Once upon a time, a ladybug was unaware of the perils of blind trust.
Someone had been following her for weeks. Maybe longer, though Ladybug wasn't sure.
She had noticed it one night. Delayed footsteps, a heavier tread. Ones that couldn't possibly be hers. The distinct breathing of someone behind her, never straying far.
She didn't know who it is. Or what they wanted. They only ever concealed themselves in the shadows.
The spotted heroine could have confidently confronted them. Despite the hesitancy she experienced during their first few patrols together- always tensed and on guard, as she waited for an akuma to emerge or a new villain to challenge her- she decided that this wasn't the stranger's intent. After a while, regardless of her best efforts, it began to feel oddly… comforting. Knowing that she wasn't alone as Ladybug yo-yoed through the streets of Paris each night, that she had a partner by her side, though they never communicated through shared words.
Her partner. She liked the sound of that.
This was the only thought on her mind as she swung onto her bed, dropping in the early morning hours from the hatch door in her ceiling with a plop. The darkness of the sky peppered with golden stars was beginning to fade, allowing a semblance of twilight to kiss the horizon. Time had slipped away from her; she had stayed out far later than intended. She knew she would regret it when she awoke several hours later for school.
In this moment though, Marinette couldn't care less. Her heart seemed as if it was racing to the beat of a thousand synchronized drums, erratic and rushing inside her chest. Millions of theories were flowing through her head, ranging from slightly possible to completely outlandish.
Another miraculous that Master Fu had given out. Without telling her?
A miraculous holder, one who possessed the jewels from an entirely different miracle box.
A ghost.
Her guardian angel.
Even Tikki's warnings at calming down for sleep couldn't penetrate through the rush of excited emotions.
"It's way too late to be thinking so hard, Marinette!" the tiny red kwami scolded, though not unkindly, through a yawn. Her paws were placed exasperatedly on either side of her body (did kwamis have what could be called hips? Flanks?) and sighed when she realized her chosen had listened to none of her advice.
"But Tikki! Didn't you see what happened tonight?" Marinette flung herself against her pillows with exuberant force, laughing softly to herself at the madness of it all. She found herself bouncing up and down from the sheer force of her excitement, her pillows flying through the air at her giddy motions. A jubilant child on Christmas day was nothing compared to her.
At her floating friend's blank look, she slowed her gleeful energy, rolling her bluebell eyes with a smile. "Well, you couldn't technically see it. Do you see through my eyes when we're merged?"
Marinette didn't know if the kwamis were completely aware during the transformation, watching through her eyes as if they were merged as one entity, or if Tikki focused all her energy into the earrings, leaving only a hint of her subconscious. The thought had never even crossed her mind before today. But now, she wished it were the former. How she wished for someone else to have seen exactly what she had, to know it hadn't been all in her mind.
"Marinette, I won't feed into this fantasy! This shouldn't be taken lightly. If there really is someone following you, it could be dangerous."
Skepticism must have shown on the young girl's face, for Tikki started to whiz back and forth in the air, pacing.
Tikki always nagged on her about security and secrecy, but Marinette knew it came from a place of deep love and worry. The ladybug kwami was always there to protect her and give her big sisterly advice, acting as Marinette's constant emotional support, though sometimes unsolicited.
"What if it's Hawk Moth?" she theorized wildly, pining Marinette with a heated glance. "Or Mayura? Or Chat Noir?"
At the proclamation, Marinette couldn't help but burst into giggles, hugging the bear plushie on her bed to her face in an attempt to muffle the crazed sound. Tikki's stern expression began to slip until the two were both laughing heartily, before suddenly remembering her parents were sleeping downstairs. When the duo had quieted down, Tikki floated to rest on top of the pillow where Marinette's head lay, the two facing each other.
"I refuse to believe it's either one of them," Marinette whispered, shaking her head softly to dispel even the possibility.
Someone was there for her each night… and it made her feel less isolated in her secrets. An invisible partner. Was this how it may have felt if Master Fu had granted another person a miraculous to fight alongside her? If this masked person was all some ruse concocted in order to catch her off guard… Maybe it was naïve, but she found herself not believing it for a second.
In defence of her mysterious stranger, she argued, "they wouldn't have hesitated to pounce at the opportunity to defeat me unguarded, if it was one of the Three, nor would they have saved me."
Tikki had no response to that logic and instead, settled more firmly into the plush cushioning to rest. Her holder certainly wasn't going to get any.
In the lull of conversation, Marinette had succeeded in ridding her mind of the night's events… for a few tense seconds. It all came rushing back when she stared longingly through the trap door above her loft, doubling now as a skylight to showcase the breaking dawn above.
Mind racing, she replayed the night like a movie in her mind. If only she could rewind and play the best parts, or rather, skip forward to view the scenes that had yet come to pass. What happened while she was away? Would she ever find out the unmasked identity of this person?
Marinette had never before found evidence to prove their existence. Nothing concrete besides a general feeling of being watched as she ran across the moonlit rooftops and glided through the air overtop parks, rivers, monuments. For a while, Marinette had almost convinced herself that it is all a figment of her overactive imagination, that this make-belief companion didn't exist at all, and never did.
Until tonight.
She sighed audibly, disturbing Tikki in her light slumber, who fell asleep in the prominent silence following their tapered conversation. The kwami only turned sleepily to face away, leaving Marinette with her mind still on the rooftops of the city.
It was stupid of her. She felt embarrassed just thinking about it.
Never had she ever allowed her clumsiness to show as Ladybug, not after the stumbling-fawn steps she had taken during her first-ever battle, almost a year ago. The detrimentally clumsy actions had led a newly appointed Ladybug right into the clutches of fresh new villain, Chat Noir, who was working alongside mastermind, Hawk Moth, with a miraculous that was thought to be lost to the world. It had been a slap to the face to her, and more specifically, her master, who had been tasked long ago to act as Guardian of the magical objects.
The black cat had appeared out of nowhere, all twisted smiles and claws sharp enough to puncture through flesh. He had gotten dangerously close to her earrings. But Ladybug had soon realized that it was his first time testing the waters with a miraculous, same as her, and she managed to slip away (barely). Not before being pressed up to the guy for agonizing minutes, tied together and hanging upside down from his extended baton, like possums on a tree, while she attempted to frantically unlatch her damn yoyo string from around their intermingled bodies.
(What kind of a weapon was a yoyo, anyway? It had no doubt come in handy over time, but she still couldn't make sense of the logic.)
An unwarranted blush had formed on her ears. Her first time being so close to a boy, and it just so happened to be the bad guy. It hadn't stopped her speech from stuttering, much to her horror. This action had given him all the ammunition he had needed. He had made a joke with an infuriating nickname to match. As if they were pals and not bitter enemies.
"What's wrong, Bugaboo?" he had drawled mockingly, head quirked to the side with a taunting smirk. "Cat got your tongue?"
The sly cat had launched at her not long after that, knife-like talons outstretched towards her miraculous.
Even the memory of it now had her wanting to growl and punch her pillows in frustration. The kind of toe-clenching, fist-inducing hatred at first sight that only the loathing of enemies could bring out. The rivalry had been set then and it had remained. Strongly. She had never known she had possessed the ability to despise someone so passionately before Chat Noir had slithered his way into her life.
During this night's patrol, her usual Marinette clumsiness had painstakingly reappeared. Something she had managed to contain relatively to herself while out as her superheroine persona. She had stupidly thought it was something she could escape as Ladybug, but could you ever really escape yourself?
The roof tiles were slippery with the oncoming spring season, precipitation from the earlier rain trickling down the slanted surface in a snail's pace. It was the best excuse Marinette could come up with. As a result, she had lost her seemingly reliable footing and slipped from several stories up. In her surprise and subsequent panic, her yo-yo wouldn't have been fast enough to prevent her fall, not without serious collision with the ground first.
Someone had saved her.
Ladybug hadn't seen their face, nor their body. As if they blended into the night. All she felt was a warm sigh against her exposed neck and the feeling of secure hands tight around her as she was caught out of the air, before being placed gently onto the cobblestone sidewalk below with a small shove. The loss of warmth caused a violent shiver to rip through her, though the spring breeze wasn't cold at all. Her nostrils tingled with a familiar scent that wiggled at the back of her mind. When she had the thought to look up, scanning the starry sky for signs of the covert rescuer, they had vanished into shadows once again.
The red rose that had been by her feet, slightly crumpled but undoubtedly real, was cold, hard, beautiful proof that she wasn't wrong. It sat on her bedside now as a reminder. Tomorrow, it would find a new home in a small vase of water. A contended sigh escaped her at the sight. This tiny flower gave her hope, something that seemed sorely lacking these days, over nine months into the fight against Hawk Moth.
Though the akumas had started easy enough (the superhero/super villain dynamic taking a while to find its footing), Hawk Moth during these latter months had been coming at her with everything he had, deploying new weapons from his arsenal. Mainly in the form of a new rival, Mayura, who dare she say, was just as or even more powerful than the leader himself. The sentimonsters, rare though they were, had been draining and with it, the happiness in her daily life that had come so easily before.
During the months before Master Fu had revealed himself to her as Guardian of the miraculous box, her nights had been plagued with dark, lonely thoughts. Insecurities of not being able to stop the threat and save the day by herself. Wondering if her final days on the Earth were nearing. She experienced them even now, the weight of her secret identity and the fate of Paris on her shoulders. If she were to slip up and lose just once…
Marinette had never asked to be a hero. If you had told a past version of herself that this was where she would end up, as Paris's masked saviour, you would have been met with a bout of uncontrollable giggling. No, she would have told you, she was no hero at all.
Even now, she found it hard to believe. She didn't fit the mould of superheroes that were found in comic books. Though they were drastically different as civilians compared to their secret identities (hello, just about every comic book hero), there was always an aura of special surrounding them. It was always clear to readers that yes, there was a reason why this person was chosen to defend all of mankind.
Her? Marinette knew that though she tried as best as she could, she knew so many others that could've suited the role of Ladybug just as well. Her classmate, Rose, who was always optimistic, or her best friend, Alya, whose determination to succeed drove every step she took. Nino, who never let the small details bother him or Adrien, who was just so kind and beautiful and athletic and perfect…
The point was, she often questioned whether she was the best choice. A suitable choice for sure, she had proven that during the past year she had spent learning the ropes of herodom. But she often wondered if Master Fu had given her a miraculous because of convenience or something else. Had destiny and whatever fate chosen her specifically for the job, or had it landed in her lap accidentally, due to a series of consequences and luck? Mari may never know.
However, despite her doubts, she had to admit that she had come into the role of hero nicely. During her time, Marinette had discovered many sides of herself, ones she hadn't even known she had. It was as if these traits took over as soon as she donned a mask. She could now say with certainty that Ladybug was courageous, resourceful and did a hell of a good job keeping Paris safe. Her cautious and calculating nature helped her to create plans, though unorthodox, with a near perfect success rate. The lucky charms never led her astray, even if she did feel the urge at times to scream in fury when they showed up. Why have a weapon when you could have a snow globe?
There were downsides to her personality that she had discovered too, however.
Marinette found throughout the months that she had a lot of qualities that didn't bode well with being a hero. She was often too stubborn. She let her emotions show plainly on her face. How Ladybug was easily riled up was a definite problem, the taunting of a certain black cat leading to impulsivity in her movements that she didn't like one bit.
So, tonight, the appearance of a someone else on her side for once, instead of against her, had brought an unusually large smile to her face.
If Marinette believed in the supernatural, in gods and spirits and everything in between, maybe she would have known indefinitely that a guardian angel had smiled upon her during her patrol, as cliché as it sounded. But she didn't know if that was quite true. The world was filled with a lot more magic than most humans knew: powerful miraculous jewels who transformed average humans into heroes, the ability of anyone's wish to be granted if the two most important jewels were combined, sentimonsters who fed off of enraged emotions. It was so strange in comparison to the mundane life Mari thought she had known so well that she didn't know what to believe in anymore.
But she knew this with surprising clarity. Someone was looking out for her. Though she didn't know the contours of their face like they most certainly knew hers, it felt nice to know that there were people (or mystical beings) out there who were looking out for superheroines too.
I ended up turning this fic into a two-shot! I really want to make this into a multichapter sometime, but I have no definite plans as of yet. This chapter is from Marinette's perspective, however, it isn't an exact recreation of the last chapter. It's more along the lines of her thoughts after the fact. Anyways, I hope you enjoy!