Summary: Marinette and Adrien have to have at least one, final conversation, and, together, they labour to put together the pieces of him. He does the same with his Mouse and his Lady. His Marinette.
That he'd been injudicious in maintaining his secret identity was obvious from, retrospectively, Marinette's clarion call announcing that she knew .
Chat Noir was the only being who could absorb blows meant for Ladybug and shrug off torrents of scalding water, dance among the acid rain with a cheery grin plastered on his face, all to his father's conductor's baton. Jerky limbs flailed on puppet strings, screws bored right through the bone of him. In his own way, Chat Noir was just the antipodal, antiphonal response to his father. Born from him. Created by him, a travesty and mockery.
Marinette knows – knew and used the mask to cushion the impact.
Whether the right choice was direct confrontation or the flaying away of his last layer of dead flesh, he can't say.
But she's done it, and they can move on, the terminal prognosis delivered.
Adrien...
Hates his father.
Not in the way that he hates cool and impersonal photoshoot preparations, being manipulated by uncaring hands, mechanical touches still sending shivers of revulsion and bliss down his spine as he tamps down on his squirming – just sits back and allows them to prepare him like a slab of beef to be set out for sale, a doll to be dressed up.
In such moments, he can extricate himself from his body so that his mind wanders through images of Tom Dupain cradling his little princess in his arms, twiddling his mustache and scraping it against her laughter-dimpled cheeks; Ladybug soaring high and fast above him, the play of lightning gleaming gold and silver as, for an instant, the webwork of her costume is suffused with radiance – resplendent in the tempest that leaves them soaked and laughing but warm in their suits.
Hatred is so much more complex than he'd ever imagined.
He doesn't have the words for it, the concepts. No mental fingers to grasp hold of his thoughts; no palette properly equipped with the range of colours needed to trace and fill out the simple sketch that Marinette had drawn on the canvas of ...
Numbness?
Apathy?
Deadness?
Perhaps it, like everything else, is just part of the larger picture, and he'll have to wait, collect the right paints, solicit the proper masters and teachers for aid, in order to complete it.
Maybe it's an opus. A life's work.
Part of one.
But, oh, the colours he already has! The ones that he's already been given as gifts are more precious even than the physical paints offered to him by his bodyguard, but just as perceptive and sensitive to his needs!
They're enough to render his life vibrant.
It's not very long before Chat Noir appears in Marinette's bedroom in a recapitulation of what might prove to be their final Multi-Chat meetup. The coarse and stiff fabric of Marinette's jeans against his cheek, actually scraping the flesh over his orbital bone because his mask has been left behind, grounds him, makes the moment rough and real just as much as it is soft.
Kept in the box, opened up to reveal his sloppy paint job and mangled, ill-suited accessories, left pristine, and played with all the same.
Just like she's doing with his hair, his head on her lap as fingers curl through thick locks, messing them up and resettling them again while a random animated movie plays on her computer screen opposite their chaise.
The low muttering of voice actors playing their parts trickles into his foggy brain, a noise that's drowned out by the sibilant melody of her absent hum, punctuated by occasional clucks of her tongue.
Marinette has the most beautiful voice, but its cadence and harmony can't be registered and refined by any voice coach as it resounds through the room and echos inside his sleep-empty skull and his world condenses down to her. Her smell. Her touch. Her eyes. Her melody. He knows now what a siren-song is – the way that it could fill you up and drive Odysseus to risk madness to hear it.
Why people would be willing to drown themselves just to escape a life without it.
Marinette's voice, even when she's failing and squeaking in a blind panic, flows from the abundance of her heart, and when compared to measured tones, meticulously crafted and coached, honed so as to ensure that what was inside could never emerge, could never betray you, that sincerity is to be treasured.
Lidded with half sleep held off because this liminal space between the perfect and the broken is heady and seductive and coercive, his eyes are focused on her face, even intakes of air just quirking her nostrils as bliss like a waterfall seeps into his scalp, scampers on little padded cats' paws down the back of his neck and wells up inside his throat, even if the flavour is bitter on his tongue, like salt and ash.
There's no place for forgetting anymore.
But there is a place for love and truth.
And Marinette makes all those things okay.
Ladybug will probably kill him, cool chastisement mitigated by genuine affection and, maybe, some ugly pity that an even more grotesque part of him – he can see it now – screams that he should use to his advantage. Making someone pity you, being a... victim , wallowing in it.
There's a power in that, and maybe he's retreated into it too often without even knowing.
"What are you thinking about?"
His spine stiffens marginally before he plays off the tension and allows himself to melt into her lap again, her fingers having slowed but the magic – oh, the magic – still being weaved, as she looks down at him. Little folds run over her brow now that she's focused on him, her hands digging deeper into his scalp to tell him that it's perfectly acceptable for him to think, to speak, to remain silent, even if her eyes are bright with hope.
"Oh, not much really," he answers, nuzzling her belly and breathing deeply. Laundry detergent – laundry that she showed him how to do during their last date – and the floral odour of her body wash fill him up. "I guess that it's just - well, everything."
"That's a lot to be thinking about all at one time." The scriches change pace, following the curve of his neck, and suddenly he has to wonder what she's thinking about. Marinette, bright as the sun, has also been so opaque on occasion.
"What can I say?" he shrugs, unsettling her in a gesture that's partially defensive. "I'm a pretty smart guy. Lots on my mind."
"A pretty smartalec," she coos, booping him on the nose with an air of mock-playfulness, not deception, but deference, "I think."
The degree to which she accommodates him is always staggering, tiptoeing around the landmines, dancing around his pitfalls like a ballerina who has trained her entire life just to execute this one performance. "Well at least you agree I'm pretty."
""Oh, I don't think that," she deflects with a quaking grin that has his heart bumping and cavorting around in his chest, swiping at all the stray butterflies.
"I suppose that my sultry, smoldering self is enough to rob any tender maiden of thought." A good smolder, eyes lidded in that perfect way that renders them dark and sultry without creasing the folds of flesh around his eyes, has her squirming just right. Practice helped a lot. So did a more coherent and conscious reflection on colour palette and the study of artwork.
Resettling his weight with unsurprising ease – he likes a girl who can toss him around like a football, or, at least, put him in his place on occasion – his girlfriend raises her legs so that she's now fully on the chaise.
Squirms take on a different cast, fit into a new yet familiar mold that impels him to grip onto her lower back more tightly.
A brief fumble as they jockey for position leaves them, at least, comfortably entwined with his cheek to her chest, their legs tangled together, and her head propped up against the back of the chaise.
He's fully awake now.
That's a good thing to be.
Is there a bad thing to be when he's here?
A kiss feathers into his tangled hair, and her breath tickles his scalp as she pauses there. "It's okay to play, Kitty, and I- I love that you feel like you can with me."
"But?" he presses, though in his gut, he detects the sick, oily sensation of his father's touch, those probing hands that never actually make contact with seared and peeling skin yet still dig so deep to rearrange organs where there are no nerves for Adrien to feel.
"But... you can also tell me the truth, unless you want me to-" Her hand falls on his cheek, cupping his chin. "I don't know. Figure it out on my own."
He swallows as he nuzzles into her palm and mumbles the ensuing words. "The truth is that I don't even know what I'm thinking. What to think."
How.
Learning to think may be the most challenging task ever set before him; every step requires new footing, new grounding, like scaling his rock-climbing wall in the dark, not knowing where the hand-holds actually were.
Swiping over his cheek, the pad of her thumb is rough with callouses, just like all her fingers from a thousand sewing-needle pricks. Imagine that. Being hardened by a thousand lances – hurt because you were stitching something new together rather than clutching at the tatters or being torn apart.
He loves the way that she looks at him in these moments, without even a glimmer of pity as her canorous voice crests and flows. "Like... if it's something important, but you need time and I need time to put it together because it's ... it's good to learn about the people you love-
How can she say that so casually? When it was a lie, love had always seemed so grandiose, a great romantic epic fit for poetry and song – Odysseus on his journey home, questing through land, sea, and hell itself; Romeo abandoning his family that wasn't a family to him.
Marinette says it like it's something that you can live each and every day.
"Then I suppose I'm wondering how you figured me out." Sometimes the easy questions suffice. His lips find the hollow of her throat and it's impossible to discern which of them is shivering.
Arms around the back of his head, enfolding the entity of him – the two pounds of twisted, creased, and folded flesh that might be all that he is outside of meat that's sold on billboards and magazine covers and bought on store shelves.
"There were just too many similarities once I started to see the real you," she says, her voice wavering between that bubbling confidence of Multimouse at play and deep and old that can only affect play, like a mother's tone as she put on alien voices to perform the role of characters in a bedtime story.
"Well, at least one of us can." He can feel her spine stiffen up under his hands, still running the length of her back. It's lovely when she becomes indignant on his behalf, and that makes him feel even more sick. How can a person be sickened by an expression of love and care? Maybe it's possible when you know that you don't deserve it.
Pushing him back, but not away, the distance only drawing them closer, she gazes at him with all the confidence, absent the swagger, of Ladybug at the Eiffel tower decrying Hawkmoth's villainy. His hands stop roving because he can only cling on to a whirlwind of iron like that.
"I promise, Adrien," she assures and makes him believe, "that I'll always try to see you, and help other people to see him too. You deserve to have people see you."
The instinctual reaction is to throw up his model's smile. Instead, a huffing breath erupts from his lungs like he's holding back the vomit and he hates himself for ruining this. Always ruining everything because that's what his father taught him to do and be and think.
He hates his father more.
"Maybe that's not something that... that I want." he offers lamely, even though he's not entirely sure what he means.
She nods, and not for the first time, it's unclear as to whether she knows either. "That's fair, but – and I'm going to be honest, I don't know what to say or – or what the right thing to say here, is, so – so I'm not trying to say what you want to feel is wrong, but -"
Of course she doesn't know. Neither of them should.
"It's okay, Marinette." He takes hold of her hip-bones and brings them flush, sensing the tremors. "I know that you'd never really want to, well-"
"Right."
"So, what is it?" After the time spent on her chaise, a lock of hair – several, in fact, though this one is being particularly unruly – has tumbled onto her forehead, rendering her a little bit disheveled. To set her right, he puts a palm to the smooth and warm flesh of her forehead and pushes the strand back into place. Much better. Her eyes, a wet blue, shine even more brightly. "You – you can say it."
"It's okay to set boundaries." Marinette begins tracing patterns along his sides, fingertips rolling over the bumps of his ribs. "Good, really, and so is choosing who you're going to – to share with, but I don't want you to feel like you have to be someone you're not just so you can get along. You deserve to have people in your life who – who love you like I do for who you are, or love you and are willing to figure out who that is."
"I don't – I want that." What does he want, really? Her, of course, but it can't just be her. "I mean, that sounds good. Intellectually , that seems good and – and healthy, but it's a lot more complicated than that."
"What do you need me to do?" she asks with an indulgent air.
"You already do so much." Too much.
The frown on her face is a reprimand that feels like a caress. How does that work? Not even like Ladybug's chastisements that put him in his place, told him that it hurt her when he hurt himself. Maybe because Marinette wasn't thinking about herself. Only him.
Oh, god, he's a child who's tearing up again.
"That is not something to feel guilty about," she insists fiercely.
How does she know him like that?
He scoffs and hates himself when a flickering scowl crosses her face and then is wiped away by understanding.
"Try telling Gabriel that." His heart jumps in his chest, but the cause is indescribable, possibly because there's a confluence of them.
"I would," she begins, dewy sweet, baring her teeth, "but after I punched him out, he wouldn't be conscious to hear it."
A laugh bubbles up, though it feels like it's canned. Their lives are not filmed in front of a live studio audience. "My hero."
"No, Adrien." Now it's serious. "You're mine."
Raising her up into a seated position so that they're both properly reclining against the back of her chaise, he puts his chin to the top of her head, the hair scratchy against the film of stubble that he's just noticed has started to come in. His father will loathe that. Another half-hour in the makeup seat, surely.
"But that's it, though," he breathes, taking in as much of her as he can on the inhale.
"Your manifest heroics?"
He almost snorts. As if he can compare. "Punching out my father."
"Just say the word." A playful little tap to his side has him grinning for no reason.
"Patricide?"
Even though that's a joke, Plagg appears highly intrigued, drumming his nub against his thigh as he actually pauses in his gluttonous consumption of the cheese platter that Marinette laid out on her work desk, one wedge of cheddar held partway to his mouth.
"I mean..." she lets the word hang, her brow cocked playfully.
Not a place for forgetting, but for softening.
"I'll never be able to do that."
"Do what?" she asks without pressure.
"Be-" Me? Free? Alive? Healthy? The culmination of that thought eludes him, so he gives up trying. Perhaps some things can't be put into words. Maybe there are no colours or shapes for certain concepts. Of course that's true. As if he could ever capture her with a thousand lifetimes of experience no matter how steady his hand, how refined his technique. Why should this be any different? "Well, just be , I guess."
"Not as long as you're with him, right?" Her snarl resounds and it cuts deep, like a surgeon's scalpel held in expert hands, cutting out a malignant mass. "In that- that place ."
"Yeah." It's a hiss more suited to Aspik, a creature of pure obsessive fixation who brutalized himself for months, than Adrien, but who is Adrien anyways? "And I – I wouldn't even know where to begin."
"Here," she answers instantly, tilting her chin upwards so that their eyes are locked. "You start right here. We talk to the guidance counselor-" God, that's terrifying - "my parents, anyone who can help us figure things out."
"I- I don't want anyone to- to ..." So that he can't see her, to quell the rolling images of blank or, worse still, pitying faces, his eyes squeeze shut and burn. "They shouldn't know."
Marinette has auras about her, warpath and fire, static electricity. Almost tangible emanations of her moods. There's a palpable sensation, as if she's poised to object, launching into a tirade that's half Alya on the warpath, and half Ladybug, but all Marinette, yet she must see in his tight-set eyes, furtive and vulnerable, what he truly means.
Then liquid heat fills him up, coaxing his eyes open so that he can look upon her. "You don't have to – to talk about that, even if I think that you should consider it. When you're ready."
"Then what would we talk about?" he asks with a small stutter.
"How to live ." She says it like she said that she loved him. As if it was an everyday thing that could be wrapped up in normalcy, an experience that awaited him at the breakfast table like a mug of soothing tea.
"Well, that's focused." He shouldn't play it off, but the yearning is too great – to play, to cajole, to hide again, when learning how to live is just as alien as being loved in the simple ways.
She pats his cheek, tracing letters and symbols. "I mean – bills, budgeting, career plans – everything that you need so that you can- can get out."
Keeping his eyes on her easy and relaxed features, eyes bright and open, his lips flutter over the inside of her fingers. When he speaks, his voice comes out rough, sluicing through the gaps between her digits. "Not going to be happening now."
"No," she reaches up, tracing the hollow of his ear. "But in a few years."
That sounds like a lifetime.
"I wish that I-" Her motions transition into a quiver, as if her bones have become gnarled with age as they hold each other more tightly, youthful, well-muscled bodies sculpted by Hawkmoth and his father slotting together in combinations unimagined. "I'm just a kid, Adrien. If I knew something - was an adult, I could tell you something else. Do something more."
"You do everything." His insistence doesn't seem enough to convince her, regardless of how candid he's being at this moment. "Never think otherwise for a second."
"That's sweet." A thick blush creeps down her chin. He's still got it, on occasion, and there's a certain power in that. "You're sweet."
"It's because you stuff me with so much sugar." He pats her stomach and then his, repeating the gesture again, noting the slight layer of paunch on hers, and his emaciation. Perfection . "The smoothness is from all the butter."
"All the more reason to keep feeding you, then." Motion stalls out as her hand covers his.
"Not going to object to that."
"Sometimes that feels like it's all that I can do, though," she says in a way that's just as bitter as her pastries are sweet. "That's why – maybe I can help just... plan things out. Know what you can do when - when you are able to get out of that hell."
"That- that may be all that we can do."
"It's not right, though," she insists.
This time, it's not nearly so hard for him to push the words out. Maybe everything – this, hate, love, healing, sickness, and health – is just a matter of practice, normalization and familiarity.
"No." He settles her into his arms, thumbing his chin in Plagg's direction and then gesturing towards the computer. In response to his prodding and raised brow, the Kwami sighs while brushing a dollop of cheese from his chest and then suckling up the remnants. Then, he floats over to the computer keyboard to increase the volume on their Disney film.
His girlfriend snuggles into him. Rather, they furl into one another like paper just catching fire.
"It's not alright," he says with feigned indifference creaking like a rusty gate opening for her. "I don't think that it ever will be, but I have something better. Now, and to look forward to."
And that's enough.
Both Ladies in his life are more than enough.
As per her request weeks earlier, lost in the tangle of life, he starts helping Ladybug paint, sharing secrets and skills and favoured techniques that they're developing on their own, and they make a habit of customizing figures, painting miniatures, and playing board games.
At the same time, Marinette does the same thing.
Free time after patrols is spent with his Lady, chatting about techniques or hunkering down in a rooftop nook with a basket of goodies to watch youtube painting tutorials on her yo-yo screen.
She learns more quickly than he does, and indulges him by replaying sections when he regains focus and begins to watch, only to realize that he missed a half-dozen steps because he was too absorbed in her bright blue eyes, keenly focused. Too fixated on the steady rise and fall of her chest, shoulders expanding and contracting in his arms. The way she bites her lips while she's focusing, absorbing.
Each moment with her by his side, or even in his lap after she shoots him a no-doubt unintentionally flirty wink, is slow torture; she sets him ablaze as if he's been chucked, or yeeted by her well-muscled arm right into her sun.
His soul should be bifurcated, but all he experiences is a sense of wholeness. The two ladies in his life wring out the guilt.
And his free time on weekends is all Marinette as she slowly eases into his presence. So often, he greets her with awe. She just boops him on the nose and winks.
He nearly swallows his own tongue because that hip-cock and saunter is like nothing that he's ever seen from her.
Flushing and sweating as Plagg rumbles his contended, mocking purr inside of his shirt pocket, Adrien trails after her like, well, like Chat Noir after Ladybug, one big blush-emblazoned fluster, to show off his collection of model paints and the new airbrush that he picked up, to be used only in a well-ventilated area, of course.
Her balcony works.
Flopping on her chaise, hands under her head as she stares at him, she exudes easy radiance. She prefers to paint purely with brushes because skills transfer more easily from sketching and some experimental figure painting that she'd done, and that's ... that's amazing. She's so talented, and when he tells her that, her body rolls and she's either trying to drown herself in her pillow, show off her butt, or both. Regardless, it – or rather she – is adorable.
Marinette takes compliments poorly, but beautifully, because she isn't really used to them, he realizes.
He makes it a mission to ensure that's no longer the case.
It reaches the point that as he's in his room, working on his custom paint job for the Ladybug miniature for the Miraculous board game, also produced by Hasbro (he sucks at contract negotiations, but the proceeds – the proceeds are still going to charity, so maybe he just sucks at the things that, in the end, weren't important), it's almost like he's slipping into being Chat Noir.
He's not, though it's close.
Really, he's not embracing a preformative persona for his father, fans, or the public. Little slivers of Chat bubble up through the cracks, moderated by his deference and genuine desire to see Marinette smile while also respecting him for being courteous and attentive, and tolerating him for being slightly sulky when they compare their work and he sees that her fine hand and skilled fingers have produced far more precise contour lines on the Chat Noir miniature than he did with Ladybug.
He's just ... himself.
The melodious hum of Marinette's voice rings out, filling the silence and rebounding off the walls so that it almost sounds like she's right next to him. Even in the unconscious hushed murmur as the tones rise and fall, there's a clarity – a surety to the voice that uncoils the tension, letting him fall into the work alongside her so that they're in the same rhythm, brush-stroke for brush-stroke. Glasses filled with clean water, changed periodically, clink, reverberating as a counterpoint to the white noise of rainfall or a podcast that they've put on.
It's nice to learn about Marinette this way. They shift from toy news to pop culture to sewing or design blog podcasts to even a few philosophy and religion discussions.
And it's just like the time that he spends with Ladybug.
Sometimes, when he hears that sweet voice, singing, he's caught up and it is Ladybug. Expecting to see his Lady, he turns to show off a particularly fine series of brush strokes, multiple layers of thinned paints applied with progressively lighter tones, that have properly highlighted the peach flush of Chat's cheeks.
Strong shoulders lead up to the graceful arch of her neck, the flesh tanned and hale from being out in the sun because she forgot, in her haste, to apply sunblock and he really should have reminded her because it's his job to keep her safe. The pigtails, bunched up and bouncing almost imperceptibly while she nods her head, are achingly tight and tempting. He wants to bury his hands in that silky black hair – not a hint of blue – and scratch her scalp to show her just how good it feels.
And it's Ladybug.
Until he blinks, and it's Marinette, singing, humming absently, focused on her work, with her back to him.
Of course it is.
"Hey?" he begins, turning away from the little miniature Chat Noir whose eyes are the crowning achievement of his entire corpus of paint work over the past few months. There's a little burgeoning spark of life in them, a few fine strokes of bone-white to emulate the reflection of light.
"Hm?" The hum is absent and half-committed as Marinette fixates so easily on her work.
His wheeled desk chair squeaks like a petulant and grumbling mouse as he rolls over to her side.
"Could you pass me the Carroburg crimson, Ladybug?" he asks, leaning over her work desk.
"Oh, sure, Chat." Her tone is absent – the words slow. The bottle is extended behind her, even as the girl fixates on the finishing touches she's just applied to her latest miniature – a Ladybug with her Lucky Charm blooming into a horde of mystical insects, all glazed with varied, progressing tones of black, red, pink, and white miming a flood of light from her magic that cast shadows over the little bug's face. Distraction is so common for her, and watching her enthralled is in itself captivating.
When their fingers brush, flesh-on-flesh, as he reaches out to retrieve the bottle of paint, Marinette's soft blue eyes, laser-focused, blink and then flutter, and then pinch along the edges as she smiles, and her hand curls around his, fingers cupped around the plastic. He can't help feeling a little silly at not being excited, or surprised by the revelation that was more of a gradual unveiling of something that he just had to admit that he already knew.
She blinks and squeezes his fingers. "How did you figure me out?"
A silly question, really, considering how obvious it should have been for so long, he knows as he locks their fingers. "You didn't make it very hard."
"I wasn't trying to," she assures as she plucks up her brush and plops it into a little glass of clouded water, just to keep the tip from drying out with the remnants of paint.
"Well, you weren't trying to do that ." To grant her space to angle her chair, her hands curling under the seat as she crab-shuffles a few inches to face him, he lets go and recedes. "Everything else you were doing – that took a lot of effort."
When she places it on his thigh in a way that might have had him gulping and thrilling – Ladybug was touching him so intimately, in the confines of her own bedroom, of all places! – were this not Marinette , her hand is instantly warm through the fabric of his jeans when she strokes his thigh.
"I'd tell you that you have no idea, but you really do."
"Yeah." He strums time on the back of her hand, eliciting a giggle at his silliness. "That was... I'll try to make sure that I carry my share from here on out."
She gives her head a shake, but it feels inwardly directed. "You were already carrying more than enough."
"We both were."
Foot to the protruding base of his rolling desk chair, she tugs him into position so that she can raise his hand to her lips. The kiss has his stomach knotting up and leaves him shivering because her eyes never leave his. Fine hairs along the back of his hand prickle at the little puff of air that leaves her nostrils as she parts from him with the faintest of wet pops.
His hand is scalding hot, much like his cheeks that also ache for the grin that's cropped up as he rubs at the tingling flesh, still slightly slick with moisture from her lips.
"So," he coughs, clearing his throat to stop sounding like a teen in the midst of puberty, voice cracking and frying randomly, "what do you say we crack open those mint in box Ladybug and Chat Noir figures."
Her head quirks. "Another custom job?"
"Multimouse and Aspik." Who else could they create together, after all? One for her shelf and one for his. Both of them in her bedroom.
In perfect synchronization, her brow and lips quirk together, playful and full of promises that are only now beginning to take shape, and be visible in full colour. "Custom original superheroes?"
A simple hug is all that he needs, largely because it's her hug, and maybe – maybe it shouldn't be enough, or shouldn't be what he perceives as enough to fill up all those empty spaces inside of him, even if Marinette-Ladybug-Multimouse is the most grandiose woman in the world, a raging nuclear inferno 1.989 × 10^30 kg in mass and all the freckled stars in the sky that should obliterate him, wash him away in blissful tidal waves of fire.
There's still so much work to do.
Not to be worthy of being loved.
But to be the person he deserves to be.
He shakes his head. "More just... Marinette and Adrien."
Her grin.
Her scent.
Her voice.
Her soul.
Her.
"Sounds like the perfect collectors' two pack."
For now , that's enough.
Author's Notes
And that concludes the longest narrative - in chapters, word count, and amount of time invested in production - that I have ever written.
A short epilogue with the capstone conclusion to this story that I had always envisioned remains, though we've progressed through unforeseen grim valleys and dense, tangled jungles when my original plan for this story was nothing more than a quick frolic along a sunshiny seashore of action figure fluff.
In many ways, the turmoil inflicted upon Adrien and our deviations on unplanned paths in dark territories mirror my own experiences over the past year as I have meandered further and further away from this fandom. Between endless toxicity in the form of fandom wars and non-canonical depictions of characters that render them parodies of themselves with salt works and, honestly, canonical developments this season that have invalidated the emotional investment that I once placed in this series and its relationships, I find myself somewhat adrift in this fandom.
No more need be said on either of those issues, as this note is not intended to convey either judgement or spoilers.
Because, your support and your attention - any of you who have made it this far in the story and in my meandering afterthoughts, and all those who moved on because of its torpid pace of updates - are the only reason that the work has actually been finished. When motivation and stability fled, there were kind words waiting for me, and the last thing that I wished to do was disappoint.
I hope that this story and its culmination have proven worthy of your time.