MiracuCrack #3P9: Choose Your Words Carefully
by DFC
(Timeline: Whenever.)
It all happened in an instant.
Chat Noir watched in horror as Ladybug's shriek of agony echoed through the air. She sank to her knees, hands clasping her head, eyes closed tightly. The villain took full advantage of her momentary helplessness; even as Chat began to spring forward, energy tentacles were upon her, yanking the earrings from her ears.
"Now!" Hawkmoth's energy signature barked. "Get those earrings to me immediately! With those in my possession... checkmate, at last!"
Oh, GOD, this is my fault, Chat's brain screamed out. I finally threw out a pun too hideous for Ladybug to handle, right in the middle of a battle..!
The villain turned and, with a mighty leap, fled the field of battle as instructed. Chat considered pursuing him... but leaving his helpless partner where people could find her was simply not an option.
As Ladybug's costume rapidly dissolved, Chat scooped her up in his arms. There would be time for self-recrimination later, for apologies, for forming some kind of game plan - whatever one could POSSIBLY be without Ladybug, he agonized - and many other things. Right now, the only thing that mattered was getting his partner to safety, getting her away from cameras, getting her away from anyone who should never know her deepest secret.
Up on a nearby rooftop, about two blocks away... then, and only then, did he look down, discovering that the heroine he'd thought was the love of his life and the girl who'd since captured his heart were one and the same.
He amazed both himself and Marinette by not dropping her.
"I... you... aaaiiiigh!"
Marinette heard Chat's gasps of raw astonishment. Her hands, futilely covering her face, slowly moved down to her sides as she recognized that there was no turning back.
"...Surprise?" she stammered, tears filling her eyes.
"Has it... can it always have been..." asked Chat, as their long partnership flashed like lightning before his eyes. "Of course it's always been you," he declared. "There's no one else that it could have been. Whom it could ever be."
"I wish that was true," she replied, slowly.
"I'm sorry, Marinette... I'm so sorry, this was all my fault-"
"Stop," she ordered him. "I'm the one who lost her composure, who let her guard down. I should be ready for anything. I have to be better than that."
"I distracted you at the worst possible time," lamented Chat. "Something that you've yelled at me about before, deservedly so. I couldn't keep my big mouth shut!"
"Chat," whispered Marinette, "You have to get me home. Now. If Hawkmoth has the earrings, he might be able to make Tikki tell him my identity. We have to get the Miracle Box out of my room and to somewhere safe before he can send his Akuma there!"
Hearing the urgency in her voice and acknowledging her logic, Chat did as he was told. Scooping Marinette up in his arms, not quite in the way that he'd dreamed of doing so, he dashed off into the night with her.
Across town, twenty minutes later, Marinette allowed herself to breathe a small sigh of relief.
"Okay... this will do for a hiding place for now," she wheezed. "I'll figure out somewhere else to put it tomorrow, and then you can come and find me and we'll do what we have to do. I'll pass on the Guardianship to you... if you'd want it."
Chat's face froze. "What?" he boggled. "You can't be giving up that."
"I have to!" Marinette insisted. "I'm compromised. You're not."
"It'll wipe your memory, like it did to Master Fu!"
More tears welled up in Marinette's eyes, but she remained firm. "Whatever it takes," she declared. "The Miraculous are more important."
"No."
Marinette's angry retort to that was swallowed up by the intensity in Chat's eyes, and she fell silent.
"You are Ladybug. You were meant to be, and you always will be," he declared. "You are the chosen Guardian, the heroine of Paris, the girl of my dreams."
"Easy for you to say that now," she stammered, "now that I've lost it all."
"You haven't lost me."
Leaning in closer, Chat's emotions had him trembling. "I swear, Marinette. By everything that I hold holy... I will recover those earrings. I will find Hawkmoth, I will defeat him once and for all, and I will make up for what I've done tonight."
"I'm not what's important right now-"
"YOU ARE. You're the one that I love. You have been for a very long time. And not just as Ladybug."
Marinette's lip quivered. "How... how can I believe that that's true?" she managed.
"Because there is no one else on Earth that I've ever trusted with this. Marinette... Claws in."
A white flash filled the rooftop.
Adrien gazed down at Marinette, love and compassion and faith in his eyes, willing her to feel the depths of how much she means to him.
The light of recognition in her eyes was instantaneous, and he held his breath, watching her closely. He hoped for a gasp of joy, broken-hearted tears becoming happy ones, the smile that had brightened his day so many times...
...but all that he could see on her face was undisguised horror.
"No... no, no, no, noooooo," Marinette wailed, closing and reopening her eyes to see if that would somehow alter the reality before her. "It can't be you!"
"It always has been," Adrien admitted. "Are you... okay?"
"N-no," whimpered Marinette, clearly quite disturbed. "I'm not."
"Is this so terrible?" asked Adrien. "You and I have been close friends in and out of costume for so long now. No one knows the real me better than you."
"I th-thought I did," Marinette stammered. "B-but... tonight-"
"Tonight changes nothing about that," Adrien continued, keeping his tone gentle. "I've been in love with you, Marinette. I still am... even though I know that you don't feel that way about me."
"Adrien, you idiot," chattered Marinette, emotion taking over. "I have been in love with you since the second day we met. I couldn't make myself tell you to your face, but I tried... so many other ways..."
Her words washed over Adrien, and he leaned in to hold her... only for her to recoil from his grasp.
"N-no! I can't do that now. One thing did change tonight," she gasped.
"That we know each other's identities?"
"No, Adrien," a heartbroken Marinette replied. "That now I know that the boy I thought I was in love with... is capable of a pun THAT VILE."
Adrien absorbed that in silence... then leaned away.
"I... suppose that there's no coming back from that," he conceded.