When Magic Fails
Written by: JuliaFC
Betas: KhanOfAllOrcs, Agrestebug, Etoile-Lead-Sama, Speckleflower, AmberLambda, Anonymousfriend27 and MiniNoire
Big thanks to: Momo|MarinetteAgresteBrand and Genxha
Cover art and chapter art credit: Rosehealer02 on Deviantart (to see her beautiful chapter art illustrations please check my Ao3 profile!)
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by (c) Thomas Astruc; TS1 Bouygues, Disney Channel, Zagtoon, Toei Animation. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
oOo
Chapter 2 - Code Polkadot
It was a race against time. His ring beeped when she passed the Ministère de la Santé, and her own Miraculous beeped in front of the ambassade des Pays-Bas. People watched in horror as she jumped and zipped across the road. She could see their stares, could hear their whispers. They were probably wondering what Ladybug was doing, holding Chat Noir and running madly across the road, both covered in blood, dust and rubble. She glared at anybody that came within a glaring distance.
"WHERE'S THE HOSPITAL?" she shouted at someone who had just stopped on a bike next to her. A familiar face, but her vision was so blurred by tears and sweat that she couldn't quite make out who the person was. She shrugged off the idea. Four different hands pointed in the same direction, immediately followed by another dozen. She attempted a grateful smile, but was certain, from the frightened reactions of the people on the road, that she had barely managed to put up a painful grimace.
She jumped across in the direction shown and immediately saw her reflection glaring at her from the windows of the building in front of her. She didn't even stop to consider what she looked like. The words on the building's windows said Hôpital Necker, but they also mentioned "University". She looked around to find the blue "H" that clearly marked a public hospital and saw it just a few metres away, at the side of a small marble arched gate, which led into a courtyard.
She landed in front of it and burst inside; her eyes scanned the courtyard until she saw at her left a door manning the sign "Accueil". As she walked inside and looked around, she saw lines of metallic black seats. Mothers and children moved to give her space, as well as the people queuing and standing in front of the reception check in. She heard whispers around the room, mothers consoling their children who were asking what happened to Chat Noir. Why were there so many kids? All the patients had children with them; that was weird.
"I need a doctor, quickly!" she said bluntly at the woman sitting at the check in desk. To her disappointment the receptionist was on the phone, so taken with looking at the screen in front of her that she hadn't even glanced in her direction. Marinette's gaze quickly ran to Chat Noir's face. The side of his head was covered in blood, which had mixed together with the dirt and the pieces of mortar in his hair and had made a sort of paste that had glued to his and even to her own suit. Her heart raced faster in her chest. She needed to hurry.
"Have you got your child's carnet de santé and carte mutuelle, and your carte vitale please?" came from behind the green desk the voice of said receptionist, who stretched her left hand out to her, her eyes still focused on the screen in front of her, her ear still glued to the phone receiver.
Marinette gulped. Child? She looked around again. There were plenty of colourful drawings and cartoon characters embossed on the walls of the reception desk and pictures of children with many different types of illnesses.
Oh yes. Hôpital Necker, the child hospital. That's right. She had heard of it in the news so many times, looking for donations for their research.
"He's not my child…" she said. If the situation hadn't been so serious, she was sure Chat would have found it funny.
The middle-aged brunette in front of her took her eyes off her screen, put a thick pair of glasses on and gave her a practiced look of pure boredom before her brown eyes widened. "Excuse me ma'am," she said to the person she was talking to on the phone. "I have an emergency here. You will need to redial." She hung up and dropped the phone receiver.
"La… Ladybug? Oh Jesus… Chat Noir? What… This is a child's hospital Ladybug… we have adult patients, but they...they're not our specialty..." She started stammering and paled considerably.
Marinette felt a gush of anger spreading all over her gut as she admitted it, hastily, "I'm fifteen… and I expect him to be around my age. I don't care if it's a hospital for children, for aliens or for wild animals. He could die if we don't act fast. He needs help. NOW."
People all around started whispering.
"Fifteen?"
"Oh my God."
"They are kids."
"Only kids."
"Maman is Chat Noir really younger than my big brother?"
"Sure." The woman at the desk picked up the phone and pushed a couple of buttons on it. "Dr. Richter? Yes, Sylvie here at reception. We have an emergency. Oh, you know already. Good… code polkadot you say? What is it, I've never heard of it? Ah okay... Cool. Yes, they know. They're 15! Yes. I hear you, yes. Crazy! I'll tell her. Leave it to me." She stood and ran out of the accueil's room; Marinette could only follow. "They're already waiting for you in front of the SUSI (2)."
Marinette paled. "But I thought this was…" she muttered, but the woman interrupted her.
"Ladybug, you're in the wrong place. This is the reception for booked appointments and routine visits. The SUSI is over there." She pointed to the left. "You're probably going to be faster than the bed. It's the other side of that rooftop."
Marinette gave her a grateful look and a nod. "Thank you… Sylvie?"
"Good luck, Ladybug," she said smiling warmly. "You saved my boyfriend when he was akumatised. This is the least I can do."
Marinette nodded again and held Chat firmly, jumping on the rooftop as fast as her legs could take her. She immediately saw that three men dressed in blue were waiting at the back entrance of the next building, near what looked like a gurney and an ambulance. She jumped off right beside them.
"We've been waiting for you, Ladybug. Nadja Chamack rang the hospital to warn us of your arrival. Please allow me to take him," one of the nurses said, as he tried to take Chat from her arms.
She initially resisted, but then heard Chat's ring giving a louder beep, so she gave in. "Please, we need to hurry. One minute and our transformations will fall," she pleaded. The man's gaze became stern. He held Chat firmly and moved steadily towards the gurney next to him. He carefully put Chat on it and quickly pushed the gurney inside the building, trying to move it hastily to the corridor leading to a door labelled 'PU - Urgences' (1).
A loud beep came from her earrings, and in a flash of pink, Marinette's transformation fell as she sped next to the nurses, not even trying to hide her face from the crowd that had gathered all around her. Her gaze stayed firmly focused on Chat and on the nurses, who were putting what she thought could be an oxygen mask on his mouth and nose, taking advantage of a moment when the gurney stopped because of the crowd. She didn't even pay any attention to Tikki, who had come out of the earrings and had looked at her worryingly before flying into her purse.
"Ew, what's that?"
"A giant bug maman!"
"Does Ladybug keep bugs in her purse?"
"WILL YOU ALL PLEASE GO FASTER? HIS SUIT HELPS HIM, BUT THIS COULD BE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HIS LIFE OR HIS DEATH! HE'S ONLY GOT A FEW MORE SECONDS TO SPARE!" She could swear that she saw a few flashes and tried to cover her face as best she could. Suddenly she felt someone's arms wrap around her as a jacket was thrown over her head.
"There's nothing else to see people, let the gurney pass!" a male voice said. She knew that voice… where had she heard that voice before?
They went through the doors of the PU and walked hastily a little longer until the gurney stopped and moved ninety degrees. The jacket was removed from her head as she heard the zipping sound of curtains being pulled all around them. A quick glance to her surroundings made her realise that they were in a sort of cubicle, protected from the view by a set of blue paper curtains, and the doctors and nurses were surrounding Chat, plugging different cables and machines all around him.
"Where do I plug the oximeter?" one of the nurses asked. She looked very young and a bit pale. She held a sort of peg in her hands, plugged into a machine and tried to attach it to one of Chat's cat ears. "Nope. Does he have human ears?" She moved his hair at the side of his head and Marinette heard her sighing in relief as she attached the peg to something.
"What happened to him, how did he get hurt, Miss Ladybug?" she heard a doctor ask and she suddenly looked up, realising that the man was talking to her.
"Oh… he fell off the Eiffel Tower…" she started to say. Then she heard the last beep of her partner's ring and in a flash of green his transformation fell. As Plagg twirled out of the ring and fell with a loud sob on top of Chat's head, Marinette couldn't stop her gaze from following the black kwami and running straight to the blond boy laying on the bed.
The plastic mask covered almost all his face, but even with that on, there was not a chance in hell that Marinette wouldn't recognise his blond mane, now combed neatly to the side of his head and clean from the dirt, but not from the blood that plastered the side of his face. Pale: he was as pale as a ghost. She only caught a glimpse of his face before someone's arms wrapped around her and held her tight. But that glimpse was enough.
No.
NO!
NOO! It couldn't be...
"Gamin? Talk to me! Are you okay?" she heard Plagg say. Then, she saw something red dashing around the room, grabbing Plagg, oblivious of his objections, and disappearing behind the curtain. "Tikki, you don't understand! I need to tell Pigtails! He's been poi—" the little God of destruction whimpered as he was dragged away. She wasn't sure, but she thought she had seen tears at the corner of Plagg's electric green eyes. Even her own eyes filled with tears, her chest shaken by loud sobs.
"Mar-Ladybug, it's okay. He will be safe," someone said, hugging her tight, but it sounded far away, like a whisper from a different time. "Marinette can you hear me? It's me, Luka," he added in a lower tone of voice. But all Marinette could hear were the sudden angry beeps of the machines in front of her, having gone mad the second Chat's transformation fell. A horde of doctors and nurses rushed to the gurney, busying themselves with plugging in more cables and hooking up strange machines to Chat's body and face.
"Sorry, Mlle. Ladybug, can you please wait over there? We need space!" Marinette heard the voice of one of the doctors say, and she felt Luka's arms wrapping tighter around her as he tried to move her backwards.
She resisted sternly. That face. She had just given one quick glance to that face. She had to see it again, to see that it wasn't the face she thought. She wriggled out of Luka's hold and jerked towards the gurney, peeking around the doctors at work and trying to give another quick look, earning quite a few glares from a couple of nurses.
The neatly combed blond mane framed the handsome face of the boy she would recognise among thousands. As pale as a ghost. His once peachy lips now dry and blue under the transparent plastic mask. His beautiful green eyes closed. Why of all people did it have to be him?
She screamed.
"It's okay, Mar-Ladybug! He will be alright!" Luka's voice said again, his arms firmly wrapped around her shoulders to stop her from lunging straight to the bedside.
"ADRIEEEEN!" Her heart-wrenching screams came loud and clear in between the sobs that rocked her chest and lungs.
"Marinette? What… Adrien? Oh, girl you must be kidding me! Mar… La-Ladybug?" This was Alya's voice. She heard Luka shushing her, and Alya's eyes widened, as she corrected herself. What was Alya doing here?
Suddenly, a pair of extra arms wrapped around her from her left side. Another pair from the right, in a vice grip that kept her from going to him, that kept pushing her backwards.
A female voice spoke, the masked emotions trickling in through the tremble in her voice. "You can't go over there! You'll only get in the way of the doctors working on him! Stay here!"
"ADRIE—" A hand cupped over her mouth, barely able to muffle the sounds of heartbreak seeping out of her.
"Shhhhh! Do you want everyone to know, Ma-Ladybug?" It was Kagami's voice. She nearly didn't recognise it, as the usually confident and blunt tone of the Japanese girl was missing completely. She sounded shaken and emotionally drained. Marinette darted her gaze around to notice that Alya was standing at her right and Kagami at her left, and they were both holding her tight, supporting Luka who held her from behind.
They were all there with her. She wondered when they arrived and how they knew where they were. Nadja probably had told them where she was heading, and they were allowed through the door of the PU before detransforming, Marinette thought, but the sight of Adrien being picked up carefully by one of the nurses and transferred into a hospital bed stopped the last of her rational thoughts from coming through. New sobs shook her chest, as new tears rolled off her cheeks. She buried her face in Alya's chest not even attempting to stop sobbing desperately.
Because Chat was Adrien. And Adrien could die. And it was her fault…
Notes:
(1) PU - Pavillon des Urgences (A&E/ER)
(2) SUSI - Service d'Urgences et de Soins Intensifs (A&E/ER, Emergency and Intensive Care department)
Author's Note:
Hi! *Keeps hiding*
I know, I know, this is probably the most catastrophic reveal ever. Please don't hate me!
I'll cut the fluff and get straight to the point. In the next instalment of "When Magic fails", "Secrets in the Open":
— "We will need to put stitches on this cut at the side of his head."
— "He has the right to choose how to live his own life!"
— "Chat Noir hasn't just been injured. He's been poisoned. And it's not just an average poison. It's extremely dangerous."
I know, I'm cruel. If you want to kill m—, I mean, if you read this and you're not part of our wonderful Discord server already, but you enjoy reading, writing and talking about Miraculous, please join our Discord server, Miraculous Fanworks (for people on FFN, discord dot gg slash mlfanworks). See you there soon, and see you soon here with the next chapters of this story. Won't be too long. Promise!
PS: you know the drill. Please let me know what you think. I love all my babies (aka stories) and have them all plotted (glances also at the pile of plots still not even started hidden in her WIP pile. Gosh, this show is a bunny breeder for me!) but I will write more eagerly stories where I receive more comments, because I feel like I'm letting down less people. So please do me this Easter present and drop me a note ;) I'll love you forever!