12 August 2019

Prompt: Dreams (Word)

Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug

Character/Pairing: Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng

Rating: K / G / All Ages

Notes: Post-Silencer. I owe y'all some fluff after yesterday. (I'm apologizing right now for the tenses. I was trying to do a thing, but I'm running on like two hours of sleep and I feel like that car that should be pulled over for drunken weaving? Call the grammar police I'm getting a WUI.)

Luka knows without a doubt that Marinette Dupain-Cheng is Ladybug.

No one tells him. He doesn't even really figure it out. He just wakes up one morning, and as he lays in his bunk and stares at the ceiling above him he just knows.

"Marinette is Ladybug," he says slowly, his voice gravelly with sleep. Across the room, half-asleep in her own bunk, Juleka snorts and throws a pillow at him.

"I'll believe it when she stops tripping up steps," she says, and he smiles slightly as he remembers walking Marinette home the night before, the hesitant kiss they'd shared, and how she'd looked back before slipping inside – and literally slipping on the freshly-mopped floor of her parents' bakery. Juleka's right, of course. Marinette couldn't be Ladybug.

And yet…he knows, he just knows, that she is.

– V –

He doesn't remember what happened while he was Silencer. It's not surprising, as no one ever actually remembers what happens when Hawkmoth's akumas possess them. There's a feeling of guilt, of regret, of shame that come with the absence of memories, but there are no real memories. You feel the anger, the hurt, the lowest of your emotions, and then you fall asleep. When you wake up, Ladybug and Chat Noir are there with reassuring smiles and no judgment (the only one who judges you is yourself – and Chloé Bourgeois, on occasion).

But he remembers what happened after. He remembers Marinette stopping him before Kitty Section took the stage, and he remembers the uncertainty in her eyes as she asks if he does remember. He'd said something, and he remembers the fear that gripped him as he wondered what he possibly could have said to put that look on her face. Akumas are born from bad places, and he knows nothing good could come from anything an akuma had said.

So he had told her what he knew, as Luka. What he'd been struggling to tell her over the weeks she'd been spending with the band, what he'd decided he shouldn't tell her after he saw the way she looked at Agreste at the ice rink. What he knew he had to tell her to chase away the sadness on her face.

She's an extraordinary girl, as clear as a musical note and as sincere as a melody. He's always heard music in his head – music is easier than talking – but she's the song that's been playing in his head since the moment they met. He hadn't told her he loves her, because neither of them are ready for those words yet (someday, he hopes, but only when he knows her heart could be his alone), but he had hoped the meaning was implied. That she had understood.

She was so good at understanding him.

She was called away before they could talk more, but when he'd checked his phone before going to bed that night he'd found a text from her.

You've been stuck in my head, too. xM

Sleep had come easy that night. He had dreamed of the ice rink, of the feel of her in his arms, of what could have happened if they hadn't been there with Adrien Agreste.

– V –

The dreams started the next night.

There's another akuma that day, and the footage from the Ladyblog caught a close-up of Ladybug speaking to the victim after the battle was done (he doesn't usually peruse the blog, but Rose had it up during practice to show Juleka something, and he'd seen it by chance). There was a look in Ladybug's eyes that he couldn't shake.

When he slept that night, his dream was of Ladybug. Of the satisfied smile she gave him as Bob Roth scrambled to salvage his image on live TV. He shook his head in disbelief at the creep and looked back to the heroine, but it was no longer Ladybug by his side. It was Marinette.

He woke up the next day and realized that Ladybug and Marinette had the same eyes.

– V –

There are little bits, pieces that slip into place when he sleeps. Marinette's bravery in standing up to the shady music exec juxtaposed with a defiant Ladybug, pleading with a villain dressed in black and purple to come to his senses. Ladybug back-flipping over that same villain and Marinette pivoting to catch a dropped case of open paints. A sorrow in clear blue eyes hidden by a spotted mask, a hero that didn't want to hurt him because…

His power had been to steal people's voices, to use those voices against their owners. He had stolen Ladybug's voice. And that's it, in the end. He hadn't recognized it at the time. He'd been so blinded by his anger and Hawkmoth, and it hadn't clicked. Or…if it had, he didn't remember it clicking.

It clicks in his dreams. He remembers in his dreams.

So he wakes up one day, staring at his ceiling, and he knows. Marinette is Ladybug. Ladybug's voice is the same one that's been stuck in his head for months now. It doesn't make sense, but it makes perfect sense. Because Juleka's right, and Marinette can't be Ladybug, and yet…he just knows.

She is.