In Chinese tradition, you would avoid giving a flower with thorny stems, because it signifies unhappiness and pain. Yet the China Rose is a deservedly popular flower, beautiful and fragrant, that signifies dauntless spirit.

The first thing Marinette heard was yelling and screams. The second thing was the sound of her partner's boots on the building she was walking past, as he vaulted overhead at speed in the direction of the commotion. She sighed and turned to walk in that direction, murmuring into her purse as she went. "Sorry, Tikki, looks like we're having akuma instead of macarons."

The street was full of people and there was nowhere to hide, so she made her way towards the sound of Hawkmoth's latest victim as Marinette. Hopefully there'd be an alley or subway entrance or flipped car or anything to hide behind soon. She wasn't looking forward to this fight. Or rather, seeing her partner. She'd only seen Chat Noir once since the plum blossom incident, and it had been so very hard to pretend nothing unusual had happened. Thankfully he'd been almost as withdrawn as she had, so when she asked with a pretence of innocence if he was all right, it had been far too easy to pretend she believed him when he said "I'm fine". And then they'd fought a villain that turned walls into mirrors that people fell into, and there'd been no time for conversation. She pulled up her favourite mental image, saved just for moments like these – Adrien offering her a peony against all the night sky – and took a deep breath, trying to focus. Calm, Marinette. Head in the game. She felt Tikki bumping against her with the same subtle message.

The people around her thinned out, and she stepped closer to the wall. Just up ahead there was finally a service lane she could step into. As she turned the corner, Tikki said "Wait! Look!". Marinette put her back to the wall and leaned back around the corner carefully to look down the street.

A lady in shimmers of green walked high on long stem-like legs. Pink ruffles ringed her shoulders and knees. Down her arms and legs were lines of long sharp thorns. She yelled "I AM THORN APART! LADYBUG AND CHAT NOIR, I WILL SLICE YOU ASUNDER!". She pointed and raised her hands, and long thorny vines sprouted from the places she pointed to. The vines curled around posts, bollards, poles, growing and spreading, choking the street. Several unfortunate people stood trapped, wrapped with vines, unable to move for the thorns.

"What is it, Tikki?"

"It's... listen carefully, because I won't be able to tell you this once you transform. Your Lucky Charm. You might have a problem."

It only took a second for Marinette to understand. If those vines snagged her hand or the yoyo she'd be unable to call the spell like she usually did.

"You'll have to..." Tikki continued, but Marinette had seen Chat Noir getting smashed against a wall by a rope of thorns, and called "Spots on!" without waiting to hear the rest. She knew she had to try and keep her yoyo clear of the thorns, and there was a cat who needed her.

It was one of the hardest battles she'd fought since the beginning, when neither of them knew what they were doing. Usually they had each other's backs, could communicate with barely a word as if they each knew what the other was thinking. This time it was all wrong. She pulled a vine back before it could get a civilian that hadn't run far enough, but when she let it go Chat Noir was in the way and got hit. Chat Noir swung his baton at a vine, and she had to duck from his backswing. She called "Left" and he went right, he called "Behind!" and she looked behind Thorn Apart instead of behind herself. They were almost as much of a risk to each other as they were the villain. They could see where the akuma was hiding, inside the lone button at the chest of her draped shimmery overshirt, but they didn't seem to be getting any closer to it.

And then Chat Noir misstepped, and a vine caught him against a wall, locking his hands against his side. "Ladyb-mmgh!" She looked across to see him trapped, with a thorny vine across his mouth so that he couldn't speak without slicing his face open.

"I WILL TEAR YOUR PARTNERSHIP APART SO THAT YOU CAN NEVER BE REJOINED!" The voice of Thorn Apart thundered around them.

Ladybug muttered to herself "Sorry, Hawkmoth, I beat you to it".

In her moment of distraction a vine began to wrap itself around her waist, and she realised she had only moments left before she was caught too. There was no time to waste. She started to raise her yoyo – and a thorny vine caught around her hand. She tried to fling the yoyo, concentrating hard, but as she called "Lucky Charm!" the vines tangled through her fingers and the string so that nothing could move.

For a moment, her heart seemed to stop.

Then, from where her fingers wove through the vines, a pink glow began to emerge. It spread outwards along the vines, first slowly and then with increasing speed. Wherever the glow touched, the thorns fell from the vines and roses bloomed in their place. In moments there were no thorns left anywhere. In astonishment she realised that the vines themselves had become her Lucky Charm. Without hesitating, she pulled the vines towards her, pulling them tight across the street so that they tangled and tripped Thorn Apart's legs. The woman toppled and fell onto a pile of roses, and the vines reached out to hold her in place.

Ladybug freed herself from the vine around her waist and walked carefully over to the woman, watching for new thorns. But Thorn Apart was still dizzy from the fall, and Ladybug took the button with ease, snapping it in half and releasing the akuma. She de-evilised it, and only then looked over at her unusually quiet partner.

Chat Noir was still against the wall, held tight by vines. They were no longer thorny, but still so tight that he couldn't move. He stood there, framed by roses, eyes following her, mouth bulging slightly – and she realised that some of the roses had blossomed inside his mouth when they replaced the thorns. Her punful partner was quite literally silenced.

She couldn't help it. She began to laugh. She walked over, still laughing, and looked at him.

Then she looked at him again, laughter fading into a serious look. Their eyes met, and held.

"Chat, would you please do something for me?" she said, hesitantly. "When I take the rose out, I want you to say nothing. Not a word."

She reached out and removed the vine that was gagging him. His eyes never left hers.

And he said nothing.

They stared at each other, tense.

Ladybug broke first. "Better get you out of there kitty", she gabbled, eyes looking anywhere but at him. Grabbing one of the vines, she attempted to throw it into the air, calling "Miraculous Ladybug!" as she did so. The vine she'd lifted floated upwards into the air, dissolving into pink light and a swarm of red and silver ladybugs. The other vines followed, streaming upwards from all over the street into the sky. Chat Noir slumped down against the wall, freed, still watching her. Still silent. Without meeting his eyes, she yelled "Gottagobye bugOUT" and leapt away.

When she detransformed near her house, Tikki flew straight up to her face. "Marinette, what was all that?"

"I was going to ask you, Tikki! I couldn't throw my yoyo and then the vines glowed!"

"That's what I was trying to tell you before", the little kwami said. "As you grow stronger as Ladybug you can force your power of creation through an object to make it the Lucky Charm. It's not good to do it all the time, but when you have no choice it can be very useful." She looked wryly at her Chosen. "That's not what I meant though, Marinette. What was all that with Chat at the end?"

Marinette looked down, blushing.

"This is going to sound really silly, Tikki", she said in embarrassment. "But once he stopped talking, it was like I finally saw him. Not the words, not the flirting or bad jokes. But all these other things he is. Like loyalty, persistence. His dauntless spirit. But also shyness and compassion. He really does care, about me and about other people. It was all in his eyes." She sighed, and Tikki smiled at her knowingly.

"You knew that's who he was", she said.

"I did – and I didn't. I thought he was just a silly cat. My good friend, and all those things, but still... and then... uughh."

It was like the words, all his words every time, had been a smokescreen that was now lifted.

"Tikki, I don't know what I think anymore."

There was silence, as Tikki settled into her purse and they began walking home. Tikki waited a moment, then poked her head up just a little.

"I think you might have to think about an apology."

A/N: True story: I once had one of these moments, where you suddenly see all of a person in their eyes and realise there's nothing hiding them from you anymore. And like Ladybug, I ran for my life. 24 hours later I was three and a half thousand kilometres away, and it wasn't far enough so I got in a car and drove another eight hundred kilometres into the backlands where nobody could possibly find me.

We had our tenth anniversary last year though, so I guess it worked out OK in the end.