Sleep was a huge mistake. Or, well the attempt was, because Adrien was pretty sure that he hadn't actually fallen asleep at all.

First had been multiple interruptions by Plagg to check if he was still "zombiefied" followed by some muttering that if he just lay there looking dead, someone was bound to find him and attempt to bury him. Apparently he looked so much like a real corpse that he was freaking Plagg out. Which was pretty concerning. Plagg was unflappable barring issues with his camembert supply.

Plagg's interruptions had sent Adrien's thoughts spiralling around being buried alive, or as close to alive as he currently was, and then the thought that he had no idea how long this state would actually last, and that being sorta not really dead could easily transition into actually dead without any warning.

He was pretty sure that once Ladybug had her Miraculous fixed (a thought that was always accompanied by a massive surge of guilt) and cast the Miraculous Cure again he'd be fine, breathing and heartbeat and kidney function and everything. Probably. Hopefully.

He had to keep his optimism. If there was one thing he was good at, it was having unwavering faith in Ladybug, and he wasn't going to stop now. The magic was probably good enough to ensure that if his already coagulated blood had started circulating again, he wouldn't just have an instant stroke.

Probably.

So to sum it up, he wasn't completely sure if sleep was possible in this state at all, but this night it definitely didn't come.

Around 5:00 he decided to stop torturing himself with the attempt, and got up.

Except instead of getting up he found himself groaning against the sudden complete inability to move. He tried to say something, but it was as if his jaw was welded shut and he only managed a pitiful moan. That's probably where zombie movies got inspired for their noises.

"Oh yeah, totally", Plagg said from somewhere across the room. Adrien groaned again. Well actually he tried to say "would you mind helping me?", but what came out was nowhere near intelligible.

"Right, I'm so glad someone finally had the courage to say that", Plagg answered unhelpfully. He did float over to Adrien's bed though.

"Mmmm mmm mmMMMmmmMM mmmmm", Adrien explained.

"Same", Plagg offered.

"MmmMMMmmmmmnnnnnmmnmmmmrrrrr"

"You really might be onto something there."

"MRRNNNmmmmnrrrnnn"

"I dunno about that one." Plagg lifted a hand and looked at it as if he was cleaning his claws, though Adrien knew for a fact that he didn't have any.

Adrien leveled a glare at his kwami that was probably undermined by the fact that his corneas weren't quite see-through anymore.

"You know, it's your own fault", Plagg said with a shrug. "The youtube lady did mention rigor mortis."

"But that only applies to corpses that can't move anymore" Adrien attempted to say, with equal success as before.

"I really don't get paid enough for everything I have to put up with", Plagg said with a sigh. "I expect a lot of camembert for this. The expensive kind, I know you're good for it."

He floated over to Adrien's face and grabbed onto his lower jaw. For a moment Adrien had no idea what the kwami was doing, but then he felt a pull. Plagg yanked with all his might until…

CRACK

The noise was both very loud in Adrien's head and among the most horrific things he'd ever heard. If he ever heard this noise again, it would be too soon. He wondered if Plagg's idea of helping had just been breaking his jaw, until he realized that he could finally move his mouth again.

"Oh wow, that sounded really bad" His words didn't sound quite like normal, but now that some mobility was back, every time he opened his mouth it worked a little more smoothly. "Thanks though. I thought rigor mortis wouldn't happen, since I can still move around."

"Uhuh, and then you laid down for several hours without moving."

"Oh…"

"Yeah, oh. Think you should avoid sleeping as long as you're the box cat." Adrien had to grin at that. Plagg must've looked up what Schroedinger's cat was, after all. Adrien had never mentioned the box at all.

"So I actually can't sleep when I'm dead? I'm a victim of false advertising!", Adrien mock complained.

"You'll live", Plagg said dismissively. "Or at least, stay as dead as currently."

"Dead on", Adrien agreed. "So, uh… could you help me get the rest of me to move?" Testing his limbs, he couldn't move anything at all.

"Did you ever even get anything done before you met me?", Plagg asked, rolling his eyes. He did float over to Adrien's right hand and started pushing on his wrist though. "You'd be lost without me."

Adrien really had been, and he would've said something sappy that embarrassed the kwami, if not for the infernal cracking noise that rewarded Plagg's effort. "Oh god, is that noise gonna happen for every joint?"

"Probably. I'm only doing this arm, once you can move it you can do the rest yourself", Plagg declared.

Well, at least there was no staff around this early, and his father's bedroom was so far away no one else ran a risk of hearing the noise.

The cracking noise of breaking rigor mortis would probably haunt Adrien's nightmares, so not being able to sleep for the foreseeable future was oddly convenient.

At least he was up and moving now. Some stiffness remained, and he wouldn't exactly call his movements graceful, not that he usually did that, anyway, but at least the gruesome noise had been worth it.

Beauty sleep definitely hadn't been achieved, he mused as he assessed his appearance in the mirror. The weird bruising that he'd now learned was livor mortis, caused by lack of blood flow, had darkened, and came up the side of his neck and the back of his ears. His eyes looked even more opaque, and paired with the jerky movements he didn't quite live up to his perfume ad image.

Luckily, being a teenage model came with some advantages, namely a generous supply of very expensive cosmetics and enough experience on how to use it. He picked the most aggressive full coverage foundation he owned and slathered himself generously. Liberal application of concealer, aggressive blending and of course lots of blush later, he almost looked like a person with a functioning circulatory system.

Except without see through corneas, but you couldn't have everything.

"What do you think Plagg?", Adrien asked as he checked his reflection for spots he'd missed. Putting make up on his ears wasn't part of his normal routine. This much product at all was usually reserved for magazine cover shoots.

Plagg looked up from where he was checking out his own teeth in the mirror (who knew why, he certainly never brushed them). "Oh hey, that looks kinda human, actually."

"Good enough to fool people at school?"

"Oh definitely, people at your school are probably the most easily fooled demographic in all of France."

"What? What do you mean by that?"

"You want me to quote all of the ridiculous excuses you've used for suddenly disappearing to fight an Akuma, or is anything Lila Rossi has ever said a better example?"

"Okay, fair", Adrien admitted. "So you think this'll work?"

"Except for the eyes, maybe. What are you gonna do about that? Claim you got instant-cataracts and hope no one questions you?"

"Nah, don't worry about that one."

"Adrien, why are you wearing sunglasses indoors?"

"I'm sorry, Mme Bustier, I've just had a pretty bad headache since yesterday's attack, bright lights make it worse… I could take them off if you think it's distracting…" Biting his lip and scratching the back of his neck (carefully, so as not to smudge his make up) Adrien did his best to look sheepish. His teacher's look of sympathy told him it was working.

"Oh, no that won't be necessary. Do you need to go to the nurse, or do you think you'll be okay for class?"

"With the sunglasses definitely, thanks Mme Bustier", Adrien said with sigh of relief that wasn't even fake. Well except he very purposefully had to think about breathing for that. As he made his way to his seat, he snuck a look at Marinette. She looked worried, but at least not like she noticed his bluff. He knew how she felt about liars, but he didn't really have a choice if he wanted to keep his identity safe.

"You okay, dude?", Nino asked with concern as he sat down.

"Yeah, I'll be fine, don't worry." And he would be. Ladybug would fix this mess, and in the meantime he could handle the consequences. It was fair, too, since this whole situation was his fault to begin with.

One of those consequences was that his stomach felt like it had a brick in it, because he'd made the mistake of trying to eat breakfast. He could swallow the food fine, but he hadn't considered that without a functioning gastrointestinal tract it would just sit in his stomach forever without being digested and that wasn't fun.

All day long no one questioned his migraine story. Not even Nathalie had made a comment about his appearance. He had a feeling the Gorilla might've noticed that he was wearing an unusual amount of make up. In true Gorilla fashion, he hadn't said anything, though.

At least there wasn't a photoshoot scheduled today. Instead he had fencing after school, which, he now realized, was the perfect sport with the perfect outfit. Maybe he should just stay in his fencing outfit forever.

His athletic performance wasn't quite on par with his enthusiasm for the outfit though.

"Touché, Point", M D'Argencourt declared passing Kagami and him. It wasn't the first time today. None of the points so far had been Adrien's.

"What's wrong with you, Adrien?", Kagami said, lifting up her mask. "My mother's wooden training dummy is more dynamic than you today."

"Well I'm sure your mom only buys the best in training dummy technology", Adrien joked, leaving his mask firmly in place. He went back to his starting position, hoping Kagami hadn't heard the crack his wrist made as he flicked his foil.

"Your movements are stiff and your stance is off", Kagami observed.

"I didn't sleep well", Adrien admitted. "Guess it must be throwing me off more than I thought"

Kagami didn't look convinced, even though it was part of the truth, and put her mask back down.

It didn't take very long for her to score the next point, while Adrien tried to hide the uncomfortable cracking of his joints with an exaggerated cough.

"Adrien, I'm not used to this sort of failure from you." Ouch. Well, Kagami was nothing if not direct.

"Look, if you want to spar with someone else, I understand, I'm just feeling a bit off today." His breakfast that still hung in his stomach with no hope of ever leaving agreed with him.

"I don't want to switch partners, I want you to improve to your usual standard", Kagami declared. Well then Adrien would just have to suck it up. It wasn't like they didn't switch up sparring groups all the time, that was a normal part of training. But once Kagami was set on something, she had a habit of being stuck in her ways.

"I'll try, but I won't make any promises."

Thirty minutes later he finally managed to score a point off of her, and from all the exercise he'd finally loosened his frozen muscles up enough to stop creaking. M. D'Argencourt called for the end of training, and Adrien actually thought that this had gone about as well as it possibly could have.

"Adrien, that was an abysmal session", Kagami declared. "What is going on with you? Is it something, I, as your friend, can help with?"

"No, no, just… an off day, you know how it is." She probably didn't.

"The honor of my family demands peak performance at all times", Kagami said. "An off day to this extent is unheard of."

"Yeah, that sounds about right. I'll… work on it. Listen, I gotta go to the bathroom, see you next week?" Luckily he was by now warmed up (not really warm, but… conceptually) to slip away from her, and he dashed into the bathroom.

Not that he actually needed he bathroom. He hadn't had any bodily functions of the toilet variety, but Plagg had helpfully told him that that had definitely happened when he'd first died, but the suit had taken care of getting rid of the evidence.

Which, if he thought about it, kinda amounted to Plagg changing his diaper, and that wasn't a thought Adrien was all that comfortable with. It also meant that he could probably just pee while transformed to no ill effect, but he was never ever testing that.

Ever.

He hid in the bathroom stall long enough for the chatter of the rest of the fencing team to die down as they left one by one. It also had the additional benefit of being able to change out of his fencing clothes without anyone seeing the postmortem lividity he hadn't put make up on.

"You know fencing girl is probably gonna be the first one to figure it out, because she doesn't actually go to your school", Plagg commented. "I can't believe the sunglass thing worked."

"Stuff doesn't always have to be super complicated. Besides, everyone except Marinette believed Lila had about a million different health issues that all randomly appear, one migraine isn't that hard to sell. At least Marinette didn't call me out."

"She seemed distracted", Plagg commented.

"Well, most people did. The failed Miraculous Cure really put a damper on everyone's spirits. I guess it makes it more real how dangerous Hawkmoth really is, when you consider all the damage might not always get fixed instantly."

Chloé had tried to start a discussion about Ladybug not being that great after all at recess, but instead of taking the bait Marinette just straight up left, and Alya had received some message on her phone that had her look mildly green before she'd excused herself.

Adrien had pointed out that Ladybug had always managed to fix things before, and she would come through. Which of course he wholeheartedly believed. If only he hadn't put her in the position where she had to prove it.

"Maybe it'll make them appreciate you guys more", Plagg suggested. "Not take everything for granted."

"But we want them to have confidence in us. We're there to protect them, they shouldn't doubt that we're gonna be there for them", Adrien argued.

Before Plagg could answer, Adrien's phone beeped with an Akuma alert. "Let's show them they can still count on us. Plagg, claws out!"

As the green light of the transformation washed over him, he instantly felt better. And the advantage of transforming in the bathroom was confirming in the mirror, that he looked better, too. His complexion was still very much the make up he'd put on, and if he wiped it off he'd probably be greeted with the same yellowy pale waxiness he'd hidden initially, but he wasn't going to test that. The big advantage was that his eyes looked normal now.

Well, like cat eyes with green sclera, but still much better than his regular eyes did at the moment.

"Makes sense, cats do have nine lives after all", he told the empty bathroom, and then left to fight the akuma.

The Akuma wasn't particularly difficult, namely another reprise of M. Pigeon. Chat appreciated that, he didn't think he would've been able to survive another tough fight like the last one. Not that he had that last one, anyway.

Though he did have to wonder if an injury like last time would even change that much about his state.

As it was, M. Pigeon's heart didn't even seem to be in it, really. Chat didn't even have to use his Cataclysm and Ladybug hadn't summoned her Lucky Charm either by the time Chat had stolen the Akuma's pipe and thrown it to her. She broke it, captured the Akuma and purified it.

"Oh, what, again?", M. Ramier said as the purple bubbles of the transformation washed it away. "Sorry about that, Chat Noir, I didn't mean to cause an inconvenience."

"Don't worry about it, it's not your fault", Chat said, and helped M. Ramier up. The Pigeon enthusiast thanked him and waved at Ladybug before going on his way.

"Pound it!", Chat Noir exclaimed and held his fist up as he approached Ladybug. After a moment she obliged with a fist bump. She looked a lot more stressed than the current Akuma merited, especially now that the fight was over.

"So… did you manage to fix it?" Looking more closely at her ear, he couldn't see the crack in the earring anymore. That had to be a good sign. "Looks normal again."

It was only when Ladybug pushed his nose back that he realized he'd been kinda far in her personal space to look at the earring. To be fair, that was mostly because those earrings where pretty small.

"I… think so?", Ladybug ventured, her words dripping with the exact opposite of confidence. "I did what the translated scan of the book told me to, and it looks fine again, but what if I misinterpreted something, or the translation was off…?"

"Well… maybe the best way is just to use a Lucky Charm and see if it helps this time?", Chat suggested.

"I'm just not sure. What if I try and it just makes everything worse? What if I break more things instead?"

"Hey! Breaking stuff is my area, don't steal my thing!", Chat exclaimed with mock offence. Ladybug offered him a tired smile. "Seriously though, even broken I don't think your Miraculous can cause destruction at all, just be less good at creating. You wouldn't expect mine to suddenly start making stuff if it was broken."

"That's… a good point actually", Ladybug said.

"You don't have to sound so surprised, I'm a really smart cat, I'll have you know."

"I know, kitty. I just wish I could talk to Master Fu about it. All this Guardian stuff is so new, and I'd feel so much better if he just told me that yes, this is what he meant by that translation, and what I did makes sense."

"Oh." That wasn't really something he could help her with, even if he desperately wanted to. He hated that she suddenly had to bear this burden, and he couldn't help her. Not that he hadn't offered, but even he had no idea how. "Maybe recruit Bunnyx to travel back in time and ask him?"

"Don't tempt me", Ladybug said. "I'd probably just dump the box on him and create a paradox."

"I don't really see a problem with that, if that's what you wanna do", Chat said with a shrug. The crack this time was barely audible, hopefully.

"No, I'll just go over the scans again, I'll figure it out", Ladybug said. "I mean I did already, I'll just double check."

"So… you're not gonna try to use your power now just to check?"

"Do you think I should? I just… I don't wanna mess things up more, what if I got something wrong, and trying it now makes it so I can't really fix it later? I don't think I'm ready." She looked up at him with her big blue eyes, and seeing that look on her, he knew that he could talk her into it, if he really pushed. It was probably in his best interest to try again, because this whole being dead thing wouldn't get easier if more time passed.

"Take all the time you need", he said instead. "If your gut's telling you not to yet, there must be a reason. I know you can do it, I believe in you, but if it takes slightly longer, then that's just how it is."

"You think that's okay? But, all the traffic jams, and everyone thinks it's my fault…"

"It's not your fault, it's Hawkmoth's, and the people of Paris can handle being in traffic jams. Or just take the metro, that's more environmentally friendly, anyway."

"Right. Thanks, Chat", Ladybug said with a smile.

"Anytime, my lady", he told her with a bow as she swung her yoyo to leave.

So… she would probably feel confident enough to fix everything before there were odors, right?