Fifty-Seven: Surprise!

Author's Note: Back from their long weekend, Chat and Ladybug attempt to clean up their little identity reveal mess with their friends.

"So... you know."

As I sat on the edge of a random roof in southwest Paris, it was more of a statement than a question to Carapace – the man who'd been my first true friend all those years ago at Dupont and now was one of the closest. I watched as his hooded face darkened a little, and then he gave me that half-smile I'd gotten used to seeing when he was embarrassed.

"Yeah," he said simply, his green-sheathed legs kicking in the air.

I smiled. Ladybug and I had only been back in Paris for a few days before we'd decided to do a split patrol with Cap and Rena Rouge. It was something we'd started not long after they'd become semi-regular holders, a chance for us to keep them loose as superheroes; once they'd become permanent holders, we'd stepped up the schedule to a few times a month, with an eye toward having them possibly take over a patrol night for us. That, of course, was before Rena made her joyous announcement; I'd already spoken to Luka about possibly filling in for her, though as popular as his band was becoming, it was often hard to know when he was even in Paris these days. Despite that, he'd agreed to help whenever he could.

Tonight's patrol was more to deal with the fallout of our best friends discovering our super-hero identities, and we'd predictably each taken our respective half of the relationship before setting out in opposite directions for the evening. I'd decided I wanted to have the "talk" over the second-best coffee in the city – literally – and had led Carapace to a café Adrien had discovered during a photo shoot in a nearby studio. The smell of roasting coffee was wafting up in divine waves as I sipped from the takeaway mug and looked at my friend over the rim. "Surprised?"

"Not in retrospect, no," Carapace replied as he pushed down his hood to expose his shaved head. Rubbing it with a gloved hand, he continued. "Once we figured it out, it was easy to match the pattern of Adrien's absences with Chat's appearances. But you – both of you, for that matter – were pretty good. Rena didn't puzzle it out until the day you asked her to do the photoshoot."

My masked eyes widened. "Wait - you knew earlier?"

Carapace smiled. "Dude, there's not a lot of space between Chat and Adrien. Besides, I've been fighting alongside you now for years; when you know what to look for, it's not hard to see those silly ears on top of your normal mop of hair."

"Hey!" I said, automatically running a paw to my mane. "I'll have you know these are part of the gig! They actually do something!"

Carapace laughed. "Yeah. Drive your female fans wild."

I rolled my eyes. "Well, I'm sure that's just an unfortunate side effect," I joked, though I was well aware of how Marinette felt about them. And how she could use them against me with that devilish touch of hers...

"Right," he laughed again as he sipped his coffee, then went sober. "So... I have to ask..."

"Is this the end of your run as Carapace?" I replied.

"Yeah," he nodded. "Or Chat, for that matter."

"The question of the evening, that." I looked up at the stars. "The short answer is, I'm not ready to give up being Chat Noir; even I were, Ladybug and I know we have unfinished business with Hawkmoth. Handing off to someone new right now would put them at a grave disadvantage. Believe me, LB and I spent a lot of time discussing this on our vacation-"

Cap snorted his coffee. "Is that what we're calling it these days?" he asked.

I glared at him for a moment before continuing. "It took a lot of years for her to trust me with her identity. It's actually Alya's fault that we know. I wasn't ready to reveal myself to Marinette when those damning photos of me with Ladybug hit her blog."

"You know, I wondered what you'd gone through with Marinette," he said. "I'm sorry, dude."

"Well, it was my fault in the first place. The upshot was it sort of forced the issue on us."

The look of astonishment on Carapace's face was slightly humorous, with his jaw open slightly and goggled eyes wide. "How on earth did you manage to keep her from knowing who you were? Especially while living together?"

"You get creative," I smiled. "But it doesn't hurt that Mari loves tight magic black leather."

His eyes grew wider. "You... you stay transformed when-"

Flushing slightly, I quickly continued my thought. "Anyway, the bottom line is that we realized there was more of a risk to not knowing who was under each respective mask. Apparently, there was a little episode back when we were still in Dupont that Ladybug thought had proved the opposite point, but over the years since she's come to the view that secrets have their own price."

"What sort of episode?"

"I couldn't tell you," I replied honestly. "It was one of those mind-numbing broken timeline incidents where Ladybug wound up being the only one to recall what happened. She's told me enough that I know I was somehow akumatized and destroyed the world as a result."

"You...?" Carapace gasped. "I can't believe it. Not in a million years."

"I was a lot younger at the time, so it's possible. My point though is that the akumatization was the result of secrets – and once she realized some secrets are better known than not, it changed her whole view on her Superhero Golden Rule."

"Ah," he smiled, looking a bit relieved. "So, you're not retiring... and we're not losing our Miraculous?"

"Exactly."

Relaxing more, Carapace drained the last of his coffee. "I was more worried than Rena," he confided. "She thought Ladybug would keep us on the payroll."

"The two of you are our closest, most trusted friends," I said, fist bumping him. "And there's no way you're getting out of covering for us when we want to take time off."

Cap chuckled. "Ah. Truth will out."

"Always." I snapped open my baton to check the time. "I'm going to call it a night, but you're welcome to stay out longer."

Stretching fully, Carapace laughed. "I'm gonna turn in too. Rena's not sleeping well these nights, actually. She can't get comfortable, especially since she's got to go to the bathroom six times a night now." As he stood, he smiled crookedly. "Each time she does, she reminds me it's my fault, too. So I'm not getting much sleep, either."

I narrowed my masked eyes. "Speaking as someone who aced Bio, I'd feel obligated to remind her that it 'takes two to tango."

Carapace laughed. "If I've learned anything, it's not to pick a fight with your beloved when the hormones are raging."

"Good point," I chuckled as I extended my baton. "See you around, turtle," I called out as I leapt into the evening.

My feline hearing picked up his laughter as he leapt away in the opposite direction. Smiling, I helicoptered over to the next rooftop and then began a relatively modest trot across the darkened rooftops of the city toward our apartment. The steady rhythm of my rubber soled boots hitting the tiles did it's usual magic and created a Zen-like mood, simultaneously relaxing me while heightening my senses. Sights, sounds and smells of Paris as it settled in for the night washed over me, once more reminding me how special my transformation abilities were – and how much more connected to my city I was as a result.

One smell stood out among many, and a wide feline grin broke out on my masked face when I realized I was passing fairly close to the Dupain-Cheng Bakery. Shifting my direction slightly, I hit the side of the building and dropped down to the street using a downspout; landing in a crouch, I took a deeper sniff, and was surprised at how more detailed my appreciation of Tom's famous bread was.

I debated for a moment taking the stealthy tact and stealing the loaves straight from the oven, but decided my girlfriend would likely disown me. Opting instead for the side entrance to the bakery kitchen, I tapped my claws against the wood. While it wasn't entirely unusual for Tom to be baking as such a late hour, my masked eyes flew wide when Marinette pulled open the door.

"Chat! Thank God. Get in here."

"Princess?" I asked as she tugged me through the door an into the warm embrace of the kitchen at full boil. Before I knew what was going on, she'd tossed me an apron and stationed me in front of a mixing bowl surrounded by smaller dishes of ingredients. Unlike my kitten days, I was far more comfortable in the kitchen as a grown feline and easily determined I was to make oatmeal raisin cookies. Still unsure of why I was making cookies at that hour of the evening, I picked up the spatula and started to blend together the ingredients.

As Marinette quietly muttered to herself over what looked to be a pound cake of some sort, I tried to get my bearings. Plucking the metal bowl from the counter, I wandered as I mixed and quickly realized her parents were nowhere in sight; every surface of the kitchen, however, had some baking project in progress, and a quick peek into the oven told me it was full of bread, pastries and cookies.

That brought a frown to my face, for on a few other occasions, I had encountered this same phenomenon from Marinette. When something was troubling her deeply, she often made a loaf of bread so she could kneed out her troubles; once the golden baguette came out of our oven at home, she'd have solved the knotty problem. And if she hadn't... well, that's where my purr therapy generally came in. Along with certain other feline talents.

I had never seen her do more than one project at a time, though.

"Princess," I said cautiously. "How was patrol? You seem to have finished earlier than-"

She whirled on me. "Madagascar Vanilla! Who on earth would come up with a recipe that requires Mada-frigging-gascar Vanilla!" she cried, shaking a spoon at me.

My feline reflexes managed to avoid most of the batter, save for on splotch that landed on my arm. "What happened, Mari?" I asked.

Bustling past me, she continued as if I'd not said anything. "Jamaican would be cheaper. Better too; but maybe I could swap it for something else-"

"Marinette?"

"Dammit! Where did Papa put the baking soda?"

"On the counter to your left," I sighed.

"Right," she nodded as she whistled past me, trailing a million exotic scents in her wake. That told me she'd been at it for a few hours now, which made my masked eyes go wider. Patrolling often took us to midnight; I'd knocked off at ten, which in itself was unusual. Ladybug ending early was extraordinary.

"Eggs? Brown or white?" she asked me.

Putting down my bowl, I put my hands on my hips. "Marinette..."

"Good idea. I'll use the mixture instead-"

"Marinette!" I growled. "What the Hell is going on?"

My girlfriend – well, technically she was my fiancé now, right? - blinked and then looked at me as though she were seeing me for the first time that evening. "She wants to get married," Marinette said simply as she sagged against the counter.

"Alya?" I asked as I swooped in beside her and held her to me. "We already knew that."

Marinette put her head into her hand. "Yes... but she wants to get married. In costume."

I cocked my mane slightly. "Themed weddings are all the rage right now," I replied, tapping a claw to my chin. "Though Alya doesn't strike me as one to dress as a princess-"

"Chat," Marinette said slowly. "She wants a superhero wedding."

"Oh," was all I managed to say. "Like... superhero-superhero?"

"Like turtle-and-fox hero, yeah," she replied softly, her eyes darting to the door that led to the residence. "With a certain cat and bug as best man and lady, respectively."

My ears went straight up. "We... that's... there's no way..." I started, before I saw the look on her face. "Princess - Milady! You didn't say yes, did you?"

"It's worse than that..." she moaned as she pressed her face into her palms. "I said we'd join her."