A/n - Warning: mentions of suicide and cutting. This is my take on a fanfiction I read a few years ago, I don't remember where. The premise has stuck with me, so I decided I'll rewrite it with a happier ending - and a baby.

"Goodbye."

Marinette froze. Something about the way Adrien said it sent shivers down her spine. She couldn't quite explain what was wrong with him saying goodbye to his friends before he left school, but it didn't feel like him.

"I love you, Marinette," he looked her directly in the eyes, "always remember that."

Now she knew something was wrong. He'd implied it, but this was the first time - at least since their identities were revealed to each other - that he'd outright said it (to her civilian form no less) and he'd just out and said it with little context. The more she thought about it, th e more it sounded like something someone would say just before doing something horrible. Once she came to the conclusion that he definitely needed to be stopped, Adrien was gone. In a panic, Marinette took off running in the direction of Adrien's house.

When Ladybug let herself in the window at Adrien's house, he was nowhere in sight. She was just about to head downstairs looking for him when she heard someone bumping around in the bathroom. Hurriedly, she opened the door, in time to see Adrien with a kitchen knife to his wrist.

"Adrien!"

Startled by her sudden call, Adrien jerked the knife, accidentally slicing himself in the process. The wound wasn't as deep as he had intended, but it was jagged and bled profusely. Marinette was to him in an instant "what have you done?!" It looked like he could bleed out from this, and even if that was his plan, she wasn't going to let him. She cast about the bathroom and spotted a bath towel neatly folded on the counter. Any other time, she wouldn't want to destroy a perfectly good piece of cloth, but it would have to be sacrifice. With a strength born of adrenaline she shredded it in her bare hands and bound the strips tightly around Adrien's wound.

"Ow!"

"You did this to yourself," she growled, "how could you?!"

"I didn't expect for you to show up when you did."

"It's an awful good thing I did! Who were you going to burden with finding your body? Your bodyguard?" Somewhere in her mind, Marinette knew that Adrien was at the lowest moment of his existence and that he needed empathy, but she couldn't help being angry with him. Did he know how much pain he caused to her when he finally said 'I love you' and tried to commit suicide in the same day? She at least knew what drove him to it. It was just shy of two weeks since Chat Noir had called Ladybug in hysterics. He told her he'd found Hawkmoth and that it was no other than his own father. She'd commended him for his tough decision, prioritizing the good of the public over his family. In an act of trust she had revealed her identity to him just before the final fight, and had promised she'd be there for him in any way she could be. She'd admired how stoic he had been even when the authorities caught wind of their fight and moved in to make an arrest. After Gabriel and Nathalie had both been taken into custody, the police thoroughly searched the house, unwittingly pulling the plug on Emilie's life support in the process. Hours later, paramedics pronounced her dead. When he realized that he was going to be locked up for a long time, rather than allow his son to go into foster care, Gabriel formally requested that Adrien be emancipated. The court agreed, but needed time to process, and requested that the adult closest to Adrien who hadn't been involved in the crime should check up on him daily until he could legally function as an adult. His bodyguard, known to most as The Gorilla, was chosen for the task.

"I didn't think that far ahead," Adrien admitted. "Marinette, I didn't want you to see this - I love you - but, please let me die. Let me die with my mom."

"N-o, w-ay," Marinette was crying so hard she could hardly talk, but she hugged him close to herself. "I'm n-ot l-o-s-ing you." She inhaled deeply, trying to speak more clearly. "Anything to get your life back on track. If it's humanly possible, I'll give you anything!"

"You can't. I appreciate you, but I can't live without my family. My mom's dead, and I disowned my dad. There's no one else. You can't bring my family back."

"You're wrong. I can't restore the family you had, but I can give you a family."

"How? 'My friends are going to be my family?' It's not the same. I can't."

Marinette put a hand under Adrien's chin and made him look at her. "You can. If it's what you need, I will make you a family. All I need is a little cooperation from you."

Adrien finally got what she meant. A bit of his old life passed through his eyes for just a moment, long enough for Marinette to see it. "I can't ask you to do that."

"But you can ask me to give you up?! Which do you think would hurt me more?"

"Giving me up?" he guessed. He could tell that was the answer she wanted.

"Damn right!" she surprised him with her venomous demeanor. "Do you really love me?"

"Yes." It was one thing he could say certainly. He knew he couldn't leave without her knowing that for sure.

"Then show me. Before you do anything else, make love to me."

"Are you sure you want that?" It would be a nice way to spend his last day, he thought.

"Please. I need to know what it feels like with the one I love. If you're not going to be here much longer..." Marinette knew exactly what she was doing. She was stalling. Earlier that day she'd held no thought of getting pregnant or even giving up her virginity in the immediate future, but she had no doubts about it. She'd wanted, since before he seemed to reciprocate her feelings, to grow old with Adrien. Anything to keep that dream alive. She would distract him from his thoughts of suicide, a minute at a time if she had to. If she could keep him alive long enough, she knew he would recover.

Hormones won the day. Adrien left the knife in the bathroom and followed Marinette into his bedroom. He shed his clothes as she shed hers and knelt on his bed with her knees splayed invitingly. Her posture was not yet one conducive to what they had planned, but one that showed off her most intimate places. "You're beautiful."

"So are you," she sighed, "or, handsome?" Looking at him looking at her with both love and lust, she would have been enjoying herself if it weren't for the recent memory of his attempted suicide. She longed to forget it, put it behind them, but she couldn't. For his sake, she couldn't put it from her mind until she could be sure the notion had been cleared from his. She had two strategies for the night. One was to make him enjoy himself, enough, but not too much. She didn't want him to be satisfied, she needed him to want more. Her other plan was to guilt him - he couldn't leave after what he'd done to her. It sounded cruel when she said it to herself, but she had to buy time, long enough for her to think of a more solid recovery plan. She drew him in, first with her gaze, then, when he was close enough, with her legs. She wanted to absorb him into her body and never let him out, there was no way he could hurt himself in there, but sadly, she knew it wasn't possible. She'd have to release her hold on him soon and trust him to stay close to her, but she was determined to take a piece of him for safe keeping before then.

Nothing mattered to Adrien anymore. He'd made up his mind. He had no future. All that was left was to enjoy his first and last time being intimate before he went to sleep forever. He wanted to tell Marinette that none of this was her fault, and at this point, the only way he could do it was by fulfilling her final wish of him. He poured his love into her body - that's how he saw it. He didn't even consider that they might have just made life, because life no longer held meaning for him.

"If you leave me to raise a baby by myself, I'll never forgive you."

Baby. Only then did he remember their conversation from earlier, that they had the physical potential to make a family from scratch. He was a horrible person, and he deserved to die, but if he died, it would just make it harder on Marinette. "I... would... never."

"Then you'll hold off on taking your life until we can find out if I'm pregnant?"

He nodded.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Negative. Marinette never would have thought she'd be so distraught to see a negative pregnancy test while still in school. She'd discovered no alternative way to distract Adrien from his woes. If she had, she might be relieved to have stalled without extra consequence, as it was, she could only think of bluffing him. Maybe she could tell him she was pregnant so that he would have no more reservations about screwing her and get him to knock her up for real as soon as possible. Goodness knows that was better than the alternative. Once she got his immediate attention off of suicide, then she could focus on bettering his mental health.

"Marinette, can we have a word."

"Sure, Maman, what is it?" Marinette was immediately curious, her mother sounded more stern than usual.

"This is hard for me to ask you, but I need an honest answer. Have you become sexually intimate?"

"Yes," she quietly admitted. She didn't like lying to her parents unless absolutely necessary, and she had the feeling this was leading to something.

"I had the feeling," Sabine sighed, "I hoped I was wrong. Sweetheart, I think you're pregnant."

"Really?" Marinette asked, her eyes taking on a sudden glint, "but I just had my period."

"Then I guess you're not."

"Oh... Why did you think I was?"

"You were acting pregnant. Just now, you seemed hopeful when I mentioned the possibility. If you've been considering it, that could be responsible for the behavior I mistook for the real thing, but tell me, why are you considering it now?"

Marinette broke down and told her mother everything that was plaguing her, still omitting the part about herself and Adrien owning miraculouses. Just past the part about catching Adrien's suicide attempt, Sabine called for Tom and asked Marinette to repeat from the beginning. In the end she confessed that for nearly a month she'd been telling Adrien she was pregnant with his baby, but that she'd as of yet been unable to put her money where her mouth was.

"Have you reached out to a medical professional?"

"I've looked into it. There's no way he's going to voluntarily get help, and involuntary admission requires a certificate from a doctor. He won't go to the doctor, I tried," she cried so hard she hiccuped "not even to look at his arm. He's afraid they would know what he tried to do. Well, he's probably not wrong. His emancipation just went through too, he's legal an adult now, so services for minors are out of the question too."

"And you're really sure there's no other way to stop him?"

"If there is I'd like to know. Nothing I can think of works."

"We'll help you think this through," Sabine promised. "For now I'd like you to run to the store. Pick up some figs, salmon, and yams."

"Sabine!" Tom exclaimed, "you aren't actually encouraging her are you? Those are all recommended for reproductive health!"

"I'm not condoning her behavior," Sabine assured him. "Foods alone won't get her pregnant, but if she's even considering it I want her to be as healthy as she can be."

Marinette hurriedly slipped away, she felt awkward causing even the slightest contention between her parents. By the time she returned she was relieved to find they had reached some kind of agreement.

"This is the kind of food I ate when your father and I were ready to have a baby," Sabine explained. "I'm not going to argue with you, but I want you to think about this very carefully. There might be a reason you haven't conceived yet, you're being given a chance to change your mind. Once you get pregnant there's no more opportunity to go back. If you really are serious you need to take care of yourself even better than you already do."

"I am serious," Marinette promised. "I just can't imagine life without him. Having his baby is a lot less scary than losing him."

"How recent was the period you just had?"

Marinette told them.

"Okay, I don't want you to let him touch you at all this next week. Salmon is supposed to be good for both genders, so why don't you bring him some leftovers? If you think you can do it without making him suspicious, try getting him a snack mix with pumpkin seed and Brazil nut. Oh, and make sure he stays hydrated. Tell him that if he doesn't cum at all during this next week you'll make sure it's worth it. And, most importantly, consider this very carefully. Then, only if you're completely certain, you can spend the night with him at the end of the week. If you decide to do it, get him to cum a little right away to stimulate your womb. After that, keep him back from orgasm as long as possible so he can build up a big load. When he does cum, try to synchronize your own orgasm with his. Prop your hips up and rest until it doesn't feel runny anymore."

"Thank you," Marinette knew how emotionally difficult it must be for her parents to go along with this. Thank goodness they understood how important Adrien was to her. They had tried to discourage her, but nonetheless advised her on how to carry it out if that was what she was determined to do. As she went up to her room she lingered just outside the room long enough to hear her father say,

"She's acting like a devoted wife, he had better marry her for all this."

Positive.

She could have cried with relief. Adrien had sworn up and down that he wouldn't leave her to raise a baby by herself. She believed him, she had never caught him in a lie. The same couldn't be said for herself. The father of her child believed she was an entire month farther along than she really was. That lie would be bound to catch up with her some day. Eight months from now he'd be worrying why she was so overdue, and by the time she delivered, he might realize that a pregnancy of that length with both mother and child healthy was impossible. Best case scenario, he would have regained his will to live by that point and would understand why she had to deceive him.

"Adrien," Marinette told him over the phone. "Get over to the hospital now, my water's broke."

"What?! But this is only the eighth month! The books said a first pregnancy could go as long as ten!"

'It's actually still the seventh,' Marinette didn't dare correct him. She was having a premature baby. She'd been hoping for a way to hide her deception from Adrien, but this was not it. She couldn't imagine how he would react if she lost the baby. She was proud of him, he'd done so well pulling himself back together for his child's sake, all that progress threatened to come tumbling down if the child died. She needed to stay calm, a baby born at seven months had pretty good chances of survival, but also an increased chance of birth defects. Did Adrien have the mental fortitude to endure if their baby turned out to be disabled?

"We have good news and bad news," the doctor informed. "The good news is your baby is going to live, the bad news is he's blind.

Marinette took in a sharp breath. At this point she felt she'd been through worse. She could handle raising a blind child, now her only worry was how Adrien would react.

sensing her nerves but perhaps not where they were coming Adrien grabbed her hand, "Hey, it's okay, we can work with this."

"You really think so?" Marinette asked.

"Absolutely, there was a time when there was no more light in my eyes, but you and our child brought it back. Just hold on, it's my turn to be the light in someone else's eyes."