The Painted Lady
(part 5)
Adrien
Adrien was being pulled, black lines spiraling around him as the person floating at this side, this old lady with curly hair that had been made into a drawing, kept her hand closed around his ankle, not letting go even as Adrien kicked and twisted and bit his lips at the fact that, for all the good that did him, he might as well have been still. The drawing didn't react to his struggling, not at all, and they kept streaming through the buildings around Place des Vosges at an absolutely mad pace, both real and drawn trees going quickly by.
Of everything that could have happened this, Adrien kept telling himself, this could only be topped by straight up bumping into whoever Hawkmoth had transformed! And if that wasn't who this mad dash was leading him to then—!
Looking towards his legs, the blue fabric of his pajamas—not to mention his own body—looking completely out of place in the middle of the colorless world around him, Adrien twisted once again, tried to aim a kick at the drawn hand wrapped around his bandaged ankle and stopped, confusion taking over his mind before he ever had the opportunity of delivering the blow.
Plagg's head, followed shortly by the rest of him, had just appeared from the pajama's chest pocket. Hanging on to his shirt for a moment, giving Adrien this utterly insane grin, followed by a thumbs up that had never meant anything good, Plagg let go of the fabric. From where Adrien stood it felt like the kwami had just been catapulted backwards, this black dot going straight passed his head as Adrien kept sliding down the drawing and Plagg was left behind.
Twisting himself to look back—something that was easier said than done—Adrien didn't have to search long to see Plagg dart behind him, to see him aiming at the pair of drawn legs hovering at his side, grab at the formerly wool socks that sagged around the drawing's ankles and—
Adrien's eyes had just gone huge.
"What are you—?!"
It happened before he could finish. Plagg had opened his mouth just as wide as that one time he had tried to put down an entire wheel of cheese in one go, he had opened it so wide there didn't seem to be anything else left of his face and then, he closed it shut right over the drawing's legs. He—He bit it! He had bit it! And if Adrien had been wondering if paper-people had any sensation at all — something which he hadn't! Why would he be wondering about that?! — he got his answer right as Plagg managed to dive for safety inside his sleeve.
The drawing was looking back, irate, and—
The angry expression had just changed, it changed like the page that held that bared teeth, narrowed eyed scowl had been flicked. Eyes now wide with shock, the old lady that was the drawing stared at Adrien from behind her round glasses, she stared at him like it couldn't believe what she saw, she stared at him—and out of nowhere she let him go.
Now sliding down the black and white lines, the very real trees that had been going by him at high speed starting to move slower and slower, Adrien had half a second to wonder how on earth he was going to get out of here before a startled yelp crossed his lips and he found himself crashing down, going right through drawn living rooms and couches and TVs and carpets and—
Adrien just had time to let out a curse, to think that somewhere back home his father and Nathalie had probably just simultaneously woken up and gravitated towards the atrium at the grave disturbance they had felt, before what for sure was the last floor on the building he was falling through opened and the drawing structure sent him straight back into whatever was left of the real world—and as it happened straight against something unfortunate enough to have to break his fall.
Now lying belly up on the floor, all tangled up on whatever that was and looking up at the black and white arched ceiling of what he knew far too well by now to be the corridor-like galleries surrounding Place des Vosges, Adrien sighed, pressed his eyes and practically jumped out of his skin when the thing he had landed on groaned, pushed his legs away, got from under him and—
"Adrien?"
Adrien's chin had just dropped. A girl, her curly brown hair a complete mess, had just gotten from under him. She was adjusting her glasses. She was picking the phone that rested over the floor's stone slabs. She was—
"Alya?" Adrien mumbled, this immediate sensation he knew exactly who was the rest of the thing the upper half of his body was still on top of, making him look down. Suffice it to say he wasn't wrong.
"Nino?!"
Lying there sprawled belly down on the stone slabs, Nino turned his head to look back, right hand rising to greet him.
"Hey, dude!" he cheered while Adrien scrambled away from his back. "Where the hell did you came from?"
The ceiling was the answer, but knowing that didn't seem to be part of Nino and Alya's priorities. Still trying to get his bearings back and, more importantly, to look away from this heavy wooden door at his side and towards the park to figure out where he was, Adrien just had to get to his feet to be pulled into a bone crushing hug by his friends.
"We have been looking for you!" Alya told Adrien, stepping back, this old-fashioned chandelier, one of the many hanging from the spaces where two arches intersected — and one of the few that somehow was still real — hanging right over her head. "I thought I had heard you some seconds ago, but—"
"BAM!" Nino exclaimed, the hand he had just slapped his leg for effect making both Adrien and Alya turn to find him grinning. "We didn't so much found you as you sprint-crashed into us! And, seriously, dude, we were so freaking worried! We lost sight of everyone when the drawing went all wobbly back there! We thought you all had been turned into one of those things by now!"
Again, Adrien didn't get the chance to get a single word out, not even to point out he hadn't 'sprint-crashed' into anyone, those last words of Nino's had Alya stepping forward, a hopeful look in her eyes.
"Have you seen Marinette?" she queried, visibly concerned, those words taking her straight to the corridor-like gallery they were standing on and the closed store to their side, to the row of columns that marked the boundary between the building and the street, just like she expected Marinette to step from behind one of them. When she didn't, Alya turned back to him.
"We completely lost her," she said.
Adrien bit the inside of his cheek, the phone Alya had picked up a moment ago, that she was holding up now, clearly streaming for the Ladyblog, forcing into this godlike effort not to get a smile stuck to his face on account of the rolling camera.
"I saw Marinette and her father some minutes ago," Adrien informed, the suspiciously Plagg-shaped lump on his right sleeve, the one he had just caught a glimpse of, making him point both his friends' away from himself and towards the park beyond the columns and the line of parked cars. "They had this huge group of drawings following them."
Adrien's hand was right over the chest pocket now, he was giving his arm this jolt to get Plagg to slide out of the sleeve. Rather than disappear once his belly was no longer keeping him stuck inside the sleeve, Plagg took a glimpse at Alya and Nino's backs, held the pocket open and looked up, straight at Adrien.
"Ditch them!" he mouthed, Adrien's equally silent—
"How?!"
—going unanswered when Nino turned, right in time, it seemed, to see Adrien still speaking with his pocket.
"Did you say anything, dude?" he asked, eyebrows arched.
"No!" Adrien exclaimed, the way he had just snapped his hand over the pocket making Plagg let out a loud protest when he was just about squashed. "I was just saying I lost sight of Marinette and her father when Chat Noir took them to the roofs! I'm sure they are fine!
It was like a light had just gone on behind Alya's eyes, she too had just turned, the garden left on her back.
"Chat Noir is here?" she beamed. "Is Ladybug here too?"
Phone again pointing straight at Adrien, Alya had just filmed him shrug.
"If she isn't yet, she must be arriving, right?" he said. "Chat Noir must have told her about this. She will be here in no time!"
I hope, Adrien finished to himself, and seeing Alya turn back towards the garden, the gleam to her eyes clearly stating she expected to see Ladybug swing by any moment now, he truly truly hoped Ladybug wasn't back at her home, asleep, and having absolutely no idea of what was going on.
As far as is friends were considered, however, the possibility that Ladybug might be having a good night's sleep clearly didn't cross their minds. Nino, in fact, had just let out a visibly relieved sigh.
"Right," he muttered, nodding. "If Ladybug and Chat Noir are here, then we have to get out of their way."
Adrien's eyes narrowed. Inside his pocket, Plagg, who had been until now lying belly up and clearly sulking, had just gotten up, the tip of his ears appearing just over the pocket as he tried to listen in.
"Did you two have a plan or something?" Adrien probed, one finger pressing Plagg's head further down, trying to get him, or more exactly his ears, back into hiding.
Standing in front of him, suffering from none of Adrien's present Plagg-related concerns, Alya and Nino traded this glance.
"We have been trying to go back to the bakery since forever," Nino informed, hand moving to massage the back of his neck when he found Adrien with his eyebrows raised.
"We know it is a horrible plan, dude," Nino went on to say, while crossing his arms. "But we have gone all around the park trying to get out of here and every single exit is blocked out. We are pretty much stuck."
Alya sighed and pulled one of her curls away from her face.
"Also, I read it is worse to just remain still at one place in a crisis scenario," she joined in and immediately covered her phone's microphone with one finger, voice dropping.
"I'm making a post for the Ladyblog about that and everything," she whispered, attention jumping from Adrien to Nino and then the other way around. "So, we should really try to be on the move at the very least."
Adrien gave her a tense smile. As much as he disagreed with the get to the bakery part of the plan, this last idea—Adrien stole a glance to his pocket, Plagg giving him this nod from inside putting him straight on the move.
"So, how did you end up here?" Adrien asked as he, Alya and Nino started to make their way down the galleries, parked car after parked car falling behind them as they walked. "You are on the opposite side of the park we were running to."
Nino had just visible cringed.
"Oh, that," he said, just as Alya inverted the camera on her phone, let out a quiet "Damn it, I forgot!" jumping from her lips and jogged to walk a meter or so in front of them.
"Dear viewers, sorry for the interruption!" she now announced, talking at the phone. "As this reporter was saying just before Adrien appeared, the situation with these drawings is still so fresh, all the Ladyblog can offer you is questions! Who did Hawkmoth corrupt this time? What is this person's motivation? How does his or her power truly work? We know by personal experience that the drawings don't have the ability to turn people into one of them. In fact, what happens when they touch us is—"
Alya turned, starting to walk backwards, camera pointed at where Adrien and Nino were walking behind her.
"Show them again, Nino," she asked him.
Adrien had just blinked, the way Nino had just raised his left arm to show this patch close to his wrist, this patch that had once been in the same grey fabric of this rest of his pajamas and that now was black and white lines leading Adrien to look at his feet... and to sigh with relief. Alya was right, the foot the drawing had grabbed was still pretty much a real foot, it was just the bandages that were now drawings, everything was fine—
Up until Alya continued.
"It is possible that being pulled into the lines turns you straight into a drawing," she theorized. "Fortunately this reporter managed to get hold of Nino before he was pulled in there so there is no way we would know! What we do know is that when one drawing failed to carry Nino away, dozens of them started following us and—!"
Alya's voice faded slowly. The cellphone camera she was still filming Adrien and Nino with, had just captured Adrien's face grow incredible pale, it had just filmed him look to the side, towards the park and stop.
"Adrien?" Alya called out, peeking from over the phone, her tone going from concerned to that of her reporter-self in an heartbeat.
"You are looking like a ghost, Adrien," Alya said, walking up to where he and Nino stood. "Do you have some information that can keep our viewers—?"
Adrien's lips turned into a thin line.
"Run," he whispered, attention stuck at the park.
"What?" Nino babbled. "Why?"
"It doesn't matter! Run!"
And Adrien closed his hands right over Nino and Alya's wrists, he dragged them with him, forcing them to flee down the galleries, the windows of the store they had been going by left behind.
"What is wrong?!" Alya cried out. "What is happening?!"
And with that question she looked to the side, to that place away from the sidewalk and the street and the cars and everything that was still real around them, she looked into the distance, to that place Adrien was still stealing glances at, to that place in the park where color turned into black and white lines, where reality gave way to drawing, to this place where this ripple was running through the park like the entire area was a sheet of paper.
"Oh no," Alya whispered, the hand that had hanged lose from Adrien's grasp now closing around his wrist as this black mass started to mount in front of the ripple, as it started getting closer and closer to them. "How did they find us?!"
Adrien's lips turned into a thin line. He knew the answer to that question. What he didn't know was where on earth was Ladybug!
Marinette
The black tile under Ladybug's right feet had just cracked, the chunk that fell out of place sending her diving to hide on the side the roof opposite Place des Vosges as it tumbled down the roof's sharp incline and, in what seemed to be a final leap of faith, jumped right over the edge of the building, diving for the street down below.
Closing her eyes, sliding a little more down the roof for safety, Marinette counted the seconds until the tile hit the floor. Contrary to what she expected to find once opened her eyes, however—and that could be easily described as a crowd of drawings jumping from the grates and trees of the park, rushing to investigate the sound—she found herself surveying and absolutely empty street.
Getting back to her feet, her concern of getting overwhelmed by drawings from just a pair of seconds ago giving way to discomfort when none appeared, Ladybug looked around. She was standing right on top of the high roof of l'Hôtel du Pavillon du Roi and with the old wooden carousel just meters to her left. Under her feet, even if she couldn't see them, were the arches she and her friends had been trying to reach, the very same ones that connected to the rest of the city.
Despite that, however, that Ladybug was presently standing here, her red suit making this sharp contrast with the black tiles behind her, a careful jump leaving her standing right on top of one of the building's chimneys, had less to do with this being her friends' destination than with the fact that this was the tallest of the building's around the park and that Marinette had been sure she would be able to get a clear view of them, or of anyone who needed help, if she just stood here.
Disturbing as it was, however, she had been here for some fifteen minutes and it didn't only look, it actually felt, like no one was here.
The park, the buildings, everything was empty.
There was not a trace of Adrien or Alya or Nino.
There was no sign of the many drawings that had been here.
Whoever Hawkmoth had akumatized was absent too.
And Chat Noir—
Marinette shook her head. At this point, she was all but chastising herself for not having caught up to him early on. Maybe if the two of them were working together right now, maybe if one of them patrolled the place while the other stood watch, maybe if they met from time to time, then—
A shiver running through the park put an abrupt end to her thoughts. In front of her, the black and white trees undulated, they did just as if they were being hit by wind—but there was no wind to speak of, there was no wind that could make the entire park start moving and raising and forming this large ripple that, to Marinette's utter horror, started to move across it, going from right to left in front of her, heading straight for the opposite side of the park where her home was located, trees and the benches and all that was drawn falling to it as this black mass mounted up front and—
Marinette jumped from the chimney, her feet hitting every bump as she slid down the tiles, the dozens of drawings she could see at the front of the ripple — that were that black mass — making her aim the yo-yo at the streetlamp many many meters below her.
She had this horrible feeling, someone had found her friends before her.
Adrien
"What do you mean you were caught by a drawing?!" Alya exclaimed, somehow still managing to hold her phone straight as she ran, Adrien's increasingly pained limp leaving her to look back as he struggled to keep up with her and Nino.
"That's how I slammed into you!" he exclaimed, looking passed the columns to their side, right towards the street. "I came crashing down through the ceiling!"
Nino's eyes had just gone huge.
"Dude, you seriously have to open the conversation with that!"
The three of them took a sharp turn with those words, the road that should have been somewhere around here having been replaced by the drawing of a wall forcing them to aim straight for the galleries that ran perpendicular to the ones they had just left and to keep going around the park, trying to find some way to escape the tidal wave that was rushing to catch them.
"Seriously! Who on Earth thinks of something like that?!" Nino panted while looking at the drawings gathering in front of the increasingly closer wave.
"Who cares about it right now?!" Alya exclaimed, reaching to grab his hand. "Run!"
Seeing both his friends vault over the step that lead from the road to the galleries, Adrien clenched his teeth as he himself stumbled, struggling to give even walk as Alya and Nino kept running, getting further and further away from him. As much as he would love to say what was happening was a clever ruse so he could jump back into being Chat Noir—
Damn it. Damn it! Damn it!
Adrien dropped to one knee right in the middle of the road, fingers clawing at his ankle, this grimace crossing his face as he looked up to find Alya and Nino had stopped and where looking back from inside the galleries, the windows to some fancy restaurant to their left, the row of columns to their right.
"Go!" Adrien shouted at them. "I will catch up to you!"
"Are you kidding me?!" Nino exclaimed, both him and Alya already running back. "I will carry you if I have to!"
"We will both carry you!" Alya remarked.
The part of Adrien who wasn't touched by seeing the two of them move down the galleries, the store window that had been right at their side left behind, was utterly horrified by the exact same thing. He was going to get Alya and Nino caught. He was getting them caught!
"Plagg!" Adrien begged through the corner of his mouth, eyes stuck to his pocket, voice barely a whisper. "Do something!"
He did. For the first time rather than repeating for the umpteenth time this was going to get worse, Plagg simply acted and to Adrien it felt like this electric current had just gone from the Miraculous on his finger all the way to his ankle, the prickling feeling so sudden, Adrien was catapulted back to his feet, that he was standing like a scarecrow right in the middle of the still tarr road when Alya and Nino stopped and tried to reach for his arms.
"It's fine," Adrien all but babbled, his words leaving his friends just as perplex as him.
"What?" they blurted out.
Adrien had to physically shake his head to snap out of this.
"It does that!" he exclaimed, pushing his friends to get them to flee again. "Go!"
Column after column fell behind them, old ceiling lamps going by as they ran, their glances at the rapidly approaching wave that had been going through the park getting increasingly frantic as it started to wash down the road at their side, devouring cars and trees and everything on its path.
"How did you escape last time?!" Adrien threw to the front of the group, the stone slabs turning into black and white lines right under their feet. "What did you do?!"
"We got lucky!" Alya and Nino shouted as one.
Adrien stole a glance at the Miraculous on his finger, a thought being spared to the kwami hiding on his pocket. Luck. No, that was definitely not what was here.
"What happened?!" Adrien nevertheless pressed on, attention jumping from the back of Nino's head to Alya's curls.
Her too starting too fall behind, Alya looked his way.
"It was just odd!" she forced out between shallow breaths. "They were there one moment and then left! I think they got distracted by something!"
Adrien could tell it without Alya having to struggle anything else out. They had been distracted? Well, he was ready to bet the something that had distracted them was Chat Noir! And considering Chat Noir was here right now—
Adrien wanted to groan. Just as he did, however, and for the second time in less than thirty minutes, it felt like he rammed into a wall. Only this time said wall wasn't Tom Dupain-Cheng's back, but Nino's and he had stopped so abruptly Adrien wasn't the only one falling, Alya was too and she had just grabbed at Adrien's shirt for balance, they were falling together, they were heading straight for the—
Adrien tossed his arms forward, the mad arm waving that ensued somehow ending with him grabbing hold of Nino just in time to stop himself and Alya from crashing into the floor—and to catch this very unfortunate glimpse of what had made Nino stop.
In front of the three of them, stepping out of the lines that now made the entirety of the galleries around them, rising from the ground, falling from the arched ceiling and even from the old ceiling lamps, were drawings. And they were gathering to block their escape into the street, they were surrounding them, leaving them stuck between them and a closed store. They were—
Adrien looked to the side, trading a quick glance with Alya, who was pretty much wedged sideways between him and Nino's hip, before both of them took a careful glance behind to find the drawings that were assembling there had, just like the ones up front, stopped.
They were moving.
They truly weren't moving.
And seeing that same shocked expression that had crossed the face of that old lady's drawing, the one that had captured him some minutes ago, cross the mass of former-people in front of him, Adrien bit into his lower lip.
In Nino's words, this was hell odd. What on earth was—?
Alya's fingers had just pressed around his arm, again glancing her way, Adrien found her slowly getting back to her feet.
"I don't think they want to approach us," Alya whispered into his ear. "Maybe we can get pass them."
Adrien pressed his lips, he nodded. A look being given around, towards the crowd surrounding them, towards the lines that made the columns and more importantly the street on the other side, he followed Alya's lead, he started to get back up.
"Nino," she called out from behind Adrien. "Let's go."
Looking around, eyes wide with fear, Nino remained frozen. He did even as he spoke, words coming through the corner of his mouth.
"Nobody moves a muscle," he hissed at them, still as stiff as a board, his order leaving Adrien and Alya to stop in this impossibly uncomfortable positions while still holding on to him. "Everyone remain as they are."
Adrien swallowed hard, pain climbing up his leg, his increasingly displeased bruised ankle, the only one presently keeping him up, seeming to scream at him through the Miraculous to stop this nonsense right now!
"Give me one reason," Adrien pleaded, gazing ahead, right at the crowd of eerily immobile drawings standing under the arched ceilings, his fingers clinging to Nino's pajama sleeve. "Please, tell me it's a really good one."
Nino glanced down at him, his brown eyes the only things that moved.
"I found their weakness," he whispered, tone so sinister Adrien could swear he felt Alya fight the urge to turn her phone's camera on him.
"You did?" she whispered and judging by the direction her voice was coming, she had managed to get herself straighter than Adrien.
"Yeah," Nino remarked, again going to stare right ahead. "They react to movement."
There was no way Adrien could know with Alya standing to his back, but he hadn't been the only one who had just let his head fall. Alya had too.
"Well, they obviously don't react to sound," she observed in a whisper. "Come on, Nino! They are waiting for something. Or someone. We have to get out of here!"
She was probably right. Come to think of it, Adrien mused, Alya was definitely right. Still, the three of them were moving as much as the drawings. They remained frozen right to the side of the closed store, almost not daring to breathe until they heard it, the thing, the person the drawings were waiting for. First, there were footsteps in the distance. And then, then they saw a shadow move under the archways. A shadow that made Alya risk turn her cellphone towards the black charcoal smudge that mimicked the real darkness that had been there a minute ago.
"Dude—" Nino stuttered as she got herself to stand, a glance at the display in her hands, leaving him staring right ahead, incredulous. "Isn't that—?"
Slowly getting himself straight, going to stand just slightly apart from his friends, Adrien was seeing it too. It was right there, walking down the galleries that spread in front of them, stepping towards the drawings that were blocking that side of their path. It was the silhouette of a—It was definitely a man. A tall, elegant man with broad shoulders. And for a moment, a horrible, terrifying moment, Adrien thought all three of them had found a way of running straight into Hawkmoth. And then, then the drawings stepped aside, they opened a path, allowing the man to step out of the darkness, to march passed them and to stand under the last remained light, menacing, dignified, imposing. And if Hawkmoth would be bad, this was a whole lot worse!
"Father?!" Adrien cried out.
The man came to an immediate halt, eyes widening, shock running through his face as he stood with the drawings to his back, white eyebrows raising in an arch.
"Adrien," he whispered and that was his father's voice , it was his father's face, but this wasn't—This couldn't be—
The creature in front of him run his fingers over the locks of white and black hair that fell to his forehead, a horrible grin spreading over the grayish-white face as he did.
"I didn't get to show you my new collection last time," The Collector spoke.
Adrien's eyes widened, the notebook snapping open in his father's hands, it clearly being aimed at Alya and Nino, making him toss himself over his friends, making him send them crashing to the floor, just as the notebook cut the air above their heads.
"Run!" Adrien shouted, pulling Alya and Nino to their feet, pushing them towards the columns, towards the street, just as a familiar voice bummed among the columns.
"GET THEM!"
Adrien bit his lip, stomach in a knot more painful than the biting pain again climbing up his leg. The last glance he took behind him, passed the drawings jumping inside the lines and the slowly turning into charcoal building, allowed him a last glance of his father, of the Collector, gazing at him between the beige columns, his grin gone, before he become lost to Adrien.
Milady, I found out who was akumatized, Adrien thought as he, Nino and Alya run across the road and Ladybug swung by, the grimace marring her face as she grabbed all three of them and their feet were lift of the street, coming at the same time a horrible certainty took over Adrien's mind.
This is all my fault!
Marinette
The terrace door closed slowly, the gloved fingers that kept the latch open carefully returning it to position before turning the key on the lock.
A shadow of relief going through her otherwise tense expression, Ladybug let her forehead rest against the door's white wood, the pain that was even now running up her right arm — the unsurprising result of having carried all three of her friends, at the same time, to safety — forcing her to press her shoulder.
If Marinette had been hoping the madness around her would subside for the pair of seconds it would take the pain on her arm to disappear, she found it coming back to play so fast she truly didn't even have time to catch a breath.
There, coming from the other side of the door her head was still resting against, was this rustle, a rustle that sounded a little too much like paper being hit by wind for comfort, and that made Marinette look up, straight at this small window on the door, and start to rise. Slowly, careful as not to be spotted, she peeked outside—and immediately dropped back down. Outside, standing just in the middle of the building's well-kept terrace, right to the side of this line of vases with flowers, was a person, a drawing, one of the many that were presently walking around.
Marinette had to press her lips together not to let out a groan. She knew she had being kind of complaining about seeing no one, including drawings, some minutes ago, but reality check! This was not good. This was not good at all! If this thing had seen her land here, if it had seen her, then her friends—
Determination burned away the anxiety that had just made its way to Marinette's eyes. Looking up at the glass on the upper section of the door one last time, she dropped the lowest she could and moved away from the landing, stepping silently down the flight of stairs that had been behind her until she stopped with her back against the handrail, and looked at the top landing and the closed door she had left behind.
She honestly didn't know what she could do if, much like the drawing of her mother, the one outside decided to slide under the door. Regardless of that, however, Marinette pulled her yo-yo out, letting it sway like a pendulum at her side as she waited, and waited, and finally heard the rustling sound coming from outside move overhead, as if the drawing had been caught by the wind and was moving away.
Marinette sighed in relief, returning the yo-yo to her belt. There was something to be said about luck here, something that probably involved Tikki, the Miraculous and being Ladybug, but, leaning over the railing, taking a peek down the winding stairs, she would have to leave such considerations for another day.
Her friends had chosen to taken cover two floors below. They were standing on one of the landings, right next to one of the apartment's doors. From where she stood, high over them, seeing moonlight coming from this tall, narrow window that run the entire height of the building, Marinette could see them—well, she kind of could see the top of their heads, but that wasn't really important, when all three of them were here: Alya in her beige pajamas, her hair in this fearful curly mess; Nino in the blue shirt and white trousers Marinette's mother had found for him; Adrien in his blue pajamas, the underside to the bandages around his ankle and foot, the very same ones that for some reason were now a drawing, smudged from him walking around barefoot.
Looking at them, having to bite down the smile that had just filled her face, trying not to rush down the wooden stairway and to their side, Marinette found the little spring left on her stride disappear the moment she set foot on the landing her friends stood at and got a chance to take a real look at them.
Something was off. Marinette could tell it as clearly as if there were big flashing lights over all three of them and it all started with Alya.
Her best friend, who should have turned the same moment she heard Ladybug come down the stairs, that should have raised her phone to get a new scope for the Ladyblog, didn't even move. Alya had her phone in her hand, alright, the way the wooden floor boards and stairs were being shown on the display telling enough as to the fact the camera was on, but strangely she wasn't filming. And that was a bad enough sign without Nino standing to her side with a worried expression on his face, it was bad enough without Marinette turning to Adrien and finding him standing right in the middle of the small landing, right hand pressed over his mouth, eyes haunted.
"Dude, are you alright?" Nino whispered.
Adrien didn't seem to be listening. Closing his eyes, back going to lean against the handrail he didn't seem to even notice anyone else was here with him until Nino walked up to him and closed both his hands over his shoulders.
"Adrien?"
The hand Adrien had been covering his lips with fell to his side. A glance behind him, over the gap on the center of the stairs, towards the window running up the entire height of the building, and he dropped his eyes.
"This is all my fault," he whispered.
Stopping next to Alya, Marinette glanced at each of her friends in turn, the quiet "What happened?" that was just behind her lips, however, was left unsaid when Alya put her phone inside her pocket and stepped towards Adrien. Rather than saying whatever had been on her mind, however, she looked at Nino, who returned her gaze, seeming about as lost as her.
"Come on, dude," he nevertheless whispered, turning back to an increasingly pale Adrien, hands closing tighter around his shoulders. "You can't seriously be blaming yourself for this. You are not the one with the butterflies!"
Right at his side, Alya took the cue, she nodded vigorously:
"Hawkmoth is the one who is to blame," she stressed, stepping closer to Adrien. "Not you."
"It's me," Adrien remarked and, the wooden floor whining under his feet, he stepped away from Nino, from Alya, from all of them, and started going down the stairs.
Watching Alya and Nino make this gesture to follow him and then stop right under the ceiling lamp none of them had made the mistake of turning on, Marinette glanced over the handrail still on time to see Adrien's blond head go down the stairs, and disappear on the landing right under them.
"What's wrong?" she queried, concern bringing her attention back up. "What happened?"
Trading a quick glance, Alya and Nino shook their heads.
"It's better if the dude tells you," Nino said, burying his hands into his pockets, clearly uncomfortable.
"Sorry, Ladybug," Alya whispered.
A new glance down, towards the stairs Adrien had just gone down of and Marinette did as they asked. She followed Adrien, and she found him just on the floor below, standing on the small landing opposite the one leading to the apartments, forehead leaning against the stairway window.
"Adrien?"
He didn't move, not even when Ladybug walked passed this giant yucca that was pulled against the wall at his side. He just stood there, staring vacantly at the building just across the street, at the black lines that were already starting to devour its top half.
"It's the Collector," he whispered.
Marinette's eyes widened, the not so distant memory of standing with her back against the wall of Adrien's bedroom, this fiend bearing Gabriel Agreste's face grinning as he prepared to swipe her inside his sketchbook, filling her mind in such a way she was looking towards the building across the street, watching one of its top windows being turned into lines.
"That's—?!"
She clenched her teeth, a single step back and she turned back towards the stairs, she ran up them, yo-yo being pulled out of her belt, the sound of her footsteps joined by her voice.
"Chat, I have no idea where you are, but I have to talk with you right now!" she spoke into the communicator. "I found some people running around, one of them is Adrien, you know that fashion designer's son? He said—!"
Ladybug's words faded, the determined cadence to her footsteps becoming slower and slower until it stopped altogether and she was left standing with her feet over this bright red doormat with a black cat, the chimes hanging from the ceiling lamp singing softly around her.
Adrien.
Left hand reaching out for the stone handrail to her side, fingers closing over it, Marinette looked down. Adrien was still standing in front of the window, still with his forehead against the glass, still staring outside. He hadn't moved, not even a little bit and, taking her attention to the street, to the building he was watching being turned into a drawing, Marinette put the yo-yo back on her belt, she moved back down the stairs, she stopped only when she reached Adrien and was left staring at his back, teeth sinking into her lower lip.
What she was about to ask was really such a silly question, but she couldn't think of anything else to say.
"Are you alright?"
She had just startled Adrien. She knew she had when a shiver went down his back and he looked at her through the reflection, a strangely lifeless expression to his eyes.
"I thought you had left," she heard him say just before he turned, a huge smile being offered to her, voice enthusiastic. "You didn't come back for me, right? I'm fine!"
Marinette hands fell to her side, not even the mask covering her face being able to hide the way her expression had just saddened.
"Would everything still be fine," she asked. "If I was someone else?"
It might have been kinder not to have asked that. Adrien's smile wavered. It visibly did. For a moment, he stood with his back to the window doing little but struggle to keep it in place. Then, he shook his head.
"No," Adrien admitted, quietly, smile dying away. "It wouldn't."
And just like that he went to sit on the stairs behind Marinette, leaving her to stare after him.
"If I was someone else—" she dared asking, hands clasped in front of her. "Would you tell me?"
Marinette wanted to kick herself the same moment she heard herself speak. She wanted to kick herself even harder when Adrien brought his attention back up and was left there, sitting on the stairs, wide-eyed, and staring at her.
"Forget I said that," Marinette grumbled and immediately Adrien seemed to be jerked out of his shock, a chuckle actually making it across his lips.
"Wait! It's not that!" he said and he smiled, this time he actually did. "There is this person… A friend told me you looked like her. I thought he was messing with me, I just noticed he was right."
Marinette tilted her head, a nervous smile making its way to her masked face. Fidgeting, this feeling of danger ringing bells in her mind, telling her to change topic this very instant, she nevertheless found herself stepping closer to where Adrien on the stairs, curiosity — and hope, mostly it was hope — getting the best of her.
"Who is it?" she asked, one of the wood board groaning under her feet when she moved.
Adrien's smile become fonder.
"Nathalie."
Marinette came to a halt.
Oh—
"You saw her once. Back at the house," Adrien went on to say, and again he smiled. It was a kind smile. A sad smile. "You wouldn't remember her."
Marinette shook her head.
"I remember her," she said. And she might be a bit disappointed. Just a little bit. "She is your father's assistant, right?"
The smile on Adrien's face seemed to freeze the same moment finding out she did remember Nathalie caused it soften. His eyes widening he jumped back to his feet, a rather pronounced limp breaking his stride as he rushed for the window, gaze darting back outside.
"She must be here," he whispered. "She must be a drawing too."
Stealing a glance at a building that was mostly lines now, Marinette stepped towards Adrien.
"Maybe she managed to escape," she offered.
Her words were met with an head shake.
"Nathalie would never run away," Adrien whispered, his voice becoming quieter, eyes dropping to the floor—and then jumping back up, relief finding its way back to his face. "At least, I know Marinette is fine!"
Marinette's heart fluttered.
"Marinette?" she repeated.
"She is a friend," Adrien clarified. "I saw Chat Noir go by with her some time ago."
Marinette hadn't been questioning how he knew that. She had been far too bewildered — she had been far too happy — that Adrien did remember her to focus on anything else. But that was the thing. She had been. Up until Adrien looked at her, with that smile, and everything she felt was replaced with guilt. Adrien was worried, and she—she—
Marinette stepped forward, furious at herself.
"I promise Nathalie will be fine. And your father," she said, the memory of standing in her room facing the empty eyes of a drawing leaving Marinette with her fists clenched. And Mom, she added, right hand moving to point towards the window and the drawn lines creeping at the other side of the street. "Me and Chat Noir will fix all of this!"
There wasn't the slightest shadow of doubt in the way Adrien looked at her.
"I know you will," he said and with that he went back to the drawing outside. "But it is the second time something like this happens and it's always because of me. Father—"
Sadness took over Adrien's eyes, a soft head shake and he turned his back on the window, going back to sit on the stairs. Silent, he took his phone out of one of his pockets and went to stare at a small group of messages on the display.
Still looking at him, the wave of anger that had made her speak out just seconds ago sizzling out, Marinette couldn't help but drop her eyes, attention going to rest on the tip of her right foot, on the way it moved back and forth over the narrow wood boards of the floor.
This was silly for sure. The only thing she did every time she got a chance to be around Adrien was stumbling and falling and not making any sense, and yet she wished, she really really wished, she was herself right now.
"Adrien—"
"I have to help him."
Marinette blinked, Adrien's words, following by a pair of bare feet going by her forcing her to look up still in time to see him march for the stairs on the other side of the landing. For a moment, a moment of pure bewilderment, Marinette did nothing but stare after him, watching Adrien's head go lower and lower as he went down each step. It wasn't until he was on the landing opposite her, the one with the doors to the apartments, that Marinette's brain started to work again and she was not so much running down the stairs as jumping over the handrail to catch up to him.
"Adrien!" she exclaimed and, her feet hitting the flight of stairs Adrien was now at, she reached out out to grab his arm, forcing him to stop. "You can't go out there! The Collector is dangerous!"
She should never have said that. No matter how true it was. Adrien had just turned. He was one step below her, looking straight at her, they were eye to eye, and Nino could say Adrien looked like Gabriel Agreste when angered all he wanted, to Marinette, right now, Adrien resembled someone she didn't know, someone altogether more terrifying.
"The Collector is my Father," she heard Adrien hiss, the moonlight coming from the stairway window behind him turning him into this shadow with golden blond hair and fiery green eyes. "I was never afraid of him. I'm not starting now!"
"Adrien!"
He was off. Moving away from her. Marching across the landing. Going down another flight of stairs.
Marinette in no way needed to see him reach the atrium and open the building's front door to know what Adrien intended to do. He was going outside. He was marching down the maze of streets leading back to Place des Vosges. And, her left hand sliding down the handrail, running after him before he managed to find the Collector and get hurt, Marinette could feel her stomach turning itself into knots.
First, Chat Noir went around jumping into things without a plan. And now Adrien stormed off! Why was everyone so reckless today?!
Adrien
"Adrien!" Ladybug called out, her voice rushing down the stairs alongside her rapid footsteps. "Adrien, wait!"
Adrien didn't answer, the anger that had replaced the numbness he had been feeling, leading his attention not to her, but to the white Miraculous resting on his finger, fury boiling from his chest.
This—This damn thing! It had been giving him bad feelings for days! It had made him go around with this horrible sensation of imminent disaster! It had gone so far as to make him believe something was wrong with his father! But now, now that something really happened to him, now that he needed help, it didn't feel the need to warn him?! Why hadn't it told him about this?! Why was it silent now?!
"Adrien!"
Turning on the first floor landing, stepping on the first of the last two flights of stairs leading to the dark atrium, Adrien could see Ladybug go by him while running down the flight of stairs he had just left.
"What are you going to do?!" she cried over the handrail.
Adrien turned to his left, going by the building's window once again, the atrium—one entirely made of elegant dark stone—opening in front of him.
"We have to have a plan!" Ladybug insisted despite his silence, the louder than usual sound to her footsteps seeming to say she had just jumped over the handrail once again to catch up to him. "You can't just stroll up to The Collector and hope for the best!"
Adrien clenched his fists.
"Look—" he snapped, and stopped that very moment, a phantom touch to the back of his head, his father's voice rising right at his side, making his feet grind to a halt just as they hit the atrium's stone slabs, just as he tasted the first of the angry words he had been about to toss at Ladybug.
"Do you want to say that?" his father's voice queried and it took everything Adrien had not to look back, not to make sure he wasn't really here, with them in the atrium. "Do you really want to say it?"
Adrien closed his eyes. When he opened them again it was to find Ladybug in front of him, fingers pressed to his chest, the door he had been trying to reach some meters behin her back.
"I am going with you," she spoke, determined.
Adrien could do little but let his shoulders drop.
"Look," he whispered and he hesitated for a moment. Two. For as long as he needed to be sure what he was about to say wasn't hurtful in any away. "I know Father acted grateful last time you helped him and I'm sure he was. But that doesn't mean he likes you. Or Chat Noir. Or anyone. If you go out there with me when he is like that—"
Adrien found himself biting his lower lip, eyes on Ladybug's bright blue ones.
I don't want you to get hurt , he wanted to tell her. I don't want Father to get hurt.
But that wasn't what he said. Instead, Adrien hit the switch on the wall at his side and stepped to the side, trying to go around Ladybug, when, with a buzz, the front door unlocked.
"It is better I go alone," Adrien announced.
Ladybug had just pinched her lips hard. She was crossing her arms and striding passed the mailboxes in the stone wall to her side, she was striding right in front of him to plant herself firmly between Adrien and the door.
"What's your plan?" she demanded to know, the door clicking shut behind her when she leaned her back against it. "What are you going to do?"
There was no escape. No way Adrien could move passed her, open the front door, step out of the building and avoid having to answer that. There was absolutely no way out of here and the truth was—
"I have no idea."
Ladybug pulled herself away from the door with his words, she stepped his way, again going by the mailboxes and stopped right in front of him.
"Then, we work out something together," she said, her bright red clothes a sharp contrast to the dark walls around her. "When you saw your father, are you sure he had been turned into the Collector, right?"
Adrien blinked. Was he sure—?
"It looked like him," he launched himself into saying, only for doubt to immediately creep into his voice. "I mean, kind of."
In fact, now that he thought about it, Adrien was left frowning. He could see the Collector as clearly as if he was here now, but he didn't look anywhere as composed as the Collector he remembered. Father's short hair fell loose over his forehead rather than being pulled back. He wore no glasses. Also—
Adrien's thoughts were brought to a stop by a sharp prick to his chest. A look down, towards the chest pocket of his pajamas, towards the place where Plagg was hiding, showed him a pair of alarmed green eyes and a small hand that was pointing his attention behind Ladybug.
Adrien snapped his head up, looking right over her head, towards the glass on the top half of the front door, towards the place where Plagg had just pointed his attention towards.
He did it right on time.
Outside, creeping down the sidewalk and straight for the door was this weirdly shaped shadow. A drawing. And had it stepped even a meter closer, it would have gotten a clear view of them before Adrien and Ladybug had time to run all the way back to the stairway and hide on the first floor.
"He couldn't do this the last time, could he?" Adrien whispered, the reflection on the building's window letting him see the drawing walking passed the front door as he and Ladybug peeked over the handrail. "Turning people and everything else into drawings. The Collector couldn't do that."
Ladybug frowned. Striding all the way across the landing, she sat, back against one of the apartments' doors, and started tapping her fingers against the floor.
"Did he have a sketchbook with him?" she suddenly asked. The question made Adrien's expression harden.
"Yeah," he confirmed, now dropping to sit behind the handrail. "He tried to get Alya and Nino inside it."
Ladybug nodded.
"That's the Collector," she said and she crossed her arms, still leaning against the apartment door. "That book was where the akuma was last time. It must still be there, I just have to get the sketchbook and force it out."
Ladybug stopped for a moment, attention running up and down Adrien's expression, eyes like blue fire.
"You said he attacked Alya and Nino," she noted, eyebrows drawing closer. "He didn't go after you?"
Adrien shrugged.
"He didn't seem to want to," he said and stopped, the memory of the drawings coming to a stop around him, Alya and Nino, of the shocked expression on the drawing that had captured him, of it releasing him, making his eyebrows jumped.
"He doesn't want to," Adrien whispered and he looked at Ladybug, he leaned in her way. "He doesn't want to."
Ladybug had just crouched, one hand laying open on the floor in front of her.
"Do you think you can distract him?"
Adrien took a deep breath.
Distract him?
His fists tightened over his knees, pressing the blue fabric of his pajamas.
"I can," Adrien spoke, looking straight back at where Ladybug was, the hand she held against the floor had just clenched into a fist. "You can take that book?"
That question—It wasn't that he doubted that Ladybug could. He just needed to hear her say it. He needed to see Ladybug pinch her lips and look at him, eyes ablaze with confidence.
"I will take it," she promised.
He needed to hear her say that to do what he did next.
"Father!"
The word sent a ripple through the drawing that was Place des Vosges, the black charcoal lines trembled, the trees shivered, the buildings themselves becoming distorted for a moment before the ripple came back, weakened and faded into the lines.
Entering the park through its still real side, bare feet moving down gravel paths until they sank into the cold wet grass of one of the flowerbeds, Adrien stopped with the boundary between drawing and reality just a few meters in front of him. Giving a vigilant glance around him, attention moving between old-fashioned metal benches and trash cans, between carefully cut green edges and naked trees, and from there to their far more sophisticated, but colorless twins on the drawn side of the park, Adrien crossed his arms, a look of impatience going through his eyes.
"I know you are here!" he said to the empty park.
Again a ripple went over the drawing. Again Adrien looked around half-expecting to see the Collector descend from one of the rooftops or stride across the park. Reality was, however, that Adrien never got a chance to see where he came from. He had just looked back, frowning at the sound of footsteps he thought he heard from the path behind him, and when he turned to the drawing in front of him the Collector stood there. He stood there, sketchbook in hand, black and white locks of hair falling to his forehead and with flowering bushes to his back, looking like he himself had risen out from the drawing—the same drawing the people he had transformed were even now jumping out of as they moved to flank him.
"This is unexpected," the Collector whispered, eyebrows knitting as he looked at Adrien, his lips parting like he wished to say something more. It took him a long moment to actually do so. "I believe I instructed you to hide, son."
Adrien crossed his arms.
"Not from you."
The same shiver that had gone through the park, seemed to find its echo in the Collector's eyes. Looking away as if to flee, some painful emotion Adrien couldn't quite understand left on his face, The Collector looked passed the drawings around him and towards the trees and the shrubs, he turned to look at the carousel and the fountain that were in the distance, cut against the buildings towards the back.
"You are alone?" he queried, looking over his shoulder, attention back to Adrien.
Adrien had to stop himself from swallowing, from allowing his expression to tell the truth.
"Yeah, I am alone," he said, and he too looked around, mimicking the Collector's movement and frowning, like he didn't understand what he was supposed to be searching for. He came back to The Collector to find this grimace going through his expression and then fading, leaving him to gaze at him, something that looked a little too much like suspicion on his gray eyes.
"What are you doing here?" the Collector probed.
Adrien found himself staring right at him. This time around, his behavior was no act.
"What I am doing?" Adrien blurted out, incredulous, eyes going straight for the crowd of transformed people around the Collector and then straight back at him. "What are you doing?"
The Collector raised his eyebrows, he blinked, gazing right back at Adrien as if surprised he didn't understand.
"Keeping you safe."
Adrien's lips parted, before he could speak, however, a flash of red appeared on one of the green trees to Adrien's left, there was this whistle, the sound of cable unwinding, and, for a moment, seeing Ladybug's yo-yo rush across the park, seeing The Collector's drawings scatter, The Collector himself snapping his head towards the red blotch on the trees and the yo-yo that was rushing at him, Adrien held his breath. It was close. It was so so close, he dared to hope—
And then everything that could go wrong proved to have been going wrong from the very start.
The chaos of the scattering drawings was actually a very organized retreat. The Collector had not so much stumbled while stepping away from the yo-yo's path as danced away from it, and he was reaching for the cable, he was—
No!
The cable had just wrapped around the Collector's arm, he had just given it a vicious pull and just like that Ladybug was sent flying out of her hiding place, she was sent flying right for the Collector, right for the sketchbook he had just opened and the transformed people that were rushing back to his side. Adrien felt his mouth run dry. If he didn't do something, if he didn't think of something right now—!
"Dad!"
His cry broke through to the Collector. There was this moment, a split second when the gray eyes glanced around, frantic, searching for him, and that moment of distraction was all Ladybug needed to get away, to whip the yo-yo in such a way that she crashed to the floor, that she could pull herself and the yo-yo free from the Collector's grasp and ran back to Adrien's side.
That she was here, however, made little to no difference. Rising to his full height, massaging the yo-yo's cable had wrapped around of, The Collector was not looking at her, but at Adrien. He was looking at him just like his father used too, back when his eyes didn't flee from him every chance they got. He was looking at him like Adrien was an open book, like he could see right through him and before Adrien even thought about what he was doing he dropped his eyes. It was all it took. It was all the Collector needed to be sure.
"You knew she was here," he whispered, and it seemed to break his heart that Adrien had. That hurt a lot more than if he had been angry. It really made it feel like this was still somehow his father.
"I'm just trying to help you," Adrien whispered, forcing himself to raise his eyes from the green grass under his bare feet and face the Collector again. He would have given anything, anything, for him to understand. "You have to stop."
Walking to the threshold of his drawing, footsteps making no sound as they hit the black and white lines around him, the Collector stopped right at the boundary between it and the real world, the people he had transformed left behind.
"No," he replied, looking straight at Adrien. "I have to keep you safe and when I finish you will be. If I have to reinvent everything in this city to accomplish that."
The Collector snapped his sketchbook open with those words, he turned it to the floor, the black lines that cascaded from inside going to grab the ones of the drawing he stood on. The world started to change right that instant, the lines that made it turning sharper, twisting themselves to the Collector's will.
Gazing around, horrified with the way the trees were bursting up towards the sky, with the way the distant carousel was turning into this sophisticated piece of art, with all that was happening, Ladybug turned to him in a fury.
"You think you are protecting your son?!" she shouted and stopped, just like she had just heard her own words, just like she understood what they meant.
"You want to protect your son," she repeated, looking at the Collector, at his sketchbook, at the changing lines of his world—and then at Adrien, at the bandages around his foot. "That was how Hawkmoth got you."
Fingers squeezing the yo-yo she still held on her hand, Ladybug took a single step closer to where the Collector stood, that strange pained grimace going through his face as the lines falling from the sketchbook kept twisting the world to his will.
"You won't hear the world isn't dangerous from me," she told him, a vigilant look being given to the people the Collector had transformed, to the way they were again moving to flank him. "If it wasn't then Ladybug—She wouldn't need to exist."
Adrien gazed at Ladybug's back, her silence, the way she went to touch her earrings like she was afraid they were just a wonderful dream, leaving him to drop his eyes to his own Miraculous. When Adrien rose his attention back up a moment later, however, Ladybug was looking around, towards the changing buildings, towards the drawings flanking the Collector, towards the Collector himself.
"I know the world isn't what any of us would want it to be," Ladybug told him. "But what you are doing—You can't really believe your son would want a world were no one is themselves."
Ladybug fell silent, her gaze saddening as she looked from the drawings to the Collector.
"Not even you."
The Collector's shoulders grew tense, immediately his eyes darted towards Adrien. They found him with his hand outstretched, a pleading note to his voice.
"Please, Father," he said. "Give me that book."
A gush of wind broke through the park. The rustling of leaves mixed with the wobbling sound of paper. Until now standing at the Collector's side, the people he had turned into drawings looked his way and started to recede, to enter the lines on the floor, they started to stream towards the lines connecting the Collector's sketchbook to his imagined world and just as they did, the park itself started to change: the trees shrank, twisting back to their original size; the fountains and the benches and even the buildings slowly went to look like themselves again. The world was looking more and more the way it should be—and it might as well be their only change.
"Father," Adrien pleaded, and this time he stepped forwards, panic rushing through his mind when his ankle failed and the Collector looked down, straight at the drawing of bandages around his foot. "Please, let me help you!"
The Collector's fingers dug into the sketchbook's cover, his hand closing like a claw around it. Still, for how much it looked like he might never let it go, Adrien could see the Collector's resolve faltering. It was in the way he was not looking at him anymore. In the way, his eyes skidded over the drawings of trees and fountains and shrubs without him seeing any of them. It was written all over him, it was as obvious as day and judging by the way Ladybug's eyes had just sharpened, by the way she had ceased to hold her silence, so did she. She was at Adrien's side now, open palm held over her heart.
"You don't have to worry, Sir," she told the Collector, her words serious, honest. "I will keep your son safe."
It all came to a stop.
All of it.
The world froze. The transformed people, the same ones that had been one by one entering the lines under them, stopped moving, the two that had been about to reenter the sketchbook pulling their torsos out of the lines that hanged from there. Standing on the threshold to this halfway point between the city he had idealized and the sketch of what Place des Vosges truly looked like, the Collector himself blinked, eyebrows raised in an arch.
"Y-You?" he stammered, looking up and down Ladybug's face, the red gleam flashing through his eyes, giving them back their focus, almost making it look like he was waking up, like he was looking at Ladybug for the very first time.
"You," the Collector growled, venomously.
Adrien felt his heart fall.
"Father, please!" he exclaimed, trying to get the Collector's attention away from Ladybug. "Give me that book!"
It was the same as nothing. Tempestuous gray eyes were burying themselves into Ladybug's bright blue ones, in one swift gesture the Collector closed his sketchbook, he broke the lines that fell from there and stepped away from the drawing surrounding him, he marched into the real world, a muscle jumping on his jaw.
"You will keep him safe," the Collector spoke and he seemed to get taller with each step, with each word. "Tell me, bug, how do you intend to do that?"
A step too close and Ladybug jumped in front of Adrien, she put herself directly between him and the approaching Collector, yo-yo twirling at her side and she—She understood her mistake a moment too late.
"No!" Ladybug gasped, yo-yo falling to her side, the hand that had flown to cover her mouth now being held between herself and the Collector. "I didn't mean—!"
Adrien wouldn't have time to get anything out, he wouldn't have time to step forward, to get himself between Ladybug and the Collector, to make a last desperate bid to solve this out. Ladybug was looking straight at the Collector's eyes and she must have seen something there Adrien didn't. She must have seen something for she had just stepped back, she was tossing her yo-yo towards one of the buildings outside the park, she was grabbing Adrien by the waist and just like that the two of them were fleeing, they were leaving the park, the drawings and everything else left behind.
"What are we doing?!" Adrien exclaimed, incredulous, bushes and trees and the metallic grates of the park rushing under his bare feet, the Collector getting smaller and smaller behind them. "We can't just leave him!"
"We have to get away from him!"
Adrien looked up and down Ladybug's tense expression, then back at the park, to where the Collector stood, eyes glued to Ladybug's back. Adrien had no idea what was happening. The only thing he knew was that gloved fingers were digging into a black sketchbook, that red eyes gleamed, their grayish color entirely gone, and in that moment, the Collector, this fiend wearing his father's face that was rational and scheming and one hundred per cent cold intellect, this creature that prided itself on being in control just as much as his father did, snapped.
He completely snapped.
Nooroo
The long black hair Nooroo had been holding between his hands slipped from his grasp, lock after lock flowing through his fingers as he stared right ahead, the unhinged wave of emotion running through his mind leaving him as if frozen, blind even to the pale young woman that was crouched in front of him, that was even now looking away from the closet she had been searching through, the distress her face didn't show clear in the way her hand clawed around the red and golden scarf she was wearing and the Miraculous hidden by it.
"What happened?"
Marinette's pink room fell away, the walls blowing away like leaves, everything in it disappearing like it hadn't existed in the first place. Falling inside his own mind and then deeper, through the connection linking him to the akuma, Nooroo found himself on the street, jumping over the park's high grates, running by parked cars, stepping into the drawing infused with an akuma's power, the black and white lines that surrounded him responding to his will.
"Nooroo," a distant voice called out. "Nooroo."
Nooroo had no idea if he answered. He had no idea if he still knew who Nooroo was for he stood on Place des Vosges and all he knew was pain and rage, all that mattered was to hunt down the girl swinging from street lamp to antenna, disappearing behind the black rooftops, all that mattered was getting back what she stole!
"What is happening?" a distant female voice asked.
The lines around the Collector's feet twisted without him paying that voice any heed, they burst up under him, propelling him up towards the sky. He landed on the roof Ladybug had disappeared on with Adrien and in a rage, barely hearing the black tiles clinking under his feet, he climbed all the way up the incline, he marched passed a tall beige chimney, he stopped only when he found Ladybug standing on the other side. Alone.
"Where is he?!" The Collector roared.
Ladybug didn't answer. Instead, she twirled her yo-yo and tossed it at the sketchbook, she tried time and time again to get it, to best him, to get the upper hand in their spar, before clenching her teeth and deciding to retreat, her yo-yo being tossed towards the park so she could flee.
"You have to talk to me," the far away female voice, Nathalie's voice, insisted.
But, again, the Collector paid it no heed.
Ladybug had retreated just as his vision started to swim, rooftops and chimneys and the distant city lights were all coming together, Ladybug herself turning into nothing but a red blur. She had retreated just as his knees hit the tiles and the world disappeared. He couldn't see. The world was black, entirely black. And then it crashed back into him in one single swipe. He was still on the rooftops, there were drawn tiles under him now and the lines falling from the sketchbook were attached to them, they were stretching over the park so he could keep pursuing Ladybug, but as they did they shivered, they fell—
The Collector was struggling to his feet.
It didn't matter.
He didn't care.
The person behind the voice he could hear inside his mind, however, the person who seemed to be calling to him—did.
"What is going on?" Nathalie asked, and for a moment, for just a moment, the Collector thought he could see her, for a moment when she reached forward it felt like she was holding his face. "Nooroo."
An electricity bolt went through the Collector's mind, lost inside the storm of his thoughts, the faceless entity who called himself Nooroo had just got hold of his scattered self—
"Nooroo, what is going on?"
—he was looking around and what he saw through his akuma froze him to the core.
Ladybug had just aimed for one of the few real streetlamps on the park, the whiplash from her yo-yo going through her body as she forced the cable to quickly retract and she dropped, rolled on the grass and started to run down one of the paths.
Looking down at her, the tiles he stood on stretching forwards, the Collector stepped onto the path he was imagining, this path that went over the real half of Place des Vosges, attention locked on to Ladybug's back.
He might have caught up to her, he might have, but the drawing around him was falling apart, struggling to keep up with his vision. The path, the bridge, all was disappearing, it was disappearing from right under The Collector's feet and under him—A void. A void was opening right under—
Master!
Nooroo reached forward, grabbed hold of the creature his holder had turned himself into and pulled him back with as much strength as he could. The Collector fell backwards. His back hit the drawn tiles of the building where he had stood just some seconds ago. Panting, weaving the Collector got back up as the bridge fell apart, drawn lines raining over Place des Vosges, he got back up to see a ripple go through the drawn half of the park, to see it lose everything he had imagined, he got back to look around at the buildings, at the streets and to find Ladybug had gone. She was nowhere to be found. And Nooro could feel the explosion of anger right before the connection inside his mind was ripped open.
"You—" his holder's voice growled, furious. "You will keep yourself out of this!"
Nooroo flinched, he backed away, bumping into the fingers that were right behind his wings as the connection was slammed shut on him and the world outside closed itself into Marinette's bedroom, into her bunk bed and cabinets and stuffed animals. The world closed in and it was just Nooroo here, Nooroo and Nathalie, who was kneeling on the floor, her hands forming a kind of nest under him.
"What happened?" she insisted, deep blue eyes searching Nooroo's. "What is going on?"
Nooroo told her. About Ladybug. About Adrien. About everything. But through his fear, that wasn't at all what he was concerned about.
"Master shouldn't be out there," Nooroo whispered, looking through the connection, voice tremulous. "He shouldn't be fighting."
Nathalie's teeth bit into her lower lip, she glanced at the round window over where they stood, and just like that got to her feet, the fingers that until now had been holding Nooroo moving to pick him up, to put him over the soft fabric of her red blouse as she moved around the room, marching straight to Marinette's mirror and the bowl under it.
"Should I call the akuma?" Nooroo queried right as Nathalie's fingers fished a black hair tie from the bowl. "I can't do it unless the Lady orders me to."
Now pulling her hair up, twisting it into a knot, Nathalie looked his way.
"Who is with him?" she asked, that single lock of hair that always insisted on falling to her forehead returning to its place. "The Collector. Is there anyone with him?"
The walls fell away again. The connection opened. Careful as not to have his presence noticed, Nooroo peeked through.
"Ladybug is there," he informed, upon seeing her slid down a roof and again trying to aim her yo-yo at the sketchbook, trying to get to the akuma. "I can't see Master's son—"
Nooroo dared to open the connection a bit more, searching around the rooftops and the park he could catch glimpses of.
"He isn't there," he whispered, coming back to the bedroom, to the large mirror that was in front of him and the blue eyes that were facing him. "He must have fled, Ladybug is the only one—"
Nathalie had just closed her eyes. The relief Nooroo could feel taking over her mind was short-lived, however. Something sharper had just buried it, her fingers were closing over the scarf she was wearing, the one his holder had given her, and seeing her start to take it off, Nooroo let go of her shoulder, he flew to stand in front of her.
"Lady, please," he pleaded, a nervous flutter going through his wings, the delicate drawings in them reflected on the mirror to his back. "If Master won't listen she must. Nothing good ever came from putting those two Miraculous together. Nothing good ever will."
Nathalie's expression hardened:
"Good is a very relative term."
"No, it is not!" Nooroo replied and diving to grab her hand, he rose back up to float in front of her, holding her fingers.
"Please," Nooroo begged, pressing Nathalie's fingers. "Please, Lady. We are not meant to make people suffer. Miraculous are meant to protect—"
A small tremor went over Nathalie's fingers, that same moment they slipped from Nooroo's grasp, falling away so they would close over the scarf. The fabric slid down her shoulders like water, flowing down her chest until it hanged from her hand and she stood in front of Nooroo, the amethyst-like stone of his Miraculous gleaming from her chest.
"Nooroo," she spoke, serene, her eyes never leaving his. "Dark wings rise."
Nooroo's eyes widened, a last pleading " Please, Lady, don't!" echoing in Marinette's bedroom before a burst of light filled the space and the quiet inside Nathalie's mind shattered, a butterfly-shaped line of light being drawn around her eyes.
"Enfin!" the Collector snapped, furious, Gabriel's voice, only so rage-filled it had become almost unrecognizable, bursting directly inside her head. "What kept you so long?!"
Bathed by the moonlight, Gabriel's scarf being wrapped around her shoulders, the Painted Lady stepped towards the bedroom's round window. Eyes falling on her own reflection, following the long line of buttons going from her short dress high neckline to the slit over her left leg, she reached within, grabbed hold of the akuma she could feel in the distance and watched the room around her fade into trees and bushes and what was left of the red buildings around Place des Vosges.
"It isn't important," she told the Collector and even if Nathalie's voice was different, even it made her sound like someone else entirely, the Painted Lady's words wrapped around him. "I'm with you now."
They did, even as pain took over her heart.
"Everything will be fine."
Author's Notes:
First of all. Thank you for your comment, Agiani!
And, second. Hello again, everyone. New chapter here :) If anyone had been out there wondering who was the Painted Lady from the title, well... here she is and there is plenty of her next part. (If anyone is curious about the name choice, painted ladies are red and black butterflies, it seemed fitting.)
But hey, I actually managed to keep my publishing dates for once! *swollen with misguided pride* Up next is the last part of the Painted Lady and I will try to keep the two week publishing schedule, so I will try my best to bring it to you on May 11th/12th. And after that, a new chapter will start :)
See you around!