There are so many flowers associated with spring, with beginnings, with first impressions. But one of the most powerful flowers in Chinese floriography is a flower of summer, the lotus. It rises from dirty and muddied waters, unsullied, bright and pure. It is the power of creation personified. It means transcendence.
The dumpster between them was big enough that they could each move around a little, get comfortable without seeing the other. Marinette pulled a cookie out of her bag and gave it to Tikki, while on the other side Adrien found cheese for Plagg.
"Any ideas, Chat?" she said, tiredness leaching through her voice.
"Not yet", he said, sounding equally tired.
They were in a service access bay behind the Musée de l'Orangerie. Master Work, as he was calling himself, seemed to be an artist whose works had been deemed too plebeian for a temporary exhibition being held there. Now he was turning passersby, street objects and anything that struck his fancy into facsimiles of more famous artworks. Which Adrien personally thought was actually pretty clever. The visual puns were hilarious, and one of his old tutors would have raved about finding the transcendent inside the mundane for at least an hour. But, well, consent. And Hawkmoth. And the battle for their Miraculouses. Chat didn't have time to appreciate the art. They had thought the akuma was hiding in a rolled up canvas that Master Work had been carrying. A Lucky Charm to take it from him and a Cataclysm to destroy it – and nothing. So now they were hiding in the first place they could find, feeding their kwamis and trying to regroup.
"We're lucky we haven't been caught yet", she said. "We could already have been another sculpture out there. He almost hit us on the West Terrace."
"I don't know," and the grin was audible in his voice. "We were right next to Rodin's Le Baiser at the time." Marinette was sure she could hear his eyebrows waggling. "Kitty..." she said warningly, and he laughed. "I know, I know," he said. "Focus."
Marinette smiled to herself. Their partnership had gotten better again over the last couple of months. It had been hard for both of them, trying to resolve what exactly was wrong without revealing anything about their civilian identities. Especially with her conversations with Chat as Marinette. She was so very thankful that whoever Chat's civilian identity was didn't know her. Imagine if they'd been having four-way conversations with each other all this time. But now... it was better. They seemed stronger. More at peace with each other, more at ease.
On the other side of the dumpster, Adrien was thinking something similar. Their fighting had been so awkward for a while. He'd had so little confidence after the, um, incident with Marinette. He hadn't been able to look Ladybug in the eyes as Chat. Or Marinette as Adrien, for that matter. He'd held tight to the memory of his chance encounter with Ladybug as Adrien, and that had helped him keep at least some of his focus. He knew she could see him, the real him, even if he couldn't tell her. And lately she'd been looking at Chat in a way that made him think she knew it too. He smiled happily. No longer being invisible to the love of his life made him feel like he could catch the moon.
Now, if only they could catch that darn akuma.
"Maybe Master Work is wearing it", he said.
"If so, we're going to have to get close to him again", she answered.
"Maybe we can pretend to be paintings too?" he laughed. "I'll do Manet's 'Boy Carrying A Sword'". She giggled, and he treasured the sound.
"You might be onto something there, Chaton", she answered. "Better the Impressionists than some of the Picasso portraits. Though I don't fancy wearing a corset and bustle." He heard the crunch of cookies. "I think we need to get him away from his medium though."
"Distract the artist by taking away his canvas?"
"Basically, yeah".
"Doesn't that mean he'll just focus harder on us?"
"Yeah", came the response.
There were a few moments of silence, then Marinette heard an unfamiliar male voice say "I'm good to go". She assumed it was Chat's kwami. Adrien heard a high pitched female voice reply "Me too".
"Any thoughts, Tikki?"
"Just do what you do best, Ladybug" the little red kwami replied with affection.
"Spots on!"
"Claws out!"
Coloured light shifted around the service bay, and the two superheroes stepped back out into sight, acknowledging each other with their eyes and then creeping up along the wall of the service bay to get a look out. Master Work was still in the Plaza de Concorde, cackling away, making art. He didn't seem to mind for now that they'd gone.
"Maybe I should call my Lucky Charm straight away", Ladybug said. "I know that gives us a time limit, but we need a strategy and I'm all out of other ideas."
"I agree", Chat said. He reached out and touched her shoulder gently. "I'll keep him busy if you have to recharge again." She smiled back, and touched the hand that was on her shoulder. They trusted each other, all the way down. It was a feeling she had with no-one else, and one she'd come to treasure even more since almost losing it.
They took a few steps back into the service bay so as not to draw attention, and Ladybug tossed her yoyo in the air. "Lucky Charm!"
A glowing white lotus flower fell into her hands, red-and-black leaves cupping its base.
They both looked at it, then up at the building they stood next to, and said at the same moment "Water lilies!"
Ladybug looked around her, and a plan came together. She tilted her head, smiling at Chat. "OK, I have a plan. But you're not going to like it."
She told him.
He trusted her completely, and he knew it would work. But she was right. He didn't like it.
Master Work hmmed to himself as he looked around for his next potential canvas.
His eye was caught by something. A single lotus flower floated on the muddy waters of the Seine, glowing in the sunlight.
"Of course!" he murmured to himself. "Instead of a pond, a river. Monet's great works on an even larger scale!" He moved down to the river's edge to get a better view of his next piece.
The lotus twitched. And then, as he watched in awe, it rose upwards. Out of the water like a goddess came a girl with raven hair dripping around her, one arm draped across her skin-tight suit as if protecting her modesty, the other cupping the lotus against her chest. A single beam of sunlight fell through the clouds onto the water streaming off her, as if she'd been newly created in that very moment.
"Birth of Venus!" he mumbled, almost too stunned to speak. He took another step forward, and then another, toes hovering just on the edge of the embankment.
His Venus stepped forward too, delicate foot reaching out a tiny step, landing just on the surface of the water.
And then another step.
She walked across the water towards him. Enraptured and in that moment unhearing of Hawkmoth's call, he stepped forward again to meet her.
But there was no embankment left for him to walk on.
The water dragged at his robes as he splashed, and a small piece of paper floated out. Ladybug dropped into the water and grabbed it as Chat Noir resurfaced gasping for breath. The two of them swam for the edge and held on there, panting. The soggy paper tore easily, and the akuma fluttered out. A swish, a fingertip drawn across an edge, and a tiny white butterfly flew away.
"Do you think we should scoop him out of the water?" Ladybug asked.
"Those girls in the Renoir skiff have got him", Chat replied.
"Where'd he get a skiff from?"
Chat looked more closely. "Looks like it used to be a skateboard", he said judiciously. "He left the wheels on it."
They both began to laugh. They kept laughing as they hauled themselves out of the water and fell in a heap together on the plaza stones. "Thank you, Chat" Ladybug said finally.
"What for, my Lady?"
"For trusting in my plan", she said, grabbing his hand and holding it. "You were the one who made that work. You lifted me up, held my feet as I walked, all underwater." She raised their hands, still joined. "And I know cats hate water".
His breathing had been almost back to normal finally after holding his breath so long, but the touch of her hand in his was threatening to steal all his air away again. To hide it, he let go of her hand and fiddled with his boot as if it had come loose in the water. Carefully not looking at her, he said "I do trust you. You know that."
"Yes, I do. It's in your eyes." Her earrings beeped. She leaned forward and put one hand under his chin, tilting it up so that their eyes met. "I had to keep my eyes on Master Work so I couldn't see if your hand would always be under my foot. But I knew it would be. Because I trust you too."
She'd said the word trust. He knew she had. His ears had heard it clearly. But the look in her eyes made his heart certain she'd been saying "love". He smiled, stood, offered her a hand up. When she was standing, he dropped again to one foot and held out his linked hands.
"Straight toss, Lady Liberty?" he murmured, glancing his eyes at the lotus she still held against her.
She smiled, put one foot in his hands. As she leapt, he stood and tossed her straight up in one motion. At the top of her flight she threw the lotus as high as she could, calling "Miraculous Ladybug!".
The glowing flower flew high above them from her outstretched hand, radiating out first a golden light that touched and softened everything, then a wash of pink with silver and red ladybugs that swarmed out across the Plaza de Concorde and the Tuilleries, restoring everything and everyone.
"Pwned it!" they said together, bumping fists. Her earrings beeped again, and with an apologetic look, she ran. Chat Noir smiled and sauntered in the opposite direction, tail with a mind of its own.
A/N: Thanks for all your reviews, I love reading them! I reply directly to any that I can. Sorry about posting just a note in the last chapter - I uploaded the chapter Thorn, then when I came back to the site ten hours later the story wasn't showing as updated and very few people had looked at that chapter. I wasn't even sure email notifications had gone out! So I posted the note in the hopes that you'd all get to see the update. If you've arrived straight at this chapter and missed Thorn, you might want to go back and read it. While the chapters are all standalones, they're also connected just a little.
As with the rest of this story, this is written, edited and posted a bit roughly and quickly. Feel free to leave comments if there's something gone awry! Or if there's something you love, of course.