Trigger Warning - I don't want to spoil anything, but this may be disturbing.

"The sea's getting a bit rough, the captain says all passengers should get below deck."

"Where is Marinette?"

"Not sure, the last time I saw her, she said the patterns in the waves were inspiring her to draw a new design. It makes sense she would have gone up to the bow of the boat."

"I'll go after her," Adrien offered.

Alya had been about to go herself, but when Adrien said he would, she decided against it. She wasn't going to get in the way of possible alone time between Marinette and her crush. Maybe this field trip, meant for studying marine science, would be the perfect atmosphere for something romantic to happen.

Adrien clung to the guide rail as he made his way to the bow of the boat. It was tough to walk as the wind was getting stronger, but this wasn't something he could just wait out. He had to get Marinette back to the cabin, preferably before rain started coming down. He found Marinette seated at the very front of the boat, her ponytails swaying in the wind as she pinned down the page of her sketchbook with one hand and tried to put her ideas to paper with the other. "Marinette!" he shouted over the wind, even though he was now right next to her. "We need to get to shelter now!"

"You go ahead and go back, I'll be right there," Marinette promised. "I need to copy this pattern before I forget what it looks like."

"Rain is coming," he told her. "If we don't go now the deck will be too slippery to cross safely."

"Okay, I get it," she stood up. "Let's go." A strong gust of wind knocked into her, ripping the sketchbook out of her hand. "No!" she reached out for it, but ultimately grabbed the railing instead, realizing there was nothing she could do as the book fluttered out to sea. "Well, it's gone now," she sighed.

"You're a brilliant artist, Marinette, I know you worked hard on those, but those designs are replaceable as long as you're safe," Adrien assured her. "What I'm worried about is losing you."

Marinette nodded and tightened her grip on the railing, focusing on putting one foot in front of another again the wind. "These are awfully big gaps in the railing, I feel like I could slip right through," she commented.

Adrien grimaced, she might not be exaggerating. Marinette was of delicate stature, and it was easy to imagine the wind picking her up and carrying her away. "Hold on tight," he warned her, "and be very careful. I just felt a raindrop."

As more rain plopped around them, their footing became even more precarious. The boat bounced, wind slammed into them, and now their feet slid every time they took a step. Perhaps most scary of all, the stainless steel railing was become harder to grasp. Then it happened, Marinette's feet were out from under her, her fingers lost contact with the wet metal, and just as she had predicted, she slid easily between the supposed rails off the side of the boat. Adrien felt helpless, it all happened before he could do anything, and by the time he grabbed for her she was already out of his reach. "OVERBOARD!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. The wind whipped away his words, and he doubted anyone had heard. He waited for a few seconds, hoping help would show up, but panicked when he saw Marinette's head go under the water. "NO!" He squeezed between the railings and dropped, not thinking about what he would do once he was in the water. He had to save Marinette! Once he was in the water, however, he felt like he needed someone to save him. He'd thought he was a pretty strong swimmer, he had his own pool after all, but never was pool water this rough. All he could do was fight to keep his own head above the water as the current carried him away. Only once the waves made sure all of his energy was thoroughly sucked out of him did they throw him onto a beach. Feeling the shifting sand under his fingers, he managed to claw his way up the beach to the point he was sure he couldn't be washed back out to sea. Feeling his life was no longer in immediate danger, he slipped into unconsciousness.

Adrien had no idea how long he had been out. It might have been a few hours or maybe even a day, he had certainly felt wiped out enough to sleep that long. His only clues to the time were the hot sun beaming down on him and the fact that his clothes and hair, previously soaked with saltwater, were dry and sticking to his body. He sat up and looked around, his eyes coming to focus on something that made him feel absolutely pathetic. Why was he still alive? Why, when he had failed to save Marinette? Why couldn't he have drowned instead of her? He crawled over and picked up the soggy sketchbook; it fell apart in his hands. Just like his hopes.

Well, now clearly wasn't his intended time to die, so he should probably find himself some food. Only when he'd thought about eating did he realize how hungry he actually was. Next to him was the sea, where there would be fish and probably seaweed. A rich food source if he would have to sustain himself long term, but not the best when what he needed was an immediate burst of energy. Fruit. He was on an island, wasn't he? Where were the fruit trees? He realized that most if not all of the trees around him did have fruit of some sort, but that it was all way above his head. That would be a problem if he didn't have a miraculous. "Plagg, claws out."

Chat used his staff to easily elevate himself to the level of the fruit. He picked one, then tied it into his tail so that his hands were free to hold two more. "Chat!" someone excitedly yelled his name.

Chat hurriedly dropped back to the ground to meet with the other person. He could hardly believe it when Ladybug came running over to him. "Chat! What are you doing here?"

"I jumped off of a boat trying to save a drowning friend, but I couldn't find her and got stranded here." A spark of hope lit inside him, Ladybug never appeared anywhere without saving the day, so maybe she'd done it again. "Have you seen Marinette? Please tell me you saved her!"

Ladybug looked shocked, and then happy. "I suppose you could say that. Yes, I saved her."

"Thank you!" Chat cried in relief. "Where is she?"

Ladybug became serious. "Chat, our situation since the last time we saw each other has drastically changed. I've had a look around this island, and I don't see a way off. There are no signs of people. I thought I was the only one here until you climbed up to where I could see you. Until help arrives, we're going to be depending on each other for our survival. I think it might actually be to our advantage now to know who each other are. So, as the answer to your question, I'm right here. Spots off."

"Marinette!" Chat hugged her, making no effort to disguise tears of joy. "I'm so glad you're okay!" He held onto her for a moment and she let him, then he backed away. "Oh, right, who we are. Well then, claws in."

"You said you jumped off of the boat..." Marinette whispered, then started beating her fist against his chest. "Why would you do that, you dumb cat? You were trying to save me; that makes me responsible for dragging you into this situation too, not just myself!"

"Marinette, stop," Adrien grabbed her wrist. "I wouldn't want to be back on that boat right now, not if I had to be there thinking you were dead. I thought that for the first hour or so that I was exploring this island by myself, and it was absolute torture. I'd rather be here here with you and know you're okay." 'Besides,' he asked himself 'didn't you have a daydream about living with her on a tropical island? Be careful what you wish for, it's coming true. If only you could find yourselves a pet hamster this would be perfect.'

Marinette stopped. "You think everyone thinks we're dead? NO! They're going to look for us, we have to believe! Come on, let's figure out what we can use to attract helicopters."

"You changed your tune suddenly, didn't you?" Adrien had to run to catch up with Marinette's sudden burst of energy. "Hadn't you just said we would need to depend on each other to survive? I know for a fact you wouldn't have revealed your identity if you didn't think we'd be here for an extended period of time."

"Do you even want to be rescued?" she asked. "You don't sound like you do."

'Not really,' he thought 'this is pretty close to my fantasy.'

"I am prepared to live here for months. It could take that long for someone to find us. The current took us hundreds of miles away, the fact that we ended up somewhere tropical is proof of that. But, someone will find us, we both have families that love us and won't stop searching. It's our duty to help them in any way we can."

Adrien was worried that Marinette wouldn't be able to accept their new situation, but after convincing him to help her build and contain a bonfire, she said nothing more about rescue. He was impressed to see her as resourceful in their new surroundings as she was fighting an akuma. He didn't know how they were going to start a fire. In survival stories, someone in the group always conveniently had glasses, which neither of them did, but the special vision she seemed to have tuned in on his ring, which she used to reflect the sun's rays onto the ruined remnants of her sketchbook that had washed ashore with them. The water damaged paper worked well enough as tinder to ignite the sticks and larger logs they had dragged out from between the trees. Now, as long as they didn't forget to feed the fire, they were set.

Marinette also showed him what she had found earlier, right before they reunited, about the time he was figuring out how to harvest fruit. There was a stream, running from their end of the island to the opposite. If they followed it inland for awhile, the salinity level decreased to the point it could be considered fresh water. "It still probably needs to be boiled before we can drink it," she decided, "so we'll have to figure out how to carry it back to the fire for that. Even now, I think it's clean enough that we should try washing our clothes as best we can."

Adrien coughed, there was something plainly wrong with that.

"What? Would you rather have dried salt in your clothes making your skin itch? If we're going to live like this, we're going to see each other a bit. We'll both keep our underwear, and I'll keep my jacket as well. When our outer clothes are dry, we can wear those while we wash the rest."

Adrien nodded, that was practical, but she had to know she was inviting him to think thoughts he'd never thought before... right?

Over the next several weeks, life on the island grew into a rhythm. Adrien learned that the 'living only on fruit' part of his fantasy gave him terrible diarrhea, so they worked on fleshing out their diet. Actually, they didn't consume much flesh. They became circumstantial pescatarians, eating what they could fish and forage. They decided to risk trying various leaves and tubers as well to see if they might be edible. They treated each new food like they expected it to be poison, holding it to their skin first to make sure it didn't produce a rash, and then sampling a tiny portion and waiting several hours before having more if it didn't make them sick. They knew they were lucky to find several new food sources, and get nothing worse than a few bad belly aches. Aside from a varied menu, they also managed between them to craft a second set of rough, fibrous clothes, a shaky hut, and the beginnings of a paddle boat.

"I feel like I'm getting stir crazy," Marinette confessed. "Now that we've finished building our house and know where to consistently find food, life here is almost too easy."

"I know, if only we had some way to relieve the tension," Adrien commented.

"Are you thinking the same thing I'm thinking?"

"I don't know..." he lied, willing her to say it. If she were the first one to bring up the topic directly, he wouldn't have to feel like such a creep.

"I think you are. The whole time we've been here, I've had a hard time keeping my eyes off you, but every time I look at you, you're trying to pretend you weren't just watching me. I want you to know... if you looked at me as just a s-sex object, I wouldn't be very happy with that, but I know that you care about me. Because I know you care, I wouldn't mind being a sex object to you as well. Who am I kidding, trying to play indifferent? What I mean to say is... I would enjoy it."

"Marinette," Adrien crawled over to her. "Don't talk about yourself that way. You're not a toy, and I don't want you to be. If you're interested, would you instead be my lover?"

"That's the question I was too shy to ask you myself."

"So offering to be friends with benefits is easier than telling me you want to have a relationship?"

Marinette gulped, "Ye-s, but only because it became obvious that you desired me and I didn't think I would be rejected. I couldn't be as sure that you loved me."

"Then let me tell you now, I love you."

"Aren't you going to let me suck you at the same time?" Marinette asked. Their sexually explorative conversation had ended in no more than a make out session, but it only took a few days for them to want to go further. They shyly agreed that maybe oral sex would be a less risky way to get into it. Now Marinette lay with her legs spread, Adrien kneeling in between.

"No, I don't want to be distracted by my own pleasure when I'm trying to focus on you. Just relax. When I'm done, then it's my turn for you to give me a favor. Deal?"

Marinette didn't answer, but nodded as she squeezed her eyes shut. Adrien was already figuring out how to touch her in ways that took her breath away.

Neither one of them expected they would take terribly long to work their way up to full sex, but their hormones nonetheless drove them to it faster than they anticipated. Locked in the most intimate position for the first time in their lives, Adrien felt a purr rising in his throat. "I've always thought other guys were just being dramatic, but I understand now. It is going to be really hard to pull out."

Marinette thought about it, "If you don't want to, you don't have to."

"I don't think that's a good idea, you could get pregnant."

"I know, but think about it. Way out here, the benefits might outweigh the cost. We've lost the purpose we had in life back home, if we decided to raise a family, that could be our new purpose. I trust you enough to know you'll pull out if I ask you to, but I just realized, I also trust you enough to let you go ahead and impregnate me. You don't have to do it, but it's an option."

For forty weeks, Adrien did not regret his decision. He didn't regret the feeling of the ultimate act of love, or the look in Marinette's eyes when she realized he really felt that strongly for her. He didn't regret it when Marinette told him she was pretty sure her period would have been there by that point. He didn't regret it when they would both sit and feel her baby bump, in awe of what they had created. He regretted it the moment she went into labor.

"What was I thinking?!" He panicked. "How did I ever think it was a good idea to get you pregnant with no access to medical attention?!" The love of his life was on the ground, in more anguish than he'd ever seen her before, and it was all because of him. Worse yet, he couldn't even do anything for her. Death by childbirth was a real thing, and he was convinced it would make him a murderer who killed with love. Then, their newborn baby cried, Marinette was still breathing, and Adrien's regrets vanished.

"The baby is fine," Marinette panted, a rush of euphoria washing away her pain. "I'm fine too."

Adrien let the tears he was holding back flow free. "I thought I was going to lose you! I was so scared..."

"I was scared too, but I reminded myself, women used to have home births all the time. Yes, there were risks, but most of them made it through all right. Now I've done it once, I should be able to do it again."

"So you're saying you want to have more babies?" He asked, wiggling an eyebrow at her. The playful mood they were making was enough to scare away most of his fears as well.

"I don't want to get pregnant again right away, so let's please be careful, but I can see wanting another baby in the next few years, if you're up to it."

"This is miserable," Adrien rubbed his eyes, which were watering. "How is Louis doing?"

"I'm worried about him. He's having a hard time breathing, way worse than you or me." Marinette coughed as she spoke. For a couple of months after Louis had been born, other than being homesick for friends and family back in Paris, life had been just about perfect for them. Then came the rainy season, and all three of them got sick. Runny nose, watery eyes, and breathing difficulty for all three of them, but worst of all for Louis. For the first week after the sickness set in, their son was inconsolable, crying endlessly. Then, something horrifying happened, he quit crying. His parents couldn't enjoy the quiet. A baby his age was supposed to cry. Something was terribly wrong.

"I'm going to try getting a few hours sleep now, okay? Wake me when the moon is directly overhead and I'll take a turn sitting with him." Adrien kissed Marinette goodnight and head to their sleeping mat in the corner, but the awakening he would have was the worst he could have feared.

"Adrien! Wake up!" Marinette shook him frantically. "Louis isn't breathing!"

"What! Are you sure?" The news snapped Adrien awake instantly and he went to check the baby with Marinette. The young parents watched in horror as the light faded from their son's eyes.

"No pulse," Adrien checked in vain. "How could this happen to us?"

"My baby is... dead?!" Marinette whispered, choking on the last word. She ran out of their shelter and disappeared down the beach. Adrien wondered where she was running off to at that time of night. He almost followed her, but then decided he should leave her alone. They would each need a while to grieve in their own way.

Morning came, Marinette had not returned, and Adrien gave up on trying to sleep. It was hopeless anyway, with images of his son's short life playing on loop through his brain. He figured he should look for Marinette. A little alone time might be necessary to sort through their feelings, but ultimately they would need to lean on each other if they were going to make it through. He'd heard of formerly functional marriages that had been torn apart by the loss of a child. His relationship with Marinette had evolved into something a lot like a marriage, he felt it deserved the same amount of effort as one too.

Though he checked all their usual spots, he couldn't find her. Turning into Chat Noir and climbing the tallest trees around couldn't even help him find her. Eventually he gave up and went home, convinced she would be be waiting for him. She wasn't. "Maybe she doesn't want to be found," Adrien mused to the baby, who thought dead, was the only human he had to talk to. "You deserve a proper burial, but first, I need to take something to remember you by." Adrien raised a sharpened stone over his son's corpse.

Over the following weeks, Plagg got tired of Adrien begging for him to talk to him lest he go mad. Plagg declined, stating the boy already had. Adrien believed the behaviors Plagg sited as evidence of insanity were better defined as coping mechanisms that he needed in order to cling to any sanity he had left at all, but Plagg had planted enough doubt for him to not necessarily believe what he thought he saw. It was Marinette, by their old bathing spot at the river, completely naked. He approached, wondering if he was hallucinating. She'd made herself scarce for the past several weeks after all, why would she appear to him now? "Marinette?"

She made eye contact with him and growled, in a way that sounded not hostile, but sexual.

"Be careful, Adrien," Tikki warned from nearby. "I haven't been able to get her to speak since Louis died. It's like she's taken an oath of silence. Do you think you can get through to her?"

"I'm not sure, I hope so." The girl he loved was scaring him now. He hoped her old self was still within her somewhere and could be reached.

Marinette walked over to him and placed her hands on his shoulders, forcing him to the ground with a low growl. She lay him back until his hair was in a pool of shallow water, and the rest of his body was supported on the smooth rocky shore. "Marinette, I miss you, please come home," Adrien told her. She didn't answer him, but instead pulled down his shorts, exposing his penis, which lifted itself up without much coaxing at all. She straddled his legs and took him into her easy, something she'd been able to do ever since being stretched by childbirth. "I have missed this feeling," he groaned, "but do you know what I miss even more? Your voice. Please talk to me." She continued to physically pleasure and psychologically torture him at the same time, bringing him close to an orgasm. "I'm going to cum," he warned her. She responded by slamming her hips into his one last time and holding there. It was the first evidence she even still understood the words he was speaking to her. He realized she was trying to get pregnant again. It gave him hope. Why would she do that unless she was going to come back to him? If that was what they needed to do to move on, he would happily start over with her. He pulled her head down to his and kissed her roughly as he unloaded inside of her. She smiled into the kiss and rubbed her belly, where they both expected their second baby would soon begin to grow. He closed his eyes and put his arms around her. "I love you." He expected her to say it back, she didn't. She got off him and walked back into the jungle, his seamen dripping down her leg. He tried to follow her, but the shorts still bungled around his legs stalled him. By the time he had them pulled up again, she was out of his sight.

He counted the days that went by without him seeing her. Since she hadn't come home with him after their last mating attempt, he decided she must for some reason be waiting until she knew she was pregnant again. If conception was indeed her motive for going to the river that day, she must have timed it when she knew she was ovulating. Assuming that to be true, he could pinpoint when her period was supposed to be, but the time came and went without him seeing her. Did that mean he had failed? "I think I broke your mother," Adrien told the bone knife in his hand. It was his most prized possession, carved from the femur of his son. As long as he kept the knife with him and used it whenever possible, Louis' spirit would never truly be gone. "But I promise I'm going to make her whole again. She's going to be at her most fertile again in a few days, and I'm going to go hunt her down. Once she's thoroughly knocked up I'll bring her back to camp with me. But, we wouldn't want to go to her empty handed. I know for a fact she doesn't have a fire, I would have seen it, so she hasn't had any cooked food in the last month either. We haven't eaten meat, other than fish, since we've been here either. Let's see if we can get ahold of something."

(Let's say that in the distant past sailors landed on this island but moved on. Some of the livestock they kept for food escaped, and their descendants live wild on the island.)

The roasted rabbit meat Adrien carried wrapped in woven grass smelled so good. He had meat scraps back at at camp that he would try once he got home, but he'd chosen the choicest pieces for Marinette. After all, she would soon need to put on weight to support their baby. Not knowing exactly where he was going he hiked up river, hoping he would run into her. At first he didn't see her, but he did find an area where it looked like she's cleared the vegetation to give herself a path down to the water. The path lead away from the water a ways, in what he assumed was the direction in which she was now living, but the path faded out and became indiscernible before it could indicate anything that looked like a dwelling.

"Marinette!" he called out, laying out the grass mat with the meat on top of it. He waited, and was rewarded soon after by the sound of someone moving through the trees. When Marinette saw him, she immediately turned her back and dropped to all fours, presenting herself to him. He accepted that this time too they would be associating as animals and mounted her. When he finished he held himself inside her for a few moments, then slowly removed himself, making an effort to spill as little of his seed as he could. "Could I please take you back with me?" he asked, trying to pick her up. She squirmed in his arms and he took that as a 'no'. "Okay, fine, but please come home as soon as you can. I love you." He left her there, still lying on the ground, and made his way back to camp.

Another month passed with still no Marinette. Adrien believed he was going to have to meet with her a third time but when he went up the river with his roast fish (he hadn't been lucky enough to get a rabbit again) calling her name evoked no response. He could only conclude she didn't want to be found. That night, he went home and cried.

Marinette looked at the beach side camp in amazement. She guessed it had been close to a year since she'd been there, and she was impressed with what Adrien had done with the place. Their old shack of wood and grass had been torn down and replaced with one of rock. She thought about turning back, she hadn't had a hand in building this and didn't know if she had any right to come back and live in it, but the baby in her arms whimpered, urging her on. She had to show Adrien what they had created!

She entered the hut - house, she decided. It was nice enough to call a little house - and found Adrien with his back to the door, sitting and cleaning the fish he had caught. From the back, the first thing that struck Marinette was how long his hair had grown, a testament to how long they had been on the island. Her hair, she knew, was a little longer than his.

"Adrien..." she said softly.

Adrien was so surprised to hear her voice that he poked himself with the knife he was using. He turned around, finger in his mouth. "You came back?" he asked, tearing up.

"Here... it's another boy," she told him, putting the baby into his arms. "I hope you'll forgive me," she implored him, beginning to cry as well.

"For running away? I'm just glad you're home."

"For losing Louis. You seemed so happy to have a son, I felt like such an Indian giver when he died. I'm worthless as a mother if I can't even keep a child alive. I didn't feel like I was worthy of even looking at you until I at least replaced what I'd stolen from you, but I had to bend that rule a little if there was going to be any chance of getting pregnant again. When I failed to conceive the first time I felt absolutely worthless, I thought I might as well hole myself up and let you forget about me, but then you came looking for me and I decided that if you were giving me another chance, I could give myself one more as well."

"So that's what this is about? You think you killed Louis? I don't want you to ever think that way again, it wasn't your fault... mold."

"Mold?"

"Mold killed our son. I found it not long after you left, the rain caused our house to grow mold. I realized as soon as I saw it that the mold is what made all three of us sick. That's why I tore down our old house and built this one. Rocks won't mold, the new baby should be safe here."

"There's the island, to port! An airplane reported smoke signals coming from that island."

Four years after being lost at sea, Adrien and Marinette were finally found and returned to Paris. They brought with them their two year old son Hugo, and about a month after they settled in, Emma was born. They made a life for themselves their in the city, but they could never forget their little desert island, and most of all, the untimely end of their Louis.