A/N: Uploading~ uploading~ Then, sleep :D

Warnings for this chapter: mentions of Major Character Death, Angst

Disclaimer: refer to Prologue

Chapter 1

There was a moment of weightless confusion-

-before everything came rushing back- like a truck running at top speed into a tree.

The roof- the mugger- Marinette Dupain-Cheng- Ladybug-

IT HURTS- IT HURTS SO MUCH-

Someone-

Anyone-

HELP-

She was going to- she was-

She was-...

... she was...

Someone... -someone was... crying.

Crying so loudly that... even her numbed senses could hear it, through the veil of physical and mental agony.

Had she... been found...?

No. It couldn't be.

She was dead.

She knew that.

There had been so much pain- she couldn't have possibly survived-

The crying stopped abruptly, causing her to feel strangely wrong-footed.

What... was going on...?

There was a strange pulsing in her ear. She couldn't hear anything anymore.

She was cold. But also warm.

Where...?

Suddenly, there was a dark fog falling over her, a cool, light sheet of satin covering her head, covering her mind. It consumed her thoughts before she could ponder the matter of her situation any further, and instead of panicking-

She freely let herself succumb to it.

(After all, what did she have to lose anymore...?)

The next time she woke up, it was with a start.

She was instantly overcome with that fact – she had woken up – and started to sob out of sheer relief and exhaustion.

But hope had only just started to bloom-

-maybe she'd been found! Maybe she'd been saved!-

-when reality hit her.

It manifested itself in the form of a dark – somewhat blurry – sky full of stars, and the feel of soft grass underneath her.

There was... no pain anymore.

...

Something was wrong.

She had... died.

So why had she woken up?

How?

... Was this all a dream conjured by her delirious mind in her final moments?

She blinked with impossible sluggishness, the likes she had only ever felt on Monday mornings-

-there would be no mornings anymore, no Mondays, nor Tuesdays, no breakfasts with her family-

-and tried to look around herself.

The darkness of the night made it difficult to identify her whereabouts, but she was able to see that there was grass, blades tall and wild, that surrounded her from all sides, and-

That was about all she could tell.

... Definitely no hospital, though.

Was this... heaven? She'd never believed particularly strongly in any religion before- ...well, Before, but... What else could it be? She didn't know of any other place where someone would go after dying, especially one so peaceful.

There was no pain in her body, she didn't feel too cold nor too hot, she wasn't being attacked by anyone...

She was just... there.

But where?

Trying to sit up didn't bear much fruit, and only revealed a new unexplainable fact about her current situation:

She couldn't move her body.

She'd been able to move her head to look around (which hadn't been all that informative anyway), but the rest of her body apparently refused to follow suit.

Doesn't mean that she didn't try to, over and over again, muscles that shouldn't exist anymore clenching for an undetermined amount of time – being motionless for a superhero was akin to death, nevermind that she'd already gone through that one delightful experience already.

It soon became obvious that her efforts were in vain, and, unable to do anything about it, she eventually let her head fall back onto the soft grass, looking up at the stars.

What had really happened? Where was she? Why couldn't she move?

... What was she going to do...?

So many questions... and no way to get answers.

(... she wished Chat Noir was here.)

Some time had passed since then – how long? there was no way to tell – and stargazing had lost a lot of its appeal.

In this place, except for looking at the night sky and breathe in the fresh unpolluted air, there was nothing to do. Nothing but to think of her... 'untimely demise', of all the people she'd left behind, of all the dreams she'd had and projects she would never get to finish-

-so besides getting tired of crying her eyes out, she was also growing progressively more restless. As a general rule, being left alone with her thoughts and no outlet to express her feelings was never a good idea for someone like Marinette, who had gotten used to talking to Tikki when anything happened, or writing in a journal- or even start on designing a new creation in order to get away from her own head for a bit.

Here, there was nothing of the sort – only her, and the stars.

She had never seen so many before, actually.

(Sightseeing hadn't exactly been the first priority on her list when the Startrain had taken its stroll through space after all.)

As the capital of France, Paris – her dear Paris, left without her protection – had always been full of lights, even during night-time, so there hadn't been that many stars to admire. She had never realised so many of them could be visible at once.

At first, she'd been entranced by the peaceful beauty that nature offered her – especially in contrast to the events leading to her... death – but soon enough, the questions swirling inside her mind had overtaken her thoughts and-

...

... Marinette felt herself tense up.

There had been a rustle through the blades of grass on her left side.

She automatically held her breath, leaving her questions about how she could even breathe in the first place at the back of her mind. None of what was happening to her since she'd woken up made sense anyway, so she was way beyond adding yet another question to the ever-growing pile. Survival instinct on the other hand, had presumably out-lived her actual death- and she wasn't adverse to listening to it right now.

Another rustle – closer this time – and she gulped silently.

Was it a person? An animal?

Considering that this place had seemed pretty much uninhabited until this very moment, she had a terrible inkling of which one it was...

And in her state, she was definitely prey.

The odds were quite clearly against her with a predator on the prowl and her inability to so much as move.

She still told herself to calm down, to think rationally – panicking had always been her worst enemy –, even though each new sound, closer than the one before, only served to remind her that she was helpless in this state-

-it was her death all over again -

-and her vivid imagination was being entirely unhelpful, making her picture wild beasts ready to tear her tender flesh apart, each more savage and bigger than the last one-

She had already died once – why was she so utterly terrified?

There was another rustle- no, a few.

She blinked once-

-and there were no stars anymore.

Instead, her entire field of vision was overtaken by fur.

Having her only source of light obstructed, she couldn't see much past this one observation, except for the fact that it was huge, furry, and growling lowly.

Don't panic-don't panic-don't panic-

Marinette dug deeply into her reserves of courage, looking for the confidence she only ever had when she was Ladybug-

-but she wasn't Ladybug anymore, was she?-

-and slowly, slowly exhaled. Carefully, she blinked in order to try and adjust to the sudden shift in lighting- but had to immediately open her eyes back again when the growling intensified as a result.

She took her next (shuddering) breath in, deliberate and silent, and ever so slowly, searched the mass of breathing fur for a snout or a muzzle – although she doubted that knowing where the attack would come from would help much anyway.

But instead of finding a gaping jaw ready to eat her whole in a single bite-

-she ended up looking straight into a pair of gleaming beastly eyes.

She swallowed her instinctive scream.

Her heartbeat had gotten erratic by now, despite the fact that she was still holding her breath.

Somewhere in the area around her head, a slight scratching made itself known, produced by a minute shifting of position from the beast and accompanied by a warm puff of moist air that almost made her flinch – an urge that she barely managed to suppress in time. Thanks to this, she realised that the unidentified furry creature was looming over her motionless form, each paws on either sides of her, muscles taut, ready to attack – and merely...

... waiting.

She didn't dare move an inch and test if this unexpected inaction would also apply to a more lively target than what she was currently displaying. As an unfortunate result, she found that she couldn't take her eyes off the beast's own, and was now stuck in the most nerve-wracking staring contest she'd ever participated in.

She could hear it sniffing her, the warmth of its massive body radiating and making her realize just how close it was – and in her peripheral vision- she was eventually able to see its impossibly large, sharp, gleaming fangs.

... Considering she shouldn't even have had lungs anymore, trying to control her breathing to keep it as silent as possible after that new discovery, was way more painful than it ought to have been.

But, even so... and even when her dry eyes started to itch painfully after being wide open for so long... a profoundly primal part of her continued to practically screech in her head, to make herself smaller, not to draw attention to herself, to play dead (she hadn't thought herself ready for a pun so soon to be honest)-

-and it, unexpectedly, made focusing on the task – if not easy – easier.

From then on, time became inconsequential.

And as seconds past by...

-do not move- do not breathe-

... before turning into minutes...

-do not blink- do not scream-

... her whole world narrowed down to the soulless gaze seemingly staring directly into her very being, and to the sound of her heart beating loudly in her ears – so loudly in fact, that she feared it would be what would prompt the beast to pounce sooner or later-

-anytime now-

-or would it be because her pained eyes were starting to tear up in an effort to moisturise?-

-she couldn't be taken unaware-

-and wasn't it just so odd? She could have sworn its eyes were getting bluer by the second-

-one attacker superposing with another-

-and she just-

couldn't.

look.

away.

Then, out of nowhere-

-the eyes turned green and the pupils, vertical.

It was as if a lightbulb had exploded due to too strong an electrical current.

Marinette's nerves snapped.

No movement was made, no words were screamed, no jumping recklessly into battle happened-

But her resolution was made:

She didn't want to die again-

(-in her own blue irises, a new gleam was quickly overwriting the terror- she was the fearless Ladybug, she'd always been, and she'd always known-)

-but if she had to,

She would stare Death Itself down.

As if her inner resolution had shown in her countenance – instantly switching her status from weak prey to potential challenger – suddenly, with a powerful snarl that reverberated into her very bones, those large beastly eyes became impossibly bigger-

-this was it- COME AT ME!-

Then-

...

White.

...

-a deafening wave of energy and a blinding- burning- white light encompassed everything in the vicinity, the beast and her included.

She couldn't see what was happening- her eyes-

Marinette didn't have time to contemplate this new development for long, because soon after-... whatever the heck this was supposed to be- for the third instance in a row, unconsciousness hit her with all the grace of an elephant in a China shop, and zero regards to her own wishes.

What she was far from imagining however, was that, this time, when she would wake up...

... everything was going to be different.

...to be continued...

A/N: Aaaaaaaaaaaand- That's a wrap! Chapter 1, done. Thoughts? Theories? This is gearing up to be a loooong story, and oh boy, I was not ready for the avalanche of ideas that hit me after I posted the prologue :'D