!Disclaimer! Chloe in this fic is only loosely based on Chloe in canon. We do not like canon Chloe because she is a racist. We just needed a bully and it was easier to use Chloe than to create an OC.
!Warning! This story contains graphic depictions of violence.
Marinette, Alya, and Nino planned this ice cream outing weeks in advance, in the hopes that Adrien would be able to join them. Luckily, the timeframe was just long enough that Nathalie and his father are finally on board. Or so they think. The last time they heard from Adrien, he had been very excited to spend time with them and get to eat something that wasn't made by his personal chef.
Frowning, Marinette checks her phone for the millionth time that evening. "He's never this late, has anyone heard from him?" She glances at Alya with furrowed brows.
Alya pulls out her phone and shakes her head, "Nothing."
Nino orders their ice cream and walks back over to them, "I don't know dude, usually, he would text if something happened. I'm sure his dad just made him do some last minute photoshoot or something and after what happened with Chloe yesterday, he might've been too upset"
"Even if that happened, wouldn't he still text?" Alya looks at Nino pointedly.
"Maybe he forgot his phone?" Nino volunteers, "Sorry Nette, I'm sure we can all hang out again soon."
Marinette sighs. "Unlikely," She looks at the ground despondently as Andre calls their order.
She doesn't move until Alya grabs her hand, "Just try to forget about it. I'm sure he's okay and we'll see him at school tomorrow anyway."
An hour later, Marinette finds herself at her desk attempting to finish some clothing commissions. How long have I been awake again? Three days of constant akumas hasn't allowed her nearly enough time to rest and now that her excitement from their outing is diminished, all of the exhaustion rushes back in full force.
Tikki flies onto the desk, blocking Marinette's view of her work. "Marinette, you've been working for hours. You need to go to sleep." Marinette nods, shooing her out of the way to find a stopping point on her project when she's startled by a sudden loud noise. She jolts and pricks her finger on a needle. "Hide Tikki!" She hisses. Now fully awake, she curses and sucks on the wound before standing to investigate.
Carefully, she creeps up to her skylight. As she gets closer, she begins to hear light tapping on the trap door and soft cries of what sounds like her name. She opens it slightly and peers through the opening. At first she sees nothing in the surrounding darkness, but when she again hears her name, she whips her head towards the source of the sound. Chat Noir is slumped against the railing of her balcony.
"Chat! What's wrong?" She asks as she throws open the trap door and rushes to his side.
"Hey purr-incess," He says, managing what Marinette thinks is an attempt at a smile, but comes across as more of a pained grimace. "I think I broke one of your plants."
She scans the balcony and spots a broken pot a couple feet away from Chat; dirt scattered everywhere. "It's okay kitty, that plant was dying anyways," she says as she shifts to clear the remains from beside him. Her hand slips and she falls into his lap, instead.
Normally, she would expect him to tease her for "falling for him," but he just lets out a sharp breath and a pained groan.
"I'm sorry!" She scrambles off of him and when he fails to respond, she searches his body for injuries. None are visible. "Can you tell me what hurts, kitty?" He lets out a mumble of unintelligible sounds in response as his head falls to the side.
Panicked, Marinette steadies his head with her hands, "Chat? Kitty, look at me!"
He lifts his head, but his eyes are unfocused. As she studies his face, she notices her hands are gleaming red with blood. "Oh my god," she looks around him and realizes that most of what she thought was dirt was actually a pool of blood. "What happened?!"
"Father… Hawkmoth..." His words are slow and slurred as he places his hand on his stomach. Oh no. He's quickly losing consciousness and Marinette realizes that with the amount of blood he's lost, if she couldn't treat his wounds, he might die.
"Oh my god. Okay listen kitty, I need you to detransform." She explains, trying to keep the panic from seeping into her voice.
"What? But m'lady'll... be mad." He manages, unable to even open his eyes as he speaks.
Marinette shakes her head, though he isn't looking at her. "No she won't. I promise you she won't, but I need you to detransform now." If he could see her pleading eyes, maybe he'd agree.
"I can't," he groans.
She racks her brain for an idea to make him drop his transformation; realizing there's only one option that almost guarantees he will. Before she can talk herself out of it, she whispers, "Tikki, spots on." After the light from her transformation fades, Ladybug lifts his head to look at her. He finally does, through lidded eyes. She notices his skin is pale. I'm running out of time. "Kitty, it's me. Drop your transformation, you're going to be okay." You have to be.
He can barely open his eyes and she worries that it's too late, but recognition flashes across his features. He forces a weak smile and mumbles something quietly. In a flash of green light, Chat Noir fades into Adrien. Within seconds, he loses consciousness completely. She freezes when she spots two long slashes in his bloodstained shirt. She gapes at the wounds underneath. She quickly shakes herself out of it and, being mindful of his injuries, she carefully lifts him into her arms.
"Okay," she breathes. "Okay. I just need to get him to a hospital and," Her sentence is cut short as a small black kwami flies into her face.
"No, you can't take him anywhere! You have to do it here!" He yells frantically.
Marinette jolts back, nearly dropping the lifeless body in her arms. "What? I can't, I don't know how! If I do this by myself he could die!"
"If you take him to the hospital, he will die. Hawkmoth is out for blood and he's hunting him down as we speak," he explains desperately, "you have to help him!" Eyes wide, she nods before stepping towards the door.
"Wait- Use your lucky charm!" Plagg calls out, stopping her.
She looks at him sceptically. "What's it gonna give me? A blood bag?"
"We don't have time for much else." He rushes out. "You said, yourself that you don't know how to help him! Do you want him to bleed out on your floor?!"
Apparently, that's enough of a reality check for her. She nods and calls for her lucky charm without hesitation. Then, her eyes widen in horror as a full blood transfusion kit, including the rack it hangs from, falls from above them. She just barely darts out of the way, nearly dropping him as he slips down her body. The equipment hits the ground with a load crash.
"I'll come back for that later," she breathes and hurriedly, but carefully, carries her partner to her room.
Once she's gotten him down the stairs, she drops her transformation and slowly lowers him onto the chaise. With the added stress from the previous three days, the transformation must have zapped what remained of her energy because Tikki falls unconscious. She probably just needs rest. Marinette tucks her into her shirt pocket, resolving to focus on Chat Noir. "Keep an eye on him, Plagg. I'm going to get some supplies and I'll be right back." Without turning any lights on, she sprints to the bathroom and grabs a first aid kit and towels. As she turns to leave, the hallway is suddenly flooded with light. She quickly glances down at her clothes and to her horror, she realizes that she's covered in blood.
"Honey?" Tom calls as the bathroom door slams closed, "Are you okay? I heard a loud banging and someone running."
"Yes papa, I'm okay. I just" she pauses, trying to think quickly, "I started my period! Yeah! I jumped off my bed as fast as I could and I knocked over my mannequin; There was blood everywhere. See?" She says brightly as she opens the door just enough to shove her blood soaked hand through. What am I thinking? That's never going to work! Now he knows I have blood on me so he's not going to leave me alone until he checks me for wounds and then I'll take too long to get back to Chat and then he'll die and we can never-
It's silent for a second before her thoughts are interrupted and he says, "Oh, okay. Um… I'll leave you to it then?"
She releases the breath she's been holding and listens to his retreating footsteps. After the light clicks off, she waits a few more seconds before quietly rushing back to her room. She throws everything on the floor beside the chaise before running to her desk to grab what she needs. Once she's again at Chat Noir's side, she promptly cuts his shirt off and applies pressure to the gashes. She silently prays that's enough to stop the bleeding.
"His arm too." Plagg directs her, quietly. Until now, he had been staring silently, lost in the depths of his mind.
Marinette snaps her head in the direction of his voice, "What?"
"He got stabbed in the arm too," he responds, bitterly.
She returns her gaze to her partner and carefully lifts his arm up to see a slash on his outer forearm. She presses one of the towels into the injury, "Plagg, I need you to hold this down."
After a few minutes, she realizes that the bleeding has slowed. After confirming that he is breathing and his heart's still beating, she breathes a sigh of relief before removing the now blood stained towel to assess the damage. Marinette is only now able to see that the slash on his arm goes down to the bone. He also has multiple small cuts and bruises on his arms and torso, along with two large gashes on his stomach. There are many injuries, but major ones aren't very deep and with a few stitches, he should be okay. She gently cleans them before grabbing a lighter and her needle. After she sterilizes the needle with the fire, she tries to thread it but it's difficult because her hands are shaking. After a few tries, she finally succeeds and moves to the gashes on his stomach. It's just like sewing a dress, I've done that a thousand times. She takes a deep breath and pushes the needle through his skin. It takes her a second to get it deep enough and she realizes, with horror, that skin is far tougher than any fabric she's stitched before.
It takes every ounce of her willpower to keep her eyes on what she is doing but after a few minutes, she finishes and inspects her work. The wounds look much better, but his upper body is still riddled with more cuts and bruises. She grimaces and continues to treat and dress all of the wounds.
"I'm going to get the blood transfusion…" Marinette waves her hands trying to think of the word before settling on, "thingy." She tells the kwami before climbing back onto her bed and through the trapdoor to her balcony. She tries to pick up the kit and carry it back down to Adrien, but it is much harder to maneuver the rack through the door than she thought. After a bit of a struggle and almost dropping everything, she finally makes it back and she sets everything down next to the chaise.
"Do you know how to use that, pigtails?" Plagg raises his eyebrow at her.
"Well it exists for me to use- and there's only one button. I just have to stick this needle in one of his veins and then press it." She explains before turning to whisper under her breath, "I think."
Truthfully, she's much more confident that this will help him than she was about her botched attempt to stitch his wounds closed. "Do we even know if this will work?"
Plagg gives her a look and answers flatly, "Do I look like someone who could answer that?"
"Well I guess if it didn't work, it wouldn't have come. It probably would have been the proper needles or thread or… something." Marinette huffs. Plagg takes her annoyance as a sign to be quiet and let her work. She finds a visible vein on his arm and, after once again sterilizing it with her lighter, pushes the needle in. She covers it with a band-aid from the first aid kit and presses the button on the machine. It begins slowly pumping the red and black liquid into him.
Marinette sighs, relieved to finally be done, and looks up at Chat Noir's face. Only, it isn't his face, it's, "Adrien, oh my god," She breathes before grabbing his hand. Suddenly, the events of the last hour hit her and her body is wracked with sobs as she collapses to the floor. This whole time, it's been him.
What if he didn't come to me? He probably would've died and I would have never known what happened to him. Oh my god, I almost lost them both.
Marinette curls into a ball, hugging herself as tears stream down her face. Blood drips down from Adrien's hand and lands on her cheek. She sobs harder and pulls the collar of her shirt into her mouth in an attempt to quiet herself and hopes to keep from alarming her parents. Luckily, if they do hear her, they don't come.
After she finally calms down, she looks up at Adrien and notices Plagg curled up on his chest watching her. "What happened, Plagg?" Her voice is hoarse.
"The kid's father tried to kill him," he answers bitterly, "I would cataclysm that trash bin of a 'father' but he deserves so much worse."
Marinette's eyebrows furrow together, an action that sends immense pain through her skull- she has already cried way too much but she needs to know. "Wait, Gabriel did this? I thought Chat said it was-"
"Hawkmoth, yep," he nods gravely, "Not only does that sorry excuse of a man win the worst parent of the year award, he also just so happens to be a terrorist who doesn't draw the line at hurting his own child."
"I knew he was bad but I never thought he would try to kill Adrien," she whispers, her eyes welling up with tears again. "Why?"
"I'm not sure, all I know is that Adrien was called into his office for a 'talk' with no warning. I didn't have time to hide in his shirt so I decided," he glances down, clearly regretful and Marinette can swear there are tears in his eyes, "I decided that I would just stay in his room and wait for him but after a few minutes I heard yelling so I started trying to sneak towards his office. That's when I heard him scream. I- stopped caring if someone saw me and raced as fast as I could. I got there just in time to see Adrien, with his shirt soaked in blood, attempting to defend himself from his father. He saw me but he was too slow and Gabriel got another hit in before he could transform. I don't know what happened after that but I do know that without the strength the suit provides, he never would have made it here."
Marinette moves to Adrien's side and begins to stroke his hair before realizing that he, like her, is still covered in blood. She glances at the clock and groans, "It's after 3 in the morning, I'm going to clean us up so we can go to bed. Do you need anything Plagg?"
"Any cheese will be fine." He answers, quietly.
She nods silently and leaves to clean herself up.
Marinette returns to the room with a tray of food, some water, and washcloths. She sets everything down, "Your cheese is on the tray, Plagg. I got food for Adrien if he wakes up but you're welcome to any of it."
Without answering, Plagg flies to the food tray and stuffs his face. Marinette begins gently cleaning the blood off of Adrien as she gets lost in thought. If we had just shared our identities like he wanted to, this might've never happened. I KNEW that Chat's home life wasn't great. If I had just let him tell me, I could've gotten him out of there before it ever progressed to this. And for what? Because of some stupid rules and a fear of disappointment? Once she's finished clearing the blood from his skin, she realizes that her vision is blurred and she feels tears dripping down her face but she's not sure when they started flowing.
She stands to clean the mess of blood soaked towels and shredded clothing. Silently, she moves everything away from the chaise before draping a blanket over Adrien. "How did I never know it was you?" She says as she runs her thumb over the part of his face where his mask usually rests. She kisses his forehead, "Thank you for coming to me," she whispers as she strokes his hair. "I don't know what I'd do if I lost you, Chat." She hesitates before adding, "I love you."
She walks to her bed and pulls the sheets off before laying them beside the chaise. Once settled, she climbs into her makeshift bed and holds his wrist to check his pulse, terrified that his heart might stop at any moment. She doesn't sleep.