Alya had called Marinette just before supper, saying Adrien really was busy tonight: he had a meeting—probably, Nino had told her afterwards, to do with the rescheduled photoshoot. Marinette hadn't even known Adrien had had a photoshoot coming up, but she supposed she couldn't expect to overhear everything pertinent to Adrien's schedule. Perhaps this had been a last minute thing, and that's why they were scrambling to set the schedule?

It didn't matter now, anyway. Her earlier words to him had come true; with the meeting Chat Noir had arranged, she really was busy tonight.

The message gave no specific time for when tonight, but presumably he meant after dark, maybe around the time she typically headed out for patrol. (After the first rude awakening, she'd decided it was worth sacrificing sleep on the off chance that there was an akuma-infected individual terrorizing the city.) She knew she wouldn't have caught the place of the meeting the first time through the message were it not for Tikki, but the statue was the only spot he'd ever mentioned. She would have found it once she knew what she was looking for.

Of course, all Marinette had given Alya when she'd asked was a laugh and an apology and the false admission that she couldn't make head or tails of what Chat Noir might mean if there was another message underlying his first.

She'd downplayed her injury over the dinner table, distracting her parents with questions about the new recipe her father was working on for the bakery, and had escaped to her room as soon as she was able. She watched Chat Noir's video on Alya's blog over and over—this was at least her fifteenth time through it—and stared at his smirking figure on the screen, wondering who he really was behind the mask.

Tikki still refused to say whether Marinette actually knew him otherwise, but that was answer itself in Marinette's book; Tikki would have had no reason to refuse to answer if she didn't know him.

Marinette had always figured that she was less curious about his identity than Alya—who had suspected Chat Noir of being Adrien, of all people!—but she was quickly realizing she'd been fooling herself before.

She did want to know who he was, and not just because it would make contacting him easier in the future if one of them couldn't transform.

She was no longer confident that she knew Chat Noir well, and that bothered her. She knew she could trust him—with her life, with her secret—but she'd gotten comfortable with the easy relationship they had between them, and she'd let herself forget that he was wearing a mask, too. She'd let herself forget that there was far more to him than the mask he showed her and the rest of Paris.

She wasn't proud of that.

She really should know better.

And to have Tikki practically admit that she knew him….

Marinette huffed and played the video again, trying to discern his identity from his mannerisms, but she didn't associate them with anyone but Chat Noir. Either she didn't know the boy without the mask well or it was all part of the mask he wore. She wished it weren't the latter—she wished the truth was that she only knew him in passing—because if it was part of his mask, then it was her own fault for failing to see through it. Part of it was that she had never thought to look, part that she'd never wanted to, and part that she'd been afraid to look deeper.

She'd felt safer with that distance between them, with the assurance that their masks would remain on, but now she suspected that false sense of security—thanks to the part of her that was trying to protect herself from judgement—had been largely responsible for what had nearly been Ladybug's downfall.

She had the uncomfortable feeling that Chat Noir had tried to find out more about Ladybug than she ever had about him, but Tikki refused to confirm any of her suspicions now.

Marinette paused the video before getting up and walking over to her window. She could see the statue dedicated to Chat Noir and Ladybug in the park below quite easily, but she saw no one haunting it, no one waiting for her—masked or unmasked.

She went back to the computer, itching for night to fall. She knew how Alya felt now, believing that she was so close to figuring out Ladybug's identity but never managing it. Frankly, Marinette was lucky Alya hadn't started drawing a Ladybug costume on her….

Marinette's eyes went wide.

A Ladybug costume.

On her.

Why hadn't she thought of that before?

"You might have been a target," Tikki offered. "You didn't know."

Marinette hadn't even realized she'd spoken aloud until then. "But maybe I should…." She trailed off and glanced at the time. It was unlikely she could get to a store before it closed, assuming she even had enough money to buy a costume, and she didn't have time to make one.

Her head thudded down onto her desk. This was hopeless. She wasn't sure whether she wanted to keep her secret or give hers up and know Chat Noir's in return—surely he'd tell her in return. There were so many benefits, but so many risks….

Maybe she should just send Tikki to meet him.

"Would I be making a mistake if I met him, Tikki?" Marinette mumbled without looking up. "Would I be making a mistake if I told him?"

Tikki didn't answer, and after a few seconds of listening only to the hum of her computer, the rush of traffic outside, and sirens in the distance, Marinette raised her head. The kwami was perched on top of Marinette's computer monitor, having moved from the sewing machine.

"Tikki?" Marinette prompted. "What did the other Ladybugs do? With the other Chat Noirs?"

"Sometimes they knew," Tikki said softly. "Sometimes, they didn't. It's easier to keep a secret when you're the only one holding it."

Marinette frowned and straightened up. "Did something happen?"

"Something always happened," Tikki answered. "It wasn't always good and it wasn't always bad. Plagg might maintain that some of the worst things could have been prevented if the secrets had been known earlier, but we lost…." She trailed off. "Knowing can be dangerous too, Marinette. Knowledge is always dangerous when it's knowledge someone else wants."

"And loose lips sink ships." Marinette might not be sure who Plagg was—presumably Chat Noir's kwami, since Tikki had mentioned the name earlier—but she was still certain Chat Noir wouldn't tell. He wouldn't knowingly tell, at any rate, any more than she would, but Tikki was warning her that the cost of a mistake could potentially be larger than she'd imagined. "What did you lose, the last time something went wrong?"

"Plagg and I aren't the only kwami," Tikki said instead of giving a proper answer. "Remember who you're facing, who you're really facing, and think carefully. This Chat Noir…. It would be good if you knew him better. It would benefit both of you to know how the other thinks and what might get inside your heads. But your identities…." Tikki shook her head. "Maybe Plagg is right, and this time knowing the truth would save the two of you from being driven to distraction with wonder. I'm not sure. I was ready to tell Chat Noir the truth when I saw no other way to get back to you, Marinette, unless I risked getting caught in the process, but you have a choice now. It's yours to make, and Chat Noir's, just as it always was, but you need to accept the consequences of your decision."

Marinette stared at Tikki, not liking how the kwami was confirming some of her fears. "But…what if I make the wrong choice?"

"We'll make the best of it. We all will. There's nothing else we can do."

Marinette glanced out the window again. It was finally beginning to get dark, and now she felt as if she were running out of time. How was she supposed to decide? Part of her truly wanted to know Chat Noir's secret and was willing to part with her own, but the other part shied away from the potential cost. What was she supposed to do?

Dusk was falling by the time Adrien reached the little park with the statue, not far from the bakery Marinette's parents owned. He'd come as himself, taking the metro and the streets instead of the rooftops (or enlisting his father's limo and potentially having to come up with explanations). He'd secured the trapped akuma and the Lucky Charm in a spare satchel, along with plenty of cheese for Plagg, and had carefully wrapped Ladybug's earrings—her Miraculous—and placed them in with everything else.

He also had a couple other essentials that would be or might become necessary for his crazy plan to work.

Adrien moved to stand so his back was touching the brick divider that served as the fence near the entrance to the park on this side, and then he took careful, measured steps toward the statue.

"What are you doing?" Plagg asked as he bobbed along beside Adrien, clearing thinking it was dark enough by now that he wouldn't be easily spotted.

Adrien continued counting under his breath until he reached the statue. "Pacing it off," he said. "I want to be sure that I know exactly where it is." The statue's base came up to his chin. A quick look around confirmed that no one was walking by, so he closed his eyes and heaved himself up. He'd sat here before, as Chat Noir. This should work.

"So what are you doing?" Plagg repeated as Adrien pushed himself off and walked back the way he'd come.

"Making sure I can get back there," Adrien replied as he reached the brick divider again. He slid down until he was hidden from sight, at least from anyone on the street. "I mean to keep my promise, Plagg."

Plagg dropped down to rest on Adrien's knee. His eyes widened when Adrien pulled out the strip of cloth he'd cut from one of his shirts. (His father would not be happy if he ever noticed, but this was important, even if Adrien wouldn't be able to explain why.) "You can't want to…." Plagg stopped. "You do," he realized glumly.

"Do you have a better idea?" Adrien asked.

"You could wear that."

"And let everyone know my weakness at a glance?"

"You're not going to be able to do anything," Plagg warned, but he allowed Adrien to tie the makeshift blindfold over his eyes.

"I won't be able to see anything," Adrien corrected. "Besides, if I just wore a blindfold myself, it might slip."

The transformation this time left him dizzy. While he usually had Plagg's excellent night vision, he now couldn't even see his hand in front of his face. It was more disorienting than he'd anticipated, especially when he knew his eyes were open and that he should be able to see something.

He slung the bag back over his shoulder and got to his feet, thinking he should have paced off how far he'd need to crawl to the statue and wondering if he should just stay where he was. He picked his way gingerly toward the statue anyway—he wanted to be visible to Ladybug—and, after a bit of pawing at the air, found the corner. He eased himself up onto the pedestal and waited.

If he was extremely unlucky, Hawk Moth would have found someone vulnerable enough to be possessed by an akuma, and he'd have to take off his ring (it was the fastest way to release the transformation, if the most jarring), get the blindfold off Plagg, stuff him full of cheese (that wouldn't be the hard part), and transform again—all without anyone seeing anything. That would be the difficult part, after trapping the villain and releasing the akuma. Unfortunately, that was all too real a possibility and the reason he didn't want to have a visible weakness of which someone could take advantage. Blademaster's connection to Hawk Moth had not been severed until after he'd gotten Ladybug's Miraculous, and Adrien doubted that Hawk Moth was not aware of the fact that she'd lost her Miraculous.

Of course, that also meant Hawk Moth had no idea whether her Miraculous had stayed lost—or so Adrien hoped—and he expected the lack of a villain turning up meant Hawk Moth had not found a suitable candidate sufficiently close to the last attack. Unless the villain (or Hawk Moth, though that was less likely) was merely biding his time, but most were focused enough on whatever goal they had that they had a tendency to make their presence known. Quickly.

Adrien settled in to wait, not daring even to whistle to pass the time because he needed to listen or someone would be able to sneak up on him without his realizing it. He kept still, frozen like the statue behind him (he was fortunately used to holding poses), and waited.

And waited.

What if Ladybug hadn't gotten his message? Plagg would be able to hold the transformation for a long time, Adrien knew—he wasn't using his power; he wasn't doing anything, really—but he hadn't entertained the possibility that Ladybug might not show up, especially after he'd realized Tikki had returned to her. Tikki knew what he'd planned. Surely she could have talked Ladybug into this.

"Come on, my lady," Adrien murmured. "You must have gotten my message."

"She did," a voice beside him said softly, and Adrien jumped in spite of himself, nearly toppling off the pedestal in the process. He'd half expected a villain to have caught him unawares, but his mind finally placed the voice as Tikki's. "She just wanted to be sure it was safe."

Adrien heard the soft footfalls approaching him then, a gait he recognized but wouldn't necessarily have been able to place as Ladybug's—although he was quite familiar with her running gait. She stopped in front of him. "Hello, Chat Noir," she said quietly. "I'm Ladybug."

When Marinette looked out the window and saw a dark shadow that must be Chat Noir by the statue, her stomach still twisted, but she went to him. She strongly debated grabbing a scarf to tie around her face—anything to keep her identity a secret—but in the end, she didn't. She did still send Tikki ahead of her, though. Not to scout ahead, as she'd told the kwami, but with the hope that Tikki would refuse if she thought Marinette was making a mistake.

Marinette had the feeling Tikki knew quite well what Marinette had tried to do, because the kwami had given her a long look before zipping off.

Chat Noir jumped when he noticed Tikki, and it made Marinette smile, but her nerves were too great to allow her to keep smiling when she went forward to introduce herself to Chat Noir.

"I'm glad you could join me, my lady," he said. There was no indication on his face that he recognized her. Actually, he wasn't even looking at her; he was looking at a spot above her head and to the left. It was disconcerting.

"Are you okay?" she asked slowly.

"I'm blinded by your beauty," Chat Noir joked as he grinned down at her.

His gaze had wandered slightly downward, to the point where she imagined he was staring at her forehead. "You really can't see me," she realized.

"Your secret is safe unless you wish to divulge it," he said. He sounded hopeful, but she had no time to think on that because he thrust out a bag and hit her on the nose in the process. "Sorry," he said quickly at her squawk. "I didn't think all of this through."

"That's all right," Marinette murmured, taking the satchel and looking inside. The akuma was trapped in a jar. The fork—the Lucky Charm—was wedged into a pocket, and carefully wrapped in tissue paper was her Miraculous.

Marinette put the earrings back on immediately, dropping to a crouch at the base of the statue and avoiding Chat Noir's swinging feet. She hissed in pain as she eased the earring into her right ear, but this would be over quickly. "Tikki," she called softly, "transform me."

It felt good to be Ladybug again.

"Did it work?" Chat Noir wondered.

Marinette smiled. "Perfectly well." She picked up the Lucky Charm and handed it to Chat Noir, who grasped blindly at it when she told him to hold it. "And now I've got an akuma to cleanse." She unbound her yo-yo and then released the akuma from the jar. She caught it again with ease, cleansing its evil and waving the little butterfly away when she released it again. "Time to reverse the damage," she said, more for Chat Noir's sake than her own as she plucked the fork from Chat Noir's hands. She threw it into the air with a cry and the bound magic was released with a flourish. She breathed a sigh of relief as part of it swept over her, healing her injury. She hadn't been sure it would.

"It's done?"

"It's done," Marinette confirmed. Thankfully, for Blademaster's sake, she knew Alya was keeping a sharp eye on the situation and would let someone know it was safe to free him if the door wasn't unlocked on its own. She'd half expected him to escape before this, really. She was lucky—they were lucky—he hadn't.

Marinette managed not to laugh too much as Chat Noir pushed himself off the base of the statue and stumbled on his landing. He was this way because of her, after all. "Thank you for keeping Tikki safe. For keeping me safe."

"My lady…." Chat Noir reached out and found her arm and drew her toward him. She let him; she suspected what was coming and didn't want to raise her voice above a whisper, though she wasn't sure if she'd be able to anyway. "I will not tell, my lady. You know I won't." His wide, unseeing eyes stared just past her face. "Please. You may even know who I am first."

Chat Noir held out his hand with his Miraculous. She'd only have to pull off his ring, and he would lose his transformation. He would become again the boy behind the mask, the boy Tikki thought she should get to know better regardless of whether or not she knew his true identity.

Marinette sighed. She reached with her free hand to curl Chat Noir's hand into a fist and pressed it back to him. "I can't."

"But—"

Marinette put a finger to Chat Noir's lips, and he stopped protesting immediately. "Tikki says it might be dangerous for us to know. I don't want to risk you—or anyone else I care about." She dropped her finger, but she stayed close to him, standing directly in front of him so that even if he couldn't see her, he was looking right at her.

"But…. I thought…."

"I'm sorry," Marinette said. "I'm tempted to know the truth, too. Believe me, I am, so much so it's almost painful, but if Hawk Moth…."

"We can deal with Hawk Moth."

"But what if we can't? He'll do anything to get our Miraculous. He'll go after our families, our friends. Tikki won't tell me any details, but she doesn't need to for me to know it could be terrible."

"A cat-astrophe?"

"This isn't the time for puns. You must know that."

Chat Noir was quiet for a moment. Then, "Plagg doesn't seem to have the same concerns. He…. He was never exactly discouraging of my, uh, curiosity."

Curiosity killed the cat. She wanted to say it, but she didn't want to make it real. She'd nearly seen the end of Chat Noir once, with Timebreaker, and she didn't want to see it again. "I don't get the impression he and Tikki see eye to eye on all of this. She made it sound like he thinks some of the bad stuff that's happened in the past could have been prevented."

"Without secrets, you mean?"

Marinette shrugged helplessly before remembering he couldn't see her. "Yes. No. I don't know. Fewer secrets, maybe. Even Tikki thinks we should get to know each other better—"

"I never thought I'd hear you say that, my lady." His grin returned. "Is this your way of asking for my number?"

"Chat Noir, please, this is important."

The grin faded. "We still need to be able to contact each other," he pointed out.

"We can do that through the Ladyblog. You must check it as often as I do if that's how you planned to get a message to me. We can use the comment section and set code words to mean different things—"

"That's not practical for something urgent."

"We'll figure something else out, then, for that, but we can't—"

This time, it was Chat Noir who held a finger to her lips—and he must have had a very good idea of exactly where she was standing by now because he didn't accidentally poke her in the eye in the process. "I want you to know," he said. "You don't…. Ladybug, as much as not knowing the truth about you pains me, you don't have to tell me who you are, not if you don't want to. The last thing I want to do is endanger you or your family. But I want you to know who I am. I don't want to keep this secret from you."

He moved to take off his ring, and she caught his hands. "No," she said quickly, her desperate tone enough to stop the smile that had begun to grow on his face. "I can't let you do that. What about your family?"

All traces of the smile vanished. "It would be…difficult to target my family," he answered slowly, "even for Hawk Moth. My father travels a lot."

Marinette waited, but Chat Noir didn't continue. "And your mother?" she prompted.

"My father travels a lot," he repeated, ignoring her question. "Hawk Moth would find an easier target in my friends, but I can protect them."

Marinette shook her head before remembering herself and saying, "You can't always expect to be there when they need you."

"I can keep a close eye on them," Chat Noir countered, "and that's only a worry if Hawk Moth finds out, isn't it? You wouldn't tell, my lady. I know you wouldn't."

"No! I don't want to know."

"You said you did," he reminded her, and she couldn't deny his words. "If you truly do not wish to know, then go, my lady. I'll not be able to track you when I cannot see."

She wanted to flee, to lie awake later because she'd had a chance to discover the truth and had given it up and was regretting the decision, but her feet were rooted to the ground. She realized she still held Chat Noir's hands and dropped them as if burned. "It needs to be a secret. From everyone, including me." She was beginning to doubt her own words.

Chat Noir's hands reached for her face and traced her features; she took a deep breath and let him, closing her eyes against her tears. She wanted to know; she did. But she couldn't. And she had to accept that. He was just making this so hard for her!

He leaned forward and spoke into her ear. "I'd rather it was a secret from everyone but you, my lady. My name is—"

The world exploded into flame.

A/N: Consequences. *grins* Thanks to everyone who's been reading and reviewing!