Prologue: Silence

After a long and harsh battle, the Burrow prepares to close behind Ladybug, for she needed to go back to her own timeline to fix what had happened to create Chat Blanc. He stands there, watching her go with hope in his gaze, swaying subconsciously from left to right. Before Bunnyx could close it completely, he smiles, his eyes full of relief.

"I'm glad this nightmare is going to be over." His voice is tired, fragile. "Everything is going to be okay, right? You two will fix it?"

Ladybug gave a warm look, though it was hardened by determination. "Of course." She walks to him, holding her fist out, "Pound it?"

Chat Noir lights up a bit, but hesitated. It had been a while since he had done this. After a moment, he puts his fist against hers. "Pound it."

Bunnyx watches at the edge of the Burrow, her gaze unreadable. Ladybug walks through the portal, already preparing to go back to her timeline, but Bunnyx was still watching him. Chat shifts on his feet again, a nervous habit. Then, a realization struck him, making him look at the bunny woman with worry. "What's going to happen to me if I'm still here?"

The rabbit holder stares at him, her face hardening. She looks away as Ladybug calls out to her from inside the Burrow, far away and unimportant. Her face hardens with her next words. "...See you later, kitty."

The Burrow closes shut. Chat's face furrows in confusion almost instantly, coming forward to feel the air where it had been. "What? What is that supposed to mean?"

No answer came as his claws continue to cut the empty space. He looks around, seeing all the destruction. The shattered moon, the flooded city, all the people turned to stone... It was his fault. He did this. Taking a deep breath, he sits down on the edge of the roof, his hands grasping the sides of it to ground him. "Later... She said later. That means she will be back."

A nervous chuckle escapes him while blind hope fills his being. "I'll see Ladybug again. She wouldn't just leave me here. We're partners."

"...Right?"

One year. He has been waiting for one year.

After the first few hours, hunger wore out over the need to stay, so he left a note, saying he would be back. He jumped from broken building to broken building, scouring for any food that hadn't crumbled in the blast. It was then when he had to detransform for the first time since he destroyed all of France.

He told Plagg what had happened. The usually warm and humorous kwami was very quiet, like he knew something very bad was happening. Adrien thought he was just hungry and grieving at first, but then the sky started falling.

While he didn't split the moon completely in two, it was still madness. He could only watch in horror as debris carved into the atmosphere, making spacecraft crash into eachother. The Kessler effect had began and the tides became uncontrollable around the world. Sometimes, there would be nothing but mud during low tide while in high tide, the sea would rise to destructive and unstable levels. Adrien sat alone in an abandoned building with Plagg, listening to a radio station talking about the states of other countries.

More people were dying. And Ladybug and Bunnyx still hadn't fixed his world.

Weeks past as governments scrambled to see what was left of France. Using what was left of security feeds uploaded and backed up on government files, they were able to figure out who Chat Noir was. Adrien Agreste was officially labeled as a mass murderer who was in the process of committing omnicide. The once beloved fourteen year old model was now seen as a psychopath to those who remained on Earth.

Plagg tried to comfort him as he wept, his voice devoid of any humor. "Adrien... There is nothing I can say to make this better." He floats into Adrien's hands, letting him cradle him against his chest. Plagg leans into it, hearing the poor boy's heart beat in a panic. "But if I had to give up cheese for the rest of my immortal life, I would do it right now to help."

Adrien sobs. He curls up further in the lonely corner of the room. "Why isn't she back yet? She has to come back."

The cat kwami didn't answer. Instead, he presses himself further against his holder. Tears of Plagg's own started to run down his cheeks. For he knew the very worst was coming.

After a few months into the fallout, more people started dying. But it was not to the tides or starvation. It was decay.

Reports started flooding in that people's very cells were dying. In fact, people started getting very sick, as if they were suffering radiation poisoning. They threw up, fell flat on the ground, and there was nothing people could do. It wasn't a virus or contagious illness. It was the consequences of the very timeline hurdling into the dark, collapsing one bit at a time with nothing to connect itself to.

Plagg had to tell Adrien what was going on.

On the very same rooftop where Ladybug had left, he speaks to Adrien. He hated every word he spoke to the broken boy, but he pressed on. "Ladybug isn't coming back."

Adrien immediately protested, his green eyes alit in rage. "Bunnyx said she would see me later! Ladybug is coming back! She wouldn't just-"

"SHE MEANT ANOTHER VERSION OF YOU!"

Had the kwami had fists, they would have been tight with all the grief in his tiny body. "They're gone. Bunnyx doesn't just control time. There are many many others. Versions of her that keep things clean and under control." His voice cracks. "Ladybug went back to her fixed timeline. To you, after the beret, most likely."

Plagg curls in on himself. "Our timeline has been severed by the Warren. And... reality is going to break little by little in the next few years. I can feel it. I feel... all of it."

"...Why didn't you tell me? You loved Tikki! She left you too-"

"I KNOW THAT!" Plagg hisses at him for the very first time, his fangs bared. "I was hoping that she would come back and save us too!"

The kwami finally broke down. He buries head in his tiny paws and weeps. Something shifts in him, a lightening of fur that should not be there. Adrien didn't notice as he stepped forward, cupping his hands around Plagg. A single tear falls down Adrien's cheek when he rests his forehead against his. For a while, he said nothing, closing his eyes and listening to his kwami's breathing.

His gaze falls to the setting sun in the distance, painting the water and white of Paris a beautiful orange. His hands tightened around Plagg. "I'm so sorry."

"...Me too."

Another year past. Adrien was now 16 years old. And he was the only person left.

Everyone else was gone. Turned to dust, killed by fellow survivors, and other causes. In both of his faces, Chat Noir and Adrien became so much angrier. In the very last line of defence, the governments hunting him down found him and tried to kill him. It was a brutal fight as he ran across buildings, launching himself forward with his pole to dodge enemy fire. In the end, the soldiers failed and forced Adrien's hand, making him kill with his own claws. For the first time, it dawned on Adrien about how easy it was for a miraculous holder to hurt an innocent. Even when not akumatized.

And that danger began the reality check that fed into Adrien's festering hate. He started to question his own memories of Marinette Dupain Cheng, remembering her behaviors beyond Ladybug. She made a collage of him in her room. She was always near him, always acting strange in a way that went beyond what was normal for a crush, always clinging.

She always had to be friends with his friends too. Always had to like what he liked, know where he was, who he talked to.

His teeth grit with every new realization. She never liked him as Chat Noir either. Only Adrien. Looking back, he didn't even know if he ever was Adrien. Most of his memories were a blur. So he starts digging. If he's going to be the only person in the world, he reasons, he's going to figure out what's going on with his brain.

Finding books on psychology and therapy was a shock to the heart for him. It was a painful process to find books that were not overly damaged or waterlogged, but he managed to scrape by with a few. Plagg joined him in his readings, his only friend to offer words of comfort. In those books, Adrien saw all the patterns of abuse his father had done to him. He learned why he didn't remember much as a kid. Dissociation, the book had called it.

And with enough of it, it lead to brain fog and memory issues. The clearest his thoughts had ever been was when he was Chat Noir. The only breath of freedom he had from being a golden boy for his father was when he was getting his ass kicked by villains. Villains who his own father manipulated to bring back his mother.

Gabriel Agreste was an amazing husband. That much Adrien remembered. He was always kind and loving to her, even in the end. As a kid, Adrien saw how much he loved her with all his heart, but... That love was never really directed at him. His father made him model and do childhood acting from the moment he could walk. He never saw his mother very much at all, unless it was for pictures.

Émilie never did anything. She always agreed with her husband on most matters, like him not going to public school. Tears start to well up in Adrien's eyes.

"... I was only made to complete my parents marriage."

Plagg nods solemnly. "Yeah. I realized it very quickly before all this. It-" He hesitates for a moment before continuing, "It only made me more attached to you. My past holders..."

Adrien looks up instantly to look at him properly. Plagg never talked about his past users. Ever. He nods patiently, his entire face softening. Plagg went on, his voice getting smaller and smaller. "They were either power hungry or they feared me. There was one time I was locked in a closet for days. Nothing to eat. They told me it was so I could stay compliant."

He never looked so small. "The owners of the miracle box always made sure to get good users for the world. But even when I did as I was told, I was locked away. You are the first user who has ever treated me like... Like I was human."

Plagg finally looks at Adrien in the eyes, his tail curling around one of his legs for self comfort. "In 5000 years, I have never cared more about anyone else. I know sound like I don't care sometimes but... That's only because I'm scared. And if you were to decay too, I don't know-"

Adrien didn't let Plagg finish. He hugs him tightly. In that moment, Adrien finally understood Plagg at the deepest level he could. It was unfortunate that it had to be here, in a abandoned room overlooking a massacred Paris, but he couldn't bring himself to care. That understanding made him blind to the white that was spreading across Plagg's fur in the next few months.

And like the white, Adrien's anger too was spreading like an infected wound.

Ladybug's name rang in his mind like a haunting bell, replaying every moment like a distorted record. He was so respectful of her. He knew he screwed up sometimes, everyone does, but he died for Ladybug. He acted as a human shield for her on multiple occasions. Fighting Timebreaker, he was erased from reality. He was deleted after he threw the arena fight against Ladybug so she could stop Gamer. He let himself get shot by a hate arrow meant for her.

...How many times had she died for him? Because he couldn't think of a single time.

His blood was boiling as he stared at the building where Ladybug left him. He felt sick to his stomach. Somewhere out there, he was still with Ladybug, but he wasn't jealous. He was disgusted by the idea that he was still letting himself die for a girl that would never do the same. Something in him snapped. "Plagg. Claws out."

The transformation was quick, faster than normal. Adrien's body felt more sensitive, as if the very ears of his suit were his own rather than a fashion choice. His breathing speeds up, for he was still looking at the building like it was responsible for everything that went wrong. White bleeds into the claws and arms of his suit as he shouts at the top of his lungs.

"CATACLYSM!"

A beam of white energy explodes from his palm, disintegrating the entire building and anything beyond. Slowly, he looks at his shaking hand, seeing the white in it. That... Wasn't possible. He wasn't akumatized. How could he...?

He scrambled towards the water, forcing himself to look at his reflection. What he saw was not Chat Noir or Chat Blanc, at least not yet. All over his costume were white patchy spots that felt more comfortable than they should have been. His eyes were a violent mix between green and ice, flashing between the two erratically. His hand comes up to touch his hair in the reflection. It had gotten lighter. No longer golden blonde.

Taking a few steps back, panic filled his lungs and body. He couldn't breathe. "Plagg... Plagg. Claws... in."

He untransformed and collapsed against a broken wall. His lungs felt too heavy for his chest, like someone was stepping on it. Ladybug. She would have done that, seeing what a monster he had become before-

Adrien's eyes widened, locking onto a single memory. Ladybug kissed him. To get his akumatized bell. In her timeline, she never dated him. And that meant...

She manipulated him. Just to win.

His hand latches onto the bell of his suit and snaps it off. Distantly, he could hear Plagg in his ears but he wasn't listening. Adrien crushes the bell in his grip. He couldn't stand to look at it anymore. Even with it gone, the panic was still in him, giving him tunnel vision. He was never going to get out of here. He was going to die alone and scared and-

Plagg suddenly appears in front of Adrien, his eyes pleading. Conflict wared on his gaze before he settled on something. He shifted his form.

Adrien became face to face with Plagg's true form. Big a skyscraper, his three eyes lock onto Adrien while his six arms hold the building he is on tightly. A massive glowing green and blue hole flickers in his chest, pulsing with every breath the kwami of destruction took. Two tails flick with concern as Plagg starts to breath in and out, fanning his cold breath across his holder's face.

He starts to breath slower, copying Plagg's breathing pattern. Adrien's heart rate evens out. Sensing this, one of his clawed hands come out, massive and dangerous to any eye. He holds it out below Adrien, giving him every chance to pull away. When he doesn't, Plagg scoops him up into his hands, making sure to angle his destructive aura away from the boy as he puts him against his shoulder.

He speaks with a hum in his voice, everywhere at once but distinctively Plagg all the same. "Shh... I got you, buddy."

Looking at Plagg's form, Adrien sees the white carving through his form, just like the suit. His voice is shaky, unsure, "Plagg. What's happening to us?"

A slight pause went through the air. Preparing for his next words, Plagg runs a single claw through Adrien's hair very gently, "There were a lot more kwamis once. Some were born on earth with more concepts to take shape from. I'm not allowed to talk about it because the masters sealed off my memories, but I think what happened to them is happening to me."

His breath hitches. A rarity in a being so powerful, "Kwami are not supposed to get attached to humans. It's one of the first things the master's taught us. You die, you fade, you're forgotten but..."

More white spreads down Plagg's form, more consistently this time. He closes his eyes, "I don't want you to die. I can't lose you."

When he opens his eyes, were a bright icy blue. "I'm holding this world together by a thread. We are the epicenter of everything fading away. Everything is going to disappear before me until I go too. We are the last lights to go out."

Adrien looks at Plagg in the eyes, all three of them. "I'll die before you then."

He looks away. He stays silent for a very long time, letting his breath come in and out, as if holding something back. "...No."

"No?"

Plagg's two tails curl in between his legs. "I'm preserving you too. The miraculous isn't just keeping you alive, its fusing with you to keep you alive. We have about two years before..." He tails off, but Adrien caught the meaning.

They have two years before Plagg uses up all his energy. Two years until Adrien was truly alone. Instead of crying or getting mad, Adrien presses himself flat against his giant body. "I'll find us a way out. I promise."

The kwami looks away, but keeps his hands close to Adrien. He didn't say it out loud, but Plagg knew that either way...

He would have to cherish the time he had left.

Chat Blanc's step echo through the city of Leon. He came here a month ago to get some peace. It was one of the few cities in France that hadn't been ravaged or looted to oblivion, a temporary respite.

...Plagg would have liked it.

His fanged teeth grit harshly. The merge was a bit after his birthday. They made all the time they could for eachother during those two years alone, for Adrien even learned how to make cheese just for him. The grief was still there, but it was tempered by the need to spend all the time they could when it was the end of time.

And now he was gone. Within Adrien to keep him alive. The tail and cat ears from his suit became a permanent part of his body, constantly flicking and twitching. Two years without anyone to talk to had taken its toll on Adrien's mind, making him more manic. Instincts ravaged his mind as he had to hunt with all the calories he was burning. Animals were getting scarcer and he was still trying to find a way out, but not out of self preservation.

His voice echoes across the rooftops, slightly unhinged, "I'm coming for you. Haunt you from hell if I have you, bug."

Twenty now, Adrien was a bit taller with white hair that came to his shoulders in length. While he was stronger now, he was thin from malnourishment. Claws grip brick as he vaults upwards, prowling for anything he could eat tonight. He would even make due on some expired soup if he had to. Grief and rage were the only things keeping him going.

A new smell suddenly catches him off guard. Pumpkin and... was that firewood. He starts to sprint down the vacant streets, stopping dead in his tracks. There on the ground was a single large black feather. A crow's, but too large to be from a normal bird. Eyes dilating, Chat Blanc inhales deeply. It was too clean, having a faint smell that he ran towards. He catches something else that makes his tail flick erratically.

Magic. Miraculous magic.

"...Somebody else is here."