A/N: I freakin hate ffn's buggy coding sometimes

Not even an hour later found them both by the fire, renewed to a warm blaze in the dark. The sun had vanished below the horizon, leaving only the moon to light the sky as it rose higher above. The sand was comfortable under Ladybug as she lounged back, crossing her arms behind her head and watching Chat out of the corner of her eye. He was lying on his side on the opposite side of the fire from her, the orange glow casting an odd color on his glowing green eyes from where they cut through the dark, watching her as well.

With the fire creating a comfortable barrier between them, and the pool into the water only a few feet away from him, Chat seemed far more comfortable. It was odd, to think that the strange beast from the bottom of the ocean would be so skittish, especially whereas she was not particularly bothered. Perhaps it was the way he'd yet to act even remotely threatening, or that she didn't have much of a choice here anyway, or maybe it was the fact he was far too attractive for his own good. But on the opposite end, she couldn't quite place her finger on why he'd be so afraid of her. Humans in general being unpredictable did make sense, but not to explain just how deep his fear extended. She almost wondered if she'd threatened him while in her fever state, but if she had, he probably wouldn't have saved her. It had to be something else, but what exactly, she did not know.

Ladybug was the first to break the silence. Her curiosity was burning with all sorts of questions, but she really didn't want to make Chat close back off again, and it felt safer to start off easy. "So… you're a mermaid..?"

Maybe too easy. It made Chat chuckle, though, a smile crossing his face. "Yes, I suppose that's what humans call us."

"What do you call yourself?"

He pulled a face, thinking. "My kind doesn't really make a habit of coming up with words for everything if we didn't have a need for it. We knew what we were, so we didn't need a word to describe ourselves."

"So if you were to have to explain to someone what you were, would you use the word 'mermaid', since you don't have a word of your own?"

Chat's voice lowered a pitch, humming to himself before answering. "I'm not sure. I… think I'd just say that I'm me."

Ladybug couldn't argue with that. In fact, she was almost jealous. For someone still so mystical to her, Chat was extremely secure in his own self identity. She could think of a few people that could benefit from his perspective, probably including herself.

"You know, though," He started talking again, unprompted, and the pirate found herself turning toward him, interested in whatever information he was willingly choosing to offer. "I don't remember who said it at this point, but I remember someone called us the 'children of the sea', once. I liked that one."

"I've never heard that." She really hadn't. In all the fairy tales she'd heard, though she hadn't paid them much mind, it didn't sound like a familiar phrase.

His expression dropped ever so slightly, grounding back to reality. "Yeah, it was a long time ago. Somewhere between then and now, things changed."

"What happened?"

Chat tilted his head, debating on how to tell what he was thinking of. Finally, he seemed to settle on saying, "At first, a long, long time ago, early humans didn't dare come near us. They didn't have anything against us, but they seemed to just want to avoid possible conflict, maybe out of fear. After that, there was a short period of curiosity from both sides, and an equally short alliance. They say it was a golden age of the bond between the land and the sea, when ocean storms calmed and the water was gentle to its guests, and some humans believed that by being friendly to us, they had calmed the great mother we had come from."

"The sea." Ladybug breathed, hanging on every word of his story.

He nodded. Then he looked out over the horizon, gaze darkening. "But it would never last, or so the ancient tales go. We are too alike as species, and as it turned out, we both share the ability to hold lifelong grudges. Whatever friendship had once existed did crumble, and turn to war."

Ladybug scoffed. "Yeah, that sounds about right." Chat looked over at her.

"Humans fight each other all the time, right?" Then he added "Well, I guess someone throwing you into my ravine was answer enough for that."

She wasn't sure whether to laugh or be offended, so instead, she just shook her head. He continued right after, anyway.

"Actually, I'm curious. What was that about? Did you say something offensive to some snooty princess somewhere?"

Ladybug couldn't help but let out a bark of laughter at that, though she didn't miss the way he flinched at the noise. "No, no. It was this… guy. A real piece of work, if you ask me. He hates my guts."

Chat rested his head on his hand, interest shining in his eyes. "And here I was hoping you'd say he was a creepy ex boyfriend that you could throw into the ocean in revenge. I wouldn't be as nice to him."

"Ew, no, ugh god no Chat he's like, ancient. And an asshole." She was cringing at the implication, and Chat just grinned. "And he looks like a wrinkly grape with a toupe."

Now Chat was the one to bust out into laughter, his tail wapping the ground once or twice while he covered his face and shook. When he caught hold of himself, Chat leaned back into the sand, wheezing. "I don't even know what those things are, but the way you said them was perfect." He chuckled some more about it, and Ladybug couldn't help smiling back at him.

"So why wouldn't you be as nice to him?" She asked, curious, once Chat was breathing normally again. He looked back at her.

"Hmm… He doesn't sound like a very good person. I mean, I don't know the whole story, or his side. But even so, I don't think it's okay to leave someone defenseless from fighting for their own survival. Whether he had good reason or not, what he did was cheap."

Again, Chat was surprising her with his thoughtful perspective. Before she could debate on it, though, he was turning back toward her with a glint in his eyes.

"Although, I'm still curious. What did you do to incur his wrath?"

Ladybug froze. "Uuuuh."

"Yeah, that's about what I expected." Chat said, but that was it. He didn't push any further, and his expression changed as he completely let it go without hesitation. "Hmm… It's probably inconsequential, but do you know the guy's name?"

"Are you gonna put a curse on him?" She asked, remembering what he'd said about names holding power. Although, she must've looked a little bit too eager, since Chat started giggling at her after he wiped the shocked expression off his face. She pouted, probably turning red. "Hey, I was just curious."

"I know, you just… looked so ready to have me magically make this guy like, I don't know, trip over his own feet every other step."

"...Can you do that?"

At that, Chat just shrugged, foregoing an answer. Knowing he wasn't going to say any more on the matter, Ladybug didn't push it, and after a moment, he backtracked. "But seriously, who is he?"

"No one knows his real name, actually." Ladybug admitted, scouring her brain for the knowledge, but relatively sure she'd never met anyone that knew it. "He makes everyone call him Hawkmoth."

She was still digging in her memory, trying to figure out if she'd ever even heard rumors of his name, but found nothing. When she turned back to look at Chat again, he was staring at her like she was a ghost, and he was as pale as one.

"Chat? Are you okay?"

He shuddered, eyes focusing. "I'm fine. Uh, that's quite the alias for him to choose. Was he inspired by the one from history?"

Confused, Ladybug could only give him a funny look. "What are you talking about? He's the first guy to call himself Hawkmoth that I've ever met. Was there another?"

Nodding, Chat took a deep breath. "A long time ago, there was another guy who went by that name, and… I don't know. I try to see the best in people, or at least I used to until this guy came along, and I'm sorry but there is no other way to describe that man than by saying he was evil."

"What did he do?" She had to ask, curiosity pulling at her, but she also couldn't help but notice how rigid Chat had gone. He was tense, his hands in fists, his eyes narrowed and looking at nothing.

"Around the time he appeared," He started, his tone sharp and low. "Humans had somehow come up with a legend that catching or killing a mermaid would grant them amazing things. Anything from our tails being indestructible material, to our dying breath giving immortality to the killer, to us being able to choose to revive the dead."

Ladybug stayed silent, almost afraid to interrupt his story with the dangerous energy Chat was radiating just from retelling it.

"This guy, the last Hawkmoth, heard about these legends and he wanted… something. I don't know what wish he wanted granted, but he wanted something, and he dedicated his life to tracking us down and hunting us." There, he stopped, and said not a word more.

"Did you… Chat, did you meet this guy?" He said it was a long time ago, but the way he was talking, Ladybug felt like it was personal.

"Yeah." That was all he said. She didn't push it further.

"Well." She said, tone a little bit lighter, and he glanced over at her from glaring at his hands. "You said it was a long time ago, right? So the guy's probably long dead?"

He blinked, slowly, as if he hadn't thought of that before. "I guess so. Er… How long do humans live?"

Ladybug thought about it for a second, latching onto the slight change in topic after his souring mood. "Most people I've met don't make it very far. A lot of the time, they either do something stupid and die, do something stupid and get killed, or get sick. I mean, just look at me, I should've died yesterday."

He was left blinking at her, seemingly absorbing that information, before she continued.

"But… Well, I've never been close to someone who made it to be much older than I am now. Everyone I know is most likely going to die in their twenties. I think the oldest person I've ever met was, I don't know, sixty?"

"Wait, wait." Chat furrowed his brows, staring at her. "Sixty what?"

"Years." She answered simply, rationalizing that he must not count in years. His jaw fell open, though, shock freezing his face.

"You people only make it to sixty if you're lucky?"

The pirate nodded. "Pretty much. It's really uncommon."

"Ladybug." He said, getting her attention and talking like he was about to reveal the most important information in the world. "That's… nothing. Ladybug, mermaids live well into the hundreds, I knew an oracle who was a thousand once."

Okay, that was pretty insane information. "Oh." She stared, a little bit floored.

"You…" He squinted, and tried again. "I'm just, I'm so sorry. You just have so little time, I can't imagine."

"That's okay." She just shrugged. "Personally, I accepted it a long time ago. Besides, if I look at yesterday as when I was supposed to die, anything at this point is just a bonus."

Chat nodded, slowly. "That's a… good way of looking at it, I guess."

They both lapsed into silence for a few minutes after that, registering the information they'd just learned. Soon, though, Chat broke it again.

"How much do you remember from your whole ordeal, by the way?" He was looking away from her as he asked, his face turning red, but she just raised an eyebrow at him and brushed it off.

"Uh, not a lot, I guess? It's all really fuzzy. I remember a lot of pain and being confused, it kinda blurs into just a big chunk of discomfort. I think at best I remember talking to you in that cave." She spoke slowly, picking at her memories, but nothing new presented itself, until a thought crossed her mind. "Hey, how did you get me out?"

He went rigid again, but by this point she was sort of getting used to him always being tense. "I just, uh. Had you hold your breath as best you could and just sort of… swam really fast."

"I thought you said we wouldn't make it without me drowning?"

"I was trying to be realistic. However, I learned that I am, uh, very fast in dire situations." Chat said, nodding his head firmly and not looking at her. "We made it up in time, to my surprise."

She raised an eyebrow. "And if we didn't you were just gonna be like 'oh welp, didn't make it, oh well, bye Ladybug'?"

"No, no!" He was flailing his arms, genuinely looking aghast at the jab, before looking ashamedly at the ground. "I just… had to try and do something, you know? Anything. If it went wrong I thought I could maybe, I don't know, nurse you back or something. Your odds weren't looking good no matter what I chose."

Ladybug's expression softened. He was right, and she was being unfair. He did everything he could and so much more than she could have asked, and she was still here to see another day because of him alone. "Well, I think I owe you my life, Chat. Thank you." That was apparently the last thing he expected, as his head shot up and he stared wide eyed at her, his cheeks going pink again.

"Really?!"

She laughed. "Of course. You didn't have to save me, but you did anyway. The least I can do is be grateful."

At that, his shocked expression turned warm, and he sent her a blinding grin. Those black fins on top of his head perked up, looking even more like cat ears, and his pointed fangs made his smile somehow that much more charming. He was absolutely precious, and oh no she was so doomed.

Shaking it off, Ladybug changed the subject, just trying to get her mind off his stupidly cute face and her hormones. "Speaking of, I've been really curious… why did you save me?"

Chat hummed, raising a hand to his mouth and staring intently at the sand, thinking hard. A few moments passed, but eventually, he looked back up at her with a somber expression. "I wasn't sure at first, either. I tried to rationalize it by telling myself the way you were being killed was just cruel and unfair, and I would have one it for anyone. But in all honesty, I think… I think you remind me of someone."

That wasn't quite what she was expecting, and she leaned in, interested. "Someone you knew? A mermaid?"

He nodded. He looked sad. "Yeah, you just, you're very similar. It was a long time ago, though."

"Well, I'm glad." She said, letting it go. He'd talk about it if he wanted to, if the amount they had already talked tonight meant anything.

After that, they both leaned back, watching the stars above. Ladybug wasn't sure how much time went by like that, neither feeling the need to say more. Though there was still more she didn't know about him, somehow, she knew she'd find out sooner or later. And until then, she was kind of starting to nod off, the crackling fire lulling her into sleep.

When she was just about out, Chat spoke up again, his voice low and murmuring in an attempt to not disturb her. It did bring her back up a teeny bit, though, just enough to listen to him.

"I'm glad I did it too. I've… enjoyed talking to you." He admitted, and in her sleepy state, Ladybug decided rationality needed to take a hike, so she rolled closer to the fire and reached past it to put a hand on Chat's arm.

The mermaid jolted at her touch, but he only turned to look at her, not flinching away. His eyes were wide, staring down at hers, as he waited for her to say something.

"I think you've been lonely for a long time, Chat. But I meant it when I said I owe you one, and if you want to be around me, I'm more than happy to be your friend."

Without thinking, she reached further and grasped his hand, threading their fingers together. He didn't protest, though he didn't seem like he could remember how to speak much right now at all. Normally she would have wanted to stay up and keep talking, and hear his reply, but she was tired and her eyes were burning under heavy lids, so she just went with it and snuggled into the sand instead.

Chat didn't mind, if him doing the same without ever letting go of her hand said anything.