There was a knock on the door to Marinette's room. She looked up slowly, scarcely aware of her own surroundings.
It was impossible to describe just how exhausted she was. It felt as if every last ounce of strength that she had to give had been leached away and stolen from her. For all that, she couldn't sleep. The events of the previous night replayed themselves in her mind. She saw Kahn and the madness behind his eyes, her friends falling one by one, the blood on Nathalie... The sounds of her desperate last breaths still echoed through her ears, no matter how much she tried to banish them. The worst though had been Adrien's terrible wail: a cry as he realized just what had happened, what he'd lost. No matter what she tried, she couldn't forget about his agony.
She'd spent most of day in her bed. It wasn't just the emotional damage. Her body was black and blue from the beating that Kahn had subjected her to the night before. He'd been brutal. Her parents paid her a visit from time to time so as to tend to her. They would offer her some food but she found herself to not be particularly hungry. The painkillers and gentle hugs however, she was somewhat more partial to.
She was expecting to see them come through the door. Instead, she found herself faced with a familiar set of blue eyes and dyed hair. She was too surprised to speak. Simply gawking at the young man as if he had beamed himself in from planet Mars. He smiled softly upon seeing her, approaching slowly so as not to startle her and giving her ample time to tell him to be on his way if she didn't feel like company.
"Hey there..." He spoke softly to her as if fearing that raising his voice beyond a few decibels risked harming her.
"Hi..."
She wanted to smile, to ask him how he was… Instead, she just felt too tired. He must have taken her words as permission to come in. She didn't object. It allowed her to see that the young man was limping. His left leg apparently wasn't quite playing game. The next thing that she noticed was the bandages covering his arms and legs and even, just visible around his chest. There were a couple of his cheek which reminded her of the wounds that she'd seen inflicted upon Nathalie. All Kahn's handiwork of course. Covering he few meters seemed to have cost her friend quite badly, as he was out of breath.
She gestured for him to sit down. He smiled gratefully and accepted. His grimaces confirmed that he was still in a reasonable amount of pain. She was honestly surprised that he had gotten out as quickly as he apparently had.
"Are you alright?" She asked, concerned.
"Yeah..." He grinned in an attempt to be reassuring. "You know they gave me shots? They were convinced I'd been mauled by an animal. What about you?"
She shrugged. It was impossible for her to express just what she was feeling. If nothing else, she wasn't entirely sure if he was talking about physically or emotionally. A shrug probably defined it the best. She was still in some pain. Internally, she didn't know quite what to make of the current situation. There was of course the pain of what had happened to Nathalie. Then her parents learning the secret that she had kept for so many years. They hadn't brought it up yet and for that she was eternally grateful. Everything that had happened seemed both agonizingly close and almost dreamlike, as if it had never happened.
Luka didn't push her. The silence or lack of a direct response were enough for him. There was a lot on her chest and she wanted a good deal of it off, it had to be said. A part of her was inclined to talk. It's what she usually did. Tikki was nearby. The kwami was usually a source of immeasurable comfort at a time like this. She'd been markedly quiet. Whilst Marinette reasoned that the creature must have seen a fair amount of death in her lifetime, she couldn't imagine that it was something that it was ever entirely possible to get used to. That and she seemed plain old exhausted, a side-effect of having made a wish. She was astonished that Plagg had had it in him to both transform Adrien and then use cataclysm.
She wondered just how much her on and off boyfriend knew. She reasoned that he must have been aware of some of what had happened. At some point, someone somewhere would have told him surely. Even if they hadn't, he must have been able to guess that it wasn't good news. That a life had been lost. He himself had foretold as much.
Before she could ponder the matter any further, the young man handed her a familiar old bag. She knew what it was. He must have gotten it back from Ivan and Mylene only a few hours ago. She was grateful but for a few moments struggled to articulate that very simple fact. The miraculouses and book were safe. It was more than any of them could have hope for yesterday. Adrien Agreste was back with them. Kahn was gone. So was Nathalie…
"Thank you..." She muttered eventually, feeling the same inescapable exhaustion.
"You're welcome..." He responded softly, hesitating a moment before asking. "How's Adrien?"
Again, Marinette was a little bit unsure about just where to begin on that one.
He'd broken down. Whether it had been Nathalie's death or that had just been the catalyst they couldn't exactly said. Plagg had stayed with him. They weren't entirely sure just what damage Kahn had done to his mind or if the young man could even remember just what he'd done. She reasoned that he must have been given that from time to time, the real Adrien had been able to break through. In a strange way, that wasn't comforting. If anything, it opened an entirely new can of worms that she didn't even want to contemplate.
She'd spent half an hour trying to bring him out of whatever he'd slipped into. He's been almost unresponsive. After the initial period of weeping and crying out for what he'd lost. It was as if he'd just slipped off to some distant place.
"We had to leave him back there…" She let out a shaky sigh. "I-I don't know if he's going to be alright."
They would give him a few hours, a little bit of time to pull himself back together. The rest of them were so beaten both physically and emotionally, that it had been decided that they would go home. Plagg would stay with him, keep watch and ensure that he wasn't alone. Whether or not it would be enough, she couldn't say. In her heart, she knew that there was a chance that Adrien, her Adrien was gone. Not in the same way that Kahn had attempted to destroy him. It was the shock from what he'd been forced to do whilst controlled, then losing Nathalie and also the way in which she had been taken from him.
She didn't even want to think back to those events. She'd never felt quite so powerless in her life as she had when she'd watched Nathalie die. Even if they had been able to stop the bleeding and heal the wound, Kahn would have taken hold. She'd known that. As much as Marinette repeated that simple fact to herself, it still failed to have the desired effect. All she could see was the woman's pale face, knowing that her own demise was approaching.
"I- I don't know what to say..." Was all that Marinette could manage, Tikki rested on her lap. "It's just before… I could fix everything. I can't this time."
"I know..." His voice was soft, full of gentle understanding.
She felt some tears stinging at the corner of her eyes. There was nothing to be done for it. She reasoned that the pain would become lesser eventually. Her parents who had experienced loss before had told her as much. She wasn't even that close to Nathalie. She was a face, an acquaintance more than anything else but she'd died, effectively been murdered and Ladybug for all of her strength and power had been powerless to help her. Worse, she had been the one to provide the woman with the instruments which had ultimately cost her her life.
"You couldn't have helped her Marinette."
"I don't know. She said she could help Adrien..." The young woman closed her eyes, thinking back to it. "I- I didn't think that she'd- I thought that she had another plan."
"She knew what she was doing." Luka slipped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her in close. "She made her choice."
Marinette knew that he was right. Of course, he hadn't witnessed the actual events which had lead to the woman's death but someone had related them to him, likely Alya. It didn't really matter, she was aware that he was doing his best to comfort her. She hadn't even been that close to Nathalie and still the loss of the woman weighed heavily upon her conscience. She didn't even want to think about how Adrien must have suffered and presumably was still. In fact, she'd never really lost anyone before. Her parents had warned her that the pain would linger for quite some time but that eventually it would get better.
For the time being however, the woman's face lingered behind the girl's eyes, even as she closed them, snuggling up to the young man once more:
"She saved us all..."
Adrien Agreste was lying on his side. These past few hours, he'd shed every tear that he felt he had left in his body. He was exhausted, even moving felt like it was a task far beyond his means. His mind might have been his own for the first time in a week but all he had inside of his head was the way that Nathalie had looked up at him as she'd gasped for breath, bleeding out slowly but surely. Her last breath hitched as his body turned to ash thanks to his destructive touch. He felt her body slipping thorough his fingers, turning to ash which was scattered on the breeze. The young man pleaded silently with the invisible forces for her to come back. He'd trade places in a heartbeat. Anything to take back what had been lost.
Plagg floated nearby. He had tried his best to console the young man but was now more accepting of the current circumstance and had decided to simply wait it out. He was snuggled up to his friend, resting against him in order to provide some much needed comfort.
"Adrien..." The kwami spoke softly to his partner. "You know she's gone."
"Of course… I killed her."
"Kahn did that." Plagg reminded the blonde haired man. "You just helped her along. She asked you to."
Adrien turned away. Instead, he sat up with his back to the wall. His fingers slipped into his pocket to retrieve a pen he had reclaimed a short while ago from his bedroom. It was the last thing that Nathalie had given him: a Christmas present. All the woman seemed to conceive of as a gift was something to do with stationary. They'd laughed about it at the time, allowing to become something of an inside joke. They wouldn't laugh about it ever again. He clicked the pen mindlessly a few more times before his hand hit the floor. It was as if his strength had been utterly drained, leaving him powerless to even raise his limbs.
"She was like a mother to me..." He declared after a short while. "I should have told her that."
"She knew Adrien. She might not have said it but she knew."
He closed his eyes, shaking his head slowly. The exhaustion that he felt was such that he couldn't even bring himself to get up. Marinette and the others were present in his mind of course but as soon as he thought about them, he found himself taken back to those terrible last few moments with the woman. Even now, he could feel her blood on his hand as he struggled to the best of his ability to stem the flow. He'd had the presence of mind to stagger downstairs and wash his hands before inevitably finding himself drawn back up here.
Plagg let out a sigh and floated over towards his partner. He paused, hovering somewhere near his hand. It took Adrien a while to realize that the kwami was trying to open his palm. He peered down perplexed. Eventually, he gave up all of his resistance, allowing his friend to do as he pleased. To his surprise, he felt a small rounded object be placed inside his hand.
Surprised, he looked down. The young man recognized relatively easily just what it was. He'd been taught about the secrets of the kwamis and the miraculous back at the temple in the mountains of Tibet. That was beginning to feel like it was a lifetime ago… Whatever the case, he found himself faced with an object that he had never before been presented with. It was a small jewel or stone. There was no string present, he would have to add one of he so chose, the power remained very much present within it. There were a thousand different strands, most of them dark which marked the strange little object.
"This is a..." His voice trailed off as something suddenly occurred to him, there was a familiar presence in the air. "Nathalie..."
"She used the Cat miraculous, only for a second but… It's enough." Plagg extended his paw, offering the little jewel. "This way a part of her is always with you."
The kwagatama was a pretty little thing, although perhaps it had been prepared in some haste. For whatever reason, likely because Plagg wasn't the most thoughtful of all kwamis, he'd never presented his partner with such a gift. Perhaps that was a good thing. As touched as Adrien was by the gift, there was one single strand of hair which caught his attention. Out of all of the previous Cat Noirs, there was only one whom he felt that he truly needed to relate to. There were some tears behind his eyes as he looked towards his friend.
"Thanks Plagg..." It came out as a sob.
He held the gem tightly in the palm of his hand. It seemed to be generating an unnatural warmth. It wasn't unpleasant, in fact there was something distinctly familiar about it. The young man closed his eyes, pressing his head back against the wall behind him as he let the sensation pass throughout his body. It was a comfort. He didn't feel quite so alone in those few moments. It almost felt as if he was drifting somewhere between consciousness and dreams.
There was a familiar clicking sound, heels against a cold stone floor which caused him to open his eyes. He didn't react any more than that however. He was afraid that turning around would somehow break the spell. He knew intuitively that it wouldn't but still, there was something so impossible about all of this that he found himself unwilling to do anything that might potentially spoil the moment. So he just sat there in relative silence.
"You can't stay here forever..." A soft voice informed the young man.
"Sure I can." Adrien replied stubbornly, his voice broken. "You're dead and I killed you."
Nathalie smiled softly in a way that she so seldom had when she was alive. Adrien didn't question her presence. Her choice to speak to him was enough to cause him to turn to face the woman. She was younger, prettier than she had been when he'd last laid eyes upon her. Those terrible scars were gone now. Was it a perfect version of her from some prime point in her life or how she wished to appear to him, how he wished her to appear… It didn't really matter. The person who had died only a few hours ago was back with him once more.
"You need to start living your life Adrien..." The woman's eyes were steely as she faced him. "Don't make the same mistake your father did. Believe me, I'm not worth it."
The young man's face fell slightly at her words. He knew that she was right. The Nathalie before him was a spirit summoned forth from the Kwagatama. He could see her, so could Plagg. To the rest of the world though she was dead. There was no changing that. He didn't want to think about that right now. The two of them were together again, that had to mean something, surely? The young man looked to her somewhat pleadingly, desperate just to talk for her for a few moments longer, to pretend that everything was alright.
She didn't seem to argue. Maybe she couldn't. He didn't know what the exact limits to this sort of thing were. In fact, he wasn't entirely sure if the Kwagatama was responsible for this or if it was his own mind which was playing some manner of cruel trick on him.
"I want you back..." He spoke in a quiet, hushed voice.
"I know you do." She responded softly. "But that's not going to change anything."
"I could." He reminded the woman, showing her the ring on his finger. "I could take your place."
"Don't." Despite the terrible offer, she remains calm. "Things are best this way. I think you still have a lot in your life to live for. I only really had you."
How could only a handful of words hurt so much? She didn't intend to inflict pain, he could tell that much quite easily. He'd never openly searched for her affection. Nathalie never seemed like the type. All the same, he would have been lying if he said that there hadn't been some sort of a bond there, something he couldn't quite explain. It had neither been desired nor intended. Somehow, it had just come about. Kahn had sensed it. It was one of the reasons why he had taken such sick pleasure in torturing and tormenting the poor woman in her last few days on Earth… For all that, up until her last few moments, they had always pretended to just be some sort of colleagues. The lie hurt now more than ever.
How lowered his head, resting it against the knees which he brought up against him. He wondered if he could reach out and touch her. What he wouldn't give for some gentle warmth and reassurance right now. Oddly, he found himself longing for his mother. A woman he knew to be utterly delusional and power mad and whom he hadn't seen in well over a decade.
Strange how the world worked sometimes…
"I loved you- Love you..." He corrected himself after a few moments. "Did you know that?"
"Oh of course I did." She assured him with a gentle smile. "You're not all that much good at hiding your feelings, you know."
"I know. It's just…" He paused reflecting upon the matter for a few moments. "I didn't want you to die."
It must have seemed like such an obvious thing to say still, right now, in the presence of a dead woman, he couldn't quite think what to say. He allowed his mind to wander for a few moments. Already, he had exhausted every opportunity concerning how he could potentially bring the woman back to him. A wish was the only thing that would do it. For that, he would need the miraculous of the Ladybug. Perhaps he could have taken it from Marinette, he doubted she would willingly give it to him. After that, a few words and she would be back. He'd use himself… He could live with that. Well, sort of.
He reopened his eyes a moment later, reminding himself that she very much was with her. He wondered just how long she would stay.
"Are you in my head?" He asked her quietly.
"I'm in your heart." Nathalie gently assured him.
He smiled softly to himself, understanding what he meant. He opened his palm briefly, contemplating the kwagatama. He would need some string in order to ensure that he could wear it properly and that it couldn't possibly slip away from him and get lost. Slowly, as he sat there, he felt some of his strength begin to return to him and with it was a renewed sense of purpose.
There was something that he had been meaning to do for a while now. It was a relatively simple course of action which would require comparatively little effort. Even when he'd resolved to leave Tibet and return home, it had been on his mind. Master Fu had spoken to him about it, suggesting that in the long run, it would do him some good. In fact, on more than one occasion during his decade spent in the mountains, the man had given him permission, even encouraged him to go back so that he could do it. When finally he'd hoped on the plane which had brought him back here, he'd intended to do it as soon as he got back to the capital. Something had always stopped him.
"Could you stay a little longer?"
"What's on your mind?"
"There's somewhere I need to go..."
The woman frowned for a few moments, contemplating him. Then, suddenly and silently, she seemed to understand. A gentle smile made its way onto the woman's features. She nodded a few times. She would be with him for a short while yet. Until he'd completed one of the few final tasks which lay ahead.