Viperion's body stiffened as the redirected orb of light hit Ladybug, enveloping her in a bright, pink glow.
His immediate thought was to use Second Chance; to go back and prevent this like they had plan–
A small shooting star zipped through the air, forcing Viperion to react. His fingers, initially on the snake's tongue, slipped off as he ducked.
To his chagrin, he turned to see the light surrounding Ladybug had dissipated, eliciting gasps from nearby Parisians.
"Awesome!" Marinette chirped, twirling around in a dress made of yarn and wool. "I always wanted to be the Knitting Fairy!"
Viperion's eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets, his hands hanging at his sides, frozen. "M-Marinette!?"
The shock festering in his heart rushed through his body, locking his feet in place and his eyes with hers.
"The truth, Luka…" she had said to him, her tone so honest and sweet he was certain he could accept whatever it might be. "Is the only thing I can't tell you."
"Look out!" Chat Noir shouted, pushing Luka and himself behind a wrecked car, barely dodging another round of the villain's shots.
They tumbled on the ground, groaning in unison. Chat Noir quickly rose to his feet and began twirling the baton in his hands, knocking away the small shooting stars aimed at them.
"Don't you two see how happy Ladybug is now?" Wishmaker asked while he neared the two, pelting Chat Noir with shot after shot. "Just let me touch you, and your childhood dreams can come true!"
The volley of projectiles forced a strained grunt from the hero. His boots, planted to the ground, scraped it as he got pushed back.
Chat Noir glanced behind him. "Viperion, Second Chance! Now!"
Viperion straightened his spine, and his focus snapped at Chat Noir's tail lashing against the scarred road. It seemed her partner was just as affected as he was.
Still in disbelief, Viperion pulled hard on the bracelet, calling out, "Second Chance!" before being blinded by a flash of light.
When Viperion reopened his eyes, he was greeted with the sight of Ladybug – Marinette, his mind corrected – holding a triceratops plushie.
She brought it closer to her and frowned. "A dino huggie?"
Meanwhile, Viperion used her momentary confusion to school his expression. As he stared at the girl behind the mask, there were a hundred things he wanted to tell her and a hundred more he wanted to ask. Yet he couldn't – though it ate him up from within. What mattered now was beating Wishmaker, and they needed a fully focused Ladybug for that. The jumble of feelings amassing in his throat would have to wait.
"Ladybug," Viperion began, and she immediately looked up at him, her earnest, cerulean gaze forcing a thought of how he had never made the connection before. "That stuffed animal is for a man in a red hat. His childhood dream was to become a dino huggie."
She nodded. "Got it!"
With that, they vaulted across the city until they reached the bridge where Chat Noir and Wishmaker were dueling.
Just like before, she rushed to go find the lucky charm's recipient, and just like before, Viperion blocked the shooting star meant for Chat Noir. However, this time, he redirected it towards the man next to Ladybug, covering him in its glow.
Soon enough, the infamous light vanished in favor of four woolen limbs and a huge, horned head.
This has to work.
The man-turned-dinosaur reached out, grasping at the air before him while shouting, "Who wants a dino hug!?"
The giant dino-man passed out hugs, Ladybug purified the butterfly, and business proceeded as usual for an akuma defeat. Bystanders cheered the heroes on and then returned to their schools, workplaces, and homes.
Everything was normal, completely, utterly normal.
But Viperion was in turmoil. With his and Ladybug's timers beeping their five-minute warnings, the duo rendezvoused in an alley close to the Career Expo. He hadn't uttered a word during their travel there, mentally bracing himself for the inevitable–
"Did… Wishmaker ever reveal mine or Chat Noir's secret identities?" she asked, a slight crack in her confident demeanor, revealing the timidness and chronic worry he'd become so familiar with in Marinette.
As the timid question fell from her lips, he couldn't help but rattle his chaotic brain for an answer. There had been so many instances when he'd self-consciously wondered why she'd sneak off while they were still together—busy, bored, uninterested—only to swiftly quell those thoughts. Marinette was the kindest, most sincere person he had the pleasure of meeting; he needed to believe it had all been for a good reason–
"Viperion?"
At this, he blinked, wrenching himself back to reality and locking eyes with her.
Ladybug's gaze appeared calm, but her shoulders were sharply raised, and her hand had a tight grip on her yoyo – she was tense; she was waiting for him.
The initial question echoed in his mind once his heart stopped fluttering at their shared memories, face blanching at the realization that he hadn't planned an answer.
"I…" he began, screaming at his brain to come up with a plausible lie, only to quit after accepting there was no such thing. "I'm sorry, Marinette."
Immediately, a harsh, cracking noise assaulted his ears, making him wince. "N-no, no, no, you can´t…" She stammered, her yoyo crushed under the force of her grasp, horror in her eyes. Then she snapped her head to the side, reached out her trembling arm, and muttered, "The bracelet… please."
Viperion was lost for words again but did as instructed.
Ladybug grabbed the miraculous before she turned around to leave. In dead silence, she stopped to glance at the high-up wall closing the alley, then at the broken pieces of her yo-yo still in her hand.
"Marinette…" Luka breathed out, not daring to move closer should he scare her away. "Let's talk–"
Her earrings beeped twice, cutting him off.
As he opened his mouth to continue, Ladybug climbed up the wall and peeked behind her shoulder.
Luka stood still, waiting for her.
But instead, Ladybug shifted her focus back and ran, leaving him alone with the soft sound of her receding footsteps jumping from roof to roof.
A few days later
(Thud, thud)
"Luka?" A voice, Juleka's, called out from outside his room, overshadowing the music playing from his speakers. In response, Luka sighed and rose from his bed, carefully storing the guitar in its case before he moved to the door.
I should have been faster, he thought while staring at his fingers on the handwheel – the same fingers whose delayed reaction had put him in this mess.
Eventually, he swung the door open.
"Need something, Jule?" He asked, his tone so lively and cheerful that it likely would have fooled anyone but her.
Juleka looked at him for a short while, past his fake grin and chilled demeanor, then dropped her gaze to the floor. "I know you're not well," she revealed. "And I know it has something to do with Marinette."
His shoulders sagged at this.
"Do… you want to talk about it?" Juleka proposed, her expression genuinely concerned. Then, gesturing to the vague direction of his guitar, she added. "It doesn't have to be in words."
Luka didn't answer right away. Instead, he grew pensive, mulling on that cursed afternoon for the umpteenth time that day. "I can't believe what I'm about to say but… music can't help fix what happened…nothing can."
"Hmm…"
Juleka gently brushed past him and stepped inside. Luka frowned at her but remained silent.
First, she scanned the room, then muttered something under her breath when her eyes landed on the large, black case.
"Did you want to borrow it?" She grabbed the instrument within and perched herself on the edge of his bed, carefully adjusting its strings while humming a familiar tune. After finishing, she beckoned him over.
Once Luka sat beside his sister, still puzzled as to what her goal was with all this, the slumbering speakers roared into action.
As the guitar strummed to the intro of "Rebel's Roar", a soft, near imperceptible voice sang alongside them:
"In this cruel world, this grim reality
all I want, all I want is to break free."
Luka sucked in a breath, shocked, but then leaned closer. Juleka singing was exceptionally rare, her inner melody at times disrupted by the mere suggestion of it alone. Yet now, it was as though her chords had aligned in perfect harmony, each one seamlessly flowing into the next.
"And I don't need your heroes to come and hold my hand
I don't want your saviors to take me from this land."
The head of the guitar poked his side, telling him to join her…
Luka supposed it couldn't hurt.
Spins, twists, stompings, and twirls – the twins swept into an unfettered, wild choreography of dance moves, unburdened by the troubles previously weighing them down. By the time they reached the middle point of the song, they'd already danced across the cabin twice, and when it ended, their voices had risen high enough to echo through the entire boat.
"I'll carve my own path, won't yield to what you say
I call the shots now, so stay out my way!"
The final chord of the energetic tune reverberated around the cabin, fading out gently as the twins collapsed onto the couch with contented sighs.
"Juleka!" He grabbed her shoulders, beyond ecstatic despite his panting. "You sang beautifully!"
She turned slightly to hide her grin, then swiped a self-conscious hand over her hair. "Yeah."
"Who–what happened? It's like you added new notes and chords to your melody but still preserved the original leitmotif!"
An indulgent smile tugged at her lips, amused by his overuse of musical terms whenever he grew excited.
"I'm trying not to bottle things up so much," she explained, then paused for a moment. "My friends have been helping me; they're pretty insistent on it too," she noted, softly chuckling. Just as Luka was about to speak, Juleka took his hands, interlacing her fingers with his. "It's not easy, but it's getting better."
Made speechless, he stared at her, booming with pride for his sister.
However, a voice in his head cut his admiration short, now more pronounced after her earnest speech.
Listen to her. Stop putting it off and go talk to Marinette.
This thought had been nagging him over the past few days: At school, during rehearsals, and while he desperately tried to fall asleep. The root cause wasn't lost on him, and the 'logical solution' much less so, and yet…
Luka sighed in resignation. He couldn't afford to hush the voice any longer, for both their sakes.
"I'm so proud of you, Jule," he said, earning him another smile, this one more radiant than the last. "I also need to take care of something that's been troubling me for a while."
Luka stood up and went to the upper deck, his determination melting away once he saw how late into the evening it was.
"Bakery's closing soon," Juleka piped up from behind him. "If… that's where you're going."
His nerves jumped at the reminder. He was actually going through with this.
Putting one foot in front of the other, he grabbed his bike and carried it to the port. His movements were clearly delayed as he did so, but he chose not to address it.
As he got ready to leave, Juleka hurried across the boarding ramp, helmet in hand. "You forgot this," she said, passing it to him.
The kind gesture made Luka chuckle, soothing some of his anxiety while he strapped it on. "Thank you. And thanks for cheering me up. I needed that."
"So… music did help?" she playfully wondered.
Luka smiled in return. "Yeah. Yes it did."
The sun's rays left a fleeting warmth on his skin as it slowly set, exchanging the orange-hued horizon for a starless night sky. Fortunately, Luka had spotted the indoor lights of the bakery filtering through its closed windows, now surrounded by the evening shadows.
A part of him, the same one who'd purposely stalled him earlier, wished he'd taken a bit longer, just long enough for the entrance to be locked and no one to be in the store to open it for him.
However, that's not what happened. When he turned its knob, the door clicked open, followed by a jarring bell chime announcing his presence. Regardless of the growing bubbling in his stomach, it was too late for him to turn now.
Inside, Sabine sat behind the register with a pen and notepad while receipts covered the counter.
They're closing out, he figured.
The petite woman's head snapped to the door in surprise, quickly putting down what she was holding. "Luka!" she chirped, her lively mood releasing the clench on his teeth, teeth he didn't know he'd been gritting. "I was finishing my little accounts for the day, but just give me a moment, and I'll reopen the register for you!"
"Thank you, Mrs. Cheng, but I actually came here to talk to Marinette. If that's okay."
Suddenly, her face dropped, and his pulse quickened. "Oh."
"I don't mean to intrude… if she doesn't want to see me, I completely understand. I can go."
Again, a tiny sliver of him hoped for a, "Yes, leave," yet his sister's inspiring words echoed in the back of his mind, steeling Luka.
"No, no, no, you're fine, dear!" Sabine assured, returning to her sunny disposition while he heaved a quiet sigh. "Marinette's just been feeling a bit down lately. Tom and I have tried to get her to open up, but she'll barely say a word to us. Today, she didn't even leave her room. We don't know if it's something that happened at school, with one of her friends, or…" she trailed off, turning still, bowing her head as her shoulders slumped.
Sabine's recollections of her daughter's wretched state clawed at his heart, yet he didn't break his stare out of respect for them.
Then, she took a deep lungful of air and brightened again, "But I'm sure a visit from a friend would cheer her right up!"
A friend.
After everything that had happened, would she even call him that? From their first meeting to dating, breaking up, and then to him finding out she was…
No, that wasn't what he was here for.
Closure. That is what he, and he believed she, needed the most right now – something only the other could offer.
Realizing he hadn't spoken for a while, Luka approached the counter and matched her mood, "I promise you I'll do my best. Marinette is a wonderful girl; she deserves to be happy."
Sabine looked at him as if her gaze went beyond his eyes and smiled knowingly. "You both do."
Luka climbed the stairs to the Dupain-Cheng's apartment with short, heavy steps, turning the quick climb into a ten-minute hike as he tried to gather his thoughts.
He was nervous, hesitant, and beset by a dozen other malignant feelings that had seemingly chosen to conspire against him that day.
It wasn't as though these sensations were entirely foreign to him, notwithstanding his typical calm persona; Jule herself carried enough memories of their past shared sorrow to last her a lifetime. However, these were different – constant and heightened to a degree only Marinette could bring them to.
I'm here, he thought while staring at the apartment's entrance, the keys he'd borrowed from Sabine dangling impatiently in his fingers. Then, he drew a long breath for a fleeting sense of fullness and unlocked the door.
Just as Sabine had told him, no one came to check the sound, with Marinette having locked herself in her room and Tom's very audible snores emanating from the hallway to his left.
Seeing the white stairway leading to her room, Luka instinctively reached for his guitar strap to ground himself. Instead, he caught the front of his t-shirt, feeling his racing heartbeat reverberate through the cloth and onto his hand, causing him to drop his grip immediately.
He looked down at his chest to see nothing but his wrinkled clothes.
I-I forgot… how?
His guitar might as well have been an extra limb for him – A source of joy, expression, and most pertinently, solace, now absent in his jour j.
Glancing back at the front door, an intrusive thought wandered through his mind. Reactively, he shook his head to rid himself of it and began climbing up to Marinette's room. "Hey Mari–"
"Please, Guardian, you must eat something!" A muffled, high-pitched voice spoke from within.
Then, another, this one prolonging the "S's" in its speech. "Daizzi's right. It's dangerous to go this long without sustenance."
Sass.
However sincere, their pleas fell on deaf ears, leaving the room in despondent silence.
When it became too much, Luka knocked on the trapdoor. "Marinette?"
In response, he heard a shriek followed by a loud thud. "Ow!"
His protective nature nearly compelled him to barge in and check up on her, but he stopped at the last moment. Their bond wasn't like that, not anymore. Depending on how she perceived him now, he was merely an uninvited guest in her house.
"Hello?" Luka called for the third time, carefully friendly and gentle tone dissipating in the face of mounting apprehension.
Eventually, the hatch cracked open, and Luka froze in anticipation.
Disheveled bangs covered bloodshot eyes, her once soft smile replaced by a faint frown and a drooping expression. "L-Luka?" she hoarsely whispered, her voice lacking its usual spirit. "What are you doing here?
He pushed himself to answer before his nerves had the chance to stop him. "I wanted us to talk about what happened."
For a brief moment, Luka could swear he saw her sagged shoulders lift up – his own responding in kind – yet they fell back down just as fast.
"Ok."
After entering her room, Luka sat on the chaise lounge while Marinette stood across from him, leaning on her desk, hands tightly holding on to its edge.
She's tense, he reasoned, we both are. Maybe I should start with something less serious.
Looking around, he spotted dolls of the two superheroes and a couple of their akumatized villains lying limp on the cushions.
Perfect.
Luka grabbed Lady Wifi's and began inspecting it. "You captured well her look. Good job," he praised, yet an acute sense of embarrassment churned in his gut.
Marinette furrowed a brow, seemingly hurt by the comment. "What?" she squeaked out.
His smile wavered, but he forced it wide. "Yeah, she looks–" He stopped abruptly, dropping the doll back to its brethren when tears started clouding her gaze.
The ensuing silence was both awkward and depressing. Meanwhile, Luka's mind raced, searching for a way to get through to her.
"Do you hate me?"
His head snapped to Marinette's, and his heart skipped a beat. Then another. What–? How could she even… why would she even think that!?
When he didn't answer, Marinette turned around and away from his gaze. Her shoulders slumped even further down as anguished sobs permeated the room. "That's a stupid question. Of course, you hate me!"
On hearing this, Luka sucked in air through his teeth and shot to his feet, her abrupt claim robbing him of breath.
"I-I mean… I lied to you! I kept secrets from you! Who wouldn't hate me!?"
"Marinette," he began, taking a few steps toward her, stopping short when another streak of angry tears slid down her chin and fell on the desk. "I'm not mad at you–"
Marinette spun back and glared at him, shouting a teary "You're lying!" before dropping to her knees.
"I–"
"Sass told me!" she revealed in between sobs, then swallowed thickly. "He told me he felt how angry and hurt you were! Because of me! Because of what I hid…"
Luka clenched his fist at her stubbornness and raised his voice. "Did he also tell you how amazed I was that you were Ladybug? How this girl, who's always there for both strangers and friends; who puts herself through hell and back for their sake, is also the savior of Paris?"
Suddenly, the whimpering hitched, and his fire dwindled.
Marinette clutched her earrings, closing her eyes as she winced. "But it's not just you… I lied to my parents, to all my friends… everyone! And I'm still doing it, because if I don't, and Hawkmoth finds out he–he will–"
A hand gently resting on her shoulders stopped her rambling. "I can't imagine what you're going through, Marinette, but you can't keep doing it by yourself. I barely recognized your song with all these new dissonant notes. If you don't do something soon, you'll fall apart."
Luka knelt down while she pondered his words, deciding to temporarily halt his search for closure to comfort her. "Thinking back, it makes complete sense that you were secretly Ladybug."
"...Because I would always have to leave when an akuma showed up?"
He shook his head. "No. I mean… that too, but not the most important part."
Marinette wiped off the stray tears that had run down her cheek, silently waiting for him to continue.
"Your characters were the same."
"Characters?"
"Mhm," he hummed. "You and Ladybug. Both kind, caring, fought for what they believed in – both heroes."
With an unconvinced sigh, Marinette rose, then crossed her arms while gazing to the side. "I don't know what to do, Luka. I thought I was getting better at managing this double life, but then we broke up; I became guardian, and now Chat Noir feels like I don't value him enough, and you also know about me, and… I'm lost. I'm completely lost."
Pondering long and hard, Luka straightened himself. "You're right; I know about you now. That means you don't have to endure all this by yourself anymore. I can be there for you, just like before, but now for both sides."
When he was finished, Marinette faced him, eyes glistening with a mixture of unshed tears and newfound hope. "Do you mean…?" she began, her wishful tone reminding him of her past mellow harmony.
An earnest smile tugged at his lips. "A second chance."