Chapter 15: When the light turns and the cold times arise
As Adrien staggered forward, he used Ladybug's widened azure eyes as a beacon. As a motivator to fight against the gallons of cement in his body that wanted to turn him to stone.
All he had to do was reach her. If he could just do that, then he knew he'd survive. Even if the world crumbled down around him twenty more times.
"Chat, wait! I'll... Hold on!" Ladybug broke into a run and rushed to meet him halfway, so that he didn't have to drag himself quite as far.
His arms rose towards her like a gravitational pull, longing to draw her into a fierce hug. But as her personal space spilled into his, all he had the strength left to do was fall against her, the last of his marionette strings snapping apart.
Ladybug squeaked and quickly threw her arms around him as he collapsed.
Still equipped with her supersuit, she was perfectly capable of holding him upright. But instead, she fell down right alongside him, and they both sank to the rubble-ridden ground in a heap of tangled limbs.
His head landed on her chest, weighed down by the mass of an ocean. But it didn't matter if her sharp clavicle bone prodded uncomfortably into his cheek; because the pulse of her steady heartbeat thrumming through his own skin was all he cared about. It filled him with a sense of relief. Of safety and solace. And Adrien never wanted to move again, even if he could.
"Oh my god." Ladybug gently cupped his face and tried to pull him up to meet her eyes. "Chat, are you...? Oh shit!" Her hand fell away. "Right, okay. Hang on, kitty. You're gonna be fine — I just need to..."
He heard the telltale sound of her yo-yo unspooling as she held it up toward the sky, before belting out her preeminent healing spell. A shower of neon ladybugs swept over him, warm and gentle, as they mended the breaks and bruises he was riddled with.
Adrien barely felt the difference.
He watched as the insects took off into the ravaged city, deftly circling around broken houses and windows and bridges and parapets. As if time had been set backwards, the piles of debris fled from the streets and melded together into distinguishable, undamaged architecture. The fires were washed away by the sea of red, and the reformed streetlights all flickered to life before the city could be plunged into darkness.
Instead, they were only plunged into silence.
The change was whiplashing. Now there was almost no evidence at all that the macabre disaster had even happened in the first place.
Almost.
Ladybug's arm dropped back down and joined her other one, both encircling him in a tight embrace.
"Better?" she asked. Her quip, as always, was more for the sake of endearment than any actual confirmation. She knew her ladybugs never failed.
Adrien tried to offer some sort of reassuring reply. But the words knotted themselves in his throat, and all that came out was a choked sob.
Ladybug had fixed him. There wasn't so much as a scratch on him anymore.
So why did it still feel like everything inside him was ruined? He still ached with the agony of that one thousand foot drop. The fire had hollowed out his gut, but the blackened wasteland within him was still burning.
Once the sobs started, he couldn't really get them to stop, and his chest heaved with enough intensity to shatter his ribs all over again. (Because he was just such a broken record, wasn't he? So beyond repair, that not even magic could rebuild the muddied mess within him.)
Without saying a word, Ladybug pulled his trembling form closer and let him cry his broken heart out. He cried until his face was caked in the tears that the ladybugs had tried to wash away. Until his mouth tasted like a foul mix of salt and copper. Until his tear ducts ran dry, leaving behind the scars of an arroyo: barren and vast.
But even when his sobs petered out, Ladybug didn't release her hold on him.
"Chat," she said, after a heavy silence. One of her hands reached up to tangle itself in the locks of his hair. "You're... You're Adrien."
His synapses sparked briefly at the realization that Ladybug had used his real name.
He wondered if that meant she knew him in his personal life. But then again, as the son of a renowned fashion designer, his existence was hardly a secret.
And as the son of a supervillain, his existence was about to become even less of a secret.
"It was you," she whispered, equal amounts disbelieving and adoring. "It was always you under that mask. Oh god, I had no... I never even..."
With difficulty, Adrien pulled his head away from the safety of her heartbeat in favor of meeting her gaze. And he wondered whether the anguished shine in her eyes was hers, or a reflection of his own. "Ladybug, I—" He licked his chapped lips and swallowed down the rasp in his throat. "I'm so sorry."
She shook her head. "You have nothing to be sorry for."
He wished he had the capacity to bury himself in a lie as beautiful as that one. "H-Hawk Moth is—"
"I know," she said, eyes unwavering.
"I sh-should've—"
"No." Her gloved hands cradled either side of his face. "Don't do that. You... You couldn't have known." She let her forehead fall against his, her eyes closing. "This whole time... You did everything right, Adrien. You were perfect. And I'm so proud of you."
She said it with so much assurance, he almost felt compelled to believe her. To wrap himself up in the comfort of her words and pretend like he didn't have a mountain of sins to answer for.
His thoughts were interrupted by a chorus of police sirens wailing in the distance; the first sign of life since the miraculous cure had been cast, and a stark reminder that the world revolved around far more than just them. They both pulled away from each other to stare in the direction of the noise.
Adrien knew exactly what it meant.
"I think they've..." He swallowed again, though it did little to alleviate the sandpaper coating his throat. "I think they've found my dad."
"Adrien..." Ladybug looked back at him, the corners of her eyes tight with worry. "I know this changes things for you. With it being your... f-father and all. If you want, we could..."
The arroyo within him flooded with water once more.
"No," he said, squeezing his eyes shut to quell the stem of fresh tears, and wishing he could squeeze the sobs in his chest into the same submission. "It changes n-nothing. We still have to do this the way we agreed." He met her gaze again, willing his voice to remain level. "Make sure he gets what he deserves, milady."
The tightness fell away from her eyes as they flew wide open. "You're not staying?"
He shook his head. "I'm sorry."
She grabbed his hand in both of hers. "Wait no, I didn't mean it like... I didn't expect you to..." She sighed, her gaze flitting to the ground. "I'm just not sure I want to leave you right now."
His chest ached with the sudden desire to take his words back. To promise that he'd never leave her side again. That he was just as much of a committed partner as he'd been on day one.
"I'm sorry," he repeated instead, because he knew if he tried to explain his reasoning, it would throw him straight into the darkness he was trying so hard to stomp down on.
"Stop that. I meant it — you have nothing to be sorry for." Her fingers tightened around his hand. "At least let me take you home."
Adamant to shut down that offer as quickly as possible, he shook his head again. "Y-You have m-more to worry about than just me."
Ladybug let out a wet chuckle. "Don't be stupid."
His own fingers tightened around hers, and Adrien was suddenly very aware of the fact that this was the first time he'd held her hand without gloves. The sleek material of her suit was smoother than he'd expected it to be.
"Please," he begged, voice rapidly losing its composure. "Let me go by myself. I-I don't wanna hold you back any more than I already..." He choked on his own larynx, putting an end to his argument. And an end to his ability to say anything at all.
He could see her eyes screaming with a symphony of emotions, but when she spoke her voice was calm. "Okay then. Are you sure you can manage?"
"He will with my help!" The nasally voice hiding inside his shirt pocket finally decided to make its presence known, and Plagg flew up to hover in the space between them. "Alright, kid, time to suit up."
Without waiting for input from either participant, Plagg barreled toward his holder's chest and disappeared in a cloud of black sparks.
The feel of Ladybug's suit fell away, as his hand was encased in its own sleek material. And Chat found himself missing the contact.
Ladybug's eyes welled up and her trembling lips broke into a smile. "Wow... It really is you," she choked out. Then her emotions dropped away in favor of a wince. "I mean— I knew it was! I just... wow."
She hastily pulled herself to her feet. And Chat, instilled with a slightly enhanced stamina thanks to Plagg's magic, found himself managing to do the same.
She turned to face him, the tears in her eyes already expunged. "Don't... Don't worry about anything, okay? I'll make sure Paris knows the truth." She brushed the non-existent dirt away from his shoulders, as if it were just second nature to her. "I'll, um, come see you when all this is over, yeah?"
Chat felt the hardened leather of his cat-ears flatten against his head. He wished he had the heart to tell her he was a ticking time bomb, and the further away she stayed from him the better.
But even if he had the heart, he certainly didn't have the voice. So instead, he rigidly nodded.
For a brief moment, Ladybug froze, her hands hovering over his shoulders and her anxious eyes boring into his. Then she turned and threw her yo-yo, catapulting herself into the air with a whistling swing.
He watched her disappear into the night, her form lit up by flashing blue lights.
As she carried the weight of an entire city by herself.
What was he thinking?
Overcome with the sudden urge to leap straight after her, Chat reached to yank his baton out from its holster. His fingers gripped around the metal as he prepared to boost himself into the sky.
But then the sharp thorns in his chest struck him so abruptly, he almost collapsed all over again. His baton hit the floor without any momentum, and he used it to steady the balance he suddenly didn't have.
He realized it wasn't that he didn't want to follow her. It was that he couldn't.
He couldn't stand beside Ladybug in front of a sea of people who'd risen from the dead, and pretend like he was their hero instead of the catalyst for everything that had happened to them. He couldn't stare a police officer dead in the eye and lie about how he'd obtained the miraculouses from the villain.
And above all, he knew he couldn't be in the same vicinity as said villain without recklessly throwing a second cataclysm into that man's face. Or maybe he'd have the opposite reaction, and start screaming and begging them not to send his father to jail. Maybe he'd do both simultaneously.
It would put to shame his little tantrum from two days ago, that's for sure.
Justice worked differently when it was personal. He didn't want to let his emotions impend the situation. And he knew he wouldn't be any help to Ladybug.
He'd be no use to her at all.
Chat turned and pole-vaulted away in the other direction, thankful for the darkness that let his suit's complexion blend in so well. More than ever before, he appreciated being invisible.
He bounded across pristine solar panels and spotless garden roofs, trying to ignore the ruptures in the empty vessel of his chest.
But he couldn't ignore them. Not really. Not when the city kept throwing it in his face how brilliantly it was doing compared to him.
The property damage had been repaired, but his insides still felt like shriveled-up rubble. The Seine's lava had disappeared, but his lungs still spat with liquid fire. The countless dead civilians had been revived, but he was still a zombie: with a heart that couldn't beat and a brain that couldn't think and a body that moved on nothing but muscle memory.
Going back home — back to Hawk Moth's house — felt like a sacrilege, and his solar plexus spiked with more anxiety the closer he got. But where else was supposed to go?
What else was he supposed to do?
Plagg said the truth would set him free. But this didn't feel like freedom. This felt like an utterly cruel and pyrrhic victory, and he wondered if the universe just hated him with a vengeance.
It could've been anyone in this entire city and it had to be him.
By the time he reached his house, his sluggish limbs felt like they were wading through mud, and his eyes could barely focus on what was in front of him. And the time bomb inside him was ticking, ticking, ticking.
Chat stumbled through his bedroom window before landing clumsily on his feet, and the momentum sent him careening straight into his nightstand, knocking all of its contents onto the floor with a loud clatter. Not even the supersuit could ward off his impending downfall anymore, and as a result he crashed straight into the carpet below.
"Plagg," he gasped through short pants. He leaned back against the side rail of his bed, darkness flickering in and out of his vision. "Plagg, I can't… I can't—"
The suit disappeared instantaneously and the kwami flitted in front of his face. "Kid?"
"Did y-you know?" He tried to inhale air that he couldn't find. "Did you know he was...?"
"No Adrien, I swear I didn't," Plagg said, his tone unnervingly serious. "I wouldn't have kept something like this from you."
The kwami settled onto his shoulder while Adrien worked on stopping himself from asphyxiating to death via dust particles. But he knew that even if he could find the oxygen, it still wouldn't remove the boiling tar from his lungs. With or without air, they'd burn and burn regardless until there was nothing left.
He was too dizzy to stand back up, his head spiraling like an orbit in space: free from friction and doomed to continue spinning for eternity.
Fear was something he understood well. But this? He understood nothing about what was happening to him right now.
All he knew was his ruined world was sinking into a black hole and he couldn't catch anything, he couldn't save anything, he was going to sink right along with it and he was dying oh my god I'm dying what's happening to me why didn't the ladybugs fix me it hurts so much I'm sorry please don't leave me I can't—
But through all the chaos and terror and shrapnel, his mind kept screaming at him to do something, to find help before it was too late.
He thought about the one girl who said she'd always be there for him.
Coming to a decision, he reached out a shaking hand and felt around on the floor until he found his phone, one of the objects that had fallen off his nightstand. "I-I'm calling Marinette."
"Oh?" Plagg sounded nervous. "And, uh, what if she doesn't pick up?"
Adrien managed to hone in on her profile picture; Marinette's dark hair and wide smile were both very distinguishable, even through the blur. He tapped the call button.
His phone didn't even ring once.
"Hey, it's Marinette! Leave a message. Beeep!"
The device slipped through his fingers and thudded onto the carpet below.
"It's alright, kid." He could faintly hear Plagg purring, but could feel none of the vibrations. "Even if Marinette isn't here, I'm here. And I'm not leaving you, okay?"
But even Plagg's words were slipping away from him now, distorting and fading and leaving behind nothing for him to hold onto.
His capillaries were bursting one by one, ripping apart his nervous system as they did so, and leaving him to fall through an endless void of sensory deprivation. With his skin burning from paresthesia, his vision overrun by static, and his ears brimming with screams, succumbing to the darkness was suddenly far too easy.
As it swallowed him whole and threw him into the inky abyss, Adrien realized there were no galaxies to greet him this time.
This time, he was completely alone.
゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜
Ladybug's mind was tearing itself in half as it attempted to grapple with two conflicting facts.
Learning these things one after the other had imploded her ability to process anything fully, and now she had no clue how to make a single coherent thought.
Fact one: Chat Noir was Adrien.
The boy she'd sat next to at lunch countless times; the boy who'd never worn his heart on his sleeve and yet had always been so ready to save hers; the boy who loved her for exactly who she was, despite knowing nothing about her superhero alter ego.
He was the same boy who'd held her hand through every battle, lifted her up when the pressure tried to drag her under, and radiated all the light she'd ever needed even in the darkest of times.
She'd always known she'd love the person behind the mask no matter what, but now it felt like her heart had swelled up to twice its size.
Though her aforementioned heart was also slowly breaking, because it was difficult to be happy about this revelation when the other one was weighing on her conscience so egregiously.
Fact two: Hawk Moth was Gabriel.
The person who was supposed to be Adrien's father had been responsible for all the havoc in Paris. Every attack he'd sent out into the world had been an attack against his own son. The jewel he'd spent so long hunting down had been right under his roof this entire time.
Adrien had been right under his roof this entire time.
The thought made her sick.
It terrified her that she still couldn't figure out Gabriel's reasons for giving back the miraculouses.
By all accounts, she and Chat should've lost.
She remembered locking eyes with the man, right before he'd disappeared into the police car. She hadn't been able to read his expression, but something about the astute iciness in his eyes had contorted her gut with dread. And even now, several hours later, she had yet to shake the awful feeling away.
Whether he was incarcerated or not, he still knew a lot more than she was comfortable to admit.
How safe were she and Chat? Hawk Moth— Gabriel might've figured out who she was, depending on if he'd gotten a good look at her. And he definitely knew who Chat was. Was he going to tell anyone?
And if he did, what would that mean for them?
It was difficult to think when background noise kept buzzing through her ears, setting her on edge.
For the first time in her life, the red and black costume felt far too tight. The collar around her neck roughly pressed against her jugular and every time she tried to take a deep breath through her chest, the material protested.
At some point, her leg had started excessively bouncing up and down under the table, and her hands were wringing together.
Her skin was itching to be free of this nightmare. But she wasn't done yet. Because that was always the problem when you took on responsibility for others.
Yourself was no longer a priority.
"Ladybug?" a faded voice called to her from behind several layers of sound barriers. "Ladybug, are you alright?"
Ladybug blinked away the haze, and her situational awareness filtered back in. The room around her was dull and gray and blank, empty of furniture save for the table that occupied the middle of it, and the rigid metal chair she was sitting on was hardly designed for comfort.
Lieutenant Raincomprix was sat down on the opposite side of the desk, and his green eyes, despite sporting several eyebags, were staring at her with concern.
She tried her best at a smile. "I'm fine."
He sighed and shifted the papers on the table into a neater pile. "I can see you've had enough. Thank you for your cooperation, but you can go home and rest now. I've gotten everything I need."
His chair squeaked as he pushed it backward and made to stand up, his large physique seeming to fill the room.
Ladybug's heart jumped as she remembered her most important point; the reason she'd even agreed to give a witness statement in the first place.
"Adrien..." Her fists tightened, and she swallowed harshly. "Adrien wasn't part of any of this."
Raincomprix hesitated, slowly turning back around to look at her. "Gabriel Agreste's son?"
"Yes." She took a deep breath. "I swear he never knew who Hawk Moth was. He never knew anything. He wasn't an accomplice."
Aside from the slight press of his lips, his face remained neutral. "I'm assuming you have evidence for this?"
Fear prickled through her chest.
Where the hell was she supposed to find that? There was no point determining whether Adrien's whereabouts had ever been accounted for during an akuma attack, because she already knew she'd find nothing. It was obvious where he'd been.
But what was everyone else going to think?
She hated how Raincomprix was staring at her with so much patience, so much professionalism. As if she were a mere business associate.
And not as if she used to attend his daughter's goddamn birthday parties.
Ladybug could feel her resolve slowly crumbling. "W-Well, no, but..."
The police officer sighed again, and adjusted his hat. "Paris is indebted to you, Ladybug. But unless you have proof, I can't take a statement like that at face value."
Adrien is Chat Noir! How's that for proof?!
She bit her tongue. Quite literally.
"Adrien is innocent," she reiterated, rising from her seat and pressing her palms onto the table. "You shouldn't need any proof. I'm the one telling you, and I've been the one keeping this city from falling apart for months. My word should be all the proof you need!"
She glared at him with as much stoicism as she could muster. And he glared right back with equal levels of intensity.
Then she saw the intensity fall away and something like clarity shifted through his eyes, as if he'd had a sudden epiphany.
Maybe he'd finally seen the anger that was festering within her. The pain. The months of pent-up stress and pressure. Or maybe he'd seen the desperation underneath all that.
Because deep down, Ladybug knew she didn't have any authority at all.
Now that all the magical villainy had been snatched away like a sudden power-cut, her purpose had similarly been pulled out from under her. She was once again completely out of her league; just a little girl playing dress-up, standing before law enforcement with nothing but a mask and a moniker, making demands she wasn't entitled to.
The city no longer needed her, she realized. And her shoulders felt oddly empty without that pressurized but familiar weight.
She'd wanted this, right?
After several torturous moments, Raincomprix nodded curtly, his eyes hardening into fixtures of steel. "Then I'll do everything in my power to find the proof for you."
Ladybug's heartbeat stuttered briefly, and she had to take a step backward to steady herself.
She'd been prepared to stand her ground for a lot longer than that. To assert that Adrien could not, would not be blamed for his father's crimes.
Because it didn't matter whether she was up against villains or police. If she was Adrien's only line of defense, then she would damn well fight until her last breath.
But it had been a lot easier than expected, and now she felt a little ridiculous simmering in all this hostility.
"Oh!" she squeaked, her ability to act professional dropping like a firing cannon. "Th-Thats great! Thank you."
Raincomprix nodded again, steely expression fading back into the familiar kindness she'd always known him to emanate. "For what it's worth, I believe you. Adrien seems like a sweet kid. One who just got saddled with a lot of bad luck."
Ladybug winced at the irony. "Yes, exactly." You don't know the half of it. "And I'm just trying to look out for innocent civilians."
"As am I," he said with a smile. "It's been a pleasure working with you, Ladybug. I hope you enjoy all this newfound free time on your hands."
"I sure will try to!" She backed out of the room, wishing like hell she knew how to formally end this conversation whilst maintaining some semblance of dignity. "Thank you for the, um... the listening."
Giving up, she spun on her heels and walked away at a slightly faster speed than necessary, searching for the exit within the maze that was the police station.
Once she found it, she didn't waste a second before taking off into the crisp night air, yo-yo soaring from her hand. She swung through the city, with a clearer destination in mind than she'd had in months.
Herself might not have been a priority, that was true. But that wasn't to say she didn't have priorities elsewhere.
Her priority was him. He was the one who needed her right now.
Not as Ladybug, or as a partner.
But as a friend.
゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜
Adrien's bedroom window was wide open.
Which was a good thing, because it meant Ladybug could easily slip through it without any pandemonium of trying to wrestle it open. But also, it was mid-November and the chill of the night time temperature was merciless.
She tightly shut it once she was inside and then turned. Though the bedside lamp had been knocked onto the floor, it still radiated enough low toned light through the room's interior for her to see everything.
Specifically Adrien sitting against his bed, face buried in his knees. His kwami was nestled in his blond hair, just a smudge of black amidst the tangles.
At the sight of him, the anxiety twisting within her stomach dimmed down to a quiet simmer, and it finally felt like she could breathe freely after hours of holding her breath.
"Adri..." She rushed toward him and dropped to her knees, hand hesitantly reaching out to touch his arm. "Adrien, I'm back."
He raised his head up to look at her, and her stomach instantly spiked with a second wave of uneasiness.
Something was off about his eyes. They were just as unseeing as a porcelain doll's: glassy and clouded and empty.
It was like he didn't even recognize her.
Swallowing down her dread, she took hold of his shoulders. "I-I'm back, and I've taken care of everything. No one's gonna think this is your fault. And if they do, I'll..."
His faraway expression didn't change. And she realized that none of this mundane stuff was going to get through to him. Not after the night he'd had.
Perhaps she needed to offer him more of a shock factor. But a positive one this time. One that would give him a reason to smile.
"Hey..." Ladybug gently brushed his fringe out of the way. "Adrien, it's me. I'm..." She took a deep, steadying breath. "Tikki, spots off!"
Her spotted spandex washed away, leaving behind her bare face, uneven pigtails, and baggy gray sweater. "I'm Marinette! You see? It's me, Adrien, I'm right here..."
His vacant eyes continued to look straight through her; broken green fires that had long since burnt out.
"Don't bother," Plagg spoke up, cracking open one eye to stare at her. "He's not gonna respond."
Her heart clenched like a fist was tightening around it. "How long has he been like this?"
Instead of replying, the kwami closed his eyes again and curled up tighter in his bed of hair.
Marinette let her hands drop away from Adrien, worrying at her lip as she tried to decide what to do next. In the end, she opted to sit down beside him and lean back against the bed. She felt the weight of Tikki land on her shoulder, her antennae tickling her chin.
She let out another shaky exhale, blinking away the moisture in her eyes that kept threatening to fall.
This was probably the last place she was supposed to be right now.
Her watch told her it was 3:43 in the morning. Now that she knew Adrien had gotten home safely, it made perfect sense to return to hers as well. To reunite with her parents. And Alya, who she'd left high and dry with her hasty departure.
She wondered if her friend had come up with some elaborate cover story to tell her parents. Or if, in a moment of panic, she'd blurted out the truth. And Marinette couldn't find it in herself to be angry if she had.
Either way, after witnessing Paris go up in flames, her parents had to be worried about her. Her phone, which she'd left in her bedroom, was probably bursting with missed calls and text messages. She knew it was selfish of her to keep them in distress like this, especially when it was more than easy for her to travel back home and alleviate all their fears.
But right now, she couldn't fathom the idea of doing anything other than sitting right here next to her partner.
Her parents could wait. Adrien couldn't.
It didn't matter what was expected of her. She knew this was where she needed to be.
Marinette tried to draw her knees up, but something clunky stabbed against the space between her stomach and thigh. Curious, she dug her hand into the front pocket of her jeans and fished out the four-leafed-clover lucky charm.
Brow furrowing, she stared down at the trinket in her hand. She'd forgotten she'd left it in there before transforming. And to find out it had been with her the entire time seemed like a practical joke.
She couldn't remember a time in her life she'd ever felt more unlucky.
Marinette chuckled humorlessly, twisting the beads with her fingers. "Y'know... this was meant to be yours."
She risked a glance over at the boy sitting next to her. To none of her surprise but all of her disappointment, he didn't turn to look at her. Soft moonlight fell over his face as he stared straight out of the window, like a photo frozen in time. Far too lost inside his own mind to realize she'd said anything at all.
"I mean... it is yours." She reached over to take hold of his wrist. With a delicacy akin to handling fragile glass, she deposited the string of beads into his open palm. "I'm sorry I didn't give it to you sooner."
She watched Adrien's fingers twitch. (And the fist around her heart untightened slightly.) Then his hand slowly curled around the lucky charm, until he was gripping it with such vigor his entire fist started shaking.
Marinette understood the feeling. The one that compelled you to hold onto something as tightly as possible, as a way to avoid drowning in your own emotions.
Suddenly possessed by the very same incentive, she reached over and tugged Adrien toward herself. He put up no resistance whatsoever, folding against her in a graceless slump. She closed her arms around his frame and squeezed him as tightly as her non-enhanced strength allowed.
"I'm..." She sniffled, trying to ignore the burn in her nose and the tremor of her lip. "I'm sorry I couldn't do more to protect you."
She didn't want to break down. Not when Adrien needed her to be the strong one. But every second she sat here in the strained silence made it harder and harder to hold herself together. How could she possibly relax when there was a chance she'd never get to tell him how—
Marinette lightly flinched when she felt a hand — Adrien's hand — gently close around her forearm and hold onto it. And she felt the fist around her heart dissolve away like salt in water.
Even if he couldn't talk to her right now, she had to take comfort in the fact that at least he knew she was here. And maybe, just for this moment, that was enough.
It was also enough to quell the adrenaline running her ragged, and Marinette finally realized how exhausted she was. The chaos hadn't left her alone since that first goddamn explosion. And at long last, here was her opportunity to forget about the rest of the world for a while.
Her eyes fell closed and she let herself simply bask in the senses: the faint scent of Adrien's shampoo wafting up her nose every time she inhaled; the warmth of his body heat soaking through her sweater; the feel of his chest rising and falling beneath her arm.
Then the door to Adrien's bedroom banged open, and all those tranquil senses immediately snapped away. Heart exploding in her chest, she whipped her head around to face the intruder.
Nathalie Sancoeur, Gabriel's assistant, panted through heavy breaths — having burst in with such urgency, it was as if she'd surmised that something may be wrong. And when her eyes fell over the two teens, they widened in shock.
Marinette froze, brain scrambling to come up with a legitimate excuse on the fly. One that could explain why she was here in the Agreste mansion, why her arms were wrapped around a catatonic Adrien, and why two little divine entities were accompanying them.
Tikki and Plagg hadn't even bothered to hide. Perhaps they knew the jig was up just as much as she did.
All possible excuses wilted in her throat, leaving her with only one option left.
"We've..." Marinette choked on a sob, the tears she'd tried so hard to hold back finally spilling down her face in warm rivulets. "We've just defeated Hawk Moth."
Nathalie's eyes managed to widen even more than they already had.
