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She broke down into tears as she found her yo-yo returned to her, void of all the miraculous, minus hers and Chat’s. She ran through everything in her head. What had gone wrong? Her mind flitted to Felix. He had been oddly interested in the storage of the miraculous in her yo-yo. But why would he be working with Hawkmoth?
Her world plunged into darkness as her vision began to swim, and tears poured openly from her eyes. She could feel Chat try to console her, but she refused to be comforted. This was her mistake. She had given the wrong miraculous to the wrong person. She was the reason Hawkmoth was going to win. It was all her fault. It was all her fault. It was all her fault. The five words continued circling through her head.
Wanting to get away, yet unsure of where to go, she began running. Her head was clouded and nothing was right.
Vaguely, she heard an announcement from Shadowmoth declaring his victory. There was nothing Paris’ precious heroes could do to stop him now. She eventually passed out from the anxiety strangling her mind.
—————————————————————-
Marinette woke up in her bed the next morning, the events from the previous night fresh on her mind. She groaned and rolled over, pulling her covers over her head. What was she to do now? They could hardly fight regular Shadowmoth without the backup of temporary heroes, how could they win, now that his arsenal had increased from destroying hers?
The horrors from yesterday plagued her mind. A knock on her trap door frightened her out of her self-deprecation.
“Marinette?” The sweet voice of her mother called. “Are you feeling okay? I wanted to let you know school is closed today, because of yesterday’s events.”
She breathed out a sigh of relief. “I’m feeling fine, thank you maman!” She hoped the faux enthusiasm would hold her parents at bay, at least for a while.
She listened as the footsteps faded away as her mother walked back down the stairs. When they had completely faded out, she looked for Tikki to find some help. Tikki wasn’t in any of her usual hiding places. She tried calling out to her, to no avail.
Freaked out because of the missing kwamii, she trudged downstairs to grab some food. On her way back to her room she doubled back to grab some cookies to see if they could lure out Tikki.
“Tikki? Please come out. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do right now, I need help. Please.” Her voice cracked and a fresh wave of tears began spilling down her face.
Suddenly a small pressure was applied to her left cheek. “Oh, Marinette. It’s not your fault. We’ll get through this, you’re my best bug yet, we’ll figure something out.”
“But what if we don’t?
-
“What if Shadowmoth does win?
-
-
“What then?”
The pressure left her cheek and she glanced up at the mini-god hovering in front of her. The worry was apparent on the god’s face even if she tried to mask it to try and stay strong.
“I went and talked to Plagg while you were asleep, and we think it may be time for you and Chat Noir to reveal yourself. I know Master always told you not to, but it may be necessary in the coming future if you want to have some support other than me for the fights.”
“But Chat Blanc… we both know how that went, how can we prevent that here?”
Tikki sighed. “We can’t. But, Plagg said he’d talk to Chat to make sure he isn’t going in blind and try to stop the same sequence of events from happening. It doesn’t guarantee a change in timelines but it gives us a better chance.”
Marinette nodded and brought Tikki to her cheek for a hug. “I’ll talk with him about it tonight when we go for patrol as well.”
“Mari… maybe you should just rest. I know the Shadowmoth situation is stressful but you need rest to perform well.”
“I wish it were that simple Tikki, but we need to be more vigilant than ever after last night. I don’t expect Shadowmoth to wait long before making his first move, and with all the miraculous, especially the fox, he can do so much more than before.”
“I know you feel the need but how do you expect to sense the magic if you’re exhausted? You’ve been working really hard with the guardian training and have learned a lot, but you’re not fluent with many of the spells yet. You can do a lot more good once you’re rested. Call Chat Noir if you’re really that worried. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind helping you out.”
“How about I can go out tonight if I get a short nap in?”
Tikki gave her an exasperated look, “We’ll see how you’re feeling tonight and what you hope to get done tomorrow and make the decision then.”
Marinette sighed overdramatically and collapsed onto her bed before passing out almost the moment her head hit the pillow. Tikki just smiled at the exhausted girl and flew off to let her sleep peacefully.
After a long dreamless sleep, Marinette found herself waking to her parents knocking on her door to get her to go for dinner with them. She rolled out of bed and opened her door, trusting Tikki to be somewhere hidden safely.
—————————————————
The following days were uneventful. Marinette met with Chat Noir each night to check for any Akumas but came up blank each time. As more time passed her anxiety levels ran through the roof. The day marked the first week since Shadowmoth’s possession of all the other miraculous left her in shambles.
As she arrived at the Eiffel Tower her shaking was clearly visible.
“Nice night isn’t it m’lady?” Chat’s voice rang through the air around her causing her to jump and almost fall off the ledge she was sitting on.
“Crap, Ladybug? Are you okay? Maybe we should go somewhere more secluded and just talk tonight.”
She paused. “We have no idea what Shadowmoth is up to. We need to be out making sure everyone is safe.”
A warm presence settled at her side and an arm wrapped around her waist pulling her into a hug. “Ladybug that’s why we should talk, patrols aren’t getting us anywhere, maybe it’s time to stop and try something else.” Marinette erased her head against his shoulder and let his words sink in before focusing back on his voice. “You’re the mastermind, but you need to stop and clear your mind some so that you can think clearly. Then we can come up with a plan of action to find the rest of the miraculous.”
“Ok Kitty, where should we go then?” She stood up and grabbed her yo-yo so that she could follow.
The two ran across the city in silence before settling in a quiet alleyway on the outskirts of the city. They just sat in silence for a while, neither wanting to break the faux sense of calm.
Chat Noir was the one to finally break the blanket covering them. “Ladybug, I think it’s time to reveal our identities, I’ve been talking to Plagg and he’s warned me about what has happened in other timelines, but, I don’t know about you… but I really need a support system outside of the suit right now, and the way Plagg was talking made it sound like you need one too. I don’t want you to feel like I’m pressuring you or anything, but we may get more done if we can meet or even just communicate outside of the suits.” The words tumbled out of his mouth, a pause only when he needed to breathe.
“I…”
“Don’t. I’m sorry for bringing it up.” He looked over to the side away from his partner.
“No! Wait! I agree with you. Tikki brought this idea up to me right after I lost the miraculous…” She paused to collect her thoughts.
“We”
She looked over at him confused.
“‘We’ not ‘I’. We’re in this together, and the blame for the loss falls on the both of us.”
“But… But… I was the one to give the wrong person the dog miraculous which resulted in the loss of the miraculous”
“So you didn’t realize what had happened, none of us did. You have no more right to shoulder all of the blame than I do.”
Chat Noir had to reiterate the same thing a few times before it finally started to sink into Marinette’s brain.
Once it seemed like it started to click in her brain Chat Noir diverted the topic, “Ok back to the original topic, do you want to reveal our identities, or wait, it is up to you M’lady.”
She stopped and thought about it for a while, “Let’s do it tonight.”
“On the count of 3?”
Marinette nodded.
“1…”
“2…”
“3…”
“Tikki spots off.”
“Plagg, claws in.”
The two kept their eyes closed for a split second before slowly opening them.
Marinette just stared. Adrien was probably the last person she would have expected to be behind the mask, yet there he sat beside her. He seemed just as dumbfounded by the development as she was.
“Who would’ve thought that our everyday ladybug was actually ladybug,” He mused.
Her mind raced like mad, she didn’t know how she was supposed to react to the new revelation. She sat staring off into space for a while, as if in a trance.
“-inette, Marinette,” Adrien was waving his hand in front of her face, “Are you okay?”
“Huh? Oh…yeah… I just need a moment to process everything.”
“Take all the time you need Marinette.”
It felt weird and she took a while longer to reconcile the two images of Adrien she had in her head. She felt it would take a little getting used to, but at the same time, it felt right to have him as her Chat Noir.
After what felt like forever of sitting in silence the two finally began talking, where they stayed for a few hours before separating to get some sleep before the next day.
A few weeks passed after the reveal with still nothing happening, by that point Marinette began really worrying that something really bad was happening or had already happened. It was unlike Hawkmoth to stay quiet for so long, and Adrien agreed with her.
—————————————————
One day after a few months of not hearing from Hawkmoth, Adrien pulled her aside in the school hallways, “Marinette, meet me back here tonight, I’ve got a suspicion that I really hope is false, but I think is worth investigating.”
His words had her worrying all day, and it left her unable to focus on her schoolwork for the rest of the day. By the time night rolled around, she was so worked up, that she left a little earlier to get a short run in before meeting up with him.
She arrived early, only to find that Adrien had already beaten her there.
“Hey Kitty, what was it you wanted to talk about?” she asked as she dropped down beside him.
His nerves were clear on his face. “I think something happened to my father, and I think it might be related to Hawkmoth.”
She knew his dad was sucky, but what led to this? “What do you mean?”
“You know how we haven’t heard from Hawkmoth in a few months? I haven’t heard from my dad in about the same amount of time, and whenever I ask Natalie about it she just gives me weird excuses. I didn’t get to see him much, but he’s never avoided me for this long before.”
“If you want to look into it, I’ll help you, how do you want to go about this?”
He thought for a moment, “I want to try breaking into my father’s study. He never lets me in, so I think there has to be something there.”
She nodded, “Do you want to go tonight or set up another time to do it?”
“I don’t want to put it off, let's go tonight.”
The two talked it over a bit before taking off to Adrien’s house. He let them in through the front door and led the way into the study.
She took a moment to study the room as Adrien walked over to a large painting on the far wall. She watched as he pulled on it and revealed a safe behind it.
“This is where I found the grimoire back when we were still quite new to this.”
She walked over to study the wall and the painting.
“Can you close that again?”
Adrien compiled and watched as she studied the image for a while longer before touching the painting. A few points seemed to move and all of a sudden the ground under Marinette started to lower.
He jumped onto the small plate with her to follow her down to a basement level he had no idea existed. It looked like a telltale evil lair, it was darkened with a large butterfly motif on the wall and a huge swarm of white butterflies fluttering around. And at the center of the room laid Adrien’s father wearing every miraculous he had taken from them.
The room stank as if he had been dead for a while, and the Kwamii seemed to be swarming around him as if unsure about what to do. They paused when they noticed Ladybug and Chat Noir in the room.
“Master!” came the chorus of all the kwamiis.
Marinette was trying not to puke at the smell, and Adrien was frozen at the sight of his dead father.
Marinette herded Adrien and the Kawmii out of the room and back to the main study so that they could chat more easily. He was still in shock from what he saw, so she wrapped him in a hug and offered whatever platitudes she could to try and help him.
When he started to come around, he wanted to know how it had happened.
“We tried to warn him.”
“We really did.”
“He just refused to listen.”
“The power of all the kwamii was too much for him.”
“When he tried transforming with all of us it overloaded him, and then…”
“That happened.”
All of the kwamiis were butting in, and it was hard to tell who was saying what, but they were able to get the gist of what had happened.
Marinette looked at the Kwamiis, “Can you guys stay with Adrien for a bit, I need to go grab all the jewels off of Hawkmoth.”
Adrien tried to protest, but she made him stay and quickly left to grab all the jewels off the man. She held her breath and grabbed all of them before fleeing the room.
Once she got back to the room she wrapped an arm around Adrien and escorted him out of the room, “Let's go back to my place, we can deal with the aftermath later. Let’s just take some time to decompress.”