#post-reveal

Yor frowned, her ruby eyes flitting to Anya’s closed door. The little girl should be sound asleep by now, blissfully unaware of the true nature of her parents’ jobs.

“No,” she replied simply.

Loid raised an eyebrow. “Yor… I know you have great skill,” he began cautiously, “But that doesn’t change the fact that your job is dangerous. You mean to tell me that you aren’t worried that there could be a night where you don’t come home?”

Yor shrugged. “I know there is always a chance, Loid,” she sighed, “And I truly would feel awful if my last thoughts are that Anya would lose another mother. But that is also why I’m not worried.”

He frowned in confusion. “But…”

“Loid.” She was serious, now. Her eyes had hardened and were sharp as flint, her entire being radiating powerful determination. “I’m not worried about being killed on the job,” she stated in a low tone he had come to call her “Thorn Princess” voice, “I’m not worried because if I ever die then I swear on my very soul I will claw my way out of Hell to return to you and Anya. Nothing will keep me from my family, not even Death.”

The funny thing Loid had been learning about Yor is, despite how insane that declaration was, he believed it. Because if anyone could look the Reaper square in the face and tell them to fuck off, it was Yor Forger.

And it…hurt. Because he wished he could say the same. He was painfully aware that once his mission was over, then he will likely be forced to leave. Having a family would only get in the way of being a spy. Even if his wife turned out to be an assassin - or, it may be because his wife was an assassin. (It was still too early to tell if it was a good or bad thing yet.)

Yor was willing to stand up to the lords of the underworld to return to the people she has come to call family, while Loid… Twilight…

He couldn’t even tell Handler that she had left a tag on her new jacket.

He also cast a longing glance at Anya’s door, feeling guilt boil uncontrollably in his chest. Yor noticed, and reached across the gap between them to gently take his hand that was on the armrest of the couch. She ran her thumb over his knuckles, leaving a little smear of blood that was probably hers.

“Let’s just focus on living right now, not in the future,” she suggested, “One job at a time.”

He managed to eke out a small smile, meeting her beautiful eyes and once more feeling his spirits lift. “Alright, I can do that,” he relented.

They sat in silence for a moment, taking in each other’s company, until something she said finally registered with Loid.

“You assume you’re going to Hell?” he demanded, unable to hide the shock in his voice. Yor was the nicest person he’d ever met! She was so good to Anya, so thoughtful and warm and helpful! Why would she ever think that—

He glanced back at her to discover she had pulled out one of her stilettos, still stained with some blood, and was idly twirling it in one hand with an unreadable expression on her face.

It felt eerily familiar, kneeling ghost-like beneath a vermillion sky. Doom crept though Antichat's chest, as thick as the acrid smoke scorching his lungs. He couldn't move, couldn't breathe. There was a weight in his arms—an inexplicable solace. And yet…  Suddenly it didn’t weigh as much as it should. No.  His eyes flicked downwards. No, no, no, no— All he held was a pile of ashes, moulded into the shape of a girl.

Please, no.

Chat squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head to rid himself of a sudden, blinding panic pounding through his skull. But it was too late. Ladybug’s slate-stained image was seared into his mind, her face frozen in pain, devoid of everything that had once painted comfort across his soul. 

Her mask was half-torn, such that Marinette's bare cheek was cradled closest to his chest. Like maybe he'd tried in vain to protect her from the blast.

From his own destruction.

A choked sound ripped itself from his throat, a painful lump following in its wake. He had no way to fix this, nothing to do but pull her in closer. To tighten his arms around her precious, fragile remains.

Another mistake. 

She crumbled in his grip; ashes floated up like a mosaic, blinding his vision. Frantically, he pawed at the air—trying to gather her fragments, to force her back together. If he caught enough, perhaps he could papier-mâché her likeness. He could use his tears as glue.

But there was no time for that before a fiery breeze tore through the street. Marinette’s remains were swept away, and only Chat’s strangled cries could follow. 

The further away they fled, the more he came undone. There was nothing left to tie his mind together, to keep his pain from exploding like a supernova.

Nothing to keep the world from collapsing in on him.

“What did you expect?” Nightormentor’s voice sliced through the smoke. “You’ve always been poison to the ones you loved most.”

NO!

With a frigid gasp—one that curdled his tar-slicked insides—Adrien awoke. Once again, there was a darling weight in his arms. Only this Marinette was warm and solid. Her limbs were tangled in the blankets she'd pulled to her side of his bed, and one of her hands curled slightly into his T-shirt as her breath tickled the fabric.

She was alive.

Adrien just wasn't sure his heart still knew how to beat.

He was too hot and too cold all at once, both drenched in sweat and trembling. His chest felt like someone had trampled it, and every attempt to breathe sliced further into the wound. 

When he closed his eyes, the world was still on fire.

Stomach lurching, he carefully rolled Marinette’s weight off his chest. He couldn’t stay here, couldn’t listen to the even sounds of her breath without hearing echoes of his own sobs slip between them. 

The room spun around him as he stumbled to the bathroom; the world still appeared as though through smoke—muted and unreliable, the air too thick to breathe. He collapsed to his knees in front of the toilet, his empty stomach convulsing, only to realize the sickness inside him wasn’t the kind he could expel.

He remained there, braced against the toilet seat, until his limbs eased their shaking enough for him to crawl away. Even so, he barely made it to the wall beside the sink before one of his arms gave out, and his cheek slammed a little too hard into the handle of one of the cupboards he twisted into a seated position. Hissing in pain, he let his face press against the wood there, shuddering at the way the cold surface shocked some life inside of him.

Time ceased to make sense after that. One moment, his chest was burning, pain reverberating through his back as he struggled to fill his lungs. The next, it seemed he’d become a giant cloud. A numb expanse of icy droplets, ready to fall at a moment’s notice.

Light gradually awakened the room, a subtle warmth flickering near the edge of his awareness. He only fully realized the day had come when, somewhere beyond the door he’d left ajar, the bed creaked.

“Adrien?” Marinette called. Her voice was gentle, but pierced through him all the same. “Everything okay?”

No.

Panic set in anew as footsteps approached. He swore he could somehow taste the blood pounding in his ears, and he clamped his mouth shut to keep from crying out. To keep from breathing, even.

He didn’t want to be found. Maybe, if he held his breath until his lungs screamed again, he’d remain concealed in his lifeless fog.

But ironically, it was harder to keep from breathing when that was his actual goal. He sucked in sharp breaths, timed to his heartbeats, and hid his face in his hands.

“Oh, Chaton...” Marinette’s slippers scraped across the bathroom tiles, coming to a stop within his sight. Too close. “Did it happen again?”

He managed a nod, bottom lip quivering as he bit back a sob.

A long exhale piqued his attention; it started as a noise from above and ended as a warm breath against his cheek. Kneeling at his side, Marinette rubbed her hands against her thighs.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

Adrien shifted his jaw from side to side, guilt hooking its talons into his gut. “I didn’t want to bother you.”

It wasn’t a lie; he felt plenty bad about inadvertently dragging her here every night. She deserved the comfort of her own bed, regardless of whether he could actually get any sleep without her. So the least he could do was actually let her get enough rest.

But it wasn’t the truth, either.

And as she took his hand, carefully smoothing his fingers over hers, he had a feeling she knew it.

“Adrien…” She tugged his arm upwards, pressing a kiss to his fingertips. “You’re not going to hurt me.”

Biting his lip to keep from disagreeing, Adrien squeezed his eyes shut. With one less sense at his disposal, he was all too aware of the way she lifted his hand further, unfolding his fingers to press against her cheek.

“See?” she whispered, breath tickling the inside of his wrist. Her head twisted to the side, lips planting a kiss on the heel of his palm. “Everything’s fine.”

He swore he could feel the remnants of destruction prickling against her cheek. It took everything he had not to jerk his hand away.

Nothing was fine.

No matter how he’d come into this world, and no matter how much he despised the fact, Adrien would always be—in some way or another—his father’s son. Sometimes he swore he saw a glimpse of the man when he turned too fast in the mirror. Other times, a flash of fury would seize him; with a sickening sense of satisfaction, he’d know what it might felt like to be a villain.

Even worse, he was his mother’s son. His very existence had killed her.

He’d killed both his parents, in the end. 

So no matter how much Marinette tried to console him, Adrien knew the voice of his nightmares had a point. He was a danger to her, to himself, to the world.

It might not even end up being his choice. All it would take was someone finding out what he was, and stealing the two rings he still couldn’t stand the sight of.

He was, at most, a liability. And Marinette deserved more than that.

She never agreed with him on that point.

“Look at me,” she said now. An edge crept into her voice, one that shocked him into listening.

His heart jumped at the blue of her eyes—filled with all the warmth that the fiery world of his nightmares had failed to hold. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice cracking. 

“No, no, no. I don’t want you to be sorry. I just…” Tears filled her eyes. “I love you, okay?”

Adrien couldn’t say it back. He couldn’t find enough truth to shove into the sentiment—not when that was all buried beneath his own misery. It was like he’d returned to his nightmare, with smoke charring his throat and one all-consuming fear.

Just the tiniest wrong movement could ruin everything.

But if he didn’t give some kind of response, Marinette would only worry. So he tugged on her hand—maybe a little too hard considering her yelp of surprise—and guided her to sit between his legs. She moved readily into place, and Adrien forced himself to ignore the fear spiking through his veins, hugging her back to his chest.

Once settled, she twisted around and tried to crane her neck upwards, reaching a hand half-blindly up to his cheek. Heart squeezing in his chest, he tightened his grip around and pressed a kiss to her head. 

She remained tense for a moment too long, but finally sighed and melted back against his chest. Her hand trailed lazily back down to her side, and her breath spilled into a hum of contentment. With her gaze fixed firmly ahead, Adrien could finally breathe again.

He didn’t want her to see the few tears he’d finally let slip down his cheeks—even if she’d no doubt hear his sniffles or feel the way the cries rumbled in his chest. And he didn't want her to examine him to deeply, to discover what he already knew.

“Sure. But do you think he followed other kids around too? I mean, there had to have more than just the two of us under consideration, right? It’s statistically unlikely that he found the two of us and immediately decided we were perfect and didn’t even look at anyone else,” Chat persisted.

Ladybug rubbed her eyes again as she considered what Chat was saying. Much as she disliked admitting it, she supposed that he did have a point. She thought back to that day when Master Fu had told her why he had chosen her. It was a moment that seemed so insignificant in retrospect.

What if she hadn’t seen Master Fu crossing the road? What if she had been too slow to help him? What if she had decided to set down her macarons instead of sacrificing them to save him? What if she’d tripped over her own two feet and failed to be helpful at all? There were so many ways it could’ve gone wrong, and yet Master Fu had based such an important decision on that one, tiny moment…

It made her wonder how many others kids Master Fu had tested in some tiny way, who had been found wanting.

"I guess there probably was. I never thought to ask him about it," Ladybug said finally. “Once he found the two of us, I don’t think he ever looked back.”

“But what if he hadn’t? What if like… in another life, he chose Lila as Ladybug instead?” Chat said.

Ladybug choked on her own saliva. “Wh-what?”

Chat was grinning now. “You know Lila. She can seem really sweet at first glance. You know. Before she opens her mouth and starts lying her butt off.”

“I just – ” Ladybug shook her head slowly. “I can’t even imagine.”

“You know Lila would’ve jumped at the chance to be special,” Chat said. “Though I doubt she would’ve kept it up once she realized it’s actual work.”

“Probably not. I think that Master Fu would’ve done a lot more research. Enough research to know what Lila was really like,” Ladybug said. But she felt a little niggle of doubt even as she spoke. The older she got, the more she realized that Master Fu had been short-sighted in a lot of ways. Maybe Chat was right; maybe they were just really lucky that this wasn’t one of them.

She suppressed a shudder at the thought of Lila having the Ladybug miraculous. Poor Tikki to be stuck with someone like Lila. And that made her think of something else.

“You know,” she said, “that means in this other life, Lila is your partner.”

Chat’s look of horror was so perfect that Ladybug couldn’t help giggling. Obviously he hadn’t taken that thought all the way to the end.

“No! No no no no no no!” Chat cried, holding his hands up as though to ward off something evil.

“Yes yes yes yes,” Ladybug teased. “Just imagine how unlucky you’d be. She’d be your classmate as Adrien Agreste and your partner as Chat Noir. There would be no escape from her then!”

“Noooooooooo!” Chat whined, sinking in on himself. “My Lady, stop filling my head with that. You’re going to give me a nightmare tonight!”

“You’re the one who brought it up!” Ladybug said.

“It was just an idle thought! Not nightmare material!”

Ladybug laughed. “Oh, Chaton, you’re so dramatic. Relax. In this life, I’m the only partner you’re ever going to have.

Chat pouted, but had a hard time suppressing his smile. “Just for that, I think you should pet my hair.”

“Oh you do, do you?” Ladybug said, rolling her eyes. But she still smiled as she patted her lap. Chat scrambled over to her and laid his head on her lap, and she started petting his hair. Shortly, the soft, rumbling sound of his purr filled the air.