Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Walking along the gloomy sidewalks in Paris wasn’t nearly as exciting as American television had made it seem.

In the movies, a dreary walk in Paris would set the scene for two lovers reuniting and proclaiming their love to each other, or a special first kiss that left viewers clutching at their hearts. There was this idea that love could survive the darkest moments, that a kiss in the rain meant that you were locked in. It created images of passion and adoration that would leave any girl weak in the knees. But as Marinette’s fingers traced the stone wall beside her, she wished nothing more for the dark clouds looming above to disappear in an instant.

She had an umbrella.

‘Adriens umbrella’ she gloomily thought to herself.

It was painfully average. A normal black umbrella of decent quality. She had seen a similar one at the gas station. It made her chest hurt to think that the item that had sparked such feelings in her was only 8.99. It shouldn’t matter now though.

As she walked the steps toward the path of Adrien's house, she had to remind herself that it was just a stupid umbrella. A meaningless piece of plastic created for convenience.

She supposed she was a bit of an umbrella as well. Darn.

When Adrien had approached her two weeks prior, she almost couldn’t stop the blush rising on her face. He had been at the school for six months at that point. Marinette could barely contain herself when he approached her on her way off to lunch break. She was packing her bag up rather slowly, lagging behind the rest of her class, which was entirely the fault of Hawkmoth for keeping her awake last night with a towering Akuma, when he called out her name.

“Marinette!”

If she hadn’t been so tired, she's sure she would've caught on fire. She turned and tried to swallow her stutter. “Hey Adrien, what's up?”

He smiled at her, and she allowed a small amount of warmth to fill her heart. After month three of endless pining with no improvement she decided to try a new approach, much at Tikki’s discretion. Clearly trying to catch him one on one wasn’t working, every time something would happen and she would be caught back at square one. The universe was clearly against the idea of Adrien hanging with Marinette and deeply falling in love with her. So she pivoted. She could do exposure therapy. If she was around him in a more casual setting, with more people, it was much easier to not melt into a puddle. So, with Alya’s help, Adrien and she became a part of the same friend group. She, Adrien, Nino, and Alya began hanging out as often as they could, making Marinette slowly get over her anxiety with the boy, making it possible to have real conversations, with a totally normal amount of stuttering on Marinette's side. She supposed at the very least they were friends. Even if she desperately wished things were different, she could swallow her crush and talk to him like a semi-normal person.

His cheeks tinged with a small blush.“Can I ask you a question, I know it's a little weird, but I didn’t know who else to ask.”

Marinette smiled and nodded, “Of course Adrien, you can always ask me questions.”

He looked down at his feet as Marinette zipped her bag. “What are girls expecting for the first date?”

If Marinette had water in her mouth she was sure it have been shot out of her mouth. A million thoughts rushed through her head like a tidal wave of emotion. Adrien had a date.

Oh

Adrien, her crush, wanted her advice on how to wine and dine a girl.

It was a humiliating feeling. A feeling of utter failure. His asking her this surely meant that he saw her as a friend. Only a friend.

She tried to not let it overwhelm her, though it was difficult. It took everything out of her to keep a straight face. “You’re g-going on a date?”

A small smile fell on his features, “Yeah, with Kagami.”

Marinette knew she would be crying about it later, but Adrien’s nervous smile made her know that she should give him the best advice ever because there was no way she would ever let that smile fall off his face.

And apparently, the advice she gave was stellar because a week later they were dating.

It had broken her into jagged disgusting pieces. But Adrien’s bright smile led her to not regret her actions. Just knowing that he was happy was almost enough to decimate her depressed feelings. Almost. Being around him hurt her, but if she wasn’t around him, then she wouldn’t be able to be a good friend. So life continued.

Which led Marinette’s shoes sloshing towards the front gate of the Agreste house. Today was Kagami’s birthday. Mr. Agreste had been very generous, allowing his son's girlfriend's birthday party to be put up at the large mansion. She was happy to attend, even if it killed her. Kagami was an amazing friend, and Marinette wouldn’t allow her misplaced feelings to get in the way of celebrating her.

Walking through the gate with her gift in hand, Marinette closed her umbrella and made a small nod at the man who greeted her at the door. She hoped she got no water on her dress, it was one of her favorites. A little black dress that she had made that sported a sweetheart neckline and lace trim.

“Name?”

“Marinette.” She waited a moment for the man to check her name but he just stared at her for a moment.

“Last name?”

Her face turned bright red. “D-Dupain-Cheng.”

He looked at his tablet and opened the door for her, grabbing her umbrella as she passed through the doors to see the converted Agreste foyer. The room, which was quite dull and modern before, now sprouted colorful streamers draped across the stairs and large balloons lining the walkway. The usually empty room was full of people dressed in bright dresses and music and laughter. As she walked in, she noted that a large majority of her class was there, which surprised her because Kagami didn't go to Collège Françoise Dupont. She knew Alya and Nino were invited, but she had shrugged it off, explaining it as Kagami meeting them a few times with her and Adrien. It wasn’t nearly as surprising as the number of reporters there. The host was nowhere to be found.

That along with the strange feeling she had been harboring all day made her feel uneasy.

She moved through a large amount of partygoers with relative swiftness to find the gift table where she promptly set her gift down and surveyed the area. The place was packed and the party had officially begun less than twenty minutes prior. It was odd.

She didn't mean it in the sense that Kagami didn’t have this many friends, but the quiet reserved girl had confided in Marinette about her social struggles. It looked more like one of Gabriel’s product launches, with so many people that they acted as a wall from Marinette's vantage point.

“Hey, Marinette!” Alya broke through the crowd in front of her. “Isn’t this party killer!”

Marinette smiled cautiously, “It’s definitely something.” Alya walked toward her.

“I never really fancied Kagami as a big party kinda person.”

Marinette looked towards the top of the stairs as motion caught her eye, it was Kagami in a beautiful dress beginning her way down, with Adrien holding her hand beside her. As they made it down the stairs, people began clapping. While Adrien smiled with his practiced expression, Kagami looked at her feet. Her face was emotionless.

“Yeah, me neither.”

As Kagami made her way to the floor, Marinette made her way to the bottom of the stairs. Many people told her a happy birthday as she passed by, but none of them really stopped to say any more than that. When Kagami saw Marinette her face brightened. When they reached each other they fell into a hug.

“Happy birthday to the most awesome girl I know!” Marinette squealed.

A small smile graced her lips. “Thank you Marinette, your words are very kind.”

Marinette looked around, “This is really quite some party.”

Kagami blushed and looked down at her feet. “Truthfully, I didn’t want to have a big party, but my mother insisted.” Marinette took a step closer to hear her over the growing noise of the party. “She said it would be a good way to publicly announce my relationship with Adrien.” She gestured to the boy next to her who Marinette had failed to see. Marinette noted how they looked at each other and decided that she would be sad about it later instead of now. Instead, she let a small sympathetic grim wash over her face.

“Well, it’s still a nice party.”

Kagami’s shoulders released a little tension. “Well, as long as I can see my friends, it will have been a successful party for me.” Marinette opened her mouth to respond but was cut off by Kagami’s fencing instructor.

“Kagami!”

Kagami looked over at the man and sighed, “I have to go, please enjoy the buffet table.”

Marinette waved at her and Adrien as they attempted to make it through the large mass of people. Adrien had been particularly silent during the interaction and it made her head spin. She went to go walk back to Alya when she noticed Chloe coming right in her direction. She looked Furious.

Knowing Chloe, she was probably furious at Marinette for some stupid made-up reason.

‘Hell no. not today, and not right now’ Marinette thought as she walked and began looking for an escape around her. She saw a hole in the masses open to her right, turning in just as she heard a shrill, “Dupain- Cheng!”

She kept moving until she broke out of the people, finding herself facing a wall.

“Where are you, baker girl?”

Marinette noted how much closer Chloe sounded than before. Marinette quickly began moving down the wall until she saw a door. There were fewer people than where she was previously in the area the door was, meaning it wasn’t an off-limits area.

“Come on, I just want to talk!”

Marinette doubted that. She pulled herself into the room with very little thought, seeking refuge in how much quieter this room was than the large entryway she was in earlier.

Tikki flew out of her purse, “Well I would call that a crisis averted!”

Marinette chucked, “Hopefully, let's just hope no one saw us enter here.”

She took a second to observe where she was. The whole room was white, with a large standing desk in the center. A large painting of Adrien's mother hung on the wall facing her. It was breathtaking.

“What a pretty painting!” Tikki flew toward it.

Marinette scrambled after her, “Yes it's very pretty, but let's not touch it. It probably costs more than the bakery.” Tikki let out a chuckle before looking at the painting, focusing on the brush strokes and movement up close. As she flew up and down the painting, she halted towards the center. Tikki squinted her eyes and moved impossibly closer. “What is it Tiki?”

Tikki flew to Marinette’s side, “There are cutouts in the painting.”

“What? Where?” Marinette moved her head closer, failing to see what the Kwami was talking about. “It looks normal to me.”

Tikki rapidly shook her head. “No, they're right here!” She flew back at the painting and pointed at an area near the figure's hand. “See!”

“Nope, and don’t touch the painting Tikki!”

Tikki usually would’ve stopped there, but her intuition told her that she needed to reach out, and make contact.

As she did, the cutouts appeared clearly to Marinette as they pressed deeply into the painting. Slowly around her feet, she began to feel herself sinking down into a small glass elevator.

“Marinette!” Tikki flew over to her, but the tube was too quick, and Marinette was moved down before she could even realize she was moving.

She looked around in shock as she moved down. She saw a beautiful greenery space lit by harsh fluorescent lights, all surrounding a cylindrical item. It was, strange. As she made it to the bottom of the elevator, she stepped out. The scene in front of her was something out of a fever dream.

She walked in a daze towards the centerpiece. How was all of this hidden under the Agreste Mansion? She looked at the silver cylinder in front of her. As she got closer the faint buzzing of electricity hit her ears.

What is this place?

She hovered her hand over the object, but before she could make contact, her instincts told her to hide. She quickly hid behind a bush to her right. Her intuition was right. Not a second after she ducked away someone entered from a side room. While Marinette couldn’t see what was happening without compromising her position, she tried to listen the best she could.

“This party was my most genius creation.” Well, that was definitely Gabriel's voice. “You should see it, Emilie. Our perfect creation seems to get better every day.”

‘Oh’ thought Marinette. Was this some sort of memorial? For Adrien’s mother? She was under the impression that Emilie was missing, not dead.

Gabriel continued. “Once, I get my wish youll be able to see all the hard work I've done, I promise you my love that it will not disappoint.”

Marinette froze.

“Paris won’t need heroes anymore, because everything will be perfect, and we can be a family. Ladybug will make a mistake sooner or later and when she does, I will use it to get everything we ever wanted.”

This couldn’t be real. Adrien’s dad, the famous designer, was talking as if he was the supervillain who had been tormenting her for months. The man who kept her awake at night. A man who desperately wanted a pair of earrings Marinette had on.

It was comical really. There was no trap set, no plan to lure Ladybug in. She had foolishly fallen into the lion's den without even knowing she was in the savannah.

She carefully moved leaves out of her view, to reveal what she had suspected.

It was Hawk moth.

“Whose there?”

Shit.

He must have heard the leaves rustling around her. There was no way this was real.

‘Please Tikki, run away, get as far away as possible.’

No sooner could she pray that she was roughly grabbed by the neck and hoisted into the air.

“Who are you!”

Up close Marinette could see the pure hatred on the man's face through his mask. There was no doubt in her mind that she needed to play her innocent student card.

“I- I’m so sorry! I won’t tell anyone. I swear on my life, I won’t tell a soul I-”

Hawkmoth, Gabriel, smacked her across the face.

“How did you get down here!”

Marinette felt her face get wet and her nose began to run. “I-it was an a-accident!” her eyes darted around. “I was pushed in there by a g-girl named Chloe and- and I tripped into the painting and I got sent down here! I d-don’t know what's going on, I swear I won’t tell Adrien-”

Another harsh slap. His eyes darkened.

“I run a tight ship here.” He began tightening his grip on her throat. “I cannot deal with this so-called accident.”

She brought her hands up to swat at his arms, but he persisted. Suddenly, her Ladybug instincts kicked in, and she swung her lifted legs at him. He tumbled backward and released his grip, causing Marinette to break free and fall into a heap. She didn’t stay there for long though, as Hawkmoth ran at her, forcing her to dodge around him and rise to her feet. She used the cylinder to rise to her feet quickly, but as she rose, it was no longer the clean piece of technology she had seen before.

It was a coffin.

Emilie Agreste.

She was lifeless.

Marinette threw her hands over her mouth in shock. She had a faint idea of what he wanted to use that wish for. Her head hit the wall first, spreading a wave of nausea through her body. To her surprise, Hawkmoth, Gabriel, rose to his feet grabbing her arm and launching her into the wall. She masked her pain as well as she could rolling her body to dodge another attack from the villain. Her arm was on fire.

He launched into another round of attack, without the use of an Akuma he only had the enhanced fighting abilities gifted to him by his jewelry. Luckily for Marinette, the miraculous had rubbed off on her, allowing her to dodge while her mind still reeled.

“Don’t you see?” He took a step back taking a breath, “My wish will make a better world, a better world for your friend.” He took a step forward.

“For my son.”

She tried to stand tall, putting on a brave face as she tried to ignore the throbbing in her ears. “Would you’re son really want it to happen like this?” She took a staggering step forward. “The cost of all of this, the lives you’ve ruined, what all because you couldn’t get therapy!”

He launched his cane at her, slamming into the wall right beside her head, causing a sizeable dent. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He took a large step forward, calling his cane back into his hand, “You’re a stupid kid, kids don’t know anything.”

His words struck something in Marinette. She wished she could’ve had more self-control.

“I know enough to know Adrien wouldn’t want this!”

That was all it took him to launch into another round of relentless attacks. “The only person who knows what my son needs is me!” He swiftly landed a punch to her face, a hard one carrying all the force of a man using a miraculous could. Without her magic, it was hard to hide how the pain burned into her skin, but she tried. She wished nothing more than to transform and beat him on his level, but she knew that in her weakened state, there was no way she would be able to win. The only way she could even get close to beating him would be if she had time to heal.

“I’m Sorry! Okay! I won’t say a word!” She stuttered it out, shifting her tactics. “You’re right, I’m a dumb kid, I don’t know what Adrien needs, all I know is there is nothing I can do to change you’re mind or stop you, so please,” She risked a glance at his eyes, “I won’t say anything!” An unreadably dark look overtook his features, as he suddenly rushed forward aiming his cane at her midsection, forcing her to shift her weight to avoid being hit. While unsteady, he forced a strong kick to her back, forcing her onto the ground.

“You won’t say a word, because you won’t be able to speak!”

He attempted to land a kick against her face, but she rolled to her side. Her abdomen exploded in pain as he redirected his kick. She tried to move, but his relentless kicks to her stomach forced her to stay still and endure it. She was on the ground, kick after kick after kick after kick until the tears and sniffles overtook her senses and she allowed him to hit her, giving up
He was talking but Marinette couldn’t hear it anymore. She felt the kicks lessen, but a new stronger force hit her as he changed to using his cane to beat her. She used all her force to move her head to see him.

His eyes were bloodshot and his movements were sloppy.

He was a monster.

They made eye contact, and she smiled. If this was the last time he ever saw her face she wanted to make it memorable. She moved to talk, blood pooling out of her mouth, forcing her to spit onto the floor before speaking.

“How would your son feel k-knowing you were beating his best friend to death underneath his house right-”

He slammed his cane down quickly, hitting her in the head and shutting her up. A pool of blood slowly spilled out of a large gash on the top of her scalp.

He stared at it, mesmerized by how the crimson liquid pooled out as the color drained from the young girl.

He paused, his heavy breaths filling the room. He fell to the floor and stared at the girl.

He looked down at his shoes, now stained with the blood of, well, whoever this was. He took a real moment to observe before he recognized her. In the heat of their confrontation, he hadn’t recognized her as more than someone in Adrien’s class, but here it was clear to see. It was Adrien’s designer friend. The one who won that stupid contest that his company had hosted.

Shit.

He just killed one of his son’s best friends.

He heard the elevator activate and looked to see Natalie making her way down into the lair. Her face morphed into one of fear when she saw the scene in front of her.

“Gabriel?”

As she saw the true nature of the situation, she ran forward crouching down to examine the mangled limbs that were once a teenage girl.

She looked up at his shocked face with horror in her eyes.

“What have you done?”

___

Alya watched as Adrien and Kagami held hands while walking around and mingling. They made a cute couple, much to her displeasure. She really wanted Marinette and Adrien to end up together, and she thought that the two had made amazing strides. Though she knew Marinette valued his happiness before she even thought about valuing her own.

Speaking of Marinette, where was that little blue bundle of sadness? Had she really only stepped in to say hi and dipped? Suddenly someone in a yellow dress rushed past her yelling on the phone.

“I thought your dad was a police officer! How are you unable to locate one poor girl!”

Ah that explained it, she must be hiding from Chloe. She grabbed her phone and went to contacts. She wanted to know all about this.

___

“She’s still breathing!”

Gabriel now sat on the floor, staying out of the way as Natalie prodded what he had presumed was a corpse only seconds before. He didn’t know how this had happened. He wasn’t planning on doing real damage, just scaring her into silence. But then she mentioned Adrien and… Well after that he remembers very little. Suddenly a loud ring emerged from the cross-body purse the teen wore.

Gabriel and Natalie made eye contact as the world stilled.

They stared at each other speechless about what to do until the ringing ceased. They both let out a breath until the ringing began again.

This time Natalie leaned down and opened the purse to see that the teen's phone was getting a call. She looked at Gabriel for a moment before canceling the call and smashing the phone into the ground and breaking it in two.

She took in a breath.

“We’ll drop her in an ally.”

Gabriel looked up in shock. “Wha-”

“She’ll either die there or she’ll be found but too scared to talk. We’ll leave a note on her to let her know we’ll hurt her family or something and-”

“No!” Gabriel’s own voice surprised him. “We can’t- we just can’t, I don’t-” he looked up at her with tears in his eyes. “I can’t-”

“You have made the biggest mistake you could’ve. You either let me fix it or you go to jail.”

Gabriel sighed and looked down at the girl. The girl who was friends with his son. The girl who had simply… made a mistake. He hardened his stare and looked at his accomplice.

“Where do you suggest we leave her?”

Chapter Text

at her phone. It was well past nine now, and people were beginning to leave the party. She didn’t know most of the people here, but those she did know came up to her before leaving. So where was Marinette?

Marinette wouldn’t leave without talking to her. Kagami knew that. As she looked around the people there, she noticed Alya speaking to Adrien close by.

“Alya,” She approached, “Have you seen Marinette?”

Alya let a small smile grace her lips and a chuckle fell out. “I haven’t seen her since like six!” She threw her hands in the air dramatically, “We were supposed to hang out after this but she's dodging my calls.”

Adrien scrunched his face up across from Alya. “It’s not really like Marinette to leave without saying goodbye.”

Kagami looked down in thought. So it seems Adrien had caught on too. Something was off.

“Yeah it isn’t, but I heard Chloe looking around for her, I wouldn’t be surprised if she ran out trying to escape.” Alya shrugged like it was nothing. Kagami supposed Marinette was slightly flaky, but it still made her concerned.

“Then why isn’t she picking up her phone?” Kagami asked warrily.

“It probably died, she never knows how to keep that thing charged.” She looked at Kagami with a kind look. “She probably didn’t mean anything by it, you know how she gets when it comes to Chloe.”

Adrien let out a sigh. “I guess you do make a fair point,” He pulled out his phone, “I’ll shoot her a text though, just in case.”

Alya nodded, but she didn’t look that worried. “If she joins me later, I’ll let you guys know, but it’s probably not that serious.”

___

It turned out to be, in fact, very serious. Because Marinette never made it home.

Alya had been sitting in her bedroom, checking her outfit for school in the mirror the morning after the party when her phone rang. It was Sabine.

She picked it up with a confused face. “Hello?”

A relieved gasp could be heard on the other line. “Alya! Thank goodness you answered, We can’t find Marinette!”

The world became impossibly still and silent.

“What?”

Sabine continued, “She never came home last night! We thought she was with you and were giving her the benefit of the doubt, but she didn’t come down for breakfast.” She heard a deeper sigh, one that sounded like Tom's.

The man spoke up. “I know you two are very close, do you have any idea where she is?”

Alya stared at the phone in her hands. This didn’t make sense. Marinette was flaky, sure, but she always made it home. She could skip out on plans all she wanted, but Alya always knew where to find her. This was serious.

“Alya?”

She blinked. Right, this was a real conversation. “I-I” She paused. “We were supposed to hang out, but I thought she just decided to go home instead. She wasn’t- she wasn’t answering her phone.”

It was quiet on the other line for a moment. “We’ve been trying to reach her all morning.” Sabine choked out. Alya could hear soft sobs forming. “She, always answers her phone…”

Alya grabbed her bag with purpose and began walking out of her room. “I’ll ask around at school, but I don’t know where she even would be. I thought she had just gone home.”

Sabine tried to say something but it came out unintelligible, Tom spoke up, “We would really appreciate that Alya if she isn’t home by after school, we’re filing a report.”

Alya nodded, “That sounds like a good plan.”

They hung up and Alya rushed to school. Marinette was sporadic, but she was never the type to leave without a good reason. Even when she was being secretive and sneaking away, she would at least give a reason as to why she was going.

But it was just silence.

Approaching the school, she waited by the stairs for any sign of Marinette. She saw many people walk past her, rushing as the warning bell rang aloud, but no Marinette.

When she entered the class, she found it all strikingly normal. Rose and Julika were watching videos on the taller girl's phone. Kim was making a bet with Alix about something that Alya would've been interested in if her world wasn’t crumbling. Nino was showing Adrien music.

On any other day, these things would be painfully boring, but today it all just made her anxiety spike.

She turned to Nino, “Have you seen Marinette?”

“Nope.” He said simply, eyes never leaving his phone. “She’s probably just late again like usual.”

Adrien nodded slightly before looking up at Alya, seeing her pale face and disheveled appearance reminded him of the conversation they had had yesterday before Alya left the party. Although, then, she didn’t really pay Marinette's absence much mind.

“Is everything okay Alya?” Adrien asked.

Alya looked like she was going to respond, but was interrupted by the bell signifying the start of the school day. She gave him a look, one that said ‘nothings okay and we’ll talk later.’

___

“So she never came home last night?”

Alya shook her head, the fork in her hand swirling around her mashed potatoes. “And her phone is going straight to voicemail.”

Nino looked at a loss for words. “I-I… wow.”

Alya nodded, “Her parents are going to contact the police, They're worried she might've gotten lost on the way home or something.”

“Lost for more than twelve hours?” Adrien crossed his arms with a skeptical look on his face, “Marinette has been to my house before, I don’t understand how she could’ve gotten lost on her way home.”

Alya shut her eyes for a moment before taking in a shaky breath. “Me neither, but I suppose, I’m just trying to be optimistic.” She opened her eyes. “Does your house have cameras or something?”

Adrien faltered as she and Nino looked at him with hope. “I don’t know to be honest, but the place was full of security, someone surely noticed her if she left so early in the evening, I can ask my father?”

Relief crashed into Alya like a tidal wave, “Would you really? That would be great.”

Adrien nodded and pulled out his phone. Every character he typed his anxiety grew. This was weird.

___

Marinette knew her way around Paris. She helped her parents with deliveries quite often, and with how popular the bakery was, she had almost the whole city memorized.

But as she opened her eyes to the dimly lit spinning alleyway, she couldn’t begin to tell you where she was. There was a large dumpster right next to her, reflecting the still gloomy sky in a way that made her want to shut her eyes and go back to sleep.

‘No’ she thought desperately, ‘you need to move.’

Her head was pounding as waves of nausea overtook her. Her stomach was screaming, and one of her legs felt like it was twisted the wrong way. That coupled with the fact she couldn’t open her left eye made it clear she probably looked about as bad as she felt.

She tried to sit up, much at her own body's protest and found she simply couldn’t do it. So instead she settled for using one of her arms, as the other one seemed broken, to push herself forward. She couldn’t see well, but she could tell there was a large light source ahead of her, surely the entrance to the alleyway. Or she was dying and that was the light everyone saw. But damn if she wasn’t going to try to get help.

As she dragged her own limp body, every nerve erupted in a white-hot fire that forced her to shut her eyes if she wanted to continue. In all her pain it was difficult for her to remember much of anything. How she had gotten here was a mystery, how she had ended up like this too.

She didn’t know much of anything, all she knew was she needed to find Tikki. At some point, her arm gave out, but she didn’t dare open her eyes. She knew if any more light seeped through, she would hurl. Suddenly the noises of wherever she was became much louder. She heard cars zooming past and people walking. Surely someone would see her if she let herself rest now.

She risked a glance to the end of the alleyway and found she was only a couple of feet away. She just needed to get people's attention. With squinted eyes, she swiveled her head. There was an empty can of something next to her. As she looked at it, it almost turned red as if she had found the right object. With the little coordination she had left, she grabbed the can next to her with a shaky hand and pushed it with as much force as she could, hoping it would roll onto the sidewalk alerting people of where she was.

With one last push, she allowed her body to relax, as her head's sharp throbbing overtook her and she once again passed out
___

Fu had the Flu. It was funny almost.

The man had run from everything he had known many years ago, in the hope of protecting the miraculous. He traveled all across the globe in hopes of finding a safe place to guard them. But now he had the flu, and he felt entirely wiped out. As it turned out, being a guardian didn’t mean he was impervious to disease.

He lay on the small futon in his little apartment, a damp rag on his head placed there by Wayzz. The kwami in question had kept him sane as he sat alone on day ten of his illness. He felt significantly better than he had a few days prior, but still not at his full energy. He needed to get better soon. He had to cancel so many appointments all because of a little bug.

Speaking of a little bug, Tikki suddenly flew through the wall in front of him, with a speed he found to be shocking.

“Tikki?” He slowly sat up and looked at Wayzz. “Where is Marinette?”

If the terrified look on her face was anything to go off of, he needed to get over this flu immediately.

___

A Kawami can always find the jewelry they're tied to.

When Tikki realized that Marinette was going into some sort of secret lair, she knew she needed to get help. She tried to find Plagg, as she knew his holder, but he was hidden from the party’s view, and she wasn’t going to risk exposing herself. In her panic, she decided to go back to the room where it happened, the one with the painting. She silently phased into the elevator only to see something she immediately regretted. She had searched for Plagg for only a few minutes but in that time Hawkmoth, Gabriel she could assume, had brutalized the girl leaving her a heap of bloody limbs.

Her phone lay smashed in front of her as a girl she recognized as Natalie, Adrien's personal assistant, stood over her.

“I’ll make a sentimonster, one that can teleport, and send her far away.”

Tikki couldn’t see Hawkmoth’s face, but she knew that he must’ve looked irate with how he sounded. “No, we are not using Duusu. It's too dangerous.”

Natalie sighed. “What other choice do we have Gabriel? You can’t transform and take her there, it’ll be too easy to recognize you.”

He was silent.

“Gabriel, this is the worst thing you could’ve done. If we let her stay like this here, people will surely find her, if not for the fact the location of her phone will say she's here. If you don’t let me deal with this, then you will never get your wish.”

Tikki glanced down at Marinette's ears from her hiding spot. It seemed they hadn’t realized the girl they had brutalized was Ladybug. It made her sick. Hawkmoth had done all of this without knowing she held a miraculous, he did it because he could.

Tikki watched as Natalie began her transformation, using the distraction she swooped down to the discarded phone and grabbed the sim card. She didn’t know what it was that was so important to Marinette, but she knew that it held information, Tikki didn’t want Marinette to lose her important Hawkmoth research. If he had found what she had in her phone it would be clear she was Ladybug, and protecting her identity seemed to be of the utmost priority.

Tikki flew back up, through the ceiling, and rushed to the Dupain-Cheng bakery. She needed to find Marinette, and she could if she still had her earrings on. But she would need energy, and she would surely need Fu.

___

The trip to the town over had been dreadfully long. In Fu’s state, he couldn’t transform to travel faster, so he simply took the train to get to Toulouse. Tikki had been able to point out on a map where she believed Marinette to be, with little complication.

Tikki rested in the front pocket of Fu’s shirt. This was all her fault. If she hadn’t touched the painting like Marinette had said, her holder would never have been injured.

Stupid lucky instincts.

The worst thing is that they were right, those stupid instincts led them right to Hawkmoth.

As they entered the town, Tikki suddenly became alert. The train slowed to a stop and Fu carefully got up and exited with the masses. The ride had been incredibly long, spanning hours. If Tikki wasn’t so worried about Marinette, she never would’ve asked Fu for help in the state he was in.

The small man began walking down the platform, whispering secretly into his pocket, “Where too now Tikki?”

The red bug paused her thoughts and went to focus on her holder's location. “Turn right.”

Fu followed her guidance efficiently and within the hour they had arrived, he stood in front of a hulking building.

The Centre hospitalier universitaire de Toulouse.

Fu looked down at Tikki and sighed, before walking in the automatic doors.

___

The police swarmed the Dupain-Cheng house for hours after their call.

They searched her room to see if she had tried to run away, but with all the half-baked designs sitting on her desk, they ruled it out.

They had visited the Agreste manor too, where one security guard said he remembered seeing Marinette leave the party around seven, but there was no security footage to back it up.

But with no other information, they had no choice but to quantify this as a missing person’s case.

“I’m sorry Sabine, we will try to find your daughter.”

The small woman didn't look up from her hands as she sat. She nodded slowly. “Thanks.”

The officers who spoke looked at his partner who had a sad look on his face. “In the meantime, please send photos of her to this,” he began writing on his pad of paper, “email address, and we’ll get to making a missing person poster.”

She didn’t answer but grabbed the paper from the officer and pulled out her phone.

The officers left after that, leaving poor Sabine to sit in her own thoughts, constantly reminded of her daughter's disappearance as she searched her phone for a recent picture.

___

Fu sat in the waiting room for a long time.

It seemed nobody knew who Marinette was, meaning she had yet to be identified, but he had heard rumblings from nurses in passing about an ICU patient who had been brought in earlier in the day. A teen girl who had been beaten to a pulp.

He figured that had to be her, but there was nothing he could do. He was too sick to be stealthy, so he looked down at Tikki. “Go, find her.”

Tikki looked up at him from his pocket. “Are you sure?”

He coughed slightly under his mask. “Me and Wayzz will be okay, go give Marinette some ladybug luck!”

Tikki looked unsure but quickly rushed out so as to not be seen by the other people in the waiting room.

When Tikki got to the room she sensed her holder in, she had to compose herself.

The room was devoid of color, much different than the homey room at Marinette's house. There were no nurses around, so Tikki supposed she could openly stare at what she saw.

Marinette's right leg was held up in a cast, and her arms were bandaged tightly. There were bandages applied variously around her face, with a large neck cast keeping her head up. Tikki couldn’t observe more than that without seeing what was under the blankets that the feeble girls form, but one look at her chart made Tikki see red.

Marinette's right lung had collapsed, and many of her ribs had been shattered. Her head was split open, and one of her arms had been broken. Her leg was elevated at the end of the bed in a large cast. She needed emergency surgery to stop the bleeding in her brain, along with an operation for her collapsed lung. She had been admitted since late morning, and it was well past 4 in the morning now, it was clear that the surgeries had taken a very long time. Her chart had more on it, giving Tikki a real reason to destroy Gabriel Agreste.

Tikki approached her, looking at the tube down her throat helping her breathe. This was her fault. At the very least she could try to fix it.

She looked around carefully in the room. She had noted she had maybe ten-ish minutes to do whatever she was going to do as the nurses said they'd check up on her at a certain time on her chart.

So she pushed through her guilt and forced a transformation on Marinette, where she could hopefully attempt to heal some of the internal damage that Hawkmoth had caused.

Chapter Text

Adrien didn’t know what to do or what was going on. He had searched extensively through the night to find Marinette but had been entirely unsuccessful.

As he released his transformation in his room, Plagg flew out and quietly began nibbling on some cheese.

Adrien sighed. “Hurry up Plagg, we need to go back out soon.”

Plagg made an annoyed noise and looked at his holder. “If we go out again, you won't sleep, and if you don’t sleep you’ll never find that girl.”

“Or we go out and find her and I can sleep after.” Adrien rolled his eyes as he dropped onto his couch.

“If she ran away, she’s probably long out of Paris-”

“She didn’t run away, Marinette wouldn’t do that!” Adrien stood up with a defensive look on his face. A sudden knock at the door caused Plagg to hide under the couch.

“Adrien?” His father said beyond the door. “Are you okay? I heard shouting.”

The blond sighed and walked over to the door. “Sorry, I was on the phone.” he pretended to hang up, “I’ll talk to you later, uh, Kim.” He opened the door to see his father standing there with a grim look on his face. “So, what's up?”

Gabriel sighed and entered his room slowly. “Were you talking about your friend?” He looked at his son sadly. “The designer?”

Adrien looked at his feet. “Yeah, I’m just worried about her. She would never disappear without a reason.”

A hand fell on the blond's shoulder in an attempt at comfort. “I’m sure everything will turn out fine, maybe she had a good reason and was scared to tell you.” Adrien stayed silent at this, he knew his father was just trying to make him feel better, but he also knew his father was flat-out wrong. Marinette loved her friends and family, and would never leave them if she had the choice. “Regardless, the police are on the case. I’m sure everything will be okay Adrien.”

Adrien nodded his head, realizing that his face was wet. His father grabbed him into a hug. “You’re probably right father.”

“I’m sorry.”

Adrien didn’t know what he was apologizing for, but he paid it no mind. Plagg was right, in this state, he was not fit at all to go out searching. Suddenly his bed looked incredibly comfortable, so when his father left, he laid down and fell into a restless sleep.

___

“So you’re a friend of her mother?” The nurse said inquisitively, eyeing the short man up and down.

It had been five days since Marinette had been admitted. During that time, Fu became healthier and rented a room at a nearby motel. He checked the hospital every day in hopes of any progress, but generally, they had no information on the, as they called her, mystery girl. Fu was lucky when a nurse took pity on him.

Fu let out a small smile, “Yes, I was in town and I heard about an unidentified girl in the paper. My brother’s daughter went missing recently, and…” he looked down “I just want to see if it's her.”

The nurse sighed. “Well, Since it's visitor's hours and she is stable, I suppose there's no harm.” She motioned for Fu to follow her, “Don’t tell my supervisor, technically she shouldn’t have visitors until next week, but her condition greatly improved in the past few days.” She opened the door to the room, allowing Fu to walk in before her, “Truly I just want to see this poor girl get home, no one deserves what happened to her.”

Fu nodded, “It's a great service this hospital has a nurse as kind as you.”

She blushed as Fu took a look at the girl in front of him. She looked weak and utterly feeble. She had a large mask over her face assisting her in breathing, and numerous bandages littered about her body. He couldn’t believe the strong girl he once saw saving Paris was now confined to a hospital bed.

“So is this the girl you know?”

Fu looked at Marinette’s twin pigtails, caked in dirt and blood as she lay quietly in her bed.

“I can’t tell, may I have a moment?”

___

Alya didn’t go to school the day after. She was far too scared of what people were saying about her now-missing best friend. When the news aired her missing persons poster the group chat erupted in chatter. Most people were scared, terrified that she had never been home. Worried they were some sort of teen snatcher running through Paris. A few people had said that Marinette was strong and that there was no reason people should be so worried.

Chloe had been the one to suggest she ran away, but the whole class shut her down quickly.

As she woke up the next morning, her eyes puffy from tears, she knew there was no way she could go to school.

She just couldn’t stop thinking about it. Marinette, while officially declared missing the day after the party, had definitely been gone since Alya lost sight of her at Kagami’s. Alya should’ve looked for her, instead of just brushing her absence aside like an airhead.

As she sit quietly in her bed, she looked at the clock. The school was surely out now, but there was still no update. She tried to convince herself no news was good news, but she knew she was only saying that out of fear. Marinette had been gone for almost two days now, and she couldn’t do much more than look at old photos of them together and cry.

Her mother had tried to get her to eat, but her appetite was missing. She couldn’t bear to eat without knowing if Marinette had access to a hot meal.

___

When Marinette woke up the second time, it was significantly more tolerable than when she was in that alleyway. The pain that had seemed so inescapable was nowhere to be found as a floaty feeling enveloped her. Her head was cloudy, and her limbs felt like clouds.

Her body was sore, but she didn’t feel the insane nausea she had dreaded earlier. Her eyes still showed discomfort to the lights, but it didn't make her head split in two like she feared it would before.

She tried to move her head but it was very difficult with whatever bandage was wrapped around her neck. She took a moment to look at herself, She was wrapped in bandages, in every visible place she could see. She recognized the large sling holding up a large cast. It took her a moment to realize that it was her own foot. She was sure there was more to everything than what she saw, but Marinette couldn’t think about that. Underneath all the bandages, she was able to see that she was transformed.

Marinette knew she was in the hospital, and she had a vague idea of the events that led her here. Seeing as she was transformed, she supposed that Tikki had found her, but that didn’t explain why she was transformed. She attempted to make a noise but faltered as it caused her throat to burn.

“They stuck a tube down your throat to help you breathe.” Fu’s voice, she recognized. “And you have a bruised esophagus.” Marinette would’ve nodded if she could have, instead she just attempted to raise her arms. It was a struggle, her entire body unwilling to cooperate. But slowly through lots of attempts, she was able to shift her fingers. She couldn’t imagine being able to do this without the aid of magic.

“You can raise your arms!” Fu exclaimed, “Raise your right hand for yes and left for no, we have very little time before the nurse comes back.

She raised her right hand a few centimeters off the bed.

“Good!” Fu looked at the Kwami, “This must be very confusing, you are transformed and Tikki is aiding you in consciousness. I need to leave for Paris soon.” She stared at him for a second. “So you were attacked by Hawkmoth.

Right hand.

“And he is Gabriel Agreste?” tears pricked at her eyes against her will. She must have been on drugs or something, because all her thoughts were clouded in haze. But with the help of Tikki’s energy, she was able to find vague memories of what had happened. Looking back at herself she could tell the attack was brutal, and she couldn’t even remember what had fully happened, especially not with all these drugs pumping through her. But she did know that what he had asked was correct.

Right hand.

“Okay, okay. And he is in possession of the peacock miraculous?”

Marinette faltered, raising both hands off the bed, hoping it communicated her confusion.

“Tikki said she had seen the peacock miraculous when she snuck down there, she said it looked like a girl named Natalie.” the revelation wasn’t that surprising. She lifted both hands off the bed again. “Ah, I see that might’ve occurred after…” He cleared his throat. “Oh! And when Tikki was there she grabbed you’re phone card thingy, Tikki is hiding it for you right now.”

Marinette sighed internally. Of course, Natalie was involved in this. Who next? Is Adrien in the know about his father's hobbies? The thought made her head hurt and she shut her eyes for a moment.

“That's enough for today, I need to head back to Paris and you need to rest.” Fu stood up and walked into her view, “I will see you when you’re better Marinette.” he leaned down and gave her a small kiss on the forehead. “Keep her safe Tikki.”

Fu left the room. Tikki dropped the transformation and passed out beside her holder.
___

Adrien walked past the Dupain-Cheng bakery, the closed sign noticeably turned to deter customers. The bakery barely ever closed.

Part of him wanted to knock on the side door, to check on her parents. But he almost couldn’t bring himself to do it. He didn’t have to though, because as he rounded the corner to enter the apartment’s entrance, Tom and Sabine quickly stumbled out. He looked at them in shock as they quickly went to lock the door behind them. It was Tom that noticed him.

“O-oh! Adrien!” the man took a step forward and wrapped the small boy in a large hug.

He froze for a second before returning it. “I wanted to come by to see if I could help or-”

“They found her,” Sabine walked away from the door frantically. “We just got the call, she was found in Toulouse.”

Adrian’s eyes bulged wide, “T-Toulouse? That's so far away, how-?”

Tom released him back to the ground. “We don’t know how, we wern’t given many details, but were on our way there now.” Tom patted his shoulder, “Don’t worry son, we're going to bring her back.”

___

When Alya got the call from Adrien, she was already dressed and ready to go.

The news of how far from Paris she had been rocked Alya to her core. Was Marinette really running away?

She shook her head, there was no way in hell that was the truth. Marinette held too much love in her heart to disappear without a trace. At the very least, she’d tell her best friend. Alya knew that. They told each other everything, and she refused to cloud her judgment just because she was found far away.

As the train car rattled she looked at Adrien. He had been a wreck when he called her, terrified at the implications of Tom and Sabine’s words. ‘It sounds like she was found somewhere in Toulouse, do you think someone kidnapped her or something?’ Adrien was only there on the train because he was ‘sleeping over at Nino’s’, something he had never done before but his father was surprisingly okay with it. He knew that a sleepover was more realistic than asking to go to Toulouse. Regardless his father was overseas at the moment with Natalie, there's no way they would know he lied.

Alya shook the thought away. They would’ve seen her on the cameras in the train station if that were the case, they would’ve at the very least told the Dupain-Cheng’s about it. Plus, Marinette was horrible at disguises, every time they dressed her up to be someone else for a school project or some weird scheme to get Adrien’s attention, she always stood out like a sore thumb.

‘No’ Alya thought. None of it made sense.

As Adrien slept peacefully beside her she noted that they were hours away from getting to the town. She allowed herself to shut her eyes for a moment to enjoy the peace of a late-night train ride.

___

If Tom hadn’t been crying on the train ride over, he was definitely crying now. Seeing his little girl wrapped like a mummy with tubes sticking out of her in every direction made him feel sick. She had been missing for nearly eight days, and she didn’t look nearly like how she had when he had last seen her. He was her father, he was supposed to protect her from all the bad things in the world.

And he failed.

“They found her in an alleyway a mile or two from here,” The cop next to them explained, “We don’t know the extent of the situation, but as she was transported over town lines, we have reason to believe this could’ve been a case of attempted human trafficking.”

A loud sob erupted from Sabine next to him. Imagining all the horrible things her daughter must’ve gone through to end up crumbling in a hospital bed broke her heart. She would’ve rather her just run away.

“Has she woken up yet?” Tom asked, arm wrapping around his wife.

The nurse next to the cop looked at the charts. “Last night it seems she may have woken up for a moment, but since then we haven’t seen any new activity. She’s actually healing really fast, we were worried at first, but she will make a rather fast recovery. The doctors think she may wake up within the next two weeks. ”

Tom let a small smile grace his features. “Our Marinette has always been a fighter.”

The cop sighed next to him, “Well until she wakes up and can give us a statement, we can’t really do much in terms of investigation.” he wrote something on his notepad, “Give us a call when she wakes up when she's out of the ICU we can try to transport her back to Paris.” He began to walk out the door before pausing and turning around, “I’ll try not to get your hopes up, but we’ll try our hardest to get justice for your daughter.”

Tom nodded sadly as his wife choked out another sob.

Looking back at his daughter, he wanted nothing more than to hug her tightly and never let go.

___

When Alya called Sabine asking to see Marinette, the other woman hesitated.

“O-oh, you and Adrien are in town?” the woman on the other line sputtered out.

Alya had scrunched her face up. “Yeah, Adrien was really worried, so we decided to head down.”

Sabine took a moment on the other line. “I don’t know if that's a good idea, Alya…”

“Why not, is something wrong?” Alya looked over to Adrien, who was staring at her, having picked up on her distressed tone.

Sabine let out a long sigh, “Marinette, she’s…” She took a moment to find her words, “She’s not really in the best of shape…”

Adrien hit Alya on the side, gesturing at the phone in question. Alya pushed him away passively, “What do you mean?”

Sabine took in a harsh breath and Alya held hers in anticipation.

“She’s in- in a Coma.”

Alya’s eyes blew wide, “She’s in a coma?”

___

If the words wern’t enough, the sight of her best friend in the hospital was.

Marinette, the girl she spent almost every moment with, the girl who loved designing and baking and claimed to detest violence, lay unresponsive right in front of Alya.

She heard Adrian let out a sob next to her, and she found herself holding back her own broken one.

Adrien was the first to speak.

“What happened?”

Tom looked at the devastated children in front of him. “We don’t know.”

___

When the article was released, it was immediately sent to the class group chat.

‘Toulouse ‘mystery girl’ identified as Parisian student Marinette Dupain Cheng’

Everyone threw around exclamations of shock. Some people were mad, some were scared. Everyone was mainly just confused. The article shed no light on what had occurred, just that she was found.

‘On Monday morning, The Toulouse local reported on an unidentified individual female found injured near city hall. She was taken to the hospital in critical condition and has since been identified as Parisian student Marinette Dupain-Cheng, who had been reported missing by her parents Monday afternoon. While there are no new updates on her condition, we wish her family well and pray for her speedy recovery.’

The article lacked lots of information, but with what the class was able to gather from it, their everyday ladybug was in the hospital in the city hours away with no knowledge of if she would be okay.

Rose had suggested they all see her, but everyone commented on how far away it was, and the idea was ruled out.

Alya was glad they wern’t coming. They didn’t know the extent, but they didn’t need to. If they were able to see her, hell if they had even a hint of the pain she was experiencing, they wouldn’t be able to handle it.

Alya was barely able to handle it.

Adrien had left earlier in the day, citing his need to get home for his story to be convincing. He had looked like a shell of himself.

Alya supposed she probably looked similar. Her mom was coming to visit the Dupain-Chengs, She planned to bring them meals. Alya hoped her mother wouldn’t drag her back to Paris with her, The Dupain-chengs let her stay in their motel and Alya was able to complete the school work online for a temporary amount of time if she needed.

Marinette was healing miraculously fast.

There was almost never a moment without a hovering doctor trying to figure out how she was healing so quickly. They took her blood to take tests, seeing if she had some sort of DNA mutation or something (Alya wasn’t really paying attention to anything other than the fact that Marinette would heal fast), but they had never followed up. Alya, ever the reporter, had deduced that meant that the universe was finally giving Marinette a break.

First Adrien asked her for dating advice, crushing her into the floor and destroying her can-do attitude. Then Luka and she broke up, no thanks to her millions of responsibilities, and she was left even more destroyed thinking she was some sort of unlovable freak. And now she’s in the hospital, bruised and broken, due to reasons Alya couldn’t figure out. At least her bestie was healing quickly.

___

Natalie felt herself walk through the Agrete mansion in a daze.

She had known that Gabriel was getting irrational, but she vowed to follow him in hopes of her wish. But this had gone too far.

She assisted in a murder.

Gabriel had options. He could’ve akumatized himself and wiped her memory. He could’ve paid her off. He could have even just asked kindly.

But instead, he brutalized a young girl. A girl the same age as Gabriel's own son. If he could hurt a kid, he could hurt his own. Adrien was in even more danger than she had thought.

She needed to get Adrien out of the house. As she walked past Gabriel’s office she heard him smashing his office into pieces. He was screaming but Natalie paid it no mind, as he always did this when he was mad.

Her tablet lit up with an old notification and she looked down. It was a Google alert for the name Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

‘Toulouse ‘mystery girl’ identified as Parisian student Marinette Dupain Cheng’

___

At night, Tikki would transform her. The Kwami would heal her slightly and gift her consciousness, whereas Marinette would review her charts and adjust her meds.

She needed to be awake as soon as she could be. There was no way that Hawkmoth wasn’t freaking out, and she would much rather fight than give him time to take flight. Being Ladybug was difficult without her own physical strength and energy to hold her up, every night she was draining the poor Kwami dry, leaving her hospital food to get her energy back. Marinette didn’t like it, but it's not like she had much of an option.

She had read the article about her in a newspaper her parents had left in her room. It was vague enough that it would probably make Hawkmoth believe she was a goner, but the fact that anyone with access to the news could track her down when she was so vulnerable left a pit in her stomach.

She wished so desperately to be rid of all this mess.

In the day, she was immobile, completely asleep. She wasn’t cognizant, just… blank. Her thoughts rarely became visible in her foggy brain, but occasionally she would see glimpses of purple and eyes that spewed anger. When she was transformed, it really pissed her off. That bastard had taken everything from her and left her with nothing more than terrifying visions of himself while she was trapped in her mind.

When she started waking up transformed, she couldn’t understand what was going on. Her body ached painfully, but she was able to walk around if she focused. It took only a few attempts of to realize that she couldn’t focus, especially with the splitting pain in her head. So she went back to sleep.

The second time it happened she abandoned hopes of moving around and instead took in the sights around her. It took her a while to realize what had happened. Every memory took so much energy to search for, but she pushed through the fog to realize she was alive.

This fact shocked her. She didn’t quite know why.

The sixth time she woke up she felt herself. She had lowered some of the pain meds on her chart a few transformations before and was finally able to think, even if her head hurt like shit.

It was then she realized she needed to tell Chat Noir what was going on. He was the only defense against Hawkmoth, and she refused to leave him in the dark. She needed to get to Paris and fast, but she didn’t think she could even make it five blocks. Sure, when she was Ladybug her physical injuries disappeared, but that did nothing for the soreness and the nausea that kept her from jumping out the window and swinging all the way there.

Plus, without being in peak condition, she wouldn’t be able to make it back before someone came to check on her.

She lay in her bed in concentration before she realized there was a lump at the end of her bed.

Huh.

She leaned forward with care and felt it, finding it to be a rather geometric object hiding under her sheets.

She pulled it out to reveal a miraculous box with a note on top.

‘In case you decide on a trip back home. -F’

Chapter Text

Adrien rushed over Parisian rooftops faster than he ever had.

When Ladybug called him to the Eiffel Tower, he knew he needed to be there quickly. She had been MIA for the past few days, and Adrien was worried. First Marinette gets hurt then Ladybug goes missing. He was hardly able to sleep with so much worry on his mind.

When he arrived there, she didn’t turn around. Which was odd considering she always knew when he was there, almost like a sixth sense. He used his opportunity to sneak up on her, making his steps silent as he playfully pushed her by the shoulders. “Hey LB!”

She let out a small gasp, clutching her hand to her chest, “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

An irritated look overtook her tired features, and boy did she look tired. She was slumped over, her hair down by her shoulders in a way he’d seen a few times before, but it was tangled and matted. He was sure if she wasn’t wearing glasses she would have large bags under her eyes.

Wait, why was she wearing glasses?

“I figure you’re probably wondering why I called you here.” She leaned against the steel beam behind her.

Adrien let a concerned look fall over his face. “Yeah I am,” He went up beside her and leaned back, “But first I’d like to know where you went and why you look so terrible.”

She closed her eyes, a crease setting on her forehead, “Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to tell a girl she looks terrible?” Adrien’s face fell but before he could say anything she spoke again, “And as for why I was gone, I have the Flu, My Kwami says that when I’m transformed I’m not contagious so don’t worry.”

Adrien nodded, “That sucks.”

She looked down at her feet, “You have no idea.” She took in a large breath of air and took a step forward, turning to face Chat. “The reason I’m here is because I know who Hawkmoth is.”

Green eyes flew open, “What!” His back straightened harshly and he took a large step towards his partner. “Who is he, how did you-”

She held up a hand lethargically to cut him off, “I’ll explain all of it, but first you have to promise not to do anything. I won’t be able to assist in a fight until I'm not sick anymore.”

Adrien nodded. “I promise, with what we’ve seen it’ll take a lot more than one of us to take him down.”

“No shit,” She nodded, “He’s a monster.”

Adrien looked at her with confused eyes. She never cursed. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Just tired. Listen, I have it on very good authority that Hawkmoth is Gabriel Agreste.”

He took a step back in confusion. “What? I thought we ruled him out.”

“Me too, but after…” She paused. “It's him, I know it's him.”

Adrien could barely keep his face under control as frustration slipped into his voice. “We’ve had this conversation before. He was Akumatized, it can’t be him.”

At his tone shift, she straightened up. “I don’t know how he did it, but I know it's him. It can’t possibly not be.”

“And how do you know that? What’s your evidence?” He crossed his arms fiercely, the sight caused Ladybug to scoff.

“What’re you a fan? Why are you acting like this?”

It was Adrien's turn to scoff this time. “Look, you bring up a previous suspect that we ruled out, and now you’re asking me why I'm not a little skeptical?”

She sighed. “I…” She fiddled with her Yo-yo, “I looked into that missing girl, the one from that school that always has Akuma attacks.” Adrien paused as he took the information in. She was searching for Marinette? “When I realized she was in Toulouse, I knew something was up, so I did some digging and went to speak with her and-”

“She’s awake?”

Ladybug froze “Uh, yes she is.” She answered awkwardly, she moved on from that quickly. “I spoke with her and she told me she was at the Agrete mansion and stumbled into his lair. That’s why she’s in the hospital, he beat the shit out of her Chat.”

Adrien pulled his baton from his back to check his phone messages, a feature he’d been grateful for, seeing nothing from Alya about Marinette being awake. Alya had promised to tell him if she woke up.

“I…” He looked up, eyebrows furrowed. “I don’t know if I believe you.”

Ladybug’s eyebrow flew up in response, “What?”

“It’s just…” He supposed saying he knew Marinette in real life wouldn’t work, as it would be compromising his identity. “I visited her too,” Ladybug's face paled, but he hardly noticed over his frustration. “And when I saw her last night, she was asleep with no signs of waking up.”

“Well she woke up today and she told me everything, why can’t you just back me on this?”

His voice rose, “If I go to that hospital right now, am I going to be able to talk to her? To hear it from her mouth?” He took a daring step forward. “Or is she going to be in a coma when I get there?”

Ladybug’s mouth hung open, a clear look of shock on her face. Chat never doubted her, so why now?

“I don’t understand why you can’t just trust me on this. I don’t take risks, I know it’s him and nothing you do or say will change that.”

It was silent for a moment as the two stared each other down.

“A visit with Marinette would really clear this up.” He moved his baton, ready to launch himself. “Let’s go, If we leave now we’ll get to Toulouse before its light.”

Ladybug stepped forward and blocked his batton from extending, “She needs her rest let's not bother her.”

Adrian shoved her hand away, “I thought you said she was awake, let's give her some company.” She blocked his way again, causing him to push her backward. She stumbled and grabbed her yoyo quickly, wrapping it around him before he could run away. “Hey!”

“Sorry Chat, but she’s in bad shape, I don’t know if I want you to see that.”

He struggled against his binding, “It doesn’t matter what you want, what matters is the truth. If Marinette could talk to you, she can talk to me.”

Ladybug opened her mouth to say something, but instead just let out a long sigh, allowing herself a moment to choose her words carefully.

“It’s clear that- that you care about her.” She looked into his eyes, eyes usually full of humor and warmth now consumed by rage. “But Hawkmoth…” A wave of anger overtook her “Gabriel,” She corrected, her voice rising, “he hurt her. He split her head open with his cane, he- he shattered her ribs. One of her lungs collapsed Chat!” She took a step in his direction and steadied herself. “She died on the surgery table! They had to resuscitate her Chat!”

Adrien paused. How did she know that? It was through teary eyes and garbled speech that Sabine had told him. He didn’t know if something like that would be widely known.

If Ladybug noticed his change, she didn’t acknowledge it, instead continuing to speak. “If you wonder how I know that information, I can’t really say, because yes, Marinette is still in a coma. Nothing I say or do will change that fact. You’re right I lied, but not because I’m trying to deceive you, I wouldn’t lie about something like this and you know that, but because telling you how I know would put my civilian identity at risk.” When she realized his anger looked dissipated she released her yoyo. “It’s him Chat, I know that as a fact so please just-”

He launched himself at her, pushing her to the ground with him on top. “Cut the Bullshit, what is going on?”

Nausea filled her body on impact. It reminded her of when Gabriel had knocked her to the ground. Her back hit the floor of the cold lair, leaving her staring up at the large fluorescent lights, she could hear her ribs crack, and she-

No, no no. That wasn’t happening. She was okay, she was safe.

She was alive.

She kicked her legs up, using all her strength to launch him off her. She shakily rose to her feet and promptly threw up, collapsing back to the ground.

When Adrien rose, he was ready to pounce, but the sight made him stop dead.

“Ladybug?”

She looked up at him when her vomit had ceased, but the concern in his eyes caused her stomach to turn again, with more vomit rising to her throat. It was mostly bile and it burned as it came up. She felt a feather-like touch on her shoulder.

“Like I said, I’m sick.” She pushed him off, standing up again. “I have been sleeping all week, my body wasn’t really ready to fight.”

“If you say so.” They stood in awkward silence.

The sounds of Paris did nothing to diminish the tense environment. Ladybug broke the silence.

“Look, I shouldn’t have lied but I’m right. Hawkmoth is Gabriel Agreste. But we have time to figure out what to do next. He hasn’t made a move in a while, I bet almost killing a teen girl made him rethink his approach.” Adrien raised his hand about to speak but she didn’t give him the chance. “But since you're so worried, you should talk to Marinette when she wakes up, I promise she’ll say all the things I am.”

She went to move, her legs shaking slightly as she walked to the railing of the tower, where she leaned while overlooking the city. “Until then, don’t investigate anything, no snooping around the Agreste mansion after hours, no stalking the family, no nothing. You should know what happened before we put a plan into effect, I don’t want you to have any doubts.” She turned around looking him in the eyes. “You promised me.”

He closed his eyes thoughtfully and nodded, “I won’t,” Green-met Blue, “But if I find out you’re lying, you’ll have more than the flu to worry about.”

She lightly chuckled “I’ll hold you to that.” She turned back around, “I’m using the miraculous of the horse to travel, I’m a little too achy to swing a lot, so you need to leave first so I can use voyage.” he nodded, “Go home chat, It’s late.”

And with that, he launched away, with the thought of how he was supposed to not investigate when he lived with the man in question.

___

When Marinette did wake up, it was nothing like how it felt when she was transformed.

Her mind was foggy and her limbs sore. She was sure if she could move, it would be excruciatingly painful, but she couldn’t find the energy to do so. Her hearing was bad, she could barely understand what the people around her were saying, but she knew they were there. Through her blurred vision, she could make out the colorful blobs around her, moving quite frantically. But the worst thing? Her head felt as though it was spitting open.

If she thought the pain she felt last night was rough, she was mistaken. No, this pain was far worse than that. She’s sure if she had more morphine in her system she could at least pretend it wasn’t there, but no, the lowered dosage seemed to be enough to make her at least have thoughts, even if thinking about thinking made her want to hurl.

Another colored blob walked in this time wearing white. He said more garbled garbage and then went silent as if looking for an answer.

‘Oh he must be talking to me’ she thought.

“W-what d-did you say?” she muttered pathetically. This new state would take some getting used to.

“I asked you if you know where you are.”

She already knew she was in the hospital, and she supposed this was a doctor. If she hadn’t been awake every night, she's sure she wouldn’t have known.

She cleared her throat, wincing at the pain it caused. “H-hospital?”

“That’s right, do you know what city?”

“Paris?” She knew she wasn’t in Paris, but he didn’t need to know she knew that. It would likely just cause them to think she ran away.

The doctor wrote something down and looked at the other two blobs, one tall with blue hues and one smaller wearing white.

‘Her parents’ she mused. God, they must be terrified.

The doctor looked up from his chart and looked at them. “May I speak to you in the hall?”

Her parents looked back at her with a small smile, “Keep her company, Alya.” Sabine said before turning and following the doctor out.

Alya? Why was she here?

“Yeah.” The response from the redhead was dull, lacking the passion Marinette had begun associating her with.

When the door was shut, Marinette knew what to do, and she knew she needed to do it fast. There was very little time to beat around the bush, her parents could come back in at any moment.

Marinette attempted to blink the haze out of her eyes and risked a glance at the redhead. She was wearing jeans and a pullover, the dull colors causing her tan skin to look desaturated. Or maybe she hadn’t been sleeping well.

Marinette supposed that was probably what it was.

“You really gave us a run for our money Mari everyone at school will be so happy to hear that-”

“Don’t tell them.” Marinette blurted out, “They can’t know.”

Alya’s face scrunched up in confusion, “Wha-”

Marinette let out a powerful sigh, her lungs aching in response. “Listen, We d-don’t have a lot of time, I talk you listen.” Alya nodded and went to open her mouth, but Marinette cut her off. “Good. First, I know who Hawkmoth is, and before you ask, yes he is the reason I am in the hospital.” Alya’s eyes flew open, “Second, He’s Gabriel Agreste.”

“Girl, What drugs are you on?”

Marinette stared her down as best as she could, “Morphine, but I lowered the dosage on my chart.”

“How-”

“Third, I am Ladybug,” Tikki flew out from behind her pillow as if to prove her point, “And I need help taking him down.”

Alya stared at her, the information settling deep into her stomach. How could she have missed that Marinette was Ladybug? The constant absences, the weirdly specific and obvious lies she gave about mundane things, and the fact she disappeared for hours on end during Akuma attacks. It all really made sense to the point the reporter felt stupid.

“I-”

“Like I said we don’t have time, speaking i-is hard, just let me get it out.” Alya nodded, “Take my earrings, Tikki can fill you in on what is going on, but I need Ladybug here ASAP to tell the police I need to be dead, otherwise, Gabriel will go after everyone in the hospital, and that cannot happen.” She looked at her Kwami, “I k-know this is last second Tikki but you know what to do.” The bug nodded, moving to remove Marinette’s earrings as she wrapped up her instructions. “You can’t tell anyone about this, not until we can make a plan, Don’t even tell the police his true identity okay?”

Alya nodded, picking up the earrings that had just been placed in her hand. “I won’t you can trust me Marinette.”

A weak smile fell on Marinette's chapped lips. “I know, I would’ve handled this myself but,” She looked down at herself, covered in bandages and casts, “I don’t think I can do this without some assistance.”

Alya went to speak but the sound of footsteps approaching stopped her. Soon, Her parents and the doctor reentered, a stark silence filling the already incredibly boring room.

The doctor looked down at Marinette with a sigh. “Marinette do you feel up to questions?”

Marinette shook her head in all too real exhaustion. Talking to Alya zapped all her adrenaline up, leaving her weak and immobile.

The doctor nodded, “Let me know when you are, we have policemen who would like to ask you some questions.”

To everyone’s surprise, Alya piped up. “No, no, no. Marinette told me she won’t speak to anyone but Ladybug, I’m writing a blog post now as we speak to get her attention.”

Sabine squinted her eyes, “What are you-”

Alya held up a hand, “I don’t know what happened but all she said while you were gone was that she needed to speak to Ladybug, She wouldn’t say why though.” Suddenly a notification erupted from her phone, “I need to go, I got a hit!”

She dashed out of the room leaving all of the adults stunned, with Marinette unable to hold back her small smile.

Chapter Text

It was a Wednesday when Marinette Dupain-Cheng’s death hit the news.

Unlike the last time she was in the news, nobody sent anything in the class group chat.

Instead, most students cried in the solitude of their rooms. Some played Jagged Stone to honor her, and a few looked through photos, but everyone was crying.

On Thursday, most students in Marinette's class didn’t attend.

Lila and Max did, one not risking his GPA and the other really didn’t care for the dark-haired girl in the first place. Mrs. Bustier didn’t even try to teach. She had asked The principal if they could have a day off, but since Marinette didn’t die on campus, they couldn’t do anything but mourn in silence. But Marinette did die.

She was dead.

___

“Nadia Chamock here, reporting live from the scene of Marinette Dupain-Chengs's vigil, held at her parent's Bakery.”

The camera panned to shots of candles and stuffed animals lying against the side of the Bakery. Students from the aforementioned girls' class stood around in equal amounts of shock. It was dark and rainy. Much similar to the day Marinette went missing.

“At this moment we have no updates about what happened to take such a bright life out of our world,” The camera panned back to Nadia. Her reporter smile was wiped from her face, instead leaving a deep crease between her brows. “Marinette…” She looked down, “She babysat my daughter since little Manou learned how to walk and…” The cameraman's movements became unsteady, and Nadia took in a deep breath. “The police are urging anyone who had any information to call the number on the screen. We had the opportunity to speak to some of her classmates and this is what they had to say.”

The screen cut to a few moments earlier when it was noticeably lighter in the sky. Center of frame stood rose, tear marks down her face highlighting the bags under her eyes. “Marinette was really an amazing person, she- she” Rose began to cry, a dark-haired girl coming to her side to hug her tightly. “She was the strongest most kind girl I’ve ever met.”

The camera cut to Nino, the lone DJ who had forgone his hat to allow his messy waves to stand up. “I knew her since preschool, she was the best. She even set me up with my current girlfriend.”

It cut away again, this time to a boy with blue hair and black clothes. “She was special, and now that she’s gone I don’t know if the tune in my heart will ever sound the same.”

Nadia appeared again, this time looking more put together, even if there were small tears pooling in her eyes. “What you see behind me is a community brought together by grief. We hope that whatever happened to Marinette Dupain-Cheng is figured out so justice can be served and-”

Adrien turned off the TV. He couldn’t stand to watch anymore.

Alya had already texted him that she was awake, he knew she wasn’t dead, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling that it was real. He was beginning to question his own reality. He didn’t know anything anymore. He knew she was alive, Alya had seemed to let it slip on accident, he knew he was supposed to believe she was dead, he was just informed before it became clear that she needed to look dead. And the reason was… Well, he knew the reason he just didn’t want to admit it. He had searched the mansion up and down, and all he found was that his father disappeared for hours on end in his office. But when Adrien would check to see if he was there, the cold white room was empty. It was a punch in the gut. It said so much by saying so little.

He knew one thing, however, and that was that he needed to see Marinette now.

___

Her parents were mad.

They went from crying hysterically to demanding to know what happened to sit silently against the wall looking at nothing.

If Marinette could, she would’ve told them everything, but she couldn’t. Gabriel would surely be monitoring them, just in case Marinette had found a way to tell them. She hadn’t of course, and now that she was ‘dead’ it was even more doubtful that they knew a thing.

Marinette didn’t know Gabriel well, but she knew Hawkmoth. He was paranoid. There was no way he wasn’t monitoring everything about her in the media.

Her parents were sleeping in their motel tonight, too exhausted to deal with their daughter's uncooperativeness. They needed showers, and even though they had this urge to watch over their daughter, knowing Ladybug was watching her put their minds at ease.

Well, not ladybug per se, more of Scarabella, who, as she put it, was the ‘temporary ladybug as the real ladybug is busy overseas.’

Marinette sighed. Her body was on fire, every nerve ending lighting up if she even so flinched. She hated it, but at least she could think. Well, until the doctors would eventually realize she wasn’t receiving the right dosage.

She couldn’t sleep because it hurt to close her eyes. But she was so tired.

A knock at the window pulled her from her thoughts. There, chat leaned, arms wrapped around his batton. He knocked again.

If she had the energy to move her arms she would’ve, but instead, she just motioned her head at him. Her neck brace had been removed a couple of x-rays ago, but that didn’t mean the action didn’t cause her to wince.

The window was unlocked, which is how Alya got in every couple of nights to update Marinette on the progress of their plan. The police were involved now, much to Marinette’s relief. That is the whole reason she was allowed to be pronounced dead. Alya swore up and down that they didn’t know Hawkmoth's identity, and Marinette trusted her.

“A little birdy told me you were in an accident.”

Marinette would’ve snorted if she could, “H-hi Chat.”

Chat’s face fell. She looked horrid. Her hair was matted, and her body was covered in bandages. She looked like a horror movie victim. He supposed this was like a horror movie in a way.

“So, bug told me that you know who hawkmoth is, and I-”

“It’s Gabriel Agreste.”

Chat’s face fell.

She turned her face forward, looking at the blank wall across from her bed. “Ladybug told me you were coming, so I thought I would cut to the chase.” She let out a sigh. “I’m not really i-in a position for long conversations, so, yeah.”

Chat nodded. He had already known in a way, that Ladybug was telling the truth he meant. But the confirmation made his ears ring and his body go numb.

“Of course, I-” he looked down at his boots, “I am sorry you had to go through that.”

“Me too.” It went silent as the two allowed very different thoughts to fill their heads. “Ladybug told me to tell you to call her after you see me, she wanted to make sure you had no doubts before continuing with her plan.”

Chat nodded, taking a step forward to plant a small kiss on the girl's forehead. “Of course, We will bring Haw- Gabriel. We will bring Gabriel to justice.”

And as soon as he had arrived, he was jumping out the window, leaving Marinette to stir in her thoughts.

___

The plan was in motion just days after Chats visit.

He didn’t want to trust Scarabella, but he knew he had to get justice for his friend. Ladybug must still be sick, and he would never try to rush her recovery, but sitting in a cold police conference room for hours on end made him wish that she was there.

Scarabella took the lead on everything, relaying words from Ladybug, words Chat didn’t get to receive firsthand. It sucked. He knew that their identities were to remain secret, but it was clear that Scarabella knew who she was in real life. It hurt that he wasn’t the first to know.

“So we strike on Thursday night, Chat, and I will inform you of the location before 7 p.m. for the sake of privacy. We’d hate for our suspect to get tipped off.”

The officers in the stuffy room all nodded, some of them looked a little peeved about the situation, but nobody was going to say anything. What was the point? These superpowered teens had single-handedly taken away a big portion of their jobs, even if they felt overlooked, they knew they had to help.

It was Sabrina’s dad who spoke next, “Will the original ladybug be joining us for the mission?”

Scarabella stalled, a crack forming in her professional facade. Chat leaned in closer to hear her response. “I-” She sighed looking down at the papers in her hands, “It’s a possibility, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

Chat leaned back in his chair with a large huff, “Of course.”

Scarabella adjourned the meeting, holding Chat behind to speak with him. As officers exited the room, she ensured the cameras in the corners were off before she spoke. “She’s not overseas you know.”

He scoffed, “I saw her before you came into the picture, I know she's sick.”

Scarabella's face transformed into one of furry, “She did what now?”

“She asked to meet up and said a bunch of stuff about the case and-”

“I cannot believe the nerve of that girl!” Her hands were up in the air dramatically, it looked like she wanted to punch the wall, “She’s always all high and mighty about everything, but can’t even take care of herself!”

Chat chuckled softly, “That sounds about right,” He paused, watching her as she took the new information, “So you know who she is right? Like under the mask?”

She stood frozen in place, her face devoid of emotion. “She told me to say no.”

He raised an eyebrow, “But that's not true, right?”

“Yeah,” She sighed, plopping herself in an office chair, “I know who she is.”

Anger flooded Chat’s vision. “I can’t believe her!” He had suspected this of course, but the confirmation made it all the more painful. “She was always the one to say not to share our identities with anyone, but-” He pointed at Scarabella, “She's just a hypocrite.”

“Don’t say that,” she lifted her head to glare daggers at him, “If you knew her condition you would take those words back.”

Chat paled, “It's really that bad?”

“It's worse than you could imagine.”

The room filled with an awkward silence.

Chat sighed, he really messed up. Of course, she wouldn’t give her miraculous away without a good reason, he just wished that he knew the full reason.

“I don’t like that you know and I don’t but-” Scarabella raised her hand to protest, “No, No, let me finish. I’m not going to ask who she is, that's unfair to her, I just want to know she's okay, that she’s not dying or something.”

Scarabella went to stand, “She’ll be okay, just… Just not now.” Chat nodded, a feeling of depression washing over him. “I gotta jet, I’ll see you Thursday.”

___

The takedown was pitiful.

Hawkmoth, His father, Adrien reminded himself, barely put up a fight. The whole mission took twenty minutes to execute, and half of that time was getting into position for the jump.

Adrien watched as the cop cars took his father away. He had no home to go to, no place to rest his head.

All he wanted to do was scream and cry, but the energy to do so was hidden deep inside of him, and he knew that they would crash into him later.

With nothing to do, he ran to Toulouse to see Marinette.

He peaked through the window when he got there, the sight nearly killed him.

Marinette's parents were crying, clutching their daughter firmly in their grasp. Scarabella stood off to the side awkwardly, while the star of all the attention, Marinette, stared off into space, a blank expression filling her features.

He suddenly felt like he was intruding on something, but when Marinette caught his eye through the window, she moved her head, granting him entrance.

“My baby almost- she- and-” Sabine couldn’t finish her sentence without crying. Tom didn’t even try to speak.

Chat slipped in quietly to stand next to Scarbella.

“I’m okay Maman… I just didn’t want you guys to freak out before he was put away.”

Tom rushed forward grabbing her face, “We know sweety, we know and we’re sorry we were mad at you for not telling us.”

They clutched her closely, crying for a while longer before they pulled back.

“We’ll leave you to talk with them,” Sabine gestured to the two heroes, “But we’ll be back after we’ve eaten, okay?”

Marinette nodded, and her parents left the room, taking one last look back at their daughter before they closed the door. The second the sound of the door closing rang through the room, Scarabella rushed forward to pull her into a hug. “It's over now its really over.”

Marinette smiled, “If I had the capacity to cry right now, I would, but really I’m just tired.” She punctuated her statement with a long yawn.

Scarabella’s lips quirked up, “I see you got caught.”

Marinette rolled her eyes, “I told them you did it,”

Scarabella jumped back, “Oh no missy, that was your decision, you should take the fall on this one.”

“How am I supposed to explain how I did it? It’s not like it makes any amount of sense.”

Scarabella nodded and chat got even more confused, they knew each other? “What’s going on?”

Marinette froze, seemingly forgetting that Chat was there in the first place. Scarabella spoke for her, “She was adjusting her meds so she could speak to me more clearly,” Marinette flushed, pulling her blankets up to her face, “And she blamed it on me! Even though she did it!”

“I wouldn’t have had to have done it If morphine didn’t make me forget how to speak!”

Scarabella rolled her eyes, “She is still coherent because the doctors have to up her dose over time, apparently you’re not supposed to go from a lot of morphine to nearly none!” She turned back to Marinette, “Which is something that you should’ve known!”

Marinette curled into herself at the harsh glare, “Well you caught the guy didn’t you?”

Scarabella rolled her eyes again, “I guess.”

“Uh,” Chat held his hand up to insert himself, “Do you two know each other?”

Marinette and Alya froze, looking at each other, and then looking away. It was dead silent as Marinette let out a large huff. “I suppose it isn’t that big of a deal, Hawkmoth was the only reason to be so secretive.”

“Are you sure girl?”

Marinette nodded, “Can you give me and Chat some time to talk?”

Scarabella nodded, and awkwardly shuffled out of the room, giving the girls privacy.

Now alone, Marinette felt self-conscious. She had never had her defenses this lowered, especially in front of her partner.

“So, I guess I should start with- Wow this is really awkward,” Marinette muttered that last part as an afterthought, her filter lessened by the drugs, “So basically, I am, well for lack of a better term-”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to princess, you shouldn’t rush yourself,” Chat said with a soft gaze.

She shook her head, “No, no, I need to.” She took in a large breath, “As you know Ladybug was out of commission, and the reason why is, well it's because…” She looked up into his piercing green eyes, and she knew she couldn’t keep this from him any longer. “I am Ladybug.”

Chat froze. Every interaction they had ever had, in and out of the suit, suddenly rushed at him. The hair, the eyes, the personality- everything, it all made sense. It was like magic had suddenly made every interaction clear. She was Ladybug. He was blind to not seeing it before.

She took his silence as prompting to keep talking, “Well, there it is! It's all out in the open, you don’t have to tell me your identity, it's okay if you don’t, but Al- Scarabella, she told me that you were upset about the circumstances, so… yeah.”

Chat was silent once again. Marinette frowned, moving her hand out to him, before he suddenly muttered out, “Claws in.”

Chat disappeared in a plume of magic, leaving Adrien Agreste standing in his place.

Marinette screamed.

___

Rose: Have you guys seen the news?

Nino: How could we not? Shits crazy

Lila: Whoever could’ve guessed this?

Nino: I knew he was evil, but that was insane.

Ivan: Maybe we should move this to a more private chat?

Nathaniel: Ivan is right

Nino: Shit, sorry dudes

Adrien: It's okay guys, My family is dealing with it.

Alix: Adrien! Are you okay dude?

Kim: Yeah man, we are so sorry to hear about everything

Adrien: I could be better, the superheroes escorted me away before anything really happened. It's still rather shocking.

Nino: Even in crisis you text like a sceinile grandma.

Mylène: Nino!

Nino: I don’t take it back.

Adrien: it’s fine guys, no one could’ve known this would happen. This shit is all fucked.

Adrien looked up from his phone to view Marinette, she had a sick grin on her face, “Are you sure about this Mari?”

She nodded her head, “They need to know, plus,” She took a bite from the sandwich in her hand, it was nice to have real food, “Don’t think I forgot Kim’s ‘This is Kim’s mom, he is dead,’ prank.”

Adrien cringed, “I don’t think these situations are as similar as you think…”

Marinette finished the rest of her sandwich and swallowed hard, holding back a groan from her sore throat. “Maybe not, but they should hear it from me before they hear it from the news.”

Adrien shrugged deciding to leave it there, there wasn’t really much he could do to stop her.

Marinette: May I remind everyone to not use profanity in this chat?

She paused in her typing, deciding to add on,

Marinette: Also I totally called it.

The chat erupted

Mylène: What is going on?

Max: Is this a joke?

Juleka: If it is it isn’t funny.

In response to that, Marinette sent a photo of herself lying in the hospital bed with her chat noir doll resting on her stomach.

Marinette: I lived bitch.

Adrien: Hypocrite

Marinette: I’m sorry this must be shocking, but I promise to explain everything later, I wanted you guys to know I was okay before the news released the story.

Alix: Bro what the fuck is even going on?

Kim: If I knew, I’d tell you.

Nino: Welcome back to the land of the living!

Alya: I’ll have you all know she’s been crafting her response for hours, she only stopped to use the restroom.

Sabrina: You knew?

Alya: I visited before she was pronounced dead, It's a real clusterfuck.

Marinette: Language!

Nino: Like you didn’t just say bitch

Marinette: Language! Anyway, it's a long story, so give me a moment to type.

___

A month passed. Marinette was home, her healing time being one for the record books. The doctors were baffled but had no real reason to hold her in Toulouse anymore, so they begrudgingly sent her back to Paris, where she would be met with the crying faces of her classmates.

The news had broken the story about the ‘Brave Teen Girl Who Helped Take Down Hawkmoth’ days ago, so she knew all of Paris would be eager to see her.

She avoided it though, she stayed in her room, only talking to her classmates and parents. And Adrien. She really liked talking to him.

Alya stood, Camera finally mounted on her tripod, stepping back to look at her friend. “Are you sure about this girl?”

Marinette nodded, “I haven’t talked to the papers specifically so I could give you the scoop.”

“While I’m flattered,” Alya moved to sit in the plush chair across from her friend, “You really don’t have to do this.”

Marinette frowned, “Who better to tell my story than me?”

Alya took a moment and nodded, using her clicker to start the camera up.

“Hey everybody, it’s your favorite blogger!” She spoke to the camera with such captivating energy that Marinette almost laughed, “We have a special guest today, Marinette Dupain-Cheng!”

“Hi!” the girl in question waved at the camera.

“How about you introduce yourself?”

Marinette took in a breath and cleared her throat, it was now or never.

“Hello ladyblog viewers, I am Marinette Dupain-Cheng, I like sewing, baking, hanging with my friends, and I like the occasional interview from my favorite blogger!”

Alya stared at her blankly. “Anything else?”

Marinette pretended like she just remembered something, “Oh yeah, I’m really good at Ultimate mecha strike!” Alya motioned her hands for her to keep going, “Oh yeah, and I was brutally beaten by Hawkmoth!” Alya smacked her palm against her head, “How could I forget that?”

Marinettes hospital selfie

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