Many things happened the following week. And many things didn't happen, too.
In school, it was time for final exams. Everyone was scrambling to get last minute studying in and spending sleepless nights cramming every ounce of information they could into their heads. On the surface Marinette was as adoring as ever toward Adrien, but there was still that inexplicable touch of sadness about her. And it seemed to Adrien that the more he tried to comfort her or get close to her, the more an invisible wall went up between them. It was like she was trying to prevent their relationship from becoming anything very serious. And it was breaking his heart, because if Ladybug refused Chat Noir and Marinette didn't want a serious relationship with Adrien, then there was no hope at all for them to be together.
At home, Adrien was making an effort to get his apartment more livable. He had managed to get some of his furniture out of his father's house. Nino had driven them there one day when his father hadn't been home. But The Gorilla had been there. And he'd seemed perfectly content to help carry Adrien's desk, chair, and sofa out to the van for him. His old bed would not possibly fit in his new tiny bedroom. Adrien had to have a smaller one delivered from a furniture store.
Keeping the apartment clean proved to be surprisingly challenging. Having lived his entire life surrounded by hired servants who cooked, cleaned, organized, and even shopped for him, maintaining his own living space was something entirely new to Adrien. There were things getting dirty and needing to be cleaned that he had never thought could get dirty to begin with. Like the walls near light switches, faucets on sinks, the glass on mirrors, the windowsills, the grout around the tiles in the shower, the inside of the refrigerator, and the spaces between the cushions of his sofa. And while he was motivated to learn how to keep everything as clean as he was accustomed to, Nino seemed to be just as equally unmotivated to lift a finger. Unless something was particularly disgusting, or hindering his work somehow, Nino seemed content to let it be and deal with it at some later, unspecified time.
This started to cause a bit of conflict between the two friends. Adrien argued that Nino had been raised by parents who taught him how to do all these things, so it should be easy for him to clean the apartment. Nino argued that if Adrien wanted the apartment to be as spotless as the Agreste estate, then he had better hire housekeeping staff to do the work just like he'd had at said estate. In the end, they came to a grudging agreement that, on the first weekend of every month, Nino would make sure that their shared areas were deep cleaned. And in the meantime, Adrien would have to tolerate some crumbs, dust, and fingerprints unless he wanted to clean it up himself. Neither was particularly happy with the arrangement, but Adrien philosophized that this meant it must be a good compromise.
When it came time to do laundry, Adrien decided that buying a washer for their clothes would be a good investment rather than spending the money on going to the laundromat every week. When the new machine was installed, however, he discovered that he had no clue how to wash his own clothes. And when he finally got the machine working and his laundry clean, he had to untangle their new clothes drying rack, assemble it, and then figure out where to put it so that he and Nino wouldn't be tripping over a wire rack full of wet laundry all the time.
It had been a huge relief when they finally purchased some cookware and stocked their kitchen with real food. No matter what Nino said, Adrien did not think it was possible to live on instant ramen noodles. In fact he never wanted see another package of the stuff ever again.
Alya kept her promise, too. One evening, she and Marinette came over and taught the boys how to cook. Alya showed them how to follow simple recipes so they could expand the variety in their diet. And Marinette showed them how to make a few of her favorite dishes. Adrien got so excited when his quiche was ready that he forgot he couldn't just grab it out of the oven with his bare hands and he accidentally scalded his fingers.
There were also certain things that Adrien noticed were not happening that week. His father, for one, had not attempted to contact him at all. Instead, one day Adrien received a packet of information in the mail for the upcoming fashion show. Since he was one of the models he needed to have the address for the venue, the time he was expected to be there, and a parking pass (even though he didn't have a car). Even though he'd been a model for the Gabriel brand most of his life, he had never actually seen one of these packets before. It felt very strange to read through it like he was an outsider.
Also conspicuously missing were regular akuma attacks. Every day Adrien expected to finally hear the screaming of panicked crowds again, and every day there was nothing. He began to wonder if he had been wrong before and perhaps Hawkmoth really had given up.
When Thursday arrived Chat made his way to the roof of the Musée d'Orsay to meet Ladybug for their weekly rendezvous again. He hadn't seen her as Ladybug all week and he wondered if she might give him some clue why, as Marinette, she was...not exactly distancing herself from Adrien, but seemingly hesitant to let them grow closer.
When he dropped onto the roof next to her it appeared that Ladybug had something else on her mind already. She was pacing and spinning her yo-yo distractedly. She barely looked up at the sound of his arrival.
"Good evening, M'lady."
"Hi Chat." She said, still pacing and continuing to spin her yo-yo. "Do you realize it's been ten days? Ten days total, and not a single akuma." She sounded more puzzled than worried.
"Yeah, I know. It's weird. It kind of makes me nervous."
"The worst part is the uncertainty, not knowing what it means, or what we can do about it, or if there's anything we should do about it. The news has picked it up, too. Did you see?"
"No. I, um, haven't had a chance to watch the news lately." The truth was there wasn't even space for a television in his and Nino's apartment. One wall of their living room was occupied by the front door and sofa, the opposite wall was taken up by the glass doors to the balcony, the left wall was shortened by the entrance to the kitchen area, and the right wall had the built in wardrobe between their bedroom doors. So the boys had decided that they could just do without a television and play games and movies on their laptops if they wanted to. Chat mentally kicked himself for not looking up the latest news reports.
"They're wondering if Hawkmoth is gone for good," she continued. "And they're starting to wonder if you and I aren't around anymore, either."
"Maybe we should do an interview and give them a chance to ask their questions."
"Not that we have any answers, do we? Wait...What's going on over there?" Ladybug looked off into the distance over Chat's shoulder.
Chat followed her gaze with narrowed eyes. Far to the south a strange solitary cloud rested near to the ground. Muddy brown, dense and narrow at the base, the cloud seemed to expand and dissipate the further from the ground it was. At the base of the cloud, Chat could make out an ominous flickering red glow and, just barely, the flashing blue lights of police cars and fire trucks. He suddenly realized what it was.
"Come on!" He called, leaping into action. With his staff he was able to vault over buildings and cover ground blindingly fast. Ladybug, with her amazing yo-yo, could swing her way through the city just as fast or perhaps even faster than he could.
It only took about a minute for them to cover the five miles to the two-story building engulfed in smoke and flames, which was surrounded by police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks. The heat of the fire was incredibly intense, even from a distance. The firefighters were already spraying their hoses into the building from several angles. And paramedics were loading stretchers with people being treated for burns and smoke inhalation into the ambulances.
Chat and Ladybug ran up to one of the firefighters. "Is there anybody left inside?" Chat demanded.
"Stay back, it isn't safe!" He answered roughly.
Chat grabbed his arm, "Look, just tell me! Is everyone out?"
The firefighter turned to them, prepared to give a scolding, then seemed to finally notice who he was talking to. "We don't know. We weren't able to search the entire building, and it's too dangerous to go in now."
Ladybug nodded and instantly cast her yo-yo into the air, shouting, "lucky charm!"
A flash of light lit up the semidarkness, momentarily obscuring the glow of the fire. A pair of bandanas landed in Ladybugs hands.
"It looks like it won't take long, then," she said.
"What are you talking about?" Chat asked.
"C'mon, Chat, there's one for each of us!" She handed him a bandana and ran toward the spray of the nearest fire hose, tying the cloth around her nose and mouth and standing underneath the stream of water to get herself fully soaked in the mist drifting down.
Chat followed suit, feeling certain that he was not going to like what they were about to do, but equally certain that they must do it at all cost.
Once they were both wet through, they ran into the burning building together. The blast of intense heat was painful, Chat felt that his skin must be blistering all over just from the ambient heat in the air. The inside of his nose, his throat, and his lungs felt like they were on fire. His eyes were stinging and watering so that he could barely see. They ran through the lobby, where flames were licking up the walls and pooling in the ceiling. They sprinted down the hallway, filled with choking black smoke. Through the roar of the fire Chat could hear the creaking of support beams giving way under the intense heat and pressure, the cracking and popping of wood, the crashing of falling objects throughout the inferno. And then he heard something else. Something that, despite the hellish blaze all around him, sent cold shivers down his spine.
Somewhere ahead of them, a baby was crying.
"This way!" He choked out and dashed ahead of Ladybug, listening all around for more survivors, but he didn't hear anything else that remotely sounded alive.
At the end of the hallway they came to the room and kicked in the door together. They could barely see through the black deadly smoke, but from a folding crib on the floor next to one of the the beds came a baby's choking, coughing cries. And on the bed next to the crib the baby's mother lay, unconscious.
Chat instantly grabbed the woman and Ladybug picked up the baby. With a one-armed swing of his staff Chat shattered the window and together they jumped outside into air that felt icy cold compared to the inside of the burning building.
"Help! We need help!" Ladybug screamed as soon as they were outside. Together they raced toward the ambulances with their precious cargo. Paramedics rushed to meet them with stretchers and oxygen. Ladybug handed the baby over to one of them and Chat laid the baby's mother down on one of the stretchers.
"Did you hear anyone else in there, Chat?" Ladybug asked, coughing and panting.
Chat shook his head. "I didn't hear any other noises, but that doesn't mean..."
He was cut off by a massive creaking, groaning, and snapping from the building. They turned to watch as the hotel collapsed in on itself, sending an eruption sparks and flames into the air.
"That's it. Too late," Ladybug murmured, staring at the blaze helplessly.
Chat watched the building for a moment in dismay. Then he looked back toward the baby and it's mother whom they had rescued from the fire. The baby had been stripped to his skin and was being loaded into the ambulance with an oxygen mask. But on the other stretcher...
Chat's heart sank. Nobody was helping the baby's mother at all. Her body lay still on the stretcher where he had placed her with a sheet draped over her head. She was gone.
"You need to do it now," he said to Ladybug.
"Do what?" she asked.
He ripped the dirty bandana off his neck and handed it to her. "You need to do it. Your miraculous power."
Her eyes grew wide and she shook her head. "Chat... it won't work. This wasn't caused by an akuma." Her earrings beeped in warning. She didn't have much time left.
He looked at the mother's body, lying under the blanket, not moving or breathing. The ambulance carrying the baby started to pull away, taking that baby away from his mother forever.
"Just... just please!" His voice broke, and it had nothing to do with the smoke. "You've got to bring her back! She has to come back! Think of that baby! You don't know what it's like to lose your mother!"
She looked at him for a moment while tears leaked from his eyes and ran down his mask over his cheeks. Then she took the bandanas and tossed them into the air, shouting, "miraculous ladybug!"
The bandanas burst into light and a swarm of tiny magical motes flew around them. Chat watched closely, and for the first time he noticed that the tiny lights actually looked like thousands of little ladybugs.
They swarmed around the area and disappeared. But the building was still in flames. The firefighters were still dousing it with water. The paramedics were still loading people into ambulances and transferring them to the hospital. And the body on the stretcher behind them was completely unchanged.
Ladybug laid her hand on Chat's arm. "I'm sorry, Chat. I'm so sorry." Her earrings beeped again, and with one last apologetic look, she ran away.
Chat walked over to the stretcher where the woman's body lay and he sat down on the ground next to her. If they had only been there sooner, maybe they could have saved her. And now that poor baby boy... how old was he? A year? Younger probably. He hadn't even cut any teeth yet. He would never even know who his mother was.
"Are you okay, Chat Noir?" A paramedic was approaching him, uncertainly.
Chat sniffed and stood up. "Yeah, yeah. Superpowers, you know. The fire didn't injure us at all. I'm just sorry we didn't help her in time." He nodded toward the stretcher next to him.
"Yeah, I know, that's the hardest part of this job. But you and Ladybug did real good today. We wouldn't have been able to get that baby out of there. You saved his life, you know. His little lungs took quite a beating, and he'll be in a bad way for a while. But I'm pretty sure he'll make it. And that's because you two showed up."
Chat thought about this for a minute. "Thank you. I really needed to hear that." He shook the man's hand. "Please excuse me. I need to go see a friend."
"Don't let me keep you, Chat Noir. You do what you gotta do."
Chat dashed through the darkness across the city until he arrived at a very familiar bakery. On the rooftop balcony, as he had expected, Marinette was leaning against the railing and looking out onto the nighttime cityscape.
Chat landed on the rooftop and crawled out onto the railing next to her.
"Chat Noir," she greeted him.
"Marinette."
"Rough night, huh?"
"Yeah. Sorry for...back there."
"You don't have to be sorry for that, Chat. I wish it could have worked. But it just can't."
Marinette's kwami zoomed up and sat on her shoulder looking very solemn. "There must be miraculous destruction to balance miraculous creation," Tikki explained. "That's why I can restore everything after an akuma. It's because the power of a miraculous caused the destruction in the first place. If you destroyed things with your cataclysm, no matter how great the destruction, I could match it with my creation. But I couldn't do more. It has to be balanced, always."
"I understand," Chat said. "And, no matter how awful tonight was, I'm still glad we went. In fact, I think we should do more of the same."
"Rescuing people?" Marinette asked.
"Yes! Exactly! Not just from fires. We could be crime fighters. Batman style! Just because there aren't any akumas lately doesn't mean we can't do anything to help people."
"You want to catch real criminals now?"
"Why not?"
"It sounds kind of dangerous."
Chat folded his arms and looked at her skeptically. "Coming from someone who has fallen from thousands of feet above the city, ridden on the back of a fire breathing dragon, and nearly gotten turned into an ice cream sculpture."
Tikki laughed. "You can do it, Marinette," the little kwami chirped. "You just have to remember that regular criminals are still dangerous even after you catch them, unlike capturing an akuma. So you have to stay on your guard all the time. But it's still easier than battling one of Hawkmoth's villains."
"You're talking like you've done this before," Marinette accused, eyeing Tikki suspiciously.
"Of course. It's what Ladybug is normally supposed to do. Hawkmoth and his evil akumas are an anomaly."
"I already have an idea how to do it, too," Chat said. "Can you meet me again tomorrow night?"
"Um, sure?"
"Meow-velous!" He grinned when Marinette rolled her eyes at his pun. "I'll see you tomorrow then, M'lady."
