Chapter Text
“Come here often?” Chat Noir purred as he landed in a crouch on the rooftop a few meters off from Ladybug.
“Chat Noir,” she greeted distractedly, voice weary and devoid of its usual playful cadences. “I didn’t hear you.”
“Something on your mind, Milady?” he hummed thoughtfully and then teasingly added, “Is it me?”
She gave a snort and mustered up a wane smile, shaking her head. “No, Chaton. You’re mostly happy or exasperated thoughts.” She patted the roof beside her. “This is…” She shook her head again.
Chat slunk up next to her, taking a seat and bumping his knee against hers. “…not so happy thoughts?” he guessed.
Ladybug nodded.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he inquired, trying to gauge her seemingly mercurial mood. “Or do you need me to distract you?” he offered. “…I could also leave you alone, if you just need to sit and think.”
She bit her bottom lip as she gazed out at the nighttime cityscape, the millions of lights glinting like earthbound stars. “I don’t know.”
“Okay…. We can just sit here, then, and you let me know when you want me to talk or leave or listen…or recite Shakespearean sonnets or tell jokes—don’t make that face; I know you love my jokes, Milady.” His knee bumped hers again as she snickered. “Be nice, Bug.”
She laughed softly like a miniature carillon. “I do love your jokes,” she admitted.
“Ah-ha!” he crowed. “See? See?! I knew it. Two years you pretend to be immune, but you weren’t fooling me, Milady.”
With a roll of her eyes, she corrected, “Chat Noir, what I object to is your timing. You know I love to joke and tease as much as the next girl, but you’re incredibly distracting when I’m trying to figure out where the akuma’s object is and formulate a plan and not get hit. If you could save the clowning for after the fight, I wouldn’t be such a sourpuss.”
Chat pursed his lips. “What ‘after the fight’?” he muttered.
“Sorry?” She cocked her head to the side.
He looked away, pretending to take in the stars. “There’s never a whole lot of time after the fight. Usually, once we save the victim and get things squared away, we have just a few seconds to say goodbye before one or both of us have to run off to detransform. That doesn’t leave me with much time to deliver a punchline. I mean, I guess I could cultivate haiku-length jokes for you, My Lady, but…I prefer the brick joke to the knock-knock, and if I have to provide jokes on the spot like that instead of sharing them as they come to mind…I don’t know. I don’t think they’ll be as fresh and inspired. That’s all I’m saying.”
“You’re trying to distract me,” Ladybug remarked, half amused, fully grateful.
Chat assumed an offended air. “Distract you? Of course not. I’m insulted, My Lady. Here I am discussing very real dilemmas with issues that are important to me, and you have to go and make it about yourself.”
“Typical me, right?” she chuckled humorlessly.
He snorted and rolled his eyes—streaks of neon green in the inky blue of the night. “Hardly. I don’t know where you’ve been, but my Lady is thoughtful and caring and selfless.”
She shot him a pointed look of dissent.
“Okay,” he conceded. “She has her bad days; she’s only human, but most of the time it’s true. My Lady is the second best person I know.”
Ladybug’s brow transformed into a warren of frown lines under her bangs. “Second best? Who did I lose out to?”
Chat Noir waved dismissively. “A girl in my class. She’s every bit as brave and selfless and principled as you, but she does it all without superpowers.”
Ladybug felt her heart constrict slightly. She tried to be happy for him, but…
“…She sounds special,” Ladybug muttered.
“She is,” Chat chuckled softly, for once not looking at Ladybug, not noticing. And the gentle, smitten smile on his face as he thought of the other girl was telling.
Ladybug cleared her throat. “Well, I wouldn’t want to stifle your artistic creativity. If after the battles is too tight a timeframe for you to work with, I won’t ask that you cut the jokes during battle out entirely. Just…maybe be a little more aware of the timing of your delivery, and if I tell you to cut it out because I’m thinking, please respect my request.”
Chat nodded, easily agreeing to the compromise. “All right. I’ll try to keep the situation in mind when joking around.”
“If it helps, you can feel free to joke all you want at times like this when we happen to meet up in costume,” Ladybug offered.
With a lilting smirk and a raised eyebrow, Chat eyed his partner. “Question. When did you tell Alya that us infrequently meeting up randomly and playing tag on the rooftops was called ‘patrol’? I saw on her blog that she snapped some pictures of us, saying that she’d run into us ‘on patrol’, and my first thought was ‘false advertising’.”
Ladybug’s cheeks heated up, and she looked away with a shrug. “She was the one who used the word ‘patrol’ first. She caught me and asked me about our patrol schedule, and I just went with it. It sounded more responsible and heroic than admitting that sometimes we suit up just to chase each other over rooftops and take in the view.”
Chat snorted. “Chasing you and taking in the view are the only reasons that I ever suit up.” He topped his statement off with a teasing wink.
She gave him a playful shove but then went silent, looking back out at the city. She heaved a drained sigh.
“Ladybug?” he called gently, concern coating the syllables.
She shook her head.
“…Anything I can do, Buginette?”
She repeated the gesture. “…You’ll just tell me not to beat myself up and try to get me to forgive myself and attempt to convince me that everything is fine because it all worked out. Part of the reason why I transformed is that I couldn’t take Tikki trying to do the same things. I screwed up so bad, Chat Noir.”
She glanced to the side, meeting his eyes, knowing her own were starting to shimmer with tears she wouldn’t let fall, knowing he would see.
“My Lady…” he whispered reverently. “No.”
“Yes, I did,” she sighed. “See? You’re trying to give me a free pass. Don’t let me get off so easily, Chat Noir. People depend on me; I have to be held accountable for my actions.”
What she couldn’t say was that on top of her inept performance as Ladybug that day, she herself had caused the akuma in the first place.
“Okay. You screwed up,” he conceded, “but then you fixed it.”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t mean I should get off scot-free.”
“No,” he agreed. “But it sounds like you’re adequately punishing yourself, so I don’t think you need anyone else’s help with that. Look. Okay. You fumbled it at first today, but you recovered brilliantly,” he reminded, bumping her arm companionably in encouragement. “You didn’t walk away and leave your mess for someone else to clean up. You took responsibility, and that’s the important thing. You don’t have to be perfect, Ladybug.”
He paused to let his words sink in and then continued in a gentle hush, “You just have to be responsible and innately good. And you are those things. If anyone gives you crap for today, I will personally tell them where they can shove it. You don’t owe these people anything; they owe you,” he insisted. “Okay? So you can stop beating yourself up and overthinking everything…. Okay, Bug?”
His eyes. She couldn’t look away. The intensity with which he was looking at her, the passion and ferocity stole the breath from her lungs because even though Chat Noir was the one she had let down the most, he was the one most in her corner. His belief in her was unshaken. His love for her was undiminished. Unquestionably, he had her back.
It made her heart quicken and her stomach flip. She loved this boy immensely. If it weren’t for Adrien…
“…But I let you down,” she mumbled. “I let you down, Chaton, and even if I don’t owe anyone else, don’t I at least owe you?”
He shrugged, smiling tentatively. “Maybe? But only in the same way that you owe things to yourself. Ladybug, you and I are the same person. You’re my other half. Your failures are my failures, your triumphs, mine. Today was partially my fault.” He said it all without a hint of irony, as if he truly believed each word and was only reporting facts.
She wasn’t so sure she put as much stock in their supposed “two halves of the same whole” as he did, but, in that moment of darkness in her soul, it felt good not to be alone.
She shook her head, rummaging around for a smile. “Thank you, Chaton, but you didn’t do anything wrong. Today was all me, and I’m really sorry I didn’t have my stuff together. I brought personal garbage into the fight, and…”
She bit her lip at the memories of Lila and her threats.
Tears welled up once more.
“Hey.” He rested a hand on her shoulder. “Ladybug, I forgive you…. Now, for your penance, I need you to do something for me, okay?”
She frowned but nodded.
He counted it out on his fingers: “Figure out what you did wrong. Write it down. Learn from your mistakes. Stop stressing about it. Can you do that?” He gave her an encouraging smile.
She struggled to return it. “All but the last part.”
“The last part is the most important,” he tsked. “Can you try?”
She nodded vigorously. “I will.”
“Good. That’s all I ask of you…. Good talk,” he decreed.
“Good talk,” she confirmed…but then it occurred to her, “So…we know why I’m here, but what are you doing out roaming the roofs at one in the morning, Chat Noir?”
He winced. “Uhh…couldn’t sleep?” He tried to cover it up, but his grin looked pained.
She bit her lip. “…Do you come here often?”
Chat looked out across the Seine. “…Not here, usually. I used to go hang out on the roof of Notre Dame before…” He shook his head. “My school is over that way, and the girl I—uhh—this girl I’m friends with. Her house. She…She always has snacks, and she’s usually up late—sometimes she falls asleep up on her balcony and I have to—but whenever I don’t feel like being alone…” he replied in a jumble and then trailed off, looking away and shaking his head, trying to conceal how red his cheeks were getting. “…So, no. No, I don’t come here often. I just happened to see you on my way, so…”
“I see,” she responded clunkily, trying to absorb the fact that Chat Noir dropped by her house when he was lonely. He had usually seemed in good spirits when he’d come. He’d said that he was out because he had energy to burn. She’d believed him. She hadn’t really thought to challenge his statements before that moment.
She felt so stupid. Why had she never stopped to question, stopped to think?
“Why can’t you sleep tonight, Chat Noir? Something on your mind?” she inquired tentatively. “You don’t have to tell me, but…if you want to talk about it?”
He squirmed, stilled, shrugged. “My friend…she’s actually the one who kind of caused the akuma. Sort of. I mean…it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t do anything wrong. That Lila girl who keeps getting akumatized is a psychotic bitch and a pathological liar. I’d like to think that she has a rough home life and that her behavior is just a desperate cry for the attention she needs, but…I’ve met her mom. Her mom is really nice and kind of a total pushover, and, frankly, I am the one with the rough home life. My sympathy dried up when Lila started trying to sabotage Marinette,” Chat seethed, a fierce, protective bite to his words. “No one hurts the people I care about.”
Ladybug was surprised to learn that her partner seemed so invested in her alter ego. Yes, they were friends and they hung out and joked around and played videogames and shared snacks, but…how had Marinette become so important to Chat Noir?
Chat cleared his throat. “So, anyway, Marinette was right there when Lila got akumatized, and…” He shuddered. “God, Bug, it was bad. I nearly blew my cover. I just…I panicked. I couldn’t get away to transform. The quad was full of people before school, and I nearly transformed in front of all of them when Lila—or Retribution or whatever she was calling herself—swung that giant cartoon cleaver at Marinette.”
Ladybug winced. “Well. It’s a good thing Adrien Agreste beat you to the punch. I saw the videos people took on their mobiles of him shoving her out of the way and getting her to safety.”
Chat nodded, taking a deep, stuttering breath. “I’m going to be having nightmares for a long time of Adrien not making it in time and me being powerless to protect her,” he confessed to the roof tiles.
“Oh, Chaton,” Ladybug cooed, her heart going out to her partner. “I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged. “I think…I mean…She reminds me of you. She looks like you, so seeing her in danger—on top of the terror I felt because it was her and because of how important she is to me—there was also…it was kind of like…a flashback of all the times I couldn’t save you.”
She frowned and almost asked him what he was talking about. Over the two years they’d been partners, she’d been taken out of commission…once? Twice? Three times tops? Very, very few. It shouldn’t have been traumatizing enough for him to have flashbacks. But, then again, she had flashbacks of the times he’d been taken out. There were more instances of when she’d lost him than when he’d lost her, but maybe the fact that he was in love with her whereas she loved him dearly but platonically made up the difference.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, not knowing what else to say. She felt kind of stunned. It wasn’t every day that you found out how important you were to your superhero partner on both sides of the mask.
He shrugged and turned to her with a weak smile that was doing its best to be reassuring. “It’s okay. I’m all right…but as soon as we defeat Papillon, I’m going to see a therapist, and my father will just have to get over it.” He laughed as if it were a joke.
She felt sick. “Oh, Chaton…”
He bumped her arm. “Hey. Let’s talk about something else. Let’s…let’s just talk, okay?”
She frowned, not sure she wanted to let this go. “Talk about what?”
“Anything. Everything,” he suggested offhandedly. “Obviously, no details that would give away our identities, but…can we just—?” He bit his lip, afraid to ask, afraid to be rejected. “No masks tonight. No walls. No keeping me at arms’ length. …Please?”
She studied his face, the raw need in his eyes, the way they begged for her to let him in.
“…Okay,” she finally agreed, and his face lit up like a million fireflies dancing on a pond under the Milky Way.
Her heart clenched because she had no business having that much power over that boy’s happiness.
“But if I say stop, we stop, all right?” she hurriedly supplemented. “And you can say stop too.”
He nodded enthusiastically.
“…I’m going to regret this,” she realized belatedly.
“What’s your favourite flower?” he began, bouncing beside her like an excitable puppy.
“Uhh…maybe roses or…daisies and violets are nice too. I’ve never really thought about it much.” There was a beat before she remembered that this was supposed to be a conversation. “Um…Do you have a favourite flower, Chat Noir?”
“Alstroemeria,” he answered immediately. “I think that the red and orange ones are the prettiest.”
Ladybug frowned. “I don’t know that I’ve heard of those before.”
“They look like little tiger lilies. They’re in the lily family. They’re small and dainty and come, like, five to a stem,” he explained. “I’ll bring you some sometime.”
She gave his nose a teasing poke. “You don’t have to do that. I can google alstro…alstro… What was it?”
“Alstroemeria,” he chuckled. “Tea or coffee?”
“Tea,” she responded decidedly. “Orange jasmine tea. Maman makes it for me. You?”
He smiled tenderly. “Coffee is a necessity; tea is a treat. Honestly, for everyday drinking, Cream Earl Grey is my preference, but when I’m having a crappy day, mint tea is my go-to comfort drink.”
“Why’s that?” she hummed, curiosity piqued by the odd detail.
“My mom used to make it when one of us was having a bad day. It was one of our things,” he answered in a wistful tone. “I still make it for myself from time to time, and it’s kind of a double comfort now.”
Ladybug barely managed to bite her tongue before the words “why doesn’t she make tea for you anymore” passed her lips. Suddenly all the little hints over the years piled up, the passing comments about his challenging home life, the subtle sadness when mothers came up in conversation.
His mother was no longer around to make him tea.
“Favourite color?” Chat plowed ahead, seemingly unaware of her sudden realization. The twinge of melancholy was gone from his voice as if it had never been there in the first place.
She let it go, knowing that neither one of them was in the right headspace for her to press. “Pink mostly, but I like green too.”
“Green like my eyes?” He waggled his eyebrows at her.
“Green like—” she began to correct but then stopped. She smiled apologetically. “…like someone’s eyes.”
Chat gave a snort. “Ah. Mystery boy has green eyes too?”
She nodded contritely. “I’m so sorry, Chat Noir.”
He shrugged. “No worries. I’m confident I can wait you out. You’ll fall for me eventually, and then it will be like ‘Jean-Pierre who?’”
Ladybug cracked up. “‘Jean-Pierre’?”
He raised his arms in a wide, palms-up shrug. “I needed something to call him in my head. It’s much more satisfying to say ‘screw you, Jean-Pierre’ than ‘screw that guy she’s in love with’. Don’t judge my coping mechanisms.”
“I would never,” she promised, trying to cover up a chuckle. “What’s your favourite color, Chat Noir?”
“Peacock blue.”
“Oh, we’re doing shades?”
He shrugged. “You can if you want. What shade of green are Jean-Pierre’s eyes?”
She snorted in laughter and then began to chew on her bottom lip. “They’re like gemstones.”
“Oh? Emerald eyes?” he hummed, unamused. “Figures.”
“Not emerald.” She hugged her knees into her chest. “Lighter than emerald…with little yellow and gold flecks. They’re like peridots.”
“Oh?” he repeated, more interested, thinking of how he’d heard his own eyes described when he was detransformed.
She nodded. “They’re beautiful. And my favourite shade of pink is bubble gum.”
“…Dark chocolate or milk?” he continued their getting-to-know-you session.
She scrunched up her nose. “I actually like semisweet. Milk is too sweet, and dark is usually too bitter. You?”
“Would you believe that I’d never had milk chocolate until about two years ago?” he snickered.
She gaped at him owlishly. “Seriously? Why?”
“My father thinks milk chocolate is toxic waste,” Chat confessed sheepishly. “My father thinks pretty much all dessert is toxic waste, so I don’t get sweets much. I like pretty much whatever I can get my hands on, but Tom and Sabine’s has the best of everything.”
“True statement.” Ladybug nodded approvingly, mentally leaving herself a note to send Chat Noir home with double the usual number of pastries she normally did the next time he dropped by Marinette’s balcony. “Do you have a favourite pastry?”
“Tom and Sabine’s macarons are phenomenal. I love their pain au chocolat too,” he answered readily, mouth beginning to water.
“Any particular flavor of macaron?” she pressed, planning on setting aside a few.
His lips buzzed in a thoughtful hum. “It keeps changing. I mean, I love passionfruit everything, and their passionfruit macaron is no exception, but I really enjoy a bunch of their other flavours as well. Key lime pie…lemonade…yuzu… They did a cannoli macaron last month that was really spectacular…. Do you have a favourite pastry, Milady?”
She really had to think about it. Pastries were an integral part of the backdrop of her life, so integral that she had begun to take them for granted. “…There’s nothing better than a good old strawberry tarte,” she decided.
He nodded his approval, almost able to taste the fresh berries, the flakey crust, and the thick, creamy custard. “Favourite book?”
She began to chew on the inside of her cheek. “You know, I don’t really read much. I guess…I mean, there are the trashy romance novels me and my friends pass around, but…I like them, but it’s not like they’re my favourite or anything.” She bit her lip as she wracked her brain. “There was this one book I read to one of the girls I babysit called The Memory of an Elephant that I thought was really neat. The art is lovely, and it’s kind of a mix of story and trivia as Marcel the elephant recounts events from his life and factual information kind of like a Wikipedia entry. I don’t know that it’s my favourite, but it’s a book that I read that I liked.” She finished with a bashful shrug. “Are you a reader, Chat Noir?”
He nodded enthusiastically. “I didn’t get out much the first decade of my life because my parents were a little strict and overprotective. I was homeschooled, and I didn’t have many friends, so in my free time, between all the extra lessons and everything, I watched a lot of anime and did a lot of reading. That’s still kind of what I do. My father let me go to public school starting a few years ago, but he still doesn’t let me go over to friends’ houses or do fieldtrips or stuff like that, so…I read a lot.”
Ladybug schooled her expression into a smile, resolving not to comment on his situation, how unfair his parents were, how much his life must suck. He seemed to be in a fairly cheerful mood at that moment, and she didn’t want to ruin it.
“Wow. You know, I never would have taken you for the bookish type,” she remarked instead.
He gave a shrug, stretching out his legs and leaning back to rest his weight on his hands. “Books let me escape. They let me experience life and see the world. I…My family has never gone on a vacation. I’ve traveled for work, but I’ve never…you know…so books let me get away.”
“What are your favourites?” she prompted, trying to keep the sad tone out of her voice.
“Don’t laugh,” he preempted. “Charlotte and Anne Brontë. Not Emily.”
Ladybug frowned. “Aren’t their books kind of…” She pursed her lips.
“Girly?” he completed. “No. They’re human-y. I like human-y. It’s part of the reason why I love Jane Austen and Victor Hugo so much. Charles Dickens too. Their characters feel real, like I could just bump into them on the street.”
Ladybug nodded, gaining a new appreciation for her partner. She could almost imagine him curled up in a window seat on a rainy day, pillow hugged to his chest, black-rimmed glasses slipping down his nose as he lost himself in imaginary worlds.
“Why not Emily Brontë?” she thought to ask.
Chat’s nose scrunched up in distaste. “I actively disliked eighty-seven percent of her characters and spent the whole of Wuthering Heights hoping bad things would happen to them. In that respect, the ending was rather satisfying, but the book was a slog, and it wasn’t even like my dislike of the characters was cathartic.”
Ladybug nodded as if she could relate. “I’ll make sure not to read it, then.”
“If you’re going to read anything, read Pride and Prejudice or Emma. They’re like trashy romance novels, only everyone will think you’re smart and sophisticated for reading them,” he chuckled.
“What are you reading right now?” She wondered, genuinely starting to take an interest in this getting-to-know-you game.
“The Three Musketeers again,” he replied nonchalantly. “I love Alexandre Dumas, So Musketeers is an old standby. I prefer The Count of Monte Cristo, though.”
“Do you ever read ‘trashy’ modern fiction?” she had to wonder. “Or is it all smarty-pants, five-hundred-page novels?”
“The Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich,” he snickered, a pink stain quickly spreading across his cheeks. He covered his face with his hands, unwilling to look at her as he confessed, “And vampire smut.”
“Vampire…smut,” she repeated as if the syllables were in a foreign language.
He nodded, daring to peek at the shocked expression on her rapidly-reddening face. “I have to get it from my one friend and sneak it into the house as if it were drugs or PopTarts or something. I pay her back in manicures and massages, so the arrangement works—she actually thinks my preferences are adorable and doesn’t make fun of me too much—but…yeah. Vampire smut.”
There was an awkward silence.
A thought occurred to him: “…I feel like I shouldn’t have told you this about me until after we were married.”
“No,” she rushed to assure. “It’s just…I’m trying to reconcile your lame puns, your family situation, serious nineteenth century classic literature, and vampire smut. I’m not judging; I’m just…processing. I’ll judge you after I actually read some of this vampire smut. What’s the author’s name?”
“Seriously?” His mind raced, trying to come up with a series that he wouldn’t be too embarrassed to have the girl he loved reading.
She shrugged, meeting his eyes. “Seriously. I find the concept intriguing.”
“Uh…well…The Southern Vampire Mysteries are pretty mainstream, if you want to try that,” he suggested.
She nodded. “…New topic?”
“Yeah,” he sighed in relief. “New topic. Uhh… What is…” He bit his lip, fishing around for something he’d always wanted to know about her. “What is your most treasured possession?”
She looked out at the Seine and hummed thoughtfully, mentally sorting through the items in her room. “I have a couple really important items: an umbrella, a jade hairpin, a bracelet, a thimble…a cat plushie.”
“Oooh?” Chat leaned in, waggling his eyebrows.
She swatted at him. “I liked cats before it was cool…but the cat plushie was a gift from my cousin.”
He raised an eyebrow repeating, “Oh?” softly, with genuine interest.
Ladybug nodded. “We were close when I was little. She’s eight years older than I am, so she was always like a big sister. She played with me and talked to me, and she always took me seriously, even though I was so much younger than she was. She got married right out of high school, when I was ten. I got to be in the wedding. It was small—just her family and a few friends—but…she looked so pretty…and her husband looked at her like she was his entire world. I remember thinking that I wanted someone to look at me like that someday.”
Chat’s heart clenched, but Ladybug didn’t seem to notice as she continued.
“But, anyway, her husband’s family was really awful. Like, he had the worst parents. Super controlling and abusive and neglectful. My cousin and her husband moved away right after the wedding to get away from them, and I haven’t seen her since. We talk on the phone, but it’s not the same as when she used to spend the night at my house and we’d whisper under the covers. It’s not the same as having her here…so the cat plushie she made for me is precious because it reminds me of her.”
Ladybug looked up at her partner’s uncharacteristic silence. “Chat Noir? You okay?”
He hurriedly pasted on a smile. “Yeah. Fine. Sorry. I just…was reminded of…someone important to me. He got married and left a bad family situation too…. I talk to his wife fairly often, but…he hasn’t taken my calls in years, so…”
Her eyes widened, and a soft gasp escaped her lips. “What happened? Is he mad at you or something?”
The words were out of her mouth before it dawned upon her that this was too personal, and she couldn’t just ask things like that of him.
“Sorry!” she backpedaled. “I shouldn’t have asked. That was rude and way too personal. Please don’t answer.”
Chat Noir stared at her in stunned silence. The situation with Félix had been pressing down upon him like a boulder for years. The secrecy and the silence were stifling. He wasn’t allowed to mention his brother’s name. Félix had been erased from the Agreste household. Obliterated to the point where Adrien often wondered if he’d just imagined a brother for himself…until the next time that Bridgette called anyway.
For a second, when Ladybug had asked what happened, the pressure let up…only to slam back down even harder when she instructed him not to answer after all.
He gulped. “He’s not mad at me.”
“Chat Noir,” Ladybug warned. “I shouldn’t have asked. You shouldn’t tell me something private like—”
“—He’s mad at himself,” Chat pressed forward heedlessly. “He doesn’t think he has the right to talk to me after he ‘abandoned’ me. He’s an idiot…like me. I think we get it from our father.”
She stared at him.
He smiled. “Sorry.”
She gulped, shaking her head slowly. “It’s…okay. It’s okay, Chaton,” she lied for both of their benefits.
She didn’t know what to do with everything she’d learned. She’d thought that she knew him, but she’d been wrong. She knew pieces and fragments. She knew the hand-picked parts he’d chosen to show. She didn’t know what to do now that the curtain had been raised and she could see the gears and the cogs, the raw machinery that kept him ticking on the inside.
“I should go,” Chat whispered, getting to his feet, still wearing a smile like a suit of armor. “It’s late. You’re tired.”
She grabbed his tail. “Wait!”
He blinked, gazing at her apprehensively.
“Please stay for a bit.” She didn’t know what she was going to say to him, but she knew that she couldn’t let it end there. If she let him go, she knew that the intangible thing that had fractured between them wouldn’t get fixed.
He bowed gallantly. “As you wish, Milady.”
He took a seat and waited, gazing unseeingly at the Eiffel Tower looming dark out in front of them.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she considered her next move.
“I’m sorry, Ladybug,” Chat whispered, guilt beginning to weigh him down.
She looked up at him in surprise, mouth a soft “o” of confusion.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” he elaborated. “You didn’t want to know, but I couldn’t…” He looked away, mentally kicking himself because he’d betrayed her trust, and now she was never going to do anything like this with him ever again.
“Chaton,” she called firmly but not unkindly. “You don’t have to apologize. I should be the one apologizing. I…”
He frowned, utterly bewildered. “What do you have to be sorry for?”
She let go of his tail and grabbed his hand instead. “Chat Noir, I’m sorry for always keeping you at arms’ length. You know why I do that, don’t you?”
He nodded. “To keep ourselves, each other, and the people we care about safe,” he recited without feeling.
She gave his hand a squeeze. “I’m sorry that the distance between us is necessary.”
“To you,” he mentally added, a touch of bitterness to the thought. She was the only one who thought this torture was necessary.
“It doesn’t mean that I don’t care about you. You know that, right?” Her eyes searched his.
He covered his thoughts with a placid smile. “I know, Ladybug.”
She frowned. “Do you? Do you know that I care about you, Chat Noir?”
With a sigh, he shook his head. “Yes, I know. I know we’re friends. I know you care.”
The lines in her brow deepened. “You’re more than just a friend to me, Chaton. You’re my partner. You are my other half, and you’re irreplaceable. You’re important to me, Chat Noir. You’re very, very important to me, okay?”
His eyes widened as it finally sank in that she meant every word. “Really?”
“Yes!” she squeaked in frustration. “Yes! You’re one of the most important people in my life. Just because I don’t know what your name is or where you live or what you do with yourself in your free time, that doesn’t cheapen my feelings for you. That doesn’t mean that you mean any less to me than the friends I see at school or the people I know from my neighborhood. The things I don’t know about you don’t make our bond any less real. I know our relationship isn’t what you want it to be, but I wish you wouldn’t let that get in the way of seeing how special what we do have is.”
A genuine smile penetrated his artificial veneer, and he lifted her hand up to his lips. “Thank you, Ladybug.”
He let her hand go, but she grabbed hold once more.
“Chaton, I wish I could be there for you more,” she whispered, blue eyes piercing his. “From the things that you’ve said tonight, it’s become apparent that you don’t always have the support you need on the other side of the mask, and I wish I could help with that…but I’m sixteen, and I don’t know how. Solving real-life problems is a lot trickier than figuring out how to use whatever object I summon up, and I don’t know that I’m actually the person you need to help you mend the things that aren’t right in your life. Now, if it helps to do ‘patrol’ more often, as long as we’re careful about our identities, that’s definitely something we could do, but—”
“—You’d be willing to meet up more regularly?” he gasped, mouth dropping open in sheer stupefaction.
She nodded. “Yes, Chat Noir. Not too often, but we can hang out if it helps. But do you have an adult that you trust? Like a teacher or one of the instructors that gives you lessons?”
Chat thought for a moment before Miss Bustier’s face came to mind. He nodded. “I think so. Why?”
“Could you maybe talk to them about the things that bother you? You hinted that your father doesn’t approve of therapy, but…could you talk to one of your teachers or instructors about things? I want you to be safe and happy, Chaton, but there’s not much I can do without compromising our identities.”
“…I’ll think about it,” he tentatively agreed. “Thank you, Bug.”
She gave his hand a pat and then let go. “Are we okay?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I think we’re good…. Thanks.”
“…Wanna tell me what your most precious possession is now?” she asked slyly in an attempt to return the easy atmosphere between them.
Chat Noir blushed and began to rub at the back of his neck. “I mean, sure,” he chuckled. “If you really want to know.”
“I’m curious,” she prompted, giving his shoulder a nudge. “What is it?”
A soft smile came to his lips that made Ladybug’s chest tighten with foreboding.
“You would think it would be something of my mother’s, and I do have a lot of special things from her too, but…my most prized possession is actually something I got from a girl in my class. A friend.”
“Oh?” Ladybug hummed. “A friend? Do you smile so dreamily when you talk about all of your friends?”
He shoved her gently, shaking his head in embarrassment. “God, you’re as bad as Plagg. Okay. I have a serious thing for her.”
“Aha,” she crowed in vindication.
“But for real, My Lady, I’m one hundred percent faithful to you,” he assured, looking her right in the eye. “My friend is the most adorable girl on the face of this earth—present company excluded—but nothing’s going to happen with her. She doesn’t feel the same way about me, and, like I said, I’m spoken for, even if you don’t want me yet. I’m patient.”
Suddenly the sadness in Ladybug’s heart wasn’t only on her own behalf. “Chat Noir…if you like this girl, you shouldn’t let me hold you back. I don’t want you throwing your life away waiting for me. I don’t want you to have regrets”
He shrugged and smiled. “Like I said, even if I did give in to my feelings for her, I don’t think she feels the same. We kind of have a shaky relationship. She’s one of the most wonderful, friendly human beings ever, but we got off to a rough start, and things between us have just stayed kind of rough. She’d give me the shirt off her back if I asked for it, but I don’t think she always feels comfortable around me. Our friendship is kind of tentative, so I don’t think telling her about my feelings is necessarily a good idea…especially since I’m still in love with you.”
Ladybug bit her lips. “I’m sorry things are so complicated.”
Chat shrugged, resigned. “This is just my life, Buginette.”
She winced. “…So…what did your friend give you that’s so special?”
The soft smile immediately returned to his face. “A good luck charm.”