Too many calm "I've been meaning to tell you for awhile now" reveals. Not enough frantic "we're about to die" reveals. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)


Breathless


The thing about the superhero business was that everything could be going your way, with victory within reach, only for everything to blow up in your face in the span of a single breath. Ladybug had already used her lucky charm (Nerf brand supersoaker) to diffuse the flare gun the akuma had been using to terrorize everyone on the bridge. As a result the weapon was drenched, rendering it unfireable and useless. So even though she was minutes away from her rapid detransformation, things were going swimmingly because now Chat was able to get within five feet of the akuma, whereas before the flares had kept him dancing out of harm's way. With his lovely lady's help, he had this in the bag.

"I need to duck out," Ladybug hissed in his ear from behind. "It'll just be a second, I have to recharge."

Chat answered her with a chivalrous bow and promptly yanked open the back door on the driver's side of an abandoned sports car. The windows were heavily tinted, which offered the perfect cover for a lady one minute from revealing her secret and stuck out in the middle of a bridge over the Seine. "Go on. I'll cover you."

She flicked at his bell as she rushed into the backseat, slamming the door shut behind her. He peered at his own reflection on the dark window for a moment, making sure none of the still-fleeing passersby would be able to see inside and compromise his lady's secret identity. Satisfied, he activated his cataclysm. Bolts of energy shot down his arm in preparation for the attack, setting his hairs on end inside his suit and little shocks of black lightning ablaze at his fingertips. It was always harder to destroy the butterflies that took nest in heartier belongings. Things like pencils and hats were easy to break. This one being a flare gun, he would need to do more than just step on it to free the nasty little messenger from within. Enter: cataclysm.

He was about to return to the firefight when suddenly Ladybug threw the car door open again. "Chat, look out!"

Wheeling around, he saw that the akuma had gotten the jump on him while he'd been distracted by Ladybug. Reacting instantly to the threat, he raised his charged hand, ready to lunge for the flare gun and put an end to all this. But the akuma had a split second advantage, and as Chat raised his hand the akuma raised his leg, connecting his foot squarely with Chat's chest and sending him flying into the backseat of the car, onto Ladybug, tumbling them both into the far side of the car. Then the akuma slammed the door on them.

Chat swore loudly (Ladybug needs to detransform and I can't be in here!) and dove for the door handle with both hands.

That was a grave mistake.

The second he thoughtlessly touched it, the electrical charge gathered in his right hand shot into the car door, singing the lock mechanism to a crisp and and spreading throughout the car's computer at light speed, briefly lighting up all the interior/exterior lights and the car alarm and the windshield wipers, before flickering out and leaving the car dead.

"Chat!" Ladybug yelled.

"I'm so sorry-"

"No, look!"

He looked. Beyond the window the akuma was standing with a devilish grin spreading across his face. They barely had time to decide they didn't like that look and test the door handles once again (definitely busted) before the akuma picked the car up over his head and hurled it off the bridge.

A few seconds of freefall. They tumbled around the backseat as the car spun through the air until Chat managed to pin Ladybug between himself and the soft seat cushion.

They hit the water, and it didn't matter that Chat had tried to protect her because they were both thrown bodily into the righthand door as the car plunged underwater, then back again as it bobbed up, unable to immediately sink. They were both in a fair amount of pain, regardless of their protective costumes, but they immediately threw themselves into escape mode. Water rose past the windows and began to seep in at their feet from some unknown location. It was day above the waterline, but everything below was cast in eternal night.

"Windows," Ladybug ordered, and she crawled to the front to check those while Chat checked the back ones again. Dead. "Locks?" They checked; dead. They tried kicking the windows out, but the water pressure prevented them from doing so. They were now totally underwater and the interior of the car was thrown into a foreboding shimmery darkness that neither would admit spoke of death. The skeleton of the car creaked ominously around them as it sank toward the bottom of the Seine. Giving up on the doors and windows, Ladybug crawled back into the backseat with Chat. If they were going to die here, they weren't doing it alone.

"Forgive me?" she asked quietly, and if she had given him time to answer he would have said 'Forgive you? I'm the one who screwed up!' But she didn't give him time before going on to say, "Tikki, detransform me."

The flash of pinkish golden light lit his face, carving it with angles of shock, but she didn't see because she couldn't look at him. Not when she'd so adamantly insisted they never share identities only to do so now because she was too scared to die-because she loved him too much to let him die just to preserve her own stupid principles. "Tikki," she pleaded when the little kwami swirled to life in the darkness. "We're in serious trouble. Eat this." The water was up to their calves now, leaving about two thirds of their air left. Two thirds of their chance at life.

On the seat beside her, Chat watched with dissociated awe as Marinette reached into her bra and pulled out a dime-sized ziploc bag, then extracted a little pill from it to shove into Tikki's mouth. The kwami shuddered but obediently started to chew it. It was dark now, but the flash of light when he'd seen her detransform had been more than enough for him to identify her.

"Vitamins," Marinette explained when she finally met Chat's eyes. In the gathering darkness, his gleaming green irises would soon be the only source of light in the entire car. Already the water outside the windows was changing from hazy green to black. "For emergencies. You think this qualifies?"

The saddest of smiles crossed Chat's face. He wished he'd thought of something like that. "Yeah," he said. "I think so, Mari."

The unexpected usage of the familiar nickname cause her heart to trip over its next beat. Did Chat know her? "Our only chance now is another lucky charm," she went on, knowing that Chat knew this as well as she, but unwilling to let silence fill their last moments together, should her hail mary fail. "How are you doing Tikki?"

"I'm chewing as fast as I can," Tikki mumbled through a mouthful of chalky paste. "It's gonna take a more than a minute for the vitamins to hit my system, Marinette. How long do we have?"

"Not that long," Marinette sighed.

"Marinette?" She glanced up when he called her name. The icy water splashed across their laps now, slanted and wrong as the car tipped backwards on its achingly slow way down to the bottom of the shallow channel, gravity pressing them into the back of the seat. He held his arms out. She moved into them gladly. "Under any other circumstances I would have been delighted to find out it was you," he whispered into her hair, choking on the words. "But now... I'll be losing you both."

He does know me, she realized. "Oh, chaton," she sighed with passion, shamelessly toying with the bell on his collar the way she'd always wanted to. "My dear Chat Noir. If it comes to that, then I'm afraid you won't have very much time to miss me."

"Adrien," he corrected.

Marinette stilled on his chest, then rose to meet his eyes. The only thing left for him to see in the darkness was the green pinpoints in her eyes where his reflected back. He wasn't afraid to die, but he also wasn't about to walk into the jaws of death without her knowing who he was. Water sloshed between them, rising to their shoulders. He moved his hands from her back to her face, answering her silent onslaught of questions with a tender brush of his thumb across her cheek. Yes, that Adrien. He wasn't quite sure whether her face was wet with river water or with tears.

(It was both.)

"You're wrong," he said gently. "I miss you already, lovebug."

A desperate sob shook her then and Marinette and drooped forward, her forehead coming into contact with his chin. "I miss you already too," she cried.

The water was now so high that they were now floating up off the seat, and had to follow the pocket of air leading up toward the front windshield. The car groaned and tilted again. They swam forward to seek out the last bit of air in the front of the car, and Adrien pulled Marinette to him again, resting his back on the slanted dashboard.

Tikki buzzed around Marinette's head, a little more full of life than she was a minute ago. "Don't despair," she urged them. "I'm almost recharged. You'll make it." Her words fell on deaf ears. The two were lost in their bubble, clinging to each other like life itself depended on it. Maybe it did. She alit on Marinette's shoulder, peering up into Adrien's luminous eyes. "And if you don't… you'll see each other again," she consoled them. "Next time around."

This caught Adrien's attention. "Hear that, bug?" he prodded, nudging her head with his. "We get another chance."

"Really?" Marinette blinked away her last tear, searching Tikki's face for the truth. Tikki had never before mentioned anything about reincarnation, or its significance regarding the miraculous holders.

"Really," Tikki confirmed.

"Then… I'm not afraid," Marinette decided, looking back up into Adrien's eyes. "If you'll be there on the other side then I'm not afraid."

The water splashed up past their noses and they had to angle their faces toward the air pocket.

"I'll find you there," Adrien told her. "Wait for me, okay?"

"Always," she said, and below the waterline she took his hand. Together they took a final breath and sank underwater.

With a terrifying jolt Adrien realized he hadn't yet told her he loved her. A surge of longing so deep it threatened to shake him apart at the seams drove him to press forward in the cold dark, finding her lips with his. A tiny stream of bubbles escaped her mouth and he almost died right then and there. He'd caused her to part with some of her precious air. But she didn't seem to notice as she desperately kissed him back, locking her arms around his neck in a silent and chilling embrace. A kiss to end all kisses.

Fear shot through him when she pulled away, fear that she was passing out for good. Please, not yet, I'm not ready to let you go. But he was pleasantly surprised to see a flash of red light the inside of the car like fireworks, and to see Ladybug replace Marinette before the light faded away. The light returned almost as quickly as it went when she immediately activated her lucky charm. Her yoyo fizzled and popped in the water between them, yet nothing happened. Nothing appeared. Marinette met his eyes with terror before the lucky light faded, and it was in that moment that they finally accepted the fact that they were going to die.

But as Marinette threw herself at him once again, he felt it.

The familiar surge of energy down his arm.

What the-? He looked over her shoulder and saw that his hand was indeed lighting up with the telltale crackling energy that always preceded the powers of destruction. He'd been given another cataclysm.

He cinched his other arm around her waist then so hard she squeaked out her last bubble of air, but it was okay because his hand was on the ceiling of the car, disintegrating it. Shards of rusted metal shot out into the river and Adrien kicked off the dashboard with all his might, dragging Marinette along with him as he swam frantically for the surface, his lungs screaming for breath and his vision spotty with oxygen deprivation. It was almost another ten seconds before they broke the surface. In the rolling waves they gasped for air, filling their lungs with the sweet, sweet oxygen they thought they had parted with forever. Treading water and clinging to each other with unapologetic abandon, they ignored the cheering of the crowd gathered on the bridge and the thrum of helicopters above them and the buzz of motorboats in the distance as they soaked in the blinding sun. The bulldozer sensation of simply being alive welled up between them like a heartbeat.

"What happened?" Marinette finally gasped when she had finished choking out water. "I thought it didn't work?"

Adrien laughed, almost manically, and planted a sloppy kiss on her wet forehead. "It seems your lucky charm this time was me."

"Cataclysm?" she realized faintly.

"I love you so much," he said all in one breath. "I realized I never told you, when we went underwater, and I just need you to know-regardless of what we are or who we are or what happens, I just, I can't go through again without you knowing that I-" He was cut off with a muffled word when she kissed him again, this time in full view of the civilians on the bridge and the news copters above.

"I love you too," she breathed when she finally pulled away.

When the search boat picked them up a few minutes later, they were offered blankets and hot tea while an officer debriefed them on the developments with the akuma since their disappearance. The officer left them alone, after that, feeling a weight in the air that he couldn't quite place and sensing that they needed a minute of peace before returning to the battle ashore. Marinette was relieved at this development and, despite the crew nearby and their beeping miraculous stones, allowed her temple to come to a rest on Adrien's shoulder.

"Hey, princess?"

The term of endearment warmed her more than the blanket around her shoulders ever would. "Yes, chaton?" He paused then, which drove her to look up at him; only to see a very mischievous look in his eye that she did not like at all. "What?"

"Oh, nothing," he hummed, radiating warmth and contentedness. "It's just… you leave me breathless, y'know?"

And this time, instead of flicking his nose for the joke, she kissed it.


...

I legit started crying at "I miss you already." I was having an emotional day when I wrote this and I straight up cried when I got to that part. Fuck me in half dude.

PSA: If you frequently drive near water you should keep a window breaking tool (they sell ones specifically for this purpose) within reach of the front seat at all times! If you find yourself in this position and do not have such a tool, you are supposed to wait for the water to completely fill the interior of the car, and THEN kick out the windows. The water pressure from outside the window will prevent you from doing this until the pressure is equalized (i.e. when the water fills the car). So take a deep breath at the last possible moment and kick with both legs with all your might. I know, it's scary. I live in a place with frequent flash flooding where this is a very real and immediate danger and therefore we all grew up learning this. So it always scares me when other people don't know what to do in this situation. Lady and Chat need to take a water safety class. smh.

Up next: A waaay more lighthearted companion piece where Alya liveblogs the whole thing on the Ladyblog. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)