"How did they react when you told them about Ladybug?" Nathalie asked Adrien, already detransformed after fighting the akuma by herself.
"I- uh... how do you think they reacted?" Adrien clenched his fists defensively, not able to look her in the eye. His heart burned with regret, and he couldn't believe he lied straight to Chloe like that. He didn't even bother telling Alya, being that the blondest girl went to mention it to her.
"Oh... I'm sorry. I had to tell people too, so I understand. You just... have to do it, even if it means admitting the worst. I couldn't even handle the idea of Felix, my Chat Noir, having been tortured and killed by something that's supposed to enhance your abilities. Your development is normal, right? Just slowly gaining things that you can put away without a problem?"
"Yeah... I can put away my fangs whenever I need to, so it doesn't always show up," Adrien replied shortly, trying to avoid the subject of death.
"That's good. I can't believe a development that affected me had affected Marinette. I mean, Felix saved me from it's progression, but it still passed to her. When Felix died, it stayed with him, but didn't go to you," Nathalie tried to conclude.
"You let it pass to her," Adrien grumbled, stomping away angrily. He didn't turn to see her expression, because he knew he would've regretted his words so quickly, and apologized immediately.
He heard her gasp, and she fell silent.
Adrien knew he was wrong, and it was mean. Blaming others was not right, and it would hurt Nathalie. Surely, she didn't mean to let Marinette die, and she tried to research and help save her.
"Y-You didn't," he turned around, his eyes focused on the floor as they grew watery. His voice was trembling, and it pained him to speak. "I'm sorry," he told her, "You didn't p-pass it to her. It wasn't your fault."
Nathalie held a firm expression, but a few tears leaked out without her own permission. "You should get started in your homework, Adrien. You have a photo shoot later today, and your father wouldn't be to keen on you missing it."
The boy watched his father's assistant walk away robotically, and immediately he felt so much more alone again. Here he nearly had another person in his house to turn to, but he hurt her by wrongfully weighing her down with the blame of being the reason that his partner, his best friend, the girl who cared so deeply for him was dead.
"I-I'm sorry," he croaked out, and he noticed Nathalie's figure stiffen. She didn't turn back to him, but paused for a short moment before continuing to make her way to her office. The clacking noise of her heels stepping against the clean white tiles of the mansion echoed against the emptiness, slowly becoming more and more distant.
"Just give her time, kid," Plagg suggested, "Let's go to your room, and maybe you could rest a little..."
Adrien slowly nodded in response, tears slipping from his eyes as he wrapped his arms around himself more and more tightly. His kwami sat on his shoulder, hoping his presence could somehow comfort the boy. Deciding to slowly fly in front of him, Plagg acted as a guide to lead him to his bedroom. He followed his kwami, trying to keep his bottom lip from quivering.
How could it be that he could lose Ladybug? She couldn't just be wiped off the surface of the planet without a trace, leaving behind so many people who loved her, both as the heroine and the civilian. She couldn't just not be at the weekly patrols. She never skipped a patrol with him, and he couldn't just guard Paris without her. Who was Chat Noir to be without Ladybug? Who was Adrien Agreste without Marinette Dupain-Cheng?
He couldn't even begin to imagine another girl working beside him, and having to work with another partner in place of Marinette. She made him promise her that he would find a new partner, yet it felt so wrong to him.
"Chat, please. You'll need a partner. I can't leave you behind with no one! I care about you, and I can't disappear knowing you'll be alone!!"
Once Adrien shut the door from the inside of his bedroom, he fell into a hiccup of sobs, allowing himself to crumple to his knees. Having slumped against the door, his back rested against the shiny dark wood as his head hung down.
"Ma-Marinette! Please, y-you can't just leave me!! Paris needs you, my Lady... I need you!!" He cried, and violently seized a ribbon of Ladybug's. Tears rolled off his cheeks and his chest weighed down in misery while his heart felt unbelievably empty. Why couldn't he have just saved her? She had so many plans and dreams for her life, never wanting to disappear.
"M-Marinette," he sobbed, "My lady! Please... you can't just leave me! I can't... I can't be without you!"
He wanted to see her again, he needed to hear her voice. Frantically, he grabbed his phone, and with shaky hands, he tried to do the pattern to open it, but it kept coming out wrong.
Why was it coming out wrong?! It wasn't supposed to be wrong!
Gritting his teeth in frustration as more tears ran down his face, he shakily tried again and again, only to get locked out for a minute. He felt himself choke on his sob as he dropped his phone hopelessly, falling to the ground in the same way.
"Marinette..." he whimpered, wanting to hear her one more time. Checking his phone, it allowed him to try again with the passcode pattern.
Once he did so, he quickly scrolled down his messages to get to Marinette's contact, to where she left that video confessing her feelings.
"Adrien, there is a- something I have to tell you..."
* * *
"And so that is what I made my partner promise me... I just hope he finds a good partner," Marinette sighed, squeezing her hands into fists, "I really upset him when I begged him to keep that promise..."
"I don't blame him, it's scary to think about losing someone you're so close to. Now that your Chat Noir is alone, who do you think would make the best partner for him?" Felix asked, able to see the visual memory of Marinette's beside her replaying.
"I really hope Nathalie would take it for now. Long term, I think this one fencer girl would have her best skills to protect Paris as Ladybug. Her name is Kagami, and she was a really good fighter. Besides, I think Chat Noir could trust her. I know she could protect Adrien Agreste for me," Marinette smiled sadly.
"Agreste? Wait a minute, is he related to a Gabriel Agreste?" Felix's eyes widened in curiosity.
"Oh, you know Gabriel Agreste? He is Adrien's dad, and a worldwide known fashion designer," she replied.
"Oh goodness, Gabriel Agreste had a son! Nathalie's best friend, Emilie, had the biggest crush on him," the man laughed in memory, but it slowly faded. "This might sound a bit crazy to ask, but do you know... if Nathalie ever found a new partner? If she married another man?"
Marinette quickly jumped to reply, "No, no. She missed you way too much. She resigned as Lady Luck like a year after you died. She works for Gabriel Agreste now, but didn't marry anybody. Nathalie loves you!" Of course Nathalie didn't give up on her love. She would do the same for Adrien if he didn't make it.
"R-Really? She didn't? She does?" Felix asked, his cheeks flushing red as he looked down at his feet. A sense of relief as well as affection for Nathalie flooded into him, and he couldn't help but to smile again. It was wrong to feel this way, he knew, and he did honestly want her to move on, but to know that someone he's thought about for so long never stopped thinking of him was... something else.
"Yes! I just wish there was a way we could come back. I'm not sure how you saved Nathalie or how we're stuck in here. Is it like a globe or a room? Are there edges, or is it just endless?" Marinette questioned excitedly.
Felix mentally computed and analyzed her multiple questions as quickly as he could. "For a while, I actually didn't move. I didn't want to get off the ledge that you were on, but I fell off and didn't slip into eternity, so I guess that's a floor. We're not floating, but at the same time, we are not physically stepping on anything materialistic. I tried to find a corner or edge, but it's just empty space. I tried to get out of here, but it goes on forever. If we leave the ledge, it might eventually be hard to find again. There's no direction we can go and find civilization."
"Well, there's no harm in trying. How hard could it be to find the ledge if there's nothing to hide it?" Marinette suggested optimistically.
"It's really flat, and it's like looking at the edge of a paper. Trust me, it disappeared until you came back. It's like the only thing that kept my sanity. Everything else is just nothing, I swear I lost my mind. I'm so glad I could talk to another person other than myself for once. I don't even know how long I've been here," Felix rambled on.
Marinette nervously laughed a little in response. Was she going to lose her sanity in this weird world? At least she had someone to talk to.
"So wait, does any of this really exist or are we just subconsciously alive while our bodies are technically disintegrated in the air?" Marinette asked Felix curiously.
"I wish I knew how to answer that, but I assume that our bodies were technically brought here while the masks are stuck with our kwamis," Felix replied, sitting down.
"What happened? What is the development for, and what does it mean? Why did ours go wrong?"
Felix sighed, looking out at the space in front of them, and began to talk. "To explain the development, it's basically an upgrade of powers. It's pretty much what my kwami had called it, superhero puberty."
"That's what I remember Plagg telling me," Marinette amused.
"He's a funny little guy, but he's right. Like puberty, you must get lots of rest during this vital upgrade of powers. The kwami must be recharged with both rest and food before transforming you. You see, they never borrow our energy, but allow us to use theirs. The development takes a huge amount of energy, so it drains our own."
"Why can't they just detransform us then?" She asked.
"It would literally kill us. With the development taking more energy than we have, the kwamis have to be the source. We need energy to help our hearts beat, to help our organs work, to basically allow our brains to function."
"The dumb akuma came up the day after I had an all-nighter," Marinette recalled, suddenly realizing.
"I remember Nathalie always pushed herself to do a lot in high school so she could get into a good college, then work for the fashion industry. She was a straight-A student, always involved in school activities, as well as sports. The girl even got the lead of our school play. There weren't enough hours in the day to do everything, so it took from her sleep."
"So did you just get too caught up between school, family, and hero duties?" Felix asked.
"Yeah... my family runs a bakery, and I had to help them all day, as well as do a long project with my other homework assignments. My parents woke me up early the next morning to make sure I wasn't late, but I had never even gone to sleep. Right after school, I was so sure I was going to take a nap, but then the dumb Printer akuma forced me to deal with his ridiculousness. After the attack, I finally realized I never lost spots after using my power. That's when I couldn't detransform," Marinette explained.
"For my own experience, I spent most of my nights researching a way to help Nathalie detransform. That's when I realized that sleep and energy had an effect on our developing powers. I got stuck in the cat suit a week after Nathalie got stuck in her suit, but it was right after we helped detransform her."
"So basically Nathalie broke superhero puberty?" Marinette asked.
"I found that it could only happen to one holder of each specific Miraculous, mostly to hold our energy for future issues, so since I'm stuck in here, your partner is completely safe from not having enough energy. It will draw from me if he doesn't," Felix explained.
"What if we run out of energy?" Marinette questioned.
"We can't. Because we were so dangerously low on energy, something put us in here, preserving and expanding our energy as a source. Based on earlier research, I found that this was the only way to keep heroes from dying, but one person of each Miraculous would get taken indefinitely."
A/N: Happy Easter!! 🐰🐣🌸🌼
I have a quick question for you guys. Please comment your honest answer:
Do you guys prefer the fanfiction with or without art?
It takes a while, but I enjoy doing it. It's helped me improve a lot since November, but I'm not sure how it affects the quality of your reading.