I wrote this instead of sleeping.
This can probably be generously called conceptual.
Summary:
In one world, a wish is made.
Yet for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. And a price that must always be paid.
['Tuesday, Ladybug thinks, is a very arbitrary day to die.']
The Law of Equivalent Exchange
Tuesday, Ladybug thinks, is a very arbitrary day to die.
Not that she'd ever given much thought to which day of the week would be her last, per se. But as she lays there, blackness slowly creeping into the edges of her vision, she can't help but ruminate; her mind flitting from one thought to the next as though trying to cram as much material into as little time as possible.
It's not like she can do much apart from sit there and think, anyway. She's completely lost feeling in her legs now, numbness replacing what used to be a world of sensation. Even if she wanted to move, it's simply not an option anymore.
Besides, she lost the taste for it fairly quickly upon realizing just how painful moving could be when your insides have suddenly become outsides.
So she sits, and she thinks, and she waits to die.
She's in the process of contemplating the simple majesty of a cloudless blue sky when blackness fills her vision, followed swiftly by gold and green and—
"Oh hey, kitty," she smiles, and then immediately regrets it when she begins coughing, the greeting aggravating her already angry throat. When she finally stops, her lips are damp, and she doesn't need to look at Chat's stricken expression to know that her mask isn't the only streak of red on her face anymore.
His hands are heartbreakingly gentle as they lift her, cradling her broken body against his trembling chest.
Chat's voice is so low it's nearly inaudible.
"No no no no no," he mutters, the mantra he's been repeating almost from the moment he landed beside her. The single syllable carries with it a well of desperation far too deep for such a simple two-letter word.
"This can't be happening," he says, speaking more to himself than to her. Even though her eyes are having a hard time focusing, she can tell when his gaze zeroes in on hers; can feel his resolve crystallizing in the air between them. "Tell me what to do, my Lady. Where's your Lucky Charm? We have to fix this, please."
"Gone," she rasps, the word leaving her with difficulty. "Bro—ken—" Useless now, she wants to add. Monarch made certain of that.
She has to stop there, though, because her vision is going spotty the longer she tries to speak and she has so much she wants to say and so little time left to do it.
Chat lets out a mournful noise like that of a wounded animal, his hands gripping her shoulders desperately.
"No, there has to be another way," he all but wails, leaning over her until all she can see and feel is black leather and devastation. He presses his forehead to hers, each of his tears burning hot against her clammy skin.
"I'm sorry," she mouths against his ear, trusting his enhanced hearing to pick up her nearly voiceless plea. I'm sorry that I'm going first. I'm sorry that we couldn't win.
I'm sorry that I'm leaving you alone.
Chat is openly bawling now, his body wracked with sobs that jostle her in a way that would have probably been painful, if she could feel anything anymore.
But the only thing she's feeling at this point is increasingly sleepy; her eyelids weighted down with all of the failures she's experienced in her nearly sixteen years on this planet.
I love you, she wants to tell him, but her throat won't cooperate, her lungs and vocal cords standing in opposition to each other, denying her even the right to choose her last words.
And so Ladybug dies, wordlessly and anticlimactically, on a sunny Tuesday afternoon.
-x-
This is one ending.
But in a world of infinite possibility, with thousands of threads woven together to create the tapestry of time, even one slight tug can be enough to unravel the fabric.
Chat Noir, like many holders of the Black Cat Miraculous before him, has never been known for his delicacy, however.
Which means that he doesn't so much tug on the strands as he shears through them with his claws, reaching through the sea of infinite realities to wrest creation from the jaws of oblivion.
He makes a wish.
And he destroys the world.
-x-
Tuesday, Ladybug thinks, staring down at the broken body of Monarch, is a very arbitrary day to die.
Although judging by the hour, it is barely Tuesday anymore; the clock on her yoyo inching steadily towards the dawning of a new day.
And a new day has dawned indeed.
For the flood of first responders steadily trickling into the hidden catacombs that lie beneath the Agreste mansion; for the citizens of Paris, asleep in their beds, blissfully unaware of what has taken place in their city tonight.
And for its heroes. Ladybug's eyes dart to her partner, who remains frozen at her side, his acid-green irises fixed unwaveringly on the dead man at his feet.
The police have already questioned them both, their statements written and recorded for posterity. Now all that is left to do is wait for the medical examiner to come and remove the body in the basement.
Or, should she say, the bodies, plural. Her eyes flick to the glass case to her right and Ladybug's stomach turns anew with horror at the sight of the tomb that contains the remains of Adrien's mother.
For how many people are in the room, there is a remarkable lack of noise; each person moving with the distinct knowledge that they have entered a graveyard, and respect must be shown for the dead.
Nevertheless, the work is not quite done.
As the world continues to spin madly on around them, Ladybug turns to her partner, grim-faced and determined.
"We need to find Adrien Agreste," is what she says.
Chat does not respond, but he follows her silently, out of the grave and into the early morning hours of what will soon become known as the most climactic Wednesday Paris has ever seen.
-x-
This is another ending.
A world, newly forged by the hands of a boy desperate to save a girl.
A world of infinite possibility, with thousands of threads painstakingly woven together by hands more accustomed to destruction than creation.
Adrien Agreste, unbeknownst to him, lives to realize his father's dream.
He makes a wish, and saves his love—his Lady, his classmate, his best friend. The other half of his soul residing within a different body.
Marinette Dupain-Cheng lives.
And together they kill his father.
-x-
notes:
Okay let me be the first to say it: I have no idea what this is. Consider it me processing my lingering angst from the season 5 finale.
But in deference to you, dear reader, here is my best and only attempt to summarize whatever the hell you just read:
Basically, in another universe, Ladybug is killed fighting Monarch. Chat uses the earrings and makes a wish to save her. The price they pay in this new world is the death of his father.
He (as the wishmaker) remembers all of it. Ladybug does not.
I understand this is not how the wish actually works in canon but in this imagining, I've framed it more like a price that must be paid eventually, not immediately. So you get a life for a life, but just not right away per se.
Besides, if the creators can rewrite how The Wish works whenever it's narratively convenient (and hooo boy did they ever with that season finale) then so can I.
Thanks for reading!
this work has been cross-posted from AO3