't have a plan when he burst into the movie theatre that Ladybug had last been seen chasing the possessed woman into. All he knew was that he had a very bad feeling in his gut. That feeling quadrupled when the possessed woman, a six-foot beanpole with dripping black hair, came surfing down the stairs on a wave and headed straight for the front doors, cackling madly all the while. Adrien lunged behind the empty concession stand before she saw him, and then peeked over toward the stairs once she'd exited the building entirely, expecting to see Ladybug giving chase.

The last bit of water finished cascading down the carpeted stairwell, but otherwise, it was empty. No Ladybug. No Ladyblogger. The fear in his gut twisted and deepened.

"Plagg," he whispered underneath the popcorn machine. "Plagg, come here."

The spirit manifested immediately. "Let me guess," he drawled, "we're off to stalk your lovebug again."

"Something like that. Transform me." And whether Plagg liked it or not, the command sent the lanky shadow rushing into Adrien's chest and triggered the transformation that unleashed the full extent of their combined power.

Once the shadow had finished enveloping him, Adrien lunged over the concession stand and went sprinting up the stairs the way the woman had come. When he got to the next floor he heard a distinct, repetitive banging noise, combined with what sounded like someone crying. His adrenaline surged and he sprinted full speed toward the sound, rounding a corner at the other end of the hall to see the Ladyblogger (Alya, was it?)pounding on a closed elevator door.

When he got to her, Alya gasped and stumbled away from him so quickly that she tripped and fell.

It was obvious what had happened. With a panicked growl and a furious punch, his fist rent straight through the elevator door. Water immediately began to spray back at him from the ragged hole. So he forced his other hand through and ripped the sliding door clean off its track, whereupon a roomful of water cascaded out into the hall, a la The Shining. A figure of light spilled out with the water as well, coming to a motionless stop just outside the door. Her eyes were closed under the red mask. Automatically, Adrien dropped heavily to his knees beside her, but flinched away before actually touching her.

"D-don't just sit there!" he yelled at Alya, who was still sitting on the other side of Ladybug's limp body, where she had tripped upon his arrival, and was now drenched with water. "Do CPR or something! Anything!"

With her wary eyes still glued to Adrien, the blogger crawled toward the heroine and rolled her over onto her back, then touched her neck for a pulse. "She's not breathing!"

"CPR!"

"I don't know how! I've neverㅡ"

"Sh-shit." Adrien pushed his wet hair out of his face, barely noticing when Alya cringed at the sudden movement. As terrified as he was to touch anyone (especially her) with these deadly hands, he couldn't let her die. He had to do something. "Shit. Move," he said, and despite her obvious fear of him, Alya immediately threw her body across Ladybug's to protect her. "I'm not going to hurt her," he pressed, his tone a thousand percent more confident than he felt. "I know CPR."

After a split second of internal turmoil, Alya closed her eyes and removed herself as human shield from Ladybug's body. She had no other choice than to trust him.

Movies lie, Adrien thought as he plugged Ladybug's nose, pulled her chin down, and pressed his lips to hers. There is nothing romantic about performing CPR on someone you love.

The limpness of her body and the coldness of her lips and the absence of breath was terrifying beyond anything Adrien had ever experienced. The image of his mother's lifeless body flashed in his head as he pushed on Ladybug's chest with flat palms to that practiced rhythm he'd learned so many years ago. Please don't let it be too late this time. Please let this save her. Tears brimmed in his eyes as he switched to breathing again. No, there was nothing romantic about CPR.

"Is it working?" Alya's voice trembled somewhere near him.

He didn't know, but he kept going. After the sixth round of pushing on her chest, he switched to breathing again, his tempo more frantic with each passing moment. Except this time when he breathed into her, she immediately coughed. She choked and rasped and her chest convulsed, and the water finally expelled itself from her lungs. Adrien lurched off of her at once and Alya rolled her onto her side so she wouldn't choke on the water again. By the time she finished coughing and opened her eyes, Adrien had moved away and was standing against the nearest movie poster uncertainly, giving the two of them as much space as physically possible in the narrow hall.

"A-aal-ya?" Ladybug rasped. "Wha.. happ'nd?"

Alya's face was puffy from crying and she was torn between elation and confusion. She looked up at Adrien, prompting Ladybug to look as well. But by the time her eyes fell on him he was already disappearing around the corner.

.

.

Sometimes Marinette lamented the fact that she couldn't actually speak to Tikki when she was transformed. Sometimes, especially in cases where she was chasing down an errant spirit, she needed advice. Tikki just couldn't give that to her while they were sharing a body. While they were transformed it was as if Tikki didn't exist. But there were other times when Marinette was secretly grateful that they couldn't converse while they were transformed together. Because Tikki was something of a mother hen, and she would without a doubt have words to say to Marinette once they got home regarding the thing that Marinette was about to do. Later, there would surely be an argument about this between spirit and chosen. For now, Marinette had free reign.

On an empty, wet backstreet, Marinette stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. One palm gathered rain as it fell, and the other clutched her failed attempt at conjuring an umbrella to shield her from the unexpected downpour. In the midnight rain Paris glowed crimson and gold and deep, rich periwinkle, the light of the city painting the stormclouds above as an landscape of rolling rainbow gray. The light of Marinette's transformation similarly reflected onto the spray of raindrops around her, flecking droplets into sparks of short-lived light as each one splashed onto the sidewalk.

"I know you're there," she said.

When after a moment there was no response, she slowly turned to look behind her. The street was as desolate in that direction as it was ahead of her. Thunder rolled and the empty street flashed white. "No use pretending you're not there," she called out after the rumble had retired into the distance. "I'm going to climb the fire escape down this alley and rest for a minute. You should follow me."

With that, Marinette turned down the alley and kept her word. The ladder was slippery, but after a quick tug it came loose and descended low enough to where she could grab hold and climb up to the first grated landing. A quick look back at the beginning of the alley revealed a shadow slinking into the light. Lightning flashed again but the light touched only his eyes, defying physics.

"Come on up," she called down, and climbed the next ladder to the second landing.

This time when she looked at the ground, he was standing under the fire escape that stood directly opposite the one she was on, attached to the neighboring building. Instead of climbing hers he began to climb that one. Apprehension bubbled in Marinette's blood as he climbed, but it was overwhelmed by her curiosity. Clutching the failed umbrella to her chest, Marinette succumbed to a brief shiver. Her clothes were drenched and even though it was summer and the rain was warm, the wind chill up here was starting to get to her. After a minute he finished his climb and drew level with her, across the way. With his arms at his sides he stood waiting. Watching. It was hard to tell through the veil of rain, but it looked like there may have been a thin cloud of steam rising above him.

"I want to talk," Marinette offered. It had been six whole months now since Le Jour de L'incendie, and the olive branch was long overdue. "Will you come over here, please?"

The shadow didn't move. He didn't speak.

Marinette pursed her lips. This was going to be rough, wasn't it? Even if he didn't want to hurt her, it was entirely possible that he hated her guts. "Please," she insisted, and with a wave of her hand conjured a long plank of wood to serve as a bridge between her landing and his. "I just want to talk. I promise I'm not going to hurt you."

The boy, who'd been gazing down at the plank of wood cautiously, snapped his eyes back toward her. "Isn't that my line?" he said incredulously.

An involuntary smile tugged at her lips. So the boy was nice and funny.

With a great deal of trepidation, he stepped out onto Marinette's impromptu bridge. She couldn't help but notice that he moved like a cat, in perfect posture with long graceful strides. Ever since he saved Marinette from drowning last week, Alya had taken to calling the boy Chat Noir on her blog, as a play of words off Marinette's own title. (A ladybug's yang would be a black cat, wouldn't it?) When pressed for her reasons, Alya admitted that it just felt gross calling him Reaper after what she'd witnessed. While it was better than Reaper, at first Marinette had disliked the connotation of the new nickname. But watching him now as he slunk across the narrow bridge, Marinette decided that the name was a smooth fit.

When he got to her side of the alley, Marinette slid into the corner of the landing so that there was a healthy five feet of space between them. There was definitely steam rising from him, she observed, though it was hard to tell where the flickering shadow ended and the steam began.

"Aren't you afraid of me?" he said quietly.

Marinette shook her head. "No. I know what you did last week. The girl that was there told me all about it. That means you've saved my life twice now, so why should I be scared of you?" The green of his eyes reacted like fire to the light of her transformation, shimmering like gemstones on his black, unseeable face. She wished his eyes weren't the only part of him she could see. With that shadow covering him so thoroughly she couldn't even tell what color his hair was, let alone read any of his facial cues or body language. It was like he was standing behind a brick wall. Today she was going to tear that wall down.

"Because I'm me?" he answered, incredulous once more.

"Yes," she agreed. "And you're not like Plagg's previous chosen at all, are you?"

His eyes widened. "N-no. No, I'm not. At least I don't want to be. You…" He frowned at her. "You like the rain?" he wondered.

Marinette followed his eyes to the unopened umbrella in her hands. She must look like a wet dog, she realized, with her drenched hair plastered to her face and her dress sticking to her legs in a way that was obvious, even through the light that covered it. "I couldn't figure the umbrella out," she admitted, although she could almost hear Tikki saying don't show weakness to an enemy. "The unfolding mechanism is far more complicated than I thought."

"Oh. In that case…"

Marinette froze on instinct as he inched toward her, but he seemed almost (if not more) wary than her. His hand rose between them and he looked up. Curious, Marinette followed his gaze, and watched as the small steam cloud above him spread to cover her as well. As it passed over her, the raindrops ceased to touch Marinette's skin. There was a brief moment of confusion as she processed the sudden switch from being pelted with rain to feeling nothing at all. All around her the rain carried on, but the two of them stood in a rainless pocket, as if a glass dome had descended on them. Oh . Understanding washed over her. He was turning the rain into steam! Such a benign use of the power of destruction would never have occurred to herㅡnot in a million yearsㅡand the sheer naïvety of it struck her to her core.

"Thank you," she whispered, and was dismayed to realize her heartbeat had sped up. Why? Was she scared again? Please, not now, I'm making so much progress.

"You're welcome," he whispered back. Their little air pocket was so poised with electricity that Marinette had to wonder if they were about to be struck by lightning.

You're staring. Marinette cleared her throat and tore her eyes from his.

"You know," she said, "you should consider showing a little more of your face when you're transformed. It would make you less threatening."

He cocked his head at her. "I don't think I can."

"You don't know till you try. It was sort of hard at first to control what the transformation looks like, but I'm sorta getting the hang of it." She pointed at the silk mask she wore over her eyes. "That's why I wear this, and don't let the light cover my face. It's blinding if it does."

"...Huh. Give me a sec." His eyes grew squinty with concentration, and the shadow that covered the lower half of his face began to smoke and swirl. After ten seconds or so it parted away from his face in a puff of liquid darkness, revealing a patch of ivory skin underneath. Mesmerized by the display, Marinette jumped when he addressed her. "Is it working?"

If she thought his eyes were humanizing, they had nothing on his mouth. He'd managed to push enough of the smoke away so that it looked more like he was wearing a mask, like her, and the difference it wrought on his face somehow made Marinette's heart speed up even more. Why? she wanted to yell at her blood pressure. He's not a threat! Calm down!

"Yes," she squeaked. A grin twitched on his lips, but then it softened back into a serious thin line. "I don't understand you at all. You're so… not evil . Why on earth were you chosen by Plagg?"

A heavy emotion flashed across his face. "Bad day."

"Huh. Must have been some bad day." She folded her arms and considered him, still taken with the new visibility of his face. Tikki was going to murder her for this later. "Look, I know I told you to leave Paris, but I'm actually glad you came back." Ignoring his gobsmacked reaction, she plowed on. "Historically, Tikki and Plagg were partners, and their chosen likewise. I know they've been enemies for four centuries, but before that was thousands of years of partnership." She knew he knew this, but she felt like she had to say it aloud. "You're obviously different from Plagg's last dozen chosen," she pressed, "and that feels important. It feels like…"

"Like we could actually get along?" he offered.

She smiled. "Yeah. So what do you say?"

He went from almost-grinning to blinking at her in abject confusion. "What are you proposing, exactly?"

"Well…" Biting her lip, Marinette walked her fingers along the wet railing of the fire escape. Her cheeks warmed as she explained, "It would be nice to have someone to watch my back in battle."

"O-oh! Oh . You want to ally with me?!"

"Is that crazy?" she wondered.

"Yes! I mean no. I meanㅡ" He combed one hand frantically through his hair. "Wow, I never expected this. You seriously trust me enough for something like that?"

"I trust you enough to give you a chance," she said. "As long as you listen to what I say when it comes to certain things. People hate you, but if you're as noble as you seem and that attack was really all Plagg, then I aim to fix that." People would hate her too, at first, for putting her trust in him. But she had already chosen this and there was no turning back.

"I'll do anything you say, Ladybug."

Those words sent a little thrill through her chest again, and she was starting to suspect that the sporadic pounding of her heart had nothing to do with fear (which was a scary thought in and of itself). "Then I think we have a chance at making this work," she smiled. "Partners, then, Chat Noir? "

He blinked at the name, then at the hand that she had extended toward him. He raised his, then lowered it again, then looked at her uncertainly. She met his gaze steadily. She knew exactly why he was hesitant, and that was why this handshake was so necessary. It wasn't just the age-old symbol of commenced partnership. It was a show of good faith. A display of the fact that Marinette was not scared of him.

She would touch the hand that had brought the Eiffel Tower down in ribbons of rust. She would trust him with her life, because there was no middle ground when it came to him and her.

When still he hesitated, she took a step toward him and took his hand herself. Only then did he meet her eyes and curl his warm fingers around hers. As Marinette gave his hand a single, solemn shake, something incredible happened. For the first time ever, a full, unfiltered smile broke across his face. It was like watching the sun come out. It was a kind of smile that affected his entire face, crinkling his eyes at the corners and dimpling his cheek and spreading so wide that his upper and lower teeth no longer touched. It was unmistakable; the boy was nice and funny and handsome, and he had a positively destructive smile. In that moment she decided that she would do just about anything to see him smile like that again.

Pleased at her reaction, the boy's grip on her hand grew a little bit firmer and the smile brightened even more. Any brighter and she might go blind. Marinette's heart hammered on harder than ever, and this time she knew it was not fear which fluttered madly in her stomach. It was definitely not fear.

"Partners," he agreed.