A/N: So, I haven't seen this type of story for the fandom yet (though I might have missed it), so... here it is!
Warnings for this story: Spoilers for anything that happened up to the end of Season 3
Warnings for this chapter: Major Character Death, minor graphic descriptions of gore, Angst
Disclaimer: Miraculous Ladybug belongs to Thomas Astruc and I make zero profit from using his characters to play around with; only the plot of this story and any OCs (Original Characters) to appear in the future belong to me.
Prologue
It had been a mugging.
Not an epic battle against an Akumatized villain, not a devious trap devised by Hawkmoth- not even a natural disaster-
A. simple. mugging.
She'd only just become the new Guardian of the Miracle Box too; how unlucky was that?
Gosh... she hoped Chat never got to know about this- he would find a way to make a pun out of it somehow, a smug reference about cats always landing on their feet or some such.
...
... Who was she kidding?
Chat Noir was going to be devastated.
It was this one thought that finally made it all hit home:
Marinette... was dying.
There was no doubt or hope about it – only a cold certainty that she could feel as strongly as the ice spreading throughout her body... steadily replacing the warmth provided by the blood that had previously been there. She could feel the vital liquid underneath her, seeping through her clothes, making her hair sticky, and slowly, but surely, escaping her, leaving her all dried up inside... a vampire's victim.
She couldn't hear Tikki (she hadn't been able to see a thing anymore since a while ago, so she didn't bother trying to find her with her eyes) anywhere in the vicinity, but she wasn't too worried that she would have been hurt despite her own exhaustion. A little fall like that was nothing to her; as Tikki regularly liked to remind her, kwamis were immortal after all. And old. She would be fine.
Besides, who knows how many partners she had lost since the beginning of her existence?
... She would probably move on quickly enough after Marinette was gone for good. Hopefully, she would find a good new host for her Miraculous, and Paris would still get to be protected by a Ladybug, even if it wasn't her.
She felt something trickle down her throat and tried to cough it out.
A weak fit of gurgles later, and she thought humourlessly that she must have made quite the ghastly sight by now, covered in substances she didn't even dare to name. Worthy of a R-rated videogame, really.
Crying, bleeding, organs leaking-
-Anyway, what kind of mugger even climbed to rooftops to look for potential victims? Had they been trying to escape from the police that way...? She supposed she shouldn't worry about the details, considering, but she did wonder.
She also wondered about what they must have thought when they saw her, short Marinette, standing there tiredly with her small purse and wobbly legs...
Had 'post-battle her' looked like easy prey?
A step-too-close to the edge of the roof, that was for sure.
The shock in those blue eyes when she'd yanked her bag out of reach and had stumbled back and into nothingness, made her pretty sure that her untimely death by flying pancake-ing had not been part of the mugger's plans at least... Not that it changed much in the grand scheme of things, but she much rather preferred being an accidental victim than a murdered one.
She resisted the urge to chuckle.
God... Her thoughts were all over the place- just like herself.
At least that mugger wasn't ever going to live with the guilt of having caused the death of one of Paris' superheroes: it wasn't Ladybug who would be found in that empty alleyway – just, Marinette. Poor young, clumsy Marinette. What had she been doing on a rooftop? Of course she would trip and fall off the building – it was such a typical Marinette thing to do.
No one would suspect that they had just lost one of their superheroes.
Not her parents, not her friends, not Master Fu, now that he had renounced his title,- not even her superhero partner.
Only Ladybug knew who Ladybug was.
Only Ladybug had known who Marinette had truly been.
Ladybug... The superhero who always found a way to save the day...
Not this time. Not to save herself.
Her tears should have been all spent by now-
-thepain-itwastoomuch-toomuchpainpainpainpain-
-but as her breath hitched with an unnatural wetness, she could feel the warmth the saltine liquid left in its wake as it trailed freely down her mangled cheeks and temples.
It was so warm against her cold skin...
She didn't want to die...
So warm...
She was just a kid.
She didn't want to leave her family.
She didn't want to leave her friends.
She didn't want to leave her partner.
She didn't want to leave Adrien.
She didn't want to die, alone in an empty alley, unknown and scared.
She didn't want any of this-
But sometimes, things just don't go the way you want them to.
And so, somewhere in a deserted part of the city of love, alone and hurting in a silent alleyway...
... Marinette Dupain-Cheng exhaled her very last breath...
... and somewhere, in an uninhabited forest in a time unknown-
-an infant inhaled its first breath.
...to be continued...
A/N: Aaand that's a wrap. As you've probably realised by now, this story is going to be about rebirth, and a whole lot of other themes I'd rather not spoil here yet :D Please don't hesitate to leave a review on your way out, so I know if anyone liked it enough to get a new chapter posted!