Adrien looked around himself and tried to figure out where he was, but it wasn't anywhere he recognized, at least not actively. He supposed it could have been Disneyland Paris, but that didn't seem quite right to him.
"Bonjour?" Cat Walker heard a feminine voice echo from somewhere around him, but he couldn't tell where, until he saw Trixx the teapot, Fluff the clock, and Longg the candelabra all make their ways toward the foyer of the Agreste mansion. He followed them and from his spot at the top of the staircase, he saw her.
His princess just walked in wearing a beautiful, soft pink dress with an apron tied around the front. "Is anyone there?" Her voice carried through the hall while she looked around. Adrien immediately feared what she was looking for and made his way downstairs, out of Marinette's view. He went into the atelier where he took the elevator to see if maybe Tom had replaced Émilie in the depths of the basement.
He felt his heart stop when he didn't see Tom in the glass coffin, he saw Sabine. His own mother had been replaced with Marinette's and he immediately felt guilty. He went back upstairs to find her, hopeful that she hadn't wandered too far into the house. When he did find her, she was at the bottom of the grand staircase in the foyer, about to go upstairs.
"What are you doing here?" His voice echoed through the almost empty room and she couldn't identify the direction it had come from.
"What? Who's out there?" Her voice was worried, trembling as she spoke.
"I'm Cat Walker, the master here. This is my home you've trespassed into."
"Cat Walker," she repeated, "I'm searching for my maman. She's been missing for days and this was the last place she was seen. She was dropping off bread and the neighbors never saw her leave."
"If your maman wanted to leave. She shouldn't have let herself in without my permission." Marinette pleaded to him to release Sabine, but he wasn't willing to listen to her, at least not at first. Eventually, she offered her own freedom in exchange for her maman's. Marinette would stay with him, as long as he agreed to let Sabine go.
He agreed, reluctantly, and returned to the basement to collect Sabine from the glass coffin. He allowed Marinette to escort her maman to the towncar that would take her back home. Sabine begged Marinette to come with her, but Marinette told her that she'd made a deal with Cat Walker, and she was a woman of her word.
He led Marinette upstairs to the guest room and offered her the freedom to go anywhere in the house that she'd desired, short of the atelier of the man who turned him into the beast he'd felt like. Marinette graciously accepted the amount of freedom that he provided, but the graciousness didn't last long as she locked herself in the guest room.
She tried to find anything to distract herself from the current situation, her being trapped in a new place without Chat Noir or Adrien, two people that she'd regularly considered friends. He left her be, ensuring that Trixx would keep her hydrated. Marinette had accepted tea, but she didn't accept any of the food he had offered her.
He knocked opn her door at the start of the third day and politely asked that she have dinner with him. She hesitated before she agreed and from there, she knew she needed to spend some of her day getting herself ready for the dinner they had planned.
Tikki, the wardrobe, offered Marinette clothing selections for the dinner, but Marinette wasn't thrilled with any of them. WIth Tikki's permission, Marinette started to tear the fabric of the clothes apart, then she used her emergency sewing kit to restyle the pieces, using grey and pink fabrics to create a basic Multimouse themed dress.
When she met him downstairs for dinner, he pulled out and pushed in her chair for her, causing a soft smile to bloom across her features. "Thank you, Cat Walker," she said politely, accepting his assistance. As the two of them sat across the long dining table from one another, the kwamis, as household goods, began serving the two of them.
Marinette did her best to enjoy her time with him, but he could tell just how nervous she was about the entire experience. Not too long after they began eating, he decided that part of the point of having her there was the chance to experience the companionship that was so infrequent in his life.
He moved from the head of the table to the side closer to her. He wasn't close enough to be in her personal space, but close enough that they both felt less alone. Marinette looked at the man in front of her and smiled softly. She took another bite of her dinner and he did the same a few moments later.
"Tell me about you," he requested from the girl sitting next to him. She didn't know what to say about herself, but that wasn't going to stop her. She told stories about the quiet district she'd grown up in, the bakery that her family owned, and her dreams for the future. She mentioned her love of creation and motioned to the dress she'd been wearing.
He admired it, impressed by the eye she seemed to have for fashion. As the night progressed, Cat Walker learned more and more about Marinette. She did her best to ask him about himself, but he was unwilling to share more than basic information with her. Eventually, she excused herself to go to sleep and he offered to walk her back to her room. She graciously accepted, not wanting her time with him to come to an end just yet.
It felt like no time had passed while the two were eating dinner together, and by the time she got back to her room, it was already 00h00. The two exchanged les bisous before she went into the room for the remainder of the night. "Good night, minou," she whispered quietly against the door when she closed it behind her.
He thought he'd heard something, but he wasn't certain, so he went back to his own room for the night. The next day, she came to breakfast with him without a request and he felt his heart flutter from the fact that she was willing to spend time with him. The two of them spent most of their time together while she was living with him.
She found herself starting to fall for him- his kindness when he spoke to her, his laugh when the two joked together, the brightness of his eyes when the two of them shared smiles. It felt like no time had passed when Cat Walker found himself falling in love with the girl who had stumbled into his life. He found himself struck by an overwhelming desire to tell her how he felt.
Before he knew anything had changed, the two of them were dancing. She had her arms around his neck while his hands were on her waist. "I love you, Marinette," he whispered to her. He didn't think she could look any happier, but she seemed plenty eager to prove him wrong in that regard.
"I love you, Adrien." He leaned down to give her a soft kiss just as she leaned up to meet him in the middle. When the kiss ended, he turned back into a civilian. Turning into a civilian reminded him that he wasn't a civilian when she told him she loved him. "Adrien." She repeated his name. Something felt off. "Adrien."
He was snapped out of his sleep and inhaled sharply, feeling like someone had been saying his name in real life. He looked around his room, desperately trying to see if there was someone there. When he looked over toward his window, he could barely catch a glance of a person pratically flying through the city, away from his window.
He made out a vague rectangle shape on his window. He blinked once, twice, adjusting his eyes to the vision in the low light. He got out of bed, room practically still as he walked toward the window. He carefully opened his window when he saw that there was something taped to the outside of it.
He removed the note carefully and brought it inside. He couldn't make out the words, so he went into his closet where he could turn the light on without Nathalie or Gabriel noticing that he was awake in the middle of the night. He also hoped that he wouldn't accidentally wake up his kwami by having the lights on.
'Mon banane,
You said you were going to leave me alone, but that doesn't mean I have to leave you alone, I hope. I figured out who you are and had it confirmed by Soulmark. I know I always said we shouldn't share identities, but that was when things were different. It was before I learned that you're closer to Monarch than either of us ever expected.
I know you're probably going to figure out my identity from this letter, but I can't say that I care anymore. We're going to stop your father, we're gonna get all of the Miraculouses back, and I'm going to get my partner back.
I have a plan, but I'm going to need you to trust me. I know that asking you to trust me is going to be a lot, especially since the last time we hung out, I walked out on you. It will be different this time, though. Feel free to reach out if you have any issues with my idea, but my plan is…'
The letter went on for almost a full page and Adrien found himself fixated on every bit of her handwriting. The introduction was the normal print he'd gotten used to from her over the last few months. When she started talking about the plan itself, it switched to cursive, much closer to the Ladybug handwriting he'd seen in the past.
'You have my number if there are any issues, but that's my plan. I'm coming to save you, sweetheart. Soon.
-Princess'
