Chapter Eight

"You're the best miraculous holder I've ever known."

Marinette wasn't looking at him while he was speaking. She wasn't even sure that he was in the room, but his voice sounded as though he was right in front of her, sitting cross-legged with a warm mug of tea in his hand just as she was, while her eyes were trained forward on the rusty old phonograph sitting on the table.

It was like his presence was stamped to the inside of her eyelids. Every time she blinked, she thought she could see his face. He was in the air, in the steam of her cup, in the gaze of the turtle kwami lingering always at the edge of her vision, never so that she could focus on him totally. And of course, he was in the rumble of that disembodied voice. It wasn't an unsettling thing to her. He wasn't speaking like a ghost after all, he was speaking like himself. He was speaking the way he always had, and he sounded no different invisible. Marinette brought the cup to her lips, but tasted nothing. She couldn't feel the heat of the steam on her skin as it rose into the air. It thickened in front of her eyes until the phonograph and the room disappeared, shrouded behind a screen of smoke that became blacker and only blacker. The force of gravity strengthened against her attempt to raise up her arm. Her fingers clawed through the darkness, trying to scrape against the metal flaring horn.

"I'm proud of you, Marinette."

"Thank you, Master."

Thank you. The words left with ease. It was almost like it wasn't her mouth that had uttered them. She couldn't taste the smoke on her tongue, so maybe it wasn't smoke at all. Had she dropped her cup? She wasn't holding it anymore. But she never heard it fall. Maybe it had disappeared to the same place he had also gone. So long ago.

Marinette had never noticed herself get to her feet, but now she was walking. And her pace was painfully slow, like she was wading through waist-deep water, like her toes were sinking into mud at the floor of the ocean (pond, lake, river, room?). The black clouds never parted for her. She inched along, trying to reach the table where the phonograph was kept, one arm still outstretched.

"I can't find it," she mumbled. Her voice sounded like it was underwater too.

"You have to. It's yours now."

"No, I can't find it."

Marinette grunted in frustration. Lifting her foot from the floor, placing it down somewhere ahead, lifting the other, placing it down. This was excruciating. Had she bricks strapped to her feet? She started to hear her pulse like a drumbeat beside her ear.

She stopped. The black clouds parted in front of her nose. Her fingers clenched shut over empty air, and there was no phonograph to be found.

No box.

She wasn't in his room anymore. The clouds slinked behind her head, and she was standing in the middle of the road, flanked by stone walls that stretched endlessly towards a sky alight with more stars than she'd ever seen in her life, and it filled her with terror. Something about the devastating magnitude and infinity of the sublime. Marinette tried to turn around, and watch the clouds as they drifted further and further away. But she was paralyzed.

"It's yours now."

His voice wasn't right. It was mingled with another.

"It's mine now."

Something deep, unnaturally deep. Distorted. No human sounds like that.

Marinette felt eyes on the back of her head. She felt eyes everywhere. Like the clouds had gained a mind, like they were watching her now, studying her, daring her to move, daring her to follow, but she couldn't.

"You're ready," he said. "You're ready."

But how was that true? She could not even reach for the yo-yo latched to her hip. Yes, there was a yo-yo there, she could feel the weight of it, and the fist still balled in front of her face was red and spotted all of the sudden.

That sharp stare like daggers pressed into her skin, heavy and warm, getting somehow closer and farther away at once, broadening in scope to encompass her in her entirely, zeroing in until she burned like her flesh was being rubbed raw.

Marinette tried to cry for help, but while her breath escaped, her voice did not.

And she could hear his voice too, on the verge of being spoken, some kind of promise he'd never have the chance to give.

Please, help. Tell me what to do. Tell me I'll be okay.

From behind, a finger reached between the strands of her hair and brushed against her ear lobe.

Marinette gasped. Paralysis released her as her hand snapped to cover her ear. The dream shattered, bursting into total blackness. She scrambled in her sheets until she was sitting up against the wall, desperately waiting for her eyes to adjust. And then the city lights from outside started trickling through the windows, fainting illuminating her surroundings. There was nobody around her. No one but Tikki, who watched her with wide dark blue eyes.

She waited for her breathing to ease up. Tikki asked if she was okay, in response to which she couldn't quite bring herself to nod. Marinette crawled to the edge of her bed and looked down into her room, searching for anything unusual in the dark. But there was nothing. All was as it was placed when she had turned out the lights. The phonograph sat on the table, empty, of course, and the rest of the room looked perfectly undisturbed.

"Tikki," she sighed, "Will you check under my desk? And in my closet?"

After giving her a wary look, the kwami did so, returning a moment later to inform her holder that nothing at all was out of sorts. "What happened, Marinette? A bad dream?"

"No, no it-" She shook her head, feeling with both hands that her miraculous were still in her ears. "It wasn't bad, it just - it felt like someone was taking my earrings."

Tikki sat herself on Marinette's knee. "Oh. Well, still. It was only a dream."

"I felt someone watching me."

"Watching you?" Tikki glanced over her shoulder, once again ascertaining that the bedroom was empty of anybody but them. "I guess that is a little freaky. But it was still in your head."

"Yeah." She stroked her ears. "Yeah, it was. Everything's fine."

Unready to go back to sleep, she turned on her lamp and tried to recall the details of her dream, perhaps to convince herself that it was, in fact, no different than any other result of random brain activity or subconsciously processed memories. She was already beginning to forget some of the details, like the sound of the distorted voice, the words that were spoken, where she was when her body froze. She clenched and unclenched her fingers to the rhythm of her steady breathing.

One thing she couldn't forget was the feeling of a thousand eyes watching her, and it took her a moment to realize that the weight of that needle-like stare hadn't diminished. Marinette's heart dropped into the pit of her stomach, her blood running cold.

Tikki noticed. "You're pale, Marinette. Do you need some water?"

"I just had a horrible thought, Tikki," she said. Her eyes darted around the room, catching on every shadow, every movement she may have only fabricated in her mind. "Conspiracy."

Her kwami blinked at her. "Marinette, nobody's-"

"No, listen. He can turn invisible. Remember?"

Something weaker than fear yet still very visible flickered across Tikki's expression. Her gaze dropped. "Ah. He can."

"What if he's-"

"Do you really think he's here? Right now?"

Marinette hesitated. The truth was she wasn't sure. Even the feeling of fingers against her ear lobe seemed distant as the rest of dream, quickly fading from the security of her memory. Then again, somebody, be it Lila or Conspiracy or the Sorcerer, had to know who she was. Had to know the identity of the girl keeping the box that had vanished from her possession. Why couldn't they come for her earrings now? They wouldn't be the first to consider it.

She drew a pillow into her lap and hugged it close, her gaze failing to focus on anything around her. "Geez, I...I have no idea."

Tikki drew closer til their foreheads touched. "For what it's worth, I don't feel like anybody's here. I didn't wake up until you did."

"No?"

"No. Everything seems normal to me."

Marinette bit her lip uncertainly.

"Think of it this way," murmured Tikki. "How could Conspiracy even reach such a delicate place as your ears without you feeling his wings first? Those things are huge and cumbersome, and I doubt he'd even be able to touch your miraculous without his feathers getting in the way."

Marinette shook her head. Tikki's reasoning sounded silly, but she had a point. She arrested whatever reassurance was offered to her.

Uncurling her body, she reached up to the trap door above her head and found it locked. She used to be forgetful of latching the thing at night, but ever since Hawkmoth had snuck into her room two years ago, she had never failed to keep it properly sealed. Of course, that begged the question of how anybody had managed to get in to steal the box in the first place, but she couldn't dwell on matters like that now. The box was gone. Her room was empty. Conspiracy wasn't here.

After a few minutes, she settled back into her sheets. If Conspiracy could find that box, then he could have found my earrings last week. He didn't. He didn't. He didn't. Why now?

Tikki laid down right above her head. Marinette turned out her lamp and shut her eyes, but it was only a matter of half a minute before she sat up and scanned the room again.

"Marinette," Tikki whispered.

"I'm making sure."

She "made sure" countless times, unable to keep her eyes closed or her mind and body restful. She tossed and turned, laid on her side to stare out over the bedroom, tore her eyes away to face the ceiling, sat up, laid back down again. Tikki made no word or sound of complaint, because Marinette was sure that despite the kwami's attempts to reassure her, she was just as anxious.

It was 4 AM when Marinette gave up trying to sleep. She threw off her covers with a huff of annoyance and climbed down from her bed. A shake of her computer mouse brought the monitor to life, and she opened the Ladyblog.

"What are you doing, Marinette?"

"I need to check something."

She flicked on her desk lamp and clicked on the tab on the Ladyblog labeled, "The Miraculous", where Alya had compiled all the information she had personally discovered about each individual relic. Some of it was common knowledge, like each miraculous's power, and the animals they represented, things that any citizen who paid attention could understand just by watching a battle on the news or YouTube. But Alya also included speculative information based upon the historical research she had done on previous miraculous wielders, linking mythological characters, events, and imagery to miraculous. She had a section named "Miscellaneous Miraculous", where she discussed possible superhero identities that could not be supported by any contemporary sighting of a corresponding miraculous holder. Here, she included her theory that Heracles held a lion miraculous, that Moses with the help of a whale miraculous parted the sea. She found nothing about a raven miraculous.

Marinette rubbed her eyes, she opened a new tab and started making her own search. The only historical figure who seemed to be especially associated with ravens was Edgar Allen Poe, and he lived mostly during the 200 year gap where there were no superheroes to speak of.

Turning invisible, becoming intangible, a disorienting bird-like screech? The only things she could find on any of that were a bunch of ghost stories, and she had a hard time viewing a ghost as a superhero. Nonetheless, she read nearly everything she came across, all the while, consistently turning her head to look over her shoulder. Nothing stirred in her room. There was not even the moan of the floorboards. Everything was utterly silent but for the birdsong outside her window, and the ever increasing bustle of cars as dawn drew nearer. Soon, the sky was lightening. Thick white clouds caught the pink glow of a horizon gleaming beyond the skyline. In the slowly illuminating room, Marinette's fears started to melt off her back along with the pressure of eyes on her skin. In its stead stewed a heavy shame and frustration. She closed her browser and climbed back into bed, determined to get some sleep before she had to truly rise for school.

The adrenaline leaving her body, she sank back into darkness nearly as soon as she dropped her face into her pillow, and no strange dreams fired through her mind over the next hour that she had to herself. Marinette was aroused next by her alarm, which she promptly switched off, and still buried under her sheets, she called Alya.

"Hey, girl, what's going on?" Alya sounded mildly groggy, but not irritated. Marinette knew she was usually up early to make sure her younger sisters were taken care of anyway.

"I need to ask you some questions about the miraculous."

"Oh?" said Alya, sharpening.

"Particularly the raven one."

"Is it a raven? See, I didn't know if it was a raven or a crow."

Marinette swallowed. Right. "Well, I'm just assuming raven."

"Uh huh. I mean this well, but this couldn't wait until we got to school? I don't have a ton of time to talk."

"I'm just worried that with Lila being akumatized and working with Conspiracy so often that she might not want to hear us talking about it."

"You have a point. I guess it doesn't matter anyway since I don't really know much."

Marinette sighed. "You don't?"

"No, not really. I admit, I haven't had a ton of time to research, but there's nothing I've ever found that gives me reason to suspect the existence of a raven or crow superhero. Or villain, for that matter. To be fair, I've only come across a handful outside of the ones that have appeared in Paris over the last four years, and I'm sure there's gotta be more."

"Yeah."

Alya latched on to the disappointment in Marinette's tone. She hesitated on the other end before saying carefully, "I'm surprised you're calling me about this. You tend not to show too much interest in this stuff."

"I don't know, I guess it feels different this time around. Wouldn't you agree?" she asked, twisting her earring between her thumb and forefinger.

"Different how? Different as in -" Alya inhaled audibly on the other hand, as if contemplating her next words "-as in Lila is the one consistently involved?"

Marinette glared towards her phone. "Alya, let's not go there."

"I won't. I'm just saying you can't blame her for everything."

"I've gotten better over the last couple years, haven't I?"

Alya hummed, then clicked her tongue. "So, this isn't about Lila being akumatized?"

Marinette glared towards the phone. "Yeah, maybe! I think that's weird. It'd be weird if it was anyone who had been akumatized twice consecutively! What if it was you that had become Lady Wifi over and over again? Wouldn't I be justified in feeling a little suspicious?"

"I don't know what you want me to say, girl," Alya replied, sounding exasperated. "Lila has been akumatized. That's a fact. Unless she got her hands on the actual fox miraculous."

Marinette reeled.

"But that would mean that both she and Ladybug and Chat Noir are lying, which just doesn't make sense."

Giving no response, Marinette crawled out of bed and paused at the base of the ladder, her eyes on the phonograph sitting on the table across the room. Though her feet remained rooted to the floor, she felt herself dissolving under the hopelessness building quickly through her body. It manifested as tears at the corners of her eyes. Her eyes sank to the floor, trying to blink away the moisture.

"Marinette, you still there?"

"It doesn't make sense, Alya," she murmured. If she raised her voice any louder, it might waver, "and I'm scared."

"Oh, girl." Marinette could hear the comforting smile in her friend's voice. "We don't have anything to be afraid of. Ladybug and Chat Noir will take care of this, just like they always do."

"But they didn't take care of it the first time," Marinette shot back. She crossed the room, and holding the phone between her jaw and shoulder, picked up the empty phonograph with both hands. "They didn't beat Hawkmoth. Did they?"

"No, I guess not. Not permanently, but they defeated countless akumas-"

"Akumas? Who cares about akumas? It's not Lila I'm worried about. It's everything else. They could never take down Hawkmoth himself. They could only take down Mayura because she -" Marinette pressed her eyes closed and turned away from the table "-because she was weaker, I guess. Have you watched that fight by the Arc de Triomphe? Conspiracy is no joke."

"No, but Ladybug and Chat Noir will come out victorious, Marinette. Don't you have faith in them?"

By now, Marinette had thrown open her closet door and set the phonograph on the floor between her laundry basket and a rack of shoes. She pulled the first shirt she saw off its hanger and closed the door.

"I get it's troubling," Alya went on when Marinette didn't answer her question. "But now is not the time to doubt them. They've never kicked Hawkmoth's ass - directly, anyway - but they've never failed us either."

"Alya." Marinette returned to the table and wiped the dust away from her motorcycle helmet. Her gaze caught on Tikki, who hovered by the computer with a gentle and sympathetic expression. Marinette could barely force out the words, and when they finally came, they came riding a heavy, quivering breath. "They're just people, you know. A couple of kids. That's it."

A stunned quiet followed. And then Marinette heard a shout in the background on Alya's end. "I gotta go for now," her friend said, sounding uncertain. "But we can talk later at school, okay?"

"Okay."

"See you soon."

"Yep."

Alya disconnected.

Marinette dressed and fell into her lounge chair, eyes aimed at the ceiling but constantly fighting to stay open. Tikki prevented her from falling asleep again, by tapping her on the forehead now and again. Eventually, she floated by with Marinette's hairbrush hanging between her arms.

"We have to leave in a half hour," she muttered.

"Maybe if I wasn't a full time student, I'd have the time to become that unflappable Ladybug everyone thinks I am. Good thing there's only a week left of the school year."

Tikki beckoned Marinette to sit up and ran the brush through her shoulder-length locks. "Marinette, it'll be okay. Take consolation in everybody's trust in Ladybug and Chat Noir. They've witnessed your heroism countless times. They have reason to be faithful."

"Thanks, Tikki, but what am I meant to do now that I have no more allies to turn to? What if I needed Rena Rouge or Ryuko or Carapace or Pegasus? What if I needed…?" She flinched as Tikki pulled the brush through a strand of tangled hair.

"What if you needed, who?" the kwami asked.

She didn't reply. Instead, she turned her head towards her desk where she'd left her phone. Tikki pulled the brush away and floated into view, her dark eyes attempting to encourage a shared gaze, but Marinette avoided her stare. She retrieved her phone and opened her contact list once again, scrolling until she found the number of the person on her mind.

Master Fu had asked her to delete his number before he handed over the guardianship, and though she said she would, she never did. He was still represented by a little turtle emoji. Her thumb hovered over the call icon, and she remembered their parting words.

"You're the best miraculous holder I've ever known. I'm proud of you, Marinette."

"Thank you, Master."

He'd handed the phonograph over, and she cradled the antique in her arms as carefully as she would hold an infant.

"It's yours now."

He'd left her with only a smile when Marinette asked him if they'd ever meet again. She supposed he couldn't make any promises, but she had assumed that they would. That she and Chat Noir would defeat Hawkmoth and Mayura, and he would be safe to return to Paris, return to her. Maybe a part of her thought he would take the guardianship back from her, that this was only a temporary, a way to throw Hawkmoth off his search for the old master. But she realized quickly that Fu wasn't coming back. He'd truly left her with all that he had, insisting that she possessed everything she needed to carry on a legacy two hundred years and seven thousand kilometers removed from her, nothing but seventeen magic jewels and an ancient instruction manual as her guide. Her defeat of Feast might have restored everything that had been lost all those years ago, but none of those things had made it back to her.

Fu never told her where he was going. Whether he was in Tibet or London or New York or Antarctica, she didn't know. She'd dared to make phone calls in the past, but they'd gone straight to voicemail, never returned. Fu must have at least known that Hawkmoth had been absent for almost two years. But perhaps that wasn't enough; perhaps, Fu needed to know that he was truly gone.

She called his number, and immediately was met with his pre-recorded greeting. If he was to know that Hawkmoth was on her side, it couldn't be from her. The entire world would have to know first, and they weren't ready for that. Gabriel wasn't ready for that. And with a situation as delicate as this, maybe they would never be.

Leave a message, and I'll get back to you, the recording promised. A promise that had been broken several times. She knew it wouldn't be kept now.

But at the sound of the tone, Marinette couldn't help the words that spilled out of her mouth. "Master," she murmured. "It's me again, Marinette. I know you won't hear this, but I really wish I had your help right now. I don't know what to do. There are some new villains, not Hawkmoth and Mayura, but a girl at my school, Lila Rossi, you remember her. Volpina. And a new holder named Conspiracy, with a raven miraculous." She hugged herself with her free arm, finger tips pressing into the spaces between her ribs. "I didn't know there was a raven miraculous, and to be honest, I'm not sure if you knew it either, considering you have only ever been responsible for one box. And then there's this sorcerer…" A chill crawled down her spine, a lash of pure terror that she tried to conceal within her voice. "I knew sorcery was a thing, but I guess I never imagined the possibilities. They did this thing where they tried to break Hawkmoth's miraculous - yeah, Hawkmoth. He's on my side now. I told you that he gave up, remember? Almost two years ago now. Which means Paris has been safe for a long time, which means you could have come back."

Tikki whimpered. Marinette began to pace the room, and every time she faced the closet, she could not draw her stare away from its door, from the phonograph that sat on the other side in the dark.

"Anyway, I'm totally underprepared to deal with them," she went on. "Conspiracy has these giant wings made of knives and no matter how hard I try, I can't touch him. He might have been in my room last night. I have no clue because he can turn invisible too. And the Sorcerer - they - they - I have no idea what to expect from them. No idea how to begin comprehending what they can do. I kinda delegated that to Chat Noir's stepmom to take care of - remember, she was Mayura? I feel kinda bad because I don't think she's okay. She's not in the right place to be taking care of something that important. But I already feel like I'm losing my mind over the fact that I have nothing. Master Fu, I have nothing. And I know that's not your fault, because you taught me everything that you knew, and you had to protect yourself and the miraculous by leaving Paris, but you know, it kinda doesn't matter, because just a couple months after you left, Hawkmoth found out I was the guardian anyway, and he stole the box. I told you that story, though. And I don't think I'm brave enough to tell you now that.." it happened again.

"Marinette," Tikki chirped softly.

It happened again. The box was stolen. I don't know where it is. I can't find it.

She wished she could find a way to explain that, but it was so unbelievable. Master Fu was the only other person that knew she was in possession of the miracle box.

But she banished the thought before its implications were sound in mind.

"Tell me what to do," she begged. A teardrop slid down her jaw and broke against the floor beside her foot. She kept pacing. Back and forth. She passed the mirror above her makeup vanity again and again, watched as her face fell apart in her reflection. She pulled the phone away from her ear to wipe away her tears with her forearm. "Tell me what to do…"

But he couldn't. Because she wasn't speaking to him. And he wasn't going to hear this message. And if he did hear it, then he wouldn't answer her.

She hung up and stuffed her phone in her pocket. The next several minutes consisted of dabbing her eyes with tissue and beating foundation into her splotchy skin. She didn't feel like eating breakfast, but if she didn't force herself out of her bedroom now, she might never leave. When her mother asked if she was feeling alright, she only answered that she hadn't slept well. It wasn't a lie and had no problem slipping unaffectedly out of her mouth despite the resurgence of apprehension that came with recalling the eerie sense of surveillance that had plagued her over those hours. But there was something else brewing within her, something which fought against the chill of terror under her skin until her blood coursed with both fire and ice.

Marinette was angry.

She was angry as she grabbed her bag, wordlessly waved her hand at her parents at the kitchen counter, and withheld the urge to slam the apartment door on her way out. She was angry as she stomped down the stairs towards the patisserie. Angry as she listened to the chime of the bell and walked out onto the street. Angry as Tikki, hidden in her purse, shifted to press herself as best as she could against Marinette's hip in comfort.

Without even thinking, she was glaring across rooftops and down alleyways, as if she was going to find Conspiracy there, watching her. Sometimes, her mind created the image of that cloaked figure she'd so briefly seen disappear behind the facade of that destroyed storefront, saw the long silver mask, with the pointed chin, and the tiny black, almond-shaped eye-holes Gabriel had illustrated for them after he told them the story. Watching her now. The both of them watching her, darkly clothed and stern-faced behind their masks and their mysterious tall figures. Two people she had no way to know anything about.

It wasn't Fu's fault that he had to leave, she tried to tell herself, but the thought couldn't withstand that dangerous storm of rage and fear stirring in her chest, couldn't withstand the fact that he had left her with the promise, with the lie that she already had everything. She was competent and brave and smart and somehow that was supposed to be enough. The truth was there were miraculous that not even Fu had known about, and magic his trusty grimoire didn't begin to explain. He knew he didn't have everything because he watched the rest be destroyed by his own careless mistake 190 years ago, a mistake he'd been haunted by all that time, a mistake he hadn't even been the one to fix. All that power and knowledge that had resurfaced, and Marinette was left with none of it.

But everything is fine, isn't it? she thought sourly, Because at least everyone trusts me.

She didn't want to talk to Alya when she got to school. Her eyes brimmed with tears and she couldn't bear to look at anything but her feet. When Adrien showed, he gently put his arm around her shoulder and whispered, "What's wrong?"

His breath on her ear had a calming effect. A very small, but very welcome one. Marinette leaned against him, and promised to tell him after their first class.

She never had the chance. Volpina attacked halfway through the period. Marinette had been so upset that she didn't even notice the girl was absent until somebody ran in from a different class, yelling about another akuma. A few minutes later, they found out she was attacking alone.

For now.