Marinette waited for a half hour at their usual meeting place, Ladybug suit on and ready to patrol, before she tried to call Chat Noir on her yo-yo. The dark haired girl had expected some sort of lateness, but not a no-show. Her red device flashed, and Adrien's face popped into view. His hair was mussed, and his eyes still had dark circles under them. Her heart ached, regret filling every extra inch of her intestinal tract.
"Hey, long time no Chat!" She grinned hopefully, but her attempt to lighten his expression failed. He looked just as upset as before her horrible pun.
"Sorry I'm late, Ladybug. I'll be there soon, I promise!" He seemed to be running. At least, that was what she could deduce from his weird breathing.
"Okay. Um, can we have an actual conversation when you get here?" Like they weren't having an actual conversation already. If it wouldn't pull a muscle, she would have kicked herself in the face right then.
"Of course. Four minutes!" He hung up. Marinette sighed at her dark screen, then tucked the yo-yo back into place around her hips. She didn't bother counting down the seconds until her partner's arrival. Instead, she tried to think of how to ask if he was okay. Which was a stupid question, because he obviously wasn't. Her hands balled into fists by her sides. Why was she so bad at this sort of thing?
"Okay, just… Adrien, are you okay? Ugh, no, that's so-" She uncurled her fingers and ran them through her hair.
"How about, your eyebags should be checked for terroristic acts because I'm really bad at breaking the ice!" Marinette shook her head. If anybody had really good ears, they would be laughing right now.
"I'll just stick with thanks for everything. That sounds a lot better than-"
"Why are you mumbling about terrorists?" Chat's voice practically smacked her sanity out of her ears.
"Oh, you're here! Are you a terrorist? Fuck." Ladybug slapped a palm into her forehead. This was much more embarrassing than the other thing she said earlier.
Adrien laughed, though. She grinned through her blush as he trotted closer.
"I mean, are you doing alright?"
"No, please, ask me if I have bombs. Do a full-body airport scan, I dare you!"
She smacked his arm gently, the playful scowl on her face covering up how worried she actually was.
"I'm not going to do that. You look like you haven't slept in a week, though. Are you okay?"
He glanced away, "I'm fine."
She didn't buy that for a second. "Look, I only asked because I'm not sure how to be worried. Or, rather, what to say because I'm worried. I mean-"
"If you stutter much more I might be able to guess your identity." He winked. Marinette glared, upset that he was trying so hard to deflect.
"Look, Mister Suave, thanks for your sarcasm. I said actual conversation on the phone, didn't I?" She huffed, all the air leaving her lungs in a quick burst. The inhale that followed was slow and measured.
"For real, though. Thank you for doing what you did. I don't know if I could have done that, even if the kid technically was dead beforehand. And you even went to talk with the mother afterwards. You didn't have to, but you did. I'm so thankful and so proud of you." She felt a deeper blush creep over her cheeks as Adrien shuffled in place, nervous energy obviously trying to escape. The dark haired girl stared at her shoes, "I just want you to know that there's no pressure on you right now. You don't have to come to patrols or whatever if you think you need time to think and sort through everything."
She heard his footsteps move a little closer, tentative and quiet. Ladybug glanced at his face. Adrien's eyes were downcast, mouth quirked in what could have been annoyance or pain. His arms and shoulders were close to his body, hands fidgeting like he wasn't sure what to do with them. She went back to looking at her own feet, which weren't moving around. He paused at arm's length.
"Ladybug, I want to talk to you about this. I want to complain about the nightmares and Sage and work and everything shitty that's happening to me right now."
Guilt crept over every inch of skin that she had. Her arms immediately crossed over her chest to protect her from any other horrible feelings, which was more likely to fail than not. Marinette hadn't been able to do her job and now Adrien was suffering, it was all her fault!
"But even just mentioning the consequences of my actions makes you feel guilty." He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. She kept staring at the ground, but covered his black clad fingers with her red ones.
"I don't want you to feel guilty about this. Not that what I want will do anything to change how you feel. So, I'm going to keep doing things as we routinely do, and I'm not going to talk about the issue unless you bring it up, okay?"
Marinette felt like the worst human being on the planet, but she nodded and squeezed his hand.
"Alright, then. Patrol like usual?"
Ladybug grinned at her partner like nothing was wrong at all, "sounds good to me!" Marinette followed after her partner as he sprinted over the rooftop and jumped onto the one below. Her legs were still shaky and she felt a lump at the back of her throat, but he seemed to be doing okay. She had to keep up, had to pretend like there was nothing else to say because if she cried in front of him they would both feel awful.
He had already had plenty of feeling awful, and she didn't want to be the source of any more of his pain.
The dark haired girl didn't think she could handle that.
Her spirits lifted as she and Chat resumed their usual patrol, her mind easing into his constant spray of chatter and jokes. Maybe he would be alright. Maybe, with time, they would both be.
Sage stared at her empty bowl of soup, then at the literal mountain of dishes in her sink. She had always been fairly awful at making herself do the household chores, but this was really the worst the dishes had ever been. She left the bowl on the table, resigning herself to being that person.
The woman tucked her dirty blanket around her shoulders, ignoring the musty smells as she pointedly ignored her son's bedroom on her walk down the hallway back to her own room. She couldn't look at any of his toys or clothes or anything yet. Her heart seized and her eyes watered just at the thought. She had been a mess at the funeral, all by herself except for Chat Noir. She had invited some work friends and some of her son's friends and family, but no one RSVP'd, so she went alone. She had used her son's ashes to plant a tree, a dogwood. His favorite.
Her hair spilled out of it's ponytail, the thin hair tie plopping on the floor. Sage stared at her bedroom ceiling. Her phone managed to find her hand and she scrolled through her messages. Coworkers offered their condolences, her boss demanded her return to work, Adrien Agreste sent her almost nothing but cat puns. She smiled at his good intentions. Tapped out a few letters, deleted them, tapped out a few more.
I think I'm going to go back to work tomorrow.
She curled up in her blanket, hair poking her in the eyes. When her phone buzzed it's response, she practically dropped it into the pile of dirty laundry that wilted next to her bedside table.
Sounds like the purr-fect plan! Let me know how that goes. :3
Sage smiled at her phone, then frowned at the messy floor. There was barely an inch of visible hardwood. Her laundry machine hadn't seen use in more than a week. She could at least scoop up the dirty laundry and put it in a basket. Even if she couldn't throw it in the wash. Her brown hands carefully unfolded the blanket she had been hiding in and dug around for a laundry basket. It took her five minutes to find the outfit she had been wearing when she had found her son.
It took another five minutes for her to stop crying and just throw that skirt and shirt combination into the overflowing garbage can. That wasn't far enough out of sight or mind, so she trotted into the kitchen, grabbed a real trash bag from the unopened box in the cupboard, and shoved the whole mess into that. It was quickly tied shut and left just inside her apartment door to be taken to the dumpster later. Sage washed her hands and went back to collecting laundry.
One of her son's little shoes was trapped in a T-shirt, which spurred on more tears. She tossed it into her closet to be dealt with later and tried to catch her breath. When she checked the bathroom to clean her face, she found it to be the cleanest room in the house. The towel on the rack was dirty, just like the rest of her clothes, but the floor didn't have crumbs or spills and the tub was just as clean as it had been a week ago.
She didn't use the restroom for much, so that made sense. She tugged the towel off the rack and brought it to her overflowing laundry basket. Walking across a clean floor made her feel less like a depressed lump and more like a functional human being. She showered and brushed her teeth for good measure, tugged a scarf over her blow-dried hair, and set an alarm for the next day.
She could do this.