#lynnimaybe

Chapter 1

Marinette rereads the message three times to make sure it’s appropriate before she copies it out of her notes app and pastes it into her messages.

I’m almost home from New York and wondered if you wanted to meet up while I’m here.

After her third read, she decides that it’s too personal, too much pressure on him. She tries again.

Did you decide on your plans for Christmas?

But she reads this one twice before realizing it offers nothing. It’s too casual.

My parents would love to have you over on Christmas if you’re not doing anything else.

That’s better. It’s not about her, so it can’t be too forward. And it’s not too much pressure, she hopes. She may not have asked her parents if Adrien can join them for Christmas just yet, but she knows they would be appalled if she hadn’t said anything, rather than surprised that she had.

She searches the crowded Metro car around her for something to distract her, but even making silly smiles at a toddler peering at her over his mother’s shoulder isn’t enough to keep her anxiety from spiraling. Because she can’t stop wondering, what if Adrien says no?

And, perhaps even worse, what if he says yes?

And his reply, which is neither, is somehow the worst:

Thank you.

And nothing else.

Marinette quickly exits the message to type a response in her notes before she dares put it in the messages. She has regretted too many texts to take the risk of actually sending what she’s thinking.

I just thought My parents like you were concerned that you’d be alone. I’d like to see you too, even if you’re not available on Christmas. Even if you’re not available on Christmas, it’d be great to see you before I go back to New York. I miss you. We should catch up.

Marinette rereads it one more time. It’s casual, comfortable, and a little condescending. She edits out the “alone” part of the message to My parents and I would like to see you. That’s better, short, simple, to the point. No pressure. Not too intimate. Not too much of anything.

She copies, pastes, and sends.

The Metro comes to a stop and Marinette slides her phone into her purse. Though it isn’t quite as bad as rush hour in New York, Marinette directs her full attention on getting in and out of the Metro safely. The crowds are thinner, but everyone is burdened with holiday packages, and Marinette has taken too many spills across stone and tile alike to risk losing focus.

But as she climbs the stairs, her phone buzzes in her pocket and she very nearly goes sprawling. The handrail saves her. She waits until she is safely on flat ground again before desperately digging her phone out of her pocket.

I’d like to see you, too. Glad you had a safe trip home.

Marinette’s heart thumps loudly. He wants to see her.

She types It was a safe trip, but a long one! I haven’t had to spend the night in an airport before, but I wasn’t going to risk missing my spot on any waiting lists after they canceled my first flight out of New York. They really wanted me to check my bag, but I was not going to risk your present getting lost in transit. into her notes app, but she doesn’t dare send it all. It sounds like a conversation, and Adrien’s been so hard to draw into a conversation ever since his father’s arrest.

Instead she sends, Hope you made it home safe from Venice? She doesn’t want to overwhelm him with herself and her own problems, but she wants to know he’s okay.

When she arrives at her parents’ bakery, her phone buzzes and she pauses, hand halfway to the door handle, to read his text.

Got in last night.

She doesn’t have time to open her notes app to draft a reply before she is swarmed by a bone-crushing hug and lifted off her feet with such force she assumes its her father. But the high-pitched squeal that accompanies the hug means it can only be one person: Alya.

Marinette squeals back and hugs her best friend as tightly as she can. As Alya sets her down, she sees Nino standing just behind her, arms spread wide. Marinette hugs him, too.

“What, no scream for me?” he grins.

“You know I missed you,” she says and kisses his cheek.

And though Marinette has a million questions for Alya and Nino, she has to say hello to her parents first.

The bakery is swarmed with customers, as it always is on Christmas Eve. Marinette had planned to get into Paris yesterday afternoon so she could help with the sales, but holiday travel plans are a terrible thing, especially internationally.

Despite the booming business of the day, her parents hold her long enough to ask her about her internship; she gives them all the positive updates. She asks them about news at home; they tell her about all the local gossip that filtered through the bakery doors: André is finally retiring his ice cream stand, Chloé Bourgeois has a girlfriend, and Kitty Section is going on tour again next year.

And finally, just as she’s reaching for an apron to help, her mother shoos her upstairs. “You must be exhausted; you’re not working after all that travel.”

“Twenty-four hours in an airport?” her father adds. “Absolutely not. Straight to bed with you.”

Marinette protests that she slept on the plane, but her parents are uninterested. She is sent away to rest.

Marinette, however, is not going to bed. She’ll get there, eventually, but first she has to talk with Alya and Nino away from where her parents can hear.

Her friends follow her upstairs, and as soon as Nino closes the trapdoor to Marinette’s childhood bedroom, Marinette is swarmed by the kwamis of the miracle box. Their squeal of excitement rivals Marinette and Alya’s.

“I missed you guys, too,” she assures them with a laugh, and takes a minute to nuzzle Tikki’s cheek in particular. Once the excitement from the reunion has settled down, Marinette turns back to Nino and Alya. “You really don’t have any news?”

Alya shakes her head. “Six months and no signs.”

“Nothing about the peacock or the butterfly miraculouses,” Nino frowns. He doesn’t mention the miraculous of destruction, but surely that’s been as fruitless a search, too. She stalks the Ladyblog for updates about their radio silent friend or the missing kwamis, though she knows Alya would text her anything before it made it to the blog.

“We’re sorry, Marinette,” Alya says. “We really thought we’d have something for you by now.”

“It’s all right. You’ve done your best.” She falls back onto her bed, suddenly bereft of any desire to unpack her things. The kwamis jump down beside her, a tumble of soft fur and static electricity.

“How’s the city treating Scarabella and Carapace?” she asks.

“It’s fine,” Nino says. “Everyone misses Ladybug and Chat Noir, but they like us well enough.”

“Not that there’s much for us to do,” Alya sighs. “Saving kittens from trees and helping people cross the road—you know, normal hero things. No villains to fight.”

“Which is a good thing,” Nino points out.

Alya shrugs.

Marinette runs her finger along the stitches in her pink comforter. She doesn’t know which is harder to bear: that the peacock and butterfly miraculouses are still lost after all the work she and Chat went through to save them or that Chat has really quit being a hero.

Six months ago, they faced Monarch, formerly Shadow Moth, formerly Hawk Moth. Six months ago, they learned that Monarch was Gabriel Agreste. Six months ago, Gabriel Agreste was arrested and Ladybug and Chat Noir were lauded as heroes.

The butterfly miraculous, however, had vanished, and the peacock along with it.

Once it was over, Ladybug and Chat Noir sat in their favorite spot atop the Eiffel Tower and watched the sun rise over the city. For Ladybug, it was a wonderful new beginning. Yes, things were unfinished, but Monarch had stalked them for so long. This still felt like a victory.

But Chat Noir was quiet, somber.

“Do you think…” Ladybug paused to evaluate her question, then plunged ahead despite her misgivings. “Do you think with Monarch gone, it might be safe to tell each other our identities?”

She expected it would cheer him up. She thought that, after four years of working together and him begging to know the truth, he would be thrilled to hear her offer it. And she was desperate to know him truly, even against her better judgment.

But instead he drew his knees tighter against his chest. “I don’t think I’m ready,” he said.

“O-oh, okay.”

“I… might need a break from this.”

“Oh.”

And that was the last time they spoke.

With no villain in Paris and an internship offer in New York waiting for her response, Marinette finally gave into Alya’s plan and handed over the earrings. Alya promised to be the best pinch hitter for Ladybug there would ever be, and swore that she’d recover the missing miraculouses by the time Marinette returned.

Alya pulls her earrings out and hands them to Marinette. “Sorry I couldn’t fix it all for you.”

Marinette hesitates. “No, Alya, they’re yours now—”

“Oh, you’re giving them back,” Alya grins and forces the earrings into her hands, “but I thought you might want a turn before you go back to New York.”

She does miss being Ladybug, and she has missed having Tikki nearby, but it won’t be the same without Chat Noir. “I could take Mullo instead. The three of us could still go out together.”

Alya snaps the Fox Pendant around her neck. “I had better take Trixx out before he gets himself into trouble.”

Trixx flies in an excited circle around Alya’s head. “Yes! Let’s go!”

“Not right now,” Alya laughs. “But we will get in a few runs as Rena Furtive before Marinette leaves. I promise.”

Maybe it’s the warm snuggles from Tikki. Maybe it’s the company of good friends. Maybe it’s having her familiar miraculous returned to her ears. Whatever the reason, Marinette manages to pull herself to her feet to unpack. She will be home for a few weeks, which is plenty of time to settle in. Or, perhaps more accurately, just enough time to settle in before she has to pack up again.

❖❖❖

It’s late that night, long after a warm Christmas Eve dinner with her parents and grandparents, before Marinette finally has a few moments to herself—well, as to herself as she can with the Miracle Box in her room. Alya insisted she keep it for the night, and Marinette guesses Alya was eager for a break. She’s happy to oblige. There was something lonely about living in New York with a roommate who came and went at all hours of the night. She’s missed having a flurry of friends to come home to.

Marinette pulls on her coat and slips upstairs to her rooftop balcony. She’s also missed this view. Paris’ lights aren’t all that different from New York but it feels different. The rooftops here are more intimate, older, and worn with familiar paths.

Tikki follows her. “Are we going out?” she asks, and Marinette hears the hope in her voice.

“It’s Christmas Eve. We shouldn’t.”

“Rest is important, Marinette, but you've been away a long time. It's okay to say you missed us.”

Marinette laughs. “Of course I missed you, Tikki. I missed everyone.”

For the most part, there has not been much time to miss her loved ones. She is used to being overworked and overwhelmed and New York is no different, even without her additional responsibilities as a hero.

But the day her father called to help her schedule a flight home for Christmas, Marinette’s heart began to ache with a longing to be home, and it has not stopped, even now that she is here.

Because she isn’t quite home. Not quite yet.

“Tikki, spots on.”

And Tikki goes with a smile, as if she knew this was exactly what Marinette came up here to do before Marinette knew it herself.

But even as the familiar magic settles into her bones, the ache in her heart does not quite fade. She leaps aimlessly across the rooftops, wishing it could all feel like it once did. She hears the jingle of a bell not far off and her heart lurches, but when she seeks out the sound, it’s only a decorative reindeer harnessed to a child-sized sled, left out in the soft dusting of snow that has begun to fall.

Otherwise, the city is quiet.

Though she has never been one for notoriety, she makes sure to call down greetings and well wishes to the people who are strolling the streets and enjoying the city’s holiday lights. She waves and smiles as they excitedly shout that Ladybug is back, that their hero is home. It isn’t the praise or recognition that she wants; she just hopes that word will reach him, wherever he is.

She stops at the Eiffel Tower.

When she is Ladybug, heights mean nothing to her. Falling and flying are as natural as inhaling and exhaling. She holds onto the iron rod above her head and leans out, looking at the city below. Its lamps glisten like starlight on the surface of water, much like the ocean she has stared across longingly from the other side, wondering if he stops to think of her as much as she stops to think of him.

If he is going to come find her, he will start here.

“Well isn’t this fortuitous,” a voice behind her murmurs.

Her heart thrums excitedly. It’s him, it’s his voice—but when she turns, Chat Noir is not behind her.

He has golden hair, like her Chat, but his eyes are hard and icy blue. Her heart stutters into an old nightmare, but no, this boy is not dressed in white. He wears a suit of pale blue with a deep violet button up visible beneath it. The tie knotted at his collar is bloodred and in place of a tie pin, he wears a brooch in the shape of a peacock’s tail.

The mask over his black-rimmed eyes is violet with feathers coming off the ends, their red, unblinking eyes as intimidating as his own cold blue ones. They’re a perfect match to the feather-shaped panel of the folded fan in his hand.

Ladybug takes a step backwards and her foot reaches the edge of the tower.

“I do love that we’re going to get a shot at the original instead of some knock off,” another voice says, high and feminine. A young woman drops down from the iron network of beams above them and lands in a graceful flourish. Her soft pink and orange skirts flutter like wings softening a landing before settling neatly around her feet. The bodice of her dress is a pale lavender, and her mask, like the young man’s, extends far beyond her face. But instead of ending in marks like a peacock’s feathers, her mask curves into the shape of a butterfly’s wings. She wears a purple brooch in the shape of a butterfly at the hollow of her throat and carries a cane tipped in amethyst.

Ladybug unclips her yo-yo from her waist. “Unless you two are going to politely hand over your miraculouses so I can return them to where they belong, I’m not sure that we have much to say to each other.”

“There’s no need for a fight,” the young man says.

“But I would love a fight,” the woman protests, lifting her cane as if it were a rapier. “How about it, Ladybug? Woman to woman?”

She plunges her cane at Ladybug’s chest and Ladybug knows she could move out of the way, but she doesn’t. She lets the attack knock her off the edge of the Eiffel Tower. Falling truly is no different from breathing for her, but her assailant, surprised to find the attack has landed, stumbles. Ladybug sees the young woman just barely catch herself on the iron beams and is disappointed. She uses her yo-yo to snag a beam of the tower, swing through and up, and lands behind the boy dressed in the peacock’s glamor.

She wastes no time. She launches her yo-yo with an intent to tie up the young man and drag him towards her. He sidesteps her attack and catches her yo-yo on the end of his fan. She pulls with the hope of disarming him, but his grip is strong.

“You could hand over your miraculous,” he suggests, “and tell us where to find Chat Noir.”

“Or don’t,” the woman says, only a small tremor in her voice after her near-fall. “I’d much rather see if you bleed first.”

She rushes Ladybug, full of an anger familiar after hundreds of fights with Monarch’s akumas and sentimonsters. It’s blind rage, formless and reckless. This woman hates her, and Ladybug hasn’t a clue why.

She’s forced to release the peacock’s fan to defend herself. She does think, a bit sadly, that perhaps it was a good thing Chat Noir declined her offer of sharing their secret identities. It means that even if she is to lose this fight, she has nothing to give these people to help them find her partner. Her former partner.

But she’s not going to lose this fight. She may not have been Ladybug for a few months, but she knows her strength and she knows her magic. The woman with the cane does not seem to know what to do with her weapon. She swings wildly, alternating between using her cane like a club or a sword. Ladybug ducks and side-steps her attacks easily. If the young man would bother to intervene, it might be a more challenging fight, but he seems content to stand to the side and watch his partner embarrass herself in her anger.

Ladybug’s yo-yo string finally snags on the woman’s cane. She yanks it towards her and tears the staff from the woman’s grip.

“That’s mine!” The young woman snarls and grasps desperately for her weapon, but the boy clicks his tongue against his teeth with the sort of sound one might reserve for a toddler throwing a tantrum.

He plucks a feather from his fan. “If you’re done throwing your fit, perhaps we could move onto the main event.”

The woman takes a step away from Ladybug with a furious frown scrawled across her face. “Fine.” And she certainly sounds like a petulant child who has just been told she can’t leave the table until she finishes her dinner.

She taps the brooch at her throat and a pale lavender butterfly flits out from her chest. The boy blows on his feather and the two magical creations swoop off the edge of the Eiffel Tower. Ladybug does her best to snare them in her yo-yo, but the boy throws his fan in an expert arc, striking her yo-yo from its path. His fan falls from the tower and the feather and the butterfly disappear into the night.

“What do you even want? Who are you?” Ladybug asks.

“I did ask politely for your miraculous,” he says, “and Chat Noir’s, but you’re right. It was quite rude of us not to introduce ourselves. This is Bella Moth, and you can call me Flourish.”

There’s a crash from the street below and Ladybug knows she needs to investigate, but if her years facing Hawk Moth and his subsequent forms taught her anything, it’s that an opportunity to meet her enemies in person is rare and she should not waste it.

“Go on, Ladybug,” Flourish says. “We’ll see you again—after our creations defeat you, and we take your miraculous.”

She thinks he ought to take a lesson from his predecessor as she is trying to do, and recognize that this strategy has ended in nothing but stalemates for the heroes and villains alike, but there’s a scream from below and Ladybug cannot ignore people in danger. She leaps from the ledge and plunges to the street below. She takes Bella Moth’s cane with her.

As she lands, she finds where Flourish’s fan has fallen. She grabs that, too and turns it over, examining it even as she runs towards the sounds of a monster tearing apart the streets of Paris. The fan looks identical to the one Mayura once wielded, but it’s clear that neither of these miraculous users are her.

She and Chat Noir never found proof that Mayura was Nathalie Sancouer, but it was not hard to put together once Gabriel Agreste’s identity was revealed. Nathalie was tight-lipped about Gabriel’s secrets, but Ladybug wonders if it might be time for another chat with the woman.

She finds the battle easily. A boy astride a senti-reindeer, whose red nose is glowing so brightly, is using his new powers and the help of his creature to fire deadly lasers at shop windows. Ladybug tries, first, to talk the boy down from his anger. She learns that he has decided to call himself Reign-deer, and he plans to destroy Christmas because his mother had to work, so he’ll be alone for the night. If he can’t enjoy the day, no one can.

It’s been a long time since she’s had to fight an akuma, and longer still since she’s had to fight one alone, but she still remembers how to use her Lucky Charm. Though it takes her a while to figure out what the red, black-spotted banana peel is for.

She notices the teddy bear dressed like a nurse that the akumatized boy clings to like a life preserver. In his other hand is a jingle bell, which he shakes each time the reindeer fires a laser. It’s not hard to guess that the powers of the miraculouses are stored in these objects, but it is hard for her to get close to the boy without getting hit by the reindeer’s shiny red nose.

But when she sees the senti-reindeer stumble on a frozen patch of road, she knows exactly how to put her Lucky Charm to use. She does have a single moment where she considers how much easier this would be if she had the help of Cataclysm, but the self-pity is brief. She can’t afford it for very long.

She uses Bella Moth’s cane—specifically the crystal on top—to deflect the reindeer’s laser. The redirected beam strikes the teddy bear right through its scrubs, and a lavender butterfly flits out of the stuffing. The reindeer rears back and its rider tumbles into the snow. The reindeer’s hoof comes down on the banana peel, slick with fresh snow, and it splays out in the street like a newborn fawn. The jingle bell goes flying into the air and Ladybug uses Flourish’s fan to catch it. It lands on the edges of the feathers and rolls into her hand where she snaps it in two and frees the blue feather.

She catches the feather and butterfly in her yo-yo and bleeds the color from them until they are pure white. Once they’re no longer a danger, she releases them, and uses her Lucky Charm to repair the damage done by the red-nosed reindeer and his rider.

The crowd has questions and concerns and she does her best to assure them that she has it under control, that she and Scarabella and Carapace are all working together to keep them safe. She promises that she and her friends will catch Bella Moth and Flourish just as they stopped Monarch.

She doesn’t answer their questions about Chat Noir. Instead, she escapes as quickly as she can. They do not complain, used to Ladybug and her hasty exits, but they don’t seem to notice that her earrings are not counting down the minutes of her transformation, not yet.

Ladybug can feel the loss where she has spent some of her magic, but she does not feel any warning signs that her power is fading. She’d waited so long for this strength, to be old enough and strong enough to no longer be bound by a single use of her miraculous’ power, but she had given it up by the time she was strong enough to hold it. At least this means she still has time to face Bella Moth and Flourish.

But when she finally reaches the Eiffel Tower, the new villains are gone. Then the cane and the fan she carries vanish suddenly and she knows there’s no hope of finding the villains now.

Something lands behind her with a thud, and Ladybug turns, fists closed in anticipation of a fight—but it is not the return of Bella Moth and Flourish. It’s only Carapace.

Rena Furtive melts out of the shadows just behind him and, without warning, pulls Ladybug into her arms.

“We got here as quickly as we could,” Carapace says.

“We’re sorry it wasn’t quickly enough,” Rena Furtive apologizes. “Are you okay?”

“It’s just my luck that two new villains decide to announce themselves the day I get back,” Ladybug says, and tries to make it funny, but her laugh sounds a bit more like a sob. She doesn’t even realize how overwhelming tonight has been until she hears it in her own voice.

Rena Furtive squeezes her shoulders tightly. “It’s not your fault.”

“It’s got to be a coincidence,” Carapace says confidently. “Maybe they’re also in town for the holiday.”

“But who are they?” Rena Furtive asks. “And what do they want?”

Ladybug tells them what she knows. It isn’t much, but it’s enough to make Rena Furtive’s brows furrow beneath her fox-like mask.

“Blonde?” Rena asks.

Carapace frowns. “No.”

“Why not?”

“We’ve talked about it before, and the answer is no.”

“That’s not a why.”

“I’ve told you why.”

Ladybug listens to this back and forth, feeling a bit like a ball at a tennis match. She has no idea what this argument is about, and she can’t manage to get a word in to interrupt.

“He got home yesterday,” Rena Furtive says, “and a new villain shows up today? Is that a coincidence?”

“Yes,” Carapace snaps. “It’s completely a coincidence.”

“Is what a coincidence?” Ladybug finally manages to ask.

“Adrien Agreste,” Rena Furtive says. “Who else would have ended up with Gabriel’s missing miraculous?”

Chapter 2

Adrien ignores the first alert on his phone. He has his tongue between his lips and his hands tangled up in a golden, sparkly ribbon. He has been fighting with this bow for fifteen minutes, and he is not going to give in now.

But when his phone beeps a third time, he picks it up.

At first, he’s disappointed it isn’t Marinette texting him back. Then his heart leaps into his throat as he realizes it’s a Ladyblog alert.

Ladybug is home.

Adrien very nearly bolts for his dresser to dig out the small black jewelry box he has abandoned in his sock drawer. He’s stopped by the news alert that appears at the top of his screen—not from the Ladyblog, but because he has his phone set up to alert him of any news articles that use the word “akuma” or “sentimonster.”

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reign-deer Rampage Reined in by Red-Spotted Hero blips at the top of his phone screen and he has hardly clicked on the notification before a new one appears: Ladybug Warns Citizens of Paris About New Villains in Town. Adrien quickly opens that one instead.

His stomach turns as he reads what little details Ladybug was able to give. It isn’t much for anyone else to chew on—Bella Moth and Flourish, the new wielders of the butterfly and peacock miraculouses—but for Adrien, it's nauseating.

His desire to see Ladybug is lost in that nausea, in that toxic pool of guilt that boils over in his stomach. He can’t face her, not after how dramatically he failed her. And now, to know that the lost miraculouses have ended up in the hands of two new villains?

There’s a reason he gave Plagg up and disappeared to Venice for two months.

He’s so caught up in his own agony, he doesn’t hear the click of heels on tile harmonized with the creak of mechanical joints announcing Nathalie’s arrival. He’s startled by the sharp staccato knocks on his bedroom door and hastily shoves the collection of half-wrapped presents under his couch as she opens his bedroom door.

The bottle of wine he bought for Nathalie rolls right on through his couch and stops at her feet. She glances down at it briefly, nudges it aside, and crosses the room to him.

Nathalie has known him too long to be put off by messes, and too long to be surprised that he’s bought her a bottle of wine for Christmas. He hopes she’ll at least be surprised by the dinner reservation in Shanghai.

“Good. You’re here,” she says by way of greeting, and sits down on his couch. She hands him a leather-bound folder, the sort she keeps memos in, but it’s Christmas, and there shouldn’t be any reason for memos.

“Where else would I be?” he asks. He takes the folder from her but he does not open it. He was very clear with her that he was not going to do any work during Christmas. He also remembers telling her to take the time off.

Since he is being stubborn, she opens the folder up for him. “I’ve prepared a statement for the press about Paris’s new villains. It only needs your signature.”

Adrien stares at her in surprise. Nathalie has managed to get a statement together before he’s hardly begun to process the idea of new villains in Paris. Prepared for everything is sort of Nathalie’s job, but he can’t help but wonder if she knew about these new villains before they had made their appearance.

Though it feels like putting his hand in a tiger’s mouth, or dropping his heart into a vat of acid, he has dared, a few times, to ask Nathalie if she knew the truth about Hawk Moth, or if she had ever helped Gabriel with any of his villainy as she had helped him with everything else.

“I only ever helped your father manage his business,” is as much as she has ever said. Except once, she added, “Do you really think if I had known what he was doing to himself, I would have said nothing?”

Adrien doesn’t really believe her, but he has no one else to turn to, not really.

Shortly after Gabriel’s arrest and formal charges were filed, his father lapsed into a coma. The doctors have no explanation, but Adrien managed to find a second opinion in a friend with a bit more knowledge of what happens when someone uses too many miraculouses.

Plagg could not say he had ever seen someone collapse from using too many miraculouses at once, but he was aware that there are side effects from overuse of a miraculous or combining too many powers of the miraculouses at once. He also mentioned that using a damaged miraculous could put the user in a similar comatose state, though Adrien still doesn't understand why Plagg included that detail in his diagnosis.

It’s hard to know which would be the worse way to spend the holiday: his father languishing in a hospital, all but brain dead, or having to face his father in a cell somewhere with the unasked “why” as impenetrable as the iron bars and glass barrier between them.

So Adrien lets Nathalie stay—after all, who else has the knowledge to keep the Agreste brand running after such a scandal—but he has kept his eyes and ears open for signs that she might be hiding the lost butterfly and peacock miraculouses.

The saying is “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” though Adrien wishes he’d minded the first part a bit more closely.

His gaze lingers on Ladybug’s name in Nathalie’s press statement. I am glad to know that Paris’ hero is home again, and I wish Ladybug the best of luck in hunting out these new villains, though I know that she does not need it. Guilt bubbles up from his stomach to his throat, burning him from the inside out.

He’s always known that it’s his fault that Ladybug left Paris last fall. He had pushed her so far away that she’d passed her legacy onto Scarabella, and he’d let Carapace step into his place without protest. They’ve done a lot of good for the city, even without a villain to face. He’s dreamed of joining them a few times. He watches them work to save a kid or a cat and he twists the space around his finger that used to hold a silver ring.

He’s accepted his fate as a sort of penance for missing all the signs of his father’s villainous secrets. He was a hero; he should have seen it sooner. Instead he and Ladybug took years to realize that Gabriel and Hawk Moth were one and the same.

Adrien signs the statement, and though he knows it's a grievous sin to work on Christmas, he says, “Maybe change it to Ladybug and Scarabella instead of just Ladybug. And we ought to use a picture of the Ladybug statue for the socials.”

“Noted. I’ve already picked one out.” She takes the folder back from him, but she does not leave. She hesitates in the middle of his room.

Adrien can’t imagine what she’s waiting for. If she dares to say anything related to work or managing his father’s company—his company—he considers what it would cost him to fire her then and there.

“Do you have anything you want to tell me, Adrien?” she finally says.

He thinks of the black and red jewelry box tucked away in his sock drawer and the silver ring inside. “No.”

She still waits. When he does not offer anything more, she asks, “Is there anything you want to ask me?”

He has a dozen questions, a hundred, a million things to ask. He keeps his voice as even as he can as he says, “Nothing I haven’t asked you before.”

She still waits. He still says nothing.

“I was many things for your father,” she finally says, “but for you, all I have done is to look out for you.”

It is hard to forget that Nathalie is the one who enabled his escape to school all those years ago, an action that changed the course of his life irrevocably, and brought him some of the greatest joy he has ever known.

“If you need a confidant,” she adds, “I am an expert at non-disclosures.”

“No, thank you.”

She waits another moment before, in a turn that Adrien finds uncharacteristically blunt, she says, “If you are Flourish, you do not have to tell me, but I cannot cover for you if I do not know what you are doing.”

Adrien considers the possibility that Nathalie could be Bella Moth. Who else would have ended up with his father’s miraculouses? But if that’s the case, wouldn’t she know who Flourish is? Or is it possible that Bella Moth and Flourish as unaware of the other outside of their personas as he and Ladybug are?

Instead of denying her accusation, Adrien asks, “Like you covered for my father?”

She does not respond to this. She only waits, and Adrien wonders if this is what she did with his father. If she waited and waited for Gabriel to tell her the truth. If she suspected—she must have suspected; no one spent as much time with Gabriel as she did—and if he is wrong for leaping at the chance to blame her.

It is not as if she did anything less to stop Gabriel than Adrien did.

Adrien’s shoulders drop in defeat and the cool exterior he’s been trying to hold onto melts. “I’m not Flourish,” he says. “If you’re asking me, though, does this mean you’re not Bella Moth?”

“I cannot imagine how I would have the time,” she says, which isn’t a “no” exactly, but Adrien considers how close he and Nathalie have become in these last six months. She knows his schedule down to the minutes written in for bathroom breaks. It would be hard for her to slip away to be a villain just as it had always been hard for him to slip away to be a hero. Hard, but not quite impossible.

Adrien searches for a pin at Nathalie’s throat and wonders if it is hidden under the cuff of her turtle neck or tucked beneath the lapel of her blazer. He sees no sign of it.

“I’m leaving, then,” she moves on breezily, as if interrogating him was just one of the many tasks on her todo list, squeezed in between the press release and her Christmas vacation. “I’d encourage you not to leave the house without a guard. There’s no telling what people will think of you after tonight.”

Adrien knows there will be people who put together the timing of his return home and Flourish’s arrival in Paris, but he won’t ask the Gorilla to work on Christmas, and Nathalie is right to tell him that he shouldn’t go alone. He could send his friends their presents via courier, instead of delivering them in person like he planned, but that defeats the purpose of his gifts. He wants to see his friends. He owes them after how he has treated them over the last six months.

Because after Gabriel’s arrest, he didn’t just push away Chat Noir’s friends; he pushed Adrien’s friends away too.

It was just so easy to be busy. The press wanted him. The lawyers wanted him. The doctors wanted him. And he didn’t want to think.

His friends were kind and comforting, even when he smiled and promised them that he was okay. He saw them when he had to and avoided them when he had an excuse. His text history is full of broken engagements and broken promises.

He didn’t even go to Marinette’s going away party last August. Nino showed up to drag him away from a dining room of thick fountain pens, thicker stacks of paper, and an even thicker crowd of lawyers, but Adrien simply couldn’t get away. He promised to catch Marinette before she left, but he didn’t manage that either. He didn’t even tell Nino he was going to Venice for a photography project until he was already across the border.

He does want to be with his friends. His texts aren’t a lie—he wants to see them. He wants to know how they’re doing, what changes are going on in their lives, but he’s afraid of the questions being returned back to him. He’s afraid they might ask him all those questions he can’t answer, all those questions he’s afraid to know the answers to.

Questions he thinks he might be able to answer if he thinks long enough and hard enough, but he’s not ready to do that.

And maybe if he can prove that Nathalie is Bella Moth, he won’t have to.

He doesn’t know why she’s waited six months to reveal herself, and he hasn’t the faintest idea who Flourish is, but he doesn’t need to know the details. He just needs to get the butterfly back and beg for Ladybug’s forgiveness.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Adrien says. He, too, has become an expert at P.R.-level vagueness after working so closely with Nathalie. “Do you have plans for your time off?”

“I thought I might take a trip to Shanghai.”

Adrien manages a straight face for a moment, but he can’t even bring himself to feign an interested, nonchalant question. He fumbles under the couch for the card he’d put together for Nathalie, complete with all the information about the restaurant and her accommodations for her trip. “Someday I’ll surprise you.” He hands the card over.

“Someday you’ll remember that I’m the one who approves every dollar you spend.”

“Next time I’ll remember to ask Nino to put it on his credit card.”

There’s a hint of a smile on the edge of Nathalie’s mouth. “If Nino Lahiffe has a credit card maximum high enough for how much you like to lavish me, his career as a film director must have really taken off.”

“Not yet, but it will.”

“Then I await the day,” she says, but with all her usual enthusiasm, which is to say, hardly any at all. She picks up the bottle of wine that had rolled to her feet. “This is mine, too, isn’t it?”

“Enjoy,” Adrien says, and leans back on his hands.

She tucks it and the press release under her arm. “Thank you. Merry Christmas, Adrien.”

His heart lurches at her tone. It’s as close to affectionate as Nathalie ever comes. He wonders if she really meant it when she said that all she had ever done was look out for him.

“Merry Christmas, Nathalie,” he says.

As soon as she is gone, he pulls his presents out from under the couch. There’s a new pair of designer shoes for Chloe, an original Degas sketch for Kagami, a new hi-def camera for Nino with specs Adrien has tested himself, and a new tablet for Alya. Nino has always told him that he does too much when it comes to gifts, but Adrien doesn’t have an appropriate frame of reference. Even after six years of gift exchanges with Nino, Adrien still can only think about how much he wants to give to his friends and never considers how much it costs.

Comparatively, Marinette’s gift is nothing. It cost Adrien very little, particularly when held against the other gifts, and yet this gift is more than he has ever given to anyone. He decides to finish wrapping the others before he gets back into a fight with the glittery bow that he has picked out especially for her.

There’s a soft creak behind him as he’s taping the wrapping paper around the frame he’d purchased for Kagami’s gift, and he shivers as a chill slips into his room.

Adrien turns to see that one of the panels of his large bedroom window has slipped open. He knows the catch is weak from years of sneaking out as Chat Noir, but he can’t remember it ever opening on its own. He gets up to close it and has to pull over a table and stretch to reach the fastener. He’s used to having a bit more height in his jump when he is Chat Noir.

It closes easily, and though the latch is certainly not as snug as it once was, it seems secure enough. If the wind is pushing it open, though, the latch will need to be replaced. He makes a note to himself to fix it before Nathalie notices.

Once Adrien has finished wrapping Alya’s gift, he returns to the bow on Marinette’s present. The glitter has already transferred to each of the other gifts, and he’s fairly certain its embedded beneath the skin of his hands by now, but he refuses to be defeated.

He tries until he gets desperate enough to pull up a video online of how to tie a nice bow. The video is helpful, but there’s an odd squeaking noise in the background. It doesn’t bother him, exactly; it’s just a little distracting.

He manages to get the bow as neat as he can, and he thinks that while it isn’t up to Marinette’s standards, it’s really not bad. She’ll be nice about it, anyway. She always is. And as he sets it aside he hears a squeak again.

He can’t blame his phone for it this time. He surveys his room, wondering if it's possible that he has mice. It had been a concern when he had first started keeping cheese in his room, but Plagg was quite good at keeping them away. He hasn’t had cheese in his room for months, so why would they be here now?

Adrien follows a squeak to his desk, but he does not see anything. He does notice that the cabinet next to it is cracked open. Is it possible Plagg woke up without him, found out he was gone, and rebuilt his horde?

Adrien peers inside the cabinet, but he sees nothing unusual. The cabinet still smells, though, and Adrien thinks he’ll never be free of Plagg’s Camembert curse.

He hears a squeak again, this time from his dresser. He turns and trips over his desk chair that was definitely not right behind him a moment ago. He would swear it’s moved specifically to be in his way.

He pushes himself up, but not before he catches sight of something small and gray disappearing behind his wastebasket. It’s not a mouse, though. Mice don’t move on two legs.

“Ma—” he stops himself before he reveals anything that Adrien Agreste is not supposed to know. “Multimouse?” he asks.

The small gray figure peeks her head out from behind the wastebasket. Her dark hair is streaked pink and pulled back in a bun, and Adrien is positive that this is Multimouse, and he knows that Multimouse is Marinette, but why is she here and small and—

There are more of her suddenly, gathering back together, and before Adrien quite understands what is happening, Multimouse is sitting at his desk chair and he is still on the ground at her feet.

She presses her hand to her head, as if her mind is still gathering itself together, then her eyes flick directly to his dresser. Adrien follows her gaze and sees his sock drawer cracked open just enough for a small version of Multimouse to slip through.

Adrien glances guiltily at the pale white line across his ring finger, a scar of happier time, before he knew just how badly he had screwed up.

Multimouse says nothing to him. She stands and crosses to his dresser.

“Wait,” he tries, but she reaches into his sock drawer and pulls out the familiar black and red hexagonal box he had tucked away months ago.

Adrien kept Plagg around for a while before pushing him away, too, just like he’d done to all of his friends; having someone around at the end of the day, someone he didn't have to explain anything to, had been nice at first. He and Plagg didn't speak much then, but they were together, at least. Then Scarabella came on the scene and Adrien, with no preamble nor apology, formally returned his ring to its box. What was the point in being Chat Noir without Ladybug?

He bites his lip as Multimouse turns to face him.

“I defended you,” she says, and there’s something in her voice that’s utterly devastated.

Adrien uses his desk chair to help himself to his feet. “Mar—Multimouse, I’m sorry…”

She doesn’t look at him. Her eyes are solely on the box. “Why?” she asks.

“I thought…” He swallows down his guilt but it pushes its way back up regardless. “I didn’t know.”

Her gray-gloved hands grip the box as if she’s got her hands around his throat squeezing the life out of him. “I told Rena she had you all wrong. I told her it wasn’t like you to do this. I told her I’d look just to make her feel better, and now…”

Adrien thinks of the gift he’s just finished wrapping, and how it was intended to be all the vulnerable parts of him laid bare for Marinette in a way he hadn’t trusted with anyone else just yet. He trusted her because he knew that she would understand him. But he doesn’t see how she’ll be able to understand this.

“Does Ladybug know you’re here?” he asks. “Or did Scarabella send you?”

Multimouse hesitates. She chews on her lower lip with an indecision that is just so full of Marinette that Adrien’s heart finally manages to surface above his guilt and pain and he steps closer.

She misinterprets his approach and steps away, lifting the jewelry box out of his reach, or at least, as high as she can. She’s small; he is not. He could try to grab the box from her, but he doesn’t.

“I am sorry,” he says. “I just… can you tell Ladybug that?”

She doesn’t acknowledge his apology. She still won’t even look at him. “Where’s the other one?” she asks.

He doesn’t answer because he doesn’t know how. “The other what?”

“Your partner’s.” And now she looks at him, but there’s so much anger in her glare that he steps away from her.

He can only stare back at her, utterly bewildered by both her question and her anger. His only partner is Ladybug, and doesn’t she know that?

“Who are you talking about?” he asks.

“Bella Moth.”

And all of the guilt, all of the heartache, and even all of Adrien’s love for Marinette turns as cold as the ice in her voice. His shoulders tighten and his jaw clenches. His tone shifts to match hers.

“You think I’m Flourish?”

“Why else did I find a miraculous jewelry box in your room?”

He’s never felt so utterly betrayed. Not even when he discovered the truth about his father. It’s one thing for Nathalie to suspect him, Nathalie who knew his father and went through it all before.

But this is Marinette, and she mentioned Rena and surely Carapace was a part of this—and Adrien knows Rena Rouge and Carapace are Alya and Nino. He doesn’t know who Scarabella and Ladybug are, sure, but how could his best friends have ever suspected him of being a villain? He’s guilty of not catching his father sooner. He’s guilty of letting Ladybug down, but not of betraying her trust in this way, and he can’t believe Marinette and his friends think he would have.

Multimouse looks at him and he glimpses, just beyond her anger, the same heartbreak he feels.

He considers, briefly, asking her to flip the catch on the box, to look inside before she leaves. It’s a simple enough request, but his heartbreak is too great.

And, anyway, isn’t this his fault too? He pushed his friends away. Why wouldn’t they turn on him?

He sees movement in the corner of his eye as a violet butterfly squeezes through his loose window pane. He doesn’t know which of them its coming for, but he’s not going to let it take Marinette, certainly.

He lunges for the box in her hand, and they both tumble to the ground. The catch on the jewelry box unlatches as it hits the ground and Adrien yanks the ring from it.

“Plagg,” he says, even though his kwami has hardly begun to form, “claws out!”

He has not even fully adjusted to Plagg’s magic as the violence of chaos settles into his bones before he calls on that power.

“Cataclysm!” he shouts as his hand closes over the butterfly. It crumbles to dust in his hand.

Multimouse covers her mouth in horror as she looks up at Chat Noir, but he does not know which part of this revelation is the most horrifying for her. Is it knowing that Chat Noir is Hawk Moth’s son? Is it knowing that her best friend, who she’s just accused of being a villain, is one of Paris’s heroes? Is it knowing that he knows who she is under that mask?

He looks out the window for Flourish’s feather to follow Bella’s butterfly, but he sees no blue feather flitting near his bedroom window. He flexes his hand, surprised by the strength of the magic left in him. He does not feel his power draining, and wonders if he could call on another Cataclysm, should the villains show themselves.

“Chat…” Multimouse says, but he’s not ready for her apology.

He is careful to keep his voice even, because it so desperately wants to break—everything in him wants to break. “Ladybug can find me if she wants.”

Chat Noir leaves through the loose window, wishing he felt better about his return to this freedom he had denied himself for so long. He uses a search for Bella Moth to distract from his heartbreak, but it’s hard to say how close she was when she sent off her akuma. His father managed to curse half of Paris without leaving the house. Bella Moth might be miles away, sensing the pulse of heartbreak and anger throughout the city with the power of her miraculous.

Whoever she is, he thinks she’s very rude to try for two akuma attacks on Christmas Eve. It’s just poor sportsmanship on her part. Maybe there’s no feather to go with it this time because Flourish has better manners.

His search is, as he expected, fruitless, but he doesn’t take himself home rightaway. As much as he wants to curl up in his bed, apologize to Plagg, and sleep his way through Christmas, he knows that it is past the time to explain himself to Ladybug. He’s been avoiding her since she offered the truth of her identity.

He’s been avoiding the truth about everything for so long.

He climbs his way up the Eiffel Tower and stares out at the city, glittering with its holiday lights.

The truth is, he knows why his father did what he did. It’s not hard to guess what his father wanted the miraculouses for, what his father’s wish would be. He also knows that his father must have suspected that he was Chat Noir at least once. But Gabriel never trusted Adrien enough to even ask, to even hint that maybe Hawk Moth’s wish would be good for them both. He knows that if he could ask his father why, Gabriel would say that he had been doing it for the both of them.

But Adrien doesn’t think he would believe him.

He sinks down onto the tower’s highest platform and draws his knees up to his chest. Ladybug will find him. And if she doesn’t… Well, then he supposes that will be answer enough for how she feels about who he is.

Chapter 3

He’s waiting on the very ledge she waited on when she first arrived in Paris, entirely unchanged from the last time she saw him. He’s seated with his knees drawn up to his chest, green eyes glittering in the evening light.

For a moment, Ladybug thinks this could be the very night they saw Gabriel arrested. The last six months could have been a terrible dream and she is about to step back and start over, as cleanly as if Fluff or Sass reset time to take her back to their last meeting.

But she knows that’s untrue. She knows that the last six months happened, just as much as the last six minutes happened, and she has to face the consequences for that, too.

She steps lightly, but loud enough that he knows she’s coming. She doesn’t want to startle him.

He doesn’t even turn around.

She sits down beside him. She sets the two Christmas presents she’s brought with her on the edge of the platform, careful not to knock them over the edge. She’s not certain that she’ll use them, but she wants them just in case this all goes well. She’s still unsure where to start.

He’s the one who breaks the silence. “Did Marinette tell you everything?”

She doesn’t answer, because anything she could say to that would be untrue. Instead, she says, “I understand a lot more now than I did before.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

Ladybug bites her lip. “Multimouse wasn’t lying when she said she defended you. She and Carapace were adamant that you couldn’t be Flourish. But you know Rena, she always wants to be thorough.”

“I thought I knew Rena.”

Ladybug tips her head at that, unsure what to make of the tone in his voice. He knows who Multimouse is, but she can’t think how he would know Rena and Carapace’s identities. He offers no further explanation, so she decides she might as well begin with her apology.

“A long time ago,” she says, “like, a few years ago long, not miraculous long, I faced an akumatized version of you.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“It was… another timeline. Bunnyx helped me. I don’t want to talk about the details—” She chews on her lower lip again, wading through the trauma of facing Chat Blanc to pick out the parts she wants to make sure Adrien understands. “—but the akuma attack was so bad that we had to reset time itself. The thing we had to change was that Adrien Agreste figured out who I was. I used to think it was just that Adrien—” she hesitates before amending, “—you told someone by accident and the secret got out. And then, after we caught Hawk Moth I wondered if that accident was telling your father. But I never, for even a moment, considered that you might have known that your father was Hawk Moth, that you might have intentionally told your father to help him. I’ve always trusted you, Adrien. And I’m sorry I doubted you tonight.”

She keeps her eyes on Chat Noir, wondering if he is going to accept her apology. She won’t blame him if he refuses.

He doesn’t look at her. Instead, he watches the city below.

“You said Rena insisted on being thorough,” he finally says, as if she had not just shared one of her most traumatic, vulnerable memories with him. “What was your opinion?”

She takes in a long, slow breath. She knew that she would have to do this. It’s not how she has imagined it after all these years, but there is no other way to be honest with him, and she is never going to repair the break between them without honesty.

For an answer, she tugs on one of the two wrapped Christmas presents she’s brought with her for this apology.

“This is for you,” she says.

He has to let his knees go to take the gift from her, and part of him seems to uncoil. Curiosity glints in his eyes alongside the heartbreak. She resists the urge to reach for his ears and see if she can elicit a purr from him. She’s going to have to let him be vulnerable on his terms, not on hers.

His claw-like gloves cut through the velvety green ribbon and tear the red wrapping paper. The box inside is about as big as his lap, flat, and plain white. He lifts the lid and pulls back the tissue inside to reveal a white silk blazer, and embroidered down the lapel on one side is a pattern of green and pink geometric shapes and flowers.

He stares at it for a long moment. She can tell by the way he runs his hands over the stitching he recognizes what it represents, but she had expected a stronger reaction from him.

“Marinette made this?” he says, and she waits for him to correct himself to ”You made this,” but he does not.

“Designed after the good luck charm.” Ladybug pulls the second gift into her lap. The gold glitter of the ribbon dusts her thighs. “Can I open your gift?” she asks.

He looks at the box in her lap, at the tag attached to the glittery ribbon that reads To: Marinette and From: Adrien. He glances down at the box in his lap. He looks back at her as she bites down on her lip, afraid she is being too subtle.

“Oh,” he says.

She waits for him to properly process it. It took her long enough to understand and she had watched him transform in front of her.

“But—wait, no,” he shakes his head, “I’ve seen Multimouse and Ladybug together. You can’t be both.”

“Trixx helped cover for me,” she said.

He sets her gift aside and stares at her, frowning like he’s trying to see through her mask. “You’ve been Marinette the whole time?”

“Yes.”

“So you… you quit because you went to New York? You didn’t quit being Ladybug because of me?”

She fidgets with the ribbon in her lap, ignoring the way the glitter coats her gloved fingers. “It was… lonely without you. It made the decision to pass my miraculous onto Scarabella easier. But no, I didn’t quit because of you.”

Chat Noir purses his lips in his own bit of indecision. Finally, he says, “You should open your gift.”

She tugs on the ribbon. It takes her a moment to figure out how to undo the complex knot, but she’s always enjoyed puzzles.

Once the package is free of its glittery trappings, she peels back the paper to reveal a photography book. The cover is a photo of a row of colorful houses on the waterfront. She opens the book and flips through photographs of Venice’s architecture and artwork.

“I liked the color there,” he says. “I thought you would, too. And…” He reaches over to her lap and flips towards the back of the book. The pictures in this end of the book are no longer of artwork and architecture. They’re of people—or rather, they’re of people’s clothing.

The photographs must have been of people posing in front of the water or a marble statue, and some still are that—full-body shots of models in motion—but some of them have been cropped down to just a sleeve or the lines on a bodice or the cut of a neckline. She knows Adrien must have an eye for fashion photography after all of his experience in the industry, but she can’t help but marvel at the way he’s captured the weight of fabric, the contrast of color, the structure of the ensemble, the complements of the patterns—it's the kind of things she would look for.

“I left because of you,” he says.

She tears her eyes away from the book to meet his and she has never wanted more desperately than she has in this moment to actually see him beneath his mask.

“You went to New York and I couldn’t help but feel like you were leaving me behind. Not like you abandoned me or anything, but that you were growing. You were pursuing your dream. And Nino got into film school and Alya sold her first article and I… I was still doing all the same things I was doing before. I wanted to do something new. I wanted to grow with all of you. So I left. I wanted to keep up with you.”

“And?” she asks. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

He shrugs. “It was… lonely.”

“I was lonely, too,” she admits. “I kept busy to forget how lonely I was.”

“That sounds familiar,” he says. He kicks his legs against the iron beams holding them up. “I’m sorry,” he says.

She shakes her head. “No, you have nothing to apologize for—”

“I doubted you. I thought… I thought you would blame me for not catching Monarch sooner. Or that you’d think I was responsible somehow, and that wasn’t fair of me. I should have trusted you. I should have trusted us.”

She leans her head against his shoulder. “No more doubting each other. No more doubting ourselves.”

He stiffens at first, then he leans back against her, until they are exchanging each other’s weight as easily as they had exchanged gifts. Somewhere in the distance, a clock strikes midnight.

“Merry Christmas, chaton,” she murmurs.

“Merry Christmas, my Lady,” he replies.

He looks down and she looks up and then before she quite realizes what she’s doing, she presses her lips against his.

It isn’t her first kiss with Chat Noir by any stretch, but it is her first kiss with someone who knows she is both Marinette and Ladybug, and she knows that he is as fond of all of her as she is of all of him. He’s not just her partner, not just a boy she used to have a crush on, not just a dear friend she has been trying to keep afloat with casual, emotion-free text messages. She finally realizes the weight of all of those things put together and it leaves her a little dizzy.

He pulls away and there’s something mischievous in his grin. “You’re bright red.”

She’s warm, despite the cold night, and doesn’t even have the sense to be embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Adrien.”

He presses his lips against her cheek and keeps his face close against hers as he murmurs, “We finished the apology bit.”

“I was a bad friend,” she says.

“Marinette—”

“I was trying to be careful to give you space, but I should’ve trusted our friendship. You didn’t have to go to Venice alone. You could’ve come to New York with me. Or gone to school with Nino, or —”

He drops his head against her shoulder like her apology is wearing him out. “We were both distant. You did it because you wanted to look out for me. I pushed my friends away because I didn’t know how you could stay friends with someone who was so close to a villain. You had to think me an idiot for not noticing, or in on it because I had noticed—”

“We would never think that of you—”

“I know.” He presses his lips against her neck and a shiver runs up her spine.

She recalls her restraint when it came to scratching his ears, her withholding a desire to touch him so he could process his feelings. He wishes he would show her that same restraint, but his hand slides up the curve of her back, pressing her against him. He breathes in deep and lets it out slowly. His breath is hot and wet against her ear and it’s not just her face that’s warm. She’s warm all over. She decides she doesn’t need to talk through anything anymore, she just wants more of this.

She tightens her hand in his hair and his throat rumbles with something so close to a purr she cannot help but laugh. She feels his smile against her neck.

“I know I said we finished the apology bit,” he sighs, “but I’ve got one more to do.”

“What for?”

“Plagg. He’s going to be insufferable. I left him in a sock drawer for months.”

“You might deserve whatever he does to you for that.” She stifles a yawn and he pulls away.

“Sorry,” he says, despite their promise to be done apologizing. “You’ve had a long day—travel and an akuma fight—I should let you get some sleep.”

“I don’t want to sleep.” She knows once she drops Tikki’s magic, all the exhaustion of being human will settle in again, but right now she feels like she could stay awake all night. She wants to stay awake all night. She’s afraid to let him go and find out that this was all a dream.

He takes her hand in his, running the pads of his fingers against her palm like he’s committing the shape of her hand to memory. Though she just had the thought that she didn’t want to be human again, she is desperate for them to drop their magic and touch properly.

“I’ll come over tomorrow,” he promises.

“But there’s so much time between now and tomorrow,” she protests.

After six months apart, she can’t stand to face another six hours without him.

“You need to spend Christmas with your family.”

“And where am I going to spend the night?” she asks.

Now his face turns red beneath his mask and she grins mischievously at him. After years of him being the forward one, she’s happy to flip the script on him.

“Are you asking?” he says, like he can’t quite believe her.

“Are you inviting?” She bats her eyelashes in an attempt at flirtation, but it feels silly. She bites down on her lip to hold in a laugh.

“Well… I could. Nathalie is gone for a few days. We’d have the whole house to ourselves.”

She thinks of him going back to the house alone and her desire to go with him doubles. “So… are you?”

He stands and pulls her up with him. She drapes her arms over his shoulders and leans in until their noses are touching. She takes a deep breath in then pulls him into a kiss and pulls him off of the tower.

They’re falling. They’re kissing. They’re breathing.

❖❖❖

Christmas morning arrives faster than either of them would like. There are a few evening apologies dashed off once the masks drop. Adrien has to apologize to Plagg, who demands reparations in pounds of Camembert. There are also apologies made to Alya and Nino through the screen of Adrien’s phone. Adrien apologizes for pushing them away just as he had Marinette; Alya apologizes for ever suspecting him of being Flourish. Nino apologizes for failing to mention that he had once told Adrien about Carapace and Rena Rouge’s identities. Marinette and Alya forgive him, but it’s one of the more shocking reveals of the night.

And finally, Tikki and Plagg are asleep and Marinette and Adrien are truly alone and there is not much more to say to each other. They press themselves together, hands touching hands properly, her calloused fingertips brushing up his bare arm, his soft hands tugging her chin closer, lips crushed together in such a seamless union that they can’t help but wonder if they’ve been doing this forever, if this moment is the only moment of time that matters, like infinity stretched out into the past and future.

The sunrise doesn’t break it, but the sunrise is closely followed by Adrien’s phone buzzing on his nightstand.

He ignores it, but they call a second time.

Adrien, hands reluctantly daring to brave the cold beyond the blankets, fumbles for his phone long enough to catch the side button and dismiss the call. Marinette presses herself closer to him.

The phone buzzes again and they both groan loudly.

“It’s probably Alya checking on my honor,” Marinette grumbles.

“Or Nino trying to be a nuisance,” Adrien sighs and grabs the phone.

It’s neither Alya nor Nino. It’s his cousin.

Marinette dives under the covers as Adrien accepts the insistent call.

“Good morning, Félix,” Adrien says, in his best attempt at wakefulness. “Merry Christmas.”

Félix sounds plenty awake, voice crisp and cool as the winter outside, and he looks plenty awake in the video, sitting outside, wrapped in a scarf and coat with the lazy sun coming up over the park behind him. “Sorry to wake you,” he says without a hint of apology. “But I got into Paris last night and thought I ought to see you. Mother has a gift for you.”

Adrien stares up at his phone screen. “You’re in Paris?” but even as he says it, he knows it has to be true. If it’s only just sunrise here, Félix can’t be in dark, gloomy London at the moment.

“I came to visit my girlfriend, but I thought I ought to make time for you, too.”

“You have a girlfriend?”

Félix turns the camera and a young woman leans up against him. Her long, reddish-brown hair is tied in two loose tails on either side of her face. She’s wearing a pale pink scarf, pinned to an orange blouse, and Adrien stifles a gasp.

Lila Rossi slides her arm around Félix’s and smiles into the phone screen. “It’s been far too long, Adrien. How are you? We’d love to spend Christmas with you! Just tell us when you’re ready for us to come over.”

“I didn’t even know you were in the country,” Adrien finally stammers out. “I was going to spend Christmas with Marinette’s family.”

Félix and Lila’s polite smiles flicker in matching scowls, but Félix quickly smooths it over. “That’s alright. I’ll be in Paris for a while. I’ve got some business to take care of. We’ll see you another time, Adrien.”

“Merry Christmas!” Lila says effusively as Félix ends the call.

Adrien drops his phone on the nightstand and stares up at the ceiling.

“Lila?” he asks weakly.

Marinette crawls out from under the covers to join him. “Lila,” she confirms with a fair amount of acid in her voice.

“I suppose it makes sense in a Merteuil and Valmont sort of way.”

Marinette doesn’t get the reference, but Adrien’s head has always been full of an absurd amount of niche information, so she trusts it's an accurate comparison.

And suddenly Bella Moth and Flourish makes sense. Félix, who had stolen the miraculouses from Ladybug, surely could have squirreled the peacock away from Gabriel. And Lila, who had weasled her way into Gabriel’s company, must have slipped the butterfly away for herself. But how did they manage to find each other and what did they want with Chat Noir and Ladybug’s miraculouses?

Marinette slides her hand into Adrien’s. It doesn’t matter, not really. They’re stronger today than they were yesterday. They’ve become Chat Noir and Ladybug again, and they’re even more than that now.

“I think we’ll manage them easily, between the four of us,” she says. “We know who they are, but they haven’t any idea about us.”

“It’s a nice change,” he says, and smiles at her.

She kisses him again and even though they need to tell Alya and Nino about what they’ve learned, even though they need to freshen up before going to visit Marinette’s parents, even though there’s a new battlefield awaiting them in the fight against Bella Moth and Flourish, they let their kiss unwind into another moment of infinity.