Chapter Text
The first time Chat Noir sees her, Marinette has just bruised her tailbone on the lid of a dumpster, and Mullo's transformation is collapsing around her like the silken threads of Cinderella's dress.
It’s her own fault. She should have brought Sass or Kaalki instead. Or she should have taken the long route through the Champ de Mars metro, hidden by crowds that squeezed like a closing fist. She should have kept distance between her and Scarabella instead of chasing the battle across Paris, her heart a stone in her throat.
Half a story above her, Chat stares down from the rooftops. He'd been reaching for her when she fell, and his hand hovers in front of him, his mouth a perfectly round O of surprise.
It's fine, she thinks dizzily. There's no way he's gonna know who I am.
Chat Noir closes his mouth, coughs into his fist, and says, incredulous: "Marinette Dupain-Cheng?"
The mouse miraculous falls from its place around her neck, bouncing heavily between her collarbones. Her hand flies up to shield it from sight. But it’s too late: Chat has seen it, the same way he saw her face; minutes after she fell backwards off a billboard and detransformed midair.
For a moment, they look at each other—Chat leaning over the gutter; Marinette on her back amidst soft drink cans and sidewalk gum, cursing her decision to crawl out of bed that morning.
Awkwardly, she clears her throat.
“Hi,” she says.
And then she runs.
Set the stage: a park in autumn, sprinkled with dead leaves like shorn flecks of gold.
Set the scene: a roiling crowd of fans and reporters, closed around Alya like a grasping hand, clamoring for her attention as she talks quickly, chin raised.
It’s odd. Even Marinette struggles to recognize her. Staring at Scarabella—the bright lip of her mask over the bridge of her nose, the striking contrasts of her suit—she can see little flashes of Alya shining through. But it’s hard to hold onto—as though she's peering into water. Tikki’s magic swirls around her like smoke.
“She isn’t the one I chose.”
The old man sitting on the park bench beside her is dressed in khakis and a loud Hawaiian shirt. His shoulders are stooped, and a cane is braced between his knees. He’s familiar, somehow. Déjà vu.
“Excuse me?” says Marinette.
“Scarabella,” he replies. He nods at Alya, in her spots and vibrant mask, flushed and laughing in front of her fans. “She isn’t the one I chose.”
He stands, cane swinging. Suddenly, she remembers—a sunbaked street, her first day of school.
“Wait,” she says. “You’re the old man from the crosswalk.”
He starts to totter away, marking his pace with the pock of his walking stick on the pavers underfoot.
“Yes. And you’re Ladybug.”
Her stomach flips over. She flies to her feet.
“Who are you?”
When the old man doesn’t answer, her resolve hardens. In a flash, she’s in front of him, blocking his path out of the park, her voice gone hard with the effort of speaking softly.
“I don’t want to be Ladybug. She deserves it more than I did.”
“I don’t doubt that she’s deserving,” he replies. He continues his leisurely strut down the path, pushing Marinette into a hopping backward shuffle. “But nonetheless: she’s not the one I chose.”
“Well, I’m not going to take the earrings back,” she mutters. “And you’re not going to take them back, either. Whoever you are. If you even care. If you’re so mad about it, then how come you’re only showing yourself now?”
Where had he been? This self-satisfied stranger. Where had he been when Théo had broken into the Louvre, and the police had hounded Alya across the city with guns? Where had he been for Dislocœur, when Chat Noir had turned on her?
“All things in good time. For now, we need to talk.”
“About what?” Marinette snaps. “Because I’m not going to tell you Scarabella’s identity. If you want to get to her, then you’ll have to go through me.”
It's guilt, more than any genuine anger. But it might have kept her courageous a moment longer—
—if her foot hadn’t chosen that precise moment to snag on a stone, sending Marinette careening backwards.
The air whooshes out of her lungs as she hits the dirt on her back. She lays there for a second, stunned. Somewhere, a boy is snickering.
The old man in the loud shirt regards her for a moment, then extends his cane to help her to her feet.
“Come with me,” he says. “Marinette, let’s walk.”
All the way home, on the rattling, grime-slick train, Marinette stares into the darkness past the windows, Mullo cupped to her chest like a heartbeat.
She lets herself in, climbs the creaking stairs, and distracts herself with her literature homework until the moon knocks silently on her skylight. By the next morning, when she wakes up for class, she's almost convinced herself that it hadn't happened at all.
But Alya is waiting for her at the base of the school steps, and she takes Marinette’s hand before she can duck away, pulling her into their whispering spot.
“I think he saw you. Multimouse you.”
“He did,” says Marinette, and Alya winces.
“He took off so fast, I couldn’t stop him. Did you manage to shake him before you detransformed?”
Marinette's knuckle-biting is answer enough. Alya sighs.
“I guess you couldn’t put off meeting him forever. I’m sure that he’ll be—”
She pauses, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
“—cool. I’m sure that Chat Noir will be cool about this.”
The day progresses at its usual pace. When the final bell releases her from class, Marinette creeps outside like a thief—and freezes.
At the base of the steps, surrounded by a squealing crowd of middle-schoolers, is Chat. When he spots her, a broad grin splits his face, and he waves his retinue away with a theatrical flourish.
"Rain check, sorry! The lady I'm escorting is here. It'd be terribly impawlite for me to keep her waiting."
Marinette decides, right then and there, that she would rather fall down a manhole and die.
Face on fire, she clatters down the steps, pushes past Chat's outstretched gentlemanly arm, and starts down the sidewalk at a brisk walk. In a sad turn of events, her legs are short; whereas Chat Noir's are irritatingly long.
"So," he says from her elbow a moment later. "You must be Scarabella’s big secret. It’s nice to finally meet you! I think.”
“How did you even find me?” she says disbelievingly. Chat Noir pivots, hops several steps in front of her, and keeps walking, backwards in order to face her.
“Secret identities, right? I could tell you, but then you’d have to kill me.”
Okay.
Marinette is nowhere near ready for this, but at least he recalls Fu's most important rule.
“So, um...how much has Scarabella… actually told you about me?”
“You’re the Guardian,” says Chat. “The one she keeps sneaking off to see during fights. You gave us our power-ups. You give out the miraculous.”
“And?”
“And what?”
And I was Ladybug.
Marinette's heel scuffs loudly as she stumbles on the sidewalk. Regaining her footing, she darts Chat a glance. Chat beams back at her, face guileless, waiting expectantly for her answer.
He doesn’t know, she realizes abruptly. Somehow, by some miracle, nothing about her had twigged him—not her face, nor her voice, nor her clumsiness, nor her discomfort. He knows her—somehow—as Marinette Dupain-Cheng; but not as Ladybug, the hero of half an hour; the girl who’d been replaced without ever being remembered.
A tight knot inside her chest unravels, and she lets out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
"Nothing," she manages. "But really, you recognize me? You know where I go to school?”
"Isn’t that unlike me? Good luck isn’t really my thing.” He winks, one eye vanishing in the black of his mask. "But I’ve heard all kinds of things. Good things, the best things. I can’t believe it’s finally my turn to meet you.”
Marinette chews her lip and quickens her pace. For a moment, Chat's smile falters, and his long, loping stride slows alongside hers.
“Am I not supposed to be here?” he says. “Is there a reason that Scarabella can visit you, but not me?”
The walk to her house is only a few streets, and they’ve reached Rue Gotlib more quickly than Marinette realized. On the curb in front of the bakery, they slow to an uncertain stop. In the starkness of the sunlight, Chat looks like a peeled-up shadow, the excitement on his face given way to uncertainty.
She could vanish behind the shopfront and go up to her room now. She doesn’t think that Chat will follow her—or that he’ll appear at Françoise Dupont the next day.
But guilt clutches at her; and at length, Marinette sighs, twisting the straps of her backpack in her fists.
“No,” she says. “It's nothing like that. But next time, make sure you don't draw so much attention."
Whatever it was that she’d seen on Chat’s face, it vanishes, quick as a cloud swallowed up by the sunlight.
“Really? You don’t mind if I come over? Because I'll be careful. I won't let anyone see me! I'll even sneak out at night if you want.”
(Phrased that way, it definitely sounds like a different secret altogether.)
“Yeah, um—I’ll give you my number? Just text me so I know you're coming.”
Beaming, he extracts his baton from the loop on his belt. Before Marinette can think better, her hand flashes out to his wrist.
“Sorry if I'm being weird,” she blurts. "I'm really happy to meet you. Honestly, I am.”
Chat blinks down at her small hand on his wrist, pale and strange against the black of his cuff. Marinette snatches it back as though it’s been burned.
"You're not weird," says Chat—which is a very kind lie. The fact that Chat Noir is such a good liar unsettles Marinette even more than the length of his steps, or the sunniness of his smile as he punches her number into his baton.
“Can’t wait,” he adds. “I’ll see you soon.”
Marinette watches him vault over the sloped line of the rooftops, a black speck of night against an ocean of sky.
"Soon," she says to herself.
She puts her face into her hands, and she groans.