#so why didn’t SHE tell Adrien | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

flightfoot · 5 months ago

Note

Could you recommend good written rarepair fics?

Sure! I don't know what you qualify as rarepair, so I'll use my old standby of "everything that isn't Lovesquare". I've got a lot of these to recommend, so I'll split it up by ship, unless there's only one fic in the pairing, in which case I'll dump it at the end.

I've split this up by pairing. If I have multiple fics to rec for a pairing, I'll give it its own category, if not, then it goes into the "one-offs" category at then end.

I have categories for Adrino, Marigami, MarcNath, Lukadrien, Julerose, Chlobrina, DJWifi, Alyanette, and FeLuka, in that order.

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Adrino:

Within Your Heart by Inkyibis

It’s Valentine’s Day and Ladybug just wants to her superhero partner to find his love. And what she wants, the Lucky Charm will create. If only she could remember what it is she did last night.

Adrino fic here! Marinette’s drunk and feeling awful that her superhero partner is alone on Valentine’s (she’s in a loving and committed relationship with Alya), so she creates a Lucky Charm to help Chat find love! In this universe, Ladybug’s Lucky Charms have the power to create new rules for the universe to follow, such as making one that demands that if you have any magic in you, you have to tell the truth or else you’ll freeze. Or in Adrien’s case, that he has to wake up in the arms of his true love every day XD. It’s very sweet and I love both Adrien’s and Nino’s relationship, and the relationship between the rest of the Miracuteam members as well, even though that’s not the focus.

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I’ll give myself a name (something stupid and pretentious) by @bbutterflies

Nino looked at the number and didn’t recognize it. Usually he wouldn’t answer, but he had nothing better to do – and could still really use a distraction – so he did. “Hello?”

“Hey, Nino.”

Nino stood up quickly, chest tightening. He knew that voice. He’d been waiting to hear it again for over two years. “Adrien?” he whispered.

“Yeah. It’s me."

When Monarch is defeated (and revealed to be Gabriel Agreste), Chat Noir immediately goes missing. Adrien disappears not long after. When Adrien finally shows up in Paris again, Nino would do anything to make sure he doesn't disappear again.

Ah this is lovely, Adrien’s been in a lot of emotional turmoil since Monarch’s defeat, convinced that everyone would hate him, SHOULD hate him, for not realizing that his father was the villain, and should hate him even more for disappearing like he does. But slowly Marinette and Nino get through to him, convince him that they just want him back.

And also Adrien and Nino smooch. Multiple times. So that’s a bonus XD.

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Would Trust You With Everything by @kasienda

Nino breaks off, tears streaking down his face. Adrien wishes he was here as himself instead of Chat so he could offer a hug.

“It’s not like I don’t think she deserved her privacy. It’s just it felt like I was her last priority. And if I knew why, then maybe we could overcome it. But when I don’t, I’m not willing to be her last thought. You know? I always put her first.”

“Yeah,” Chat agrees, able to relate too well. He always put Ladybug first too, and he’s not sure it has ever been the same for her. “I’m sorry you’ve been so alone through this."

“I haven’t been totally alone,” Nino disagrees, holding up his phone. “My best friend has been keeping me company virtually most of the day.”

“Yeah? It helped?”

“I don’t know if any of the stuff he sent helped, but like, given what I know he’s up to, he totally had to move heaven and earth to talk to me so much, and that really helped. You know, just knowing that someone was thinking of me.”

“I’m glad,” Chat Noir said. “I wish he could be there in person for you.”

Nino sighs. “Yeah, me too, but at least you’re here."

...

Season 4 au - canon divergent from Rocketear Rocketear led to DJWiFi breakup.

Ahh, Adrino my beloved XD. I love the identity shenanigans in this one with Adrien being around Nino as both Adrien and Chat Noir, and both of them vaguely describing their situations to each other. It takes Adrien a bit to figure out that he has a crush on Nino, but once he does...

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The moment I knew (I’d no choice but to love you) by @bbutterflies

“He’s dating me,” Nino said, taking Adrien’s hand in his own.

Adrien could only stare back at him in shock.

“How dare you all force him to come out?” Nino continued, glaring at the reporters. “That was disgusting.” He pulled Adrien over to the car, guided him in, and shut the door behind them.

In the relative quiet and privacy of the backseat, Adrien finally processed what had just happened. “So… when were you going to tell me we were dating?”

This Adrino fic is delicious XD. Reporters keep hounding Adrien about his love life, so Nino finally gets them off Adrien’s back by fake-dating him. Problem is, Adrien’s actually been madly in love with Nino for years but has never been able to tell him. And now as they’re spending more time together, Nino’s beginning to find that he’s enjoying all these “couple” activities more than maybe he ought to if it’s entirely platonic...

If you want to see Adrien and Nino PINING for each other while “fake” dating (is it really fake if both parties want it to be real?) then you’ve come to the right fic!

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Chemistry With Him by @bbutterflies

It kind of sucked Nino was taking chemistry, but classes had filled up fast and he needed to take something and his advisor had said the credits would, somehow, count towards his major. It really sucked he was taking it first thing on a Monday morning (and Wednesdays, and Fridays, unfortunately). But he could get through it. He knew he could.

So no more boys. No distractions. He could do this all on his own.

“Is anyone sitting here?”

Nino looked up to find the source of the voice. A blond, green-eyed, absolutely beautiful someone.

Okay. Maybe one distraction.

Ah, adorable Adrino. This is a universe where Adrien never went to public school, so while Chat Noir, Ladybug, Carapace, and Rena Rouge all know each other (and Marinette, Alya, and Nino all know each other’s identities) they’re unaware that they are all already friends with Adrien. I loved seeing Chat and Carapace excitedly tell each other about their awesome crush/boyfriend, not knowing they were talking about each other XD.

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Awaken by InkyIbis

The previously white butterfly, now oozing black and purple as a conduit of the butterfly miraculous powers, flutters softly within the silvered-gloved hand.

It sits there for a long time.

"Go, my akuma," The soft sigh pushes the butterfly, the akuma, out towards the despair of a love not returned. The same ache within his chest. On a level so great that he's willing to sacrifice the city to mend it.

It's okay if he's the villain for now. He'll force the miraculous of creation and destruction to be revealed, and once he gets his hands on them, none of this pain, none of his loss, will ever happen.

This is essentially a canon rewrite for Miraculous (specifically seasons 1 and 2, with a bunch of the events mixed around) that focuses primarily on Adrien, with his relationship with Nino being the main driving relationship of the fic. (Don’t worry, Marinette’s still treated fine, she’s just not the focus). This is the best “rewrite Miraculous with more of a focus on Adrien” type fic I’ve seen, with it reworking the plots of the episodes so that they’re different enough to be their own distinct thing - it’s not trying to just rewrite the canon episodes but from Adrien’s POV, there’s a lot of lore changes going on as well, and things occur in different orders.

Like lorewise, Chat’s given a more important role in cleaning up the mess the akumas leave, with his power helping to cleanse akuma victims and he and Ladybug needing to use their powers in tandem in order to cast Miraculous Ladybug. There’s also no Miracle Box holding the kwamis. Instead, Chat sometimes surpasses his limits and ends up summoning kwamis, which is dangerous to him, but very useful.

What really makes this fic great though, is its focus on Adrien’s emotions. You really get a feel for Adrien’s insecurities, especially when it comes to not feeling like he’s good enough for Nino, with not wanting to bother him when he absolutely should, with feeling like he’s not a good enough friend to him, and then there’s dealing with all of Gabriel’s usual abuse on top of that.

Speaking of Nino, this is an Adrino fic (though several characters get crushes on Adrien, Nino’s the one who matters most for this), though a slowburn one. Nino’s clearly head-over-heels for Adrien, but Adrien has like, no context for what a romantic crush feels like and is basically viewing Nino the way he viewed Marinette in canon prior to season 5. He clearly cares for him a lot, including romantically, he just... doesn’t get it.

Anyway, if you want an interesting canon rewrite fic from Adrien’s perspective with Adrino as the main pairing, this is a good story to pick up!

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If I hold you too close by @bbutterflies

Paris didn’t come to a screeching halt for akumas anymore. They were so commonplace, so frequent, no one stopped their lives unless they were in danger. They trusted the heroes to fix everything if something did go wrong, save them if they got hurt. Adrien was still fighting the urge to find Plagg and go running into battle. Plagg wasn’t here, though. --- Post-season 5 where Adrien got sent to London sooner and gave up his Miraculous to keep Paris safe.

If you know this author, then you've probably already guessed that this is an Adrino fic (seriously if you like Adrino, check out bbutterflies fics, though honestly if you ARE an Adrino fan, you probably already have).

So in this scenario, Adrien was sent to London and didn't get to return, so he gave Plagg the ring so he could find another Holder. In this case, Nino. After a few years, once he's an adult, Adrien manages to come back from London, but he's in ROUGH shape. He drinks a lot, he has a reputation for partying hard and causing disruptions, and is really depressed and hates himself, and hates Felinoir (Nino's Black Cat form) even more, for having what he lost.

But even while Adrien's pushing everyone away to protect himself, his old friends refuse to give up on him, even though he's given up on himself.

While Adrien's problems are the primary focus of the fic, they're not the entire focus. Nino gets a POV, and he has personal issues and insecurities of his own. He has trouble holding down relationships, he doesn't have a lot of close friends these days, and he's struggling to keep up in school with all the akumas he's had to fight. He and Ladybug are fine coworkers, but they aren't much more than that - they aren't friends like Chat Noir and Ladybug were.

Oh, also, Nino's a transman. That's also caused some issues in making and keeping friends.

It's a beautiful story of one person hitting rock-bottom and gradually being pulled back out of it again, until they can stand on their own and push themselves up the rest of the way, and of a friend who discovers their childhood best friend (and crush) has changed enormously since they last saw them, and not in good ways - only to find that their friend is, at their core, still there. They just need help seeing it themselves.

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Marigami:

Plans Aren’t Everything by BeeRye

Feeling a bit fed up with constantly having her dates with Marinette cut short, Kagami sets aside some time in order to plan the perfect outing for the two of them. Despite being the holder of the Miraculous of the Black Cat, she believes one day of romance isn’t too much to ask for. As long as she treats it all like she does everything else in her life, the results she wants should come to pass. She doesn’t quite know what to do if that ends up not being the case.

This was adorable and captured Kagami’s mindset well, she decided, rather optimistically that she could just brute force the date into going well. Unfortunately, that’s not gonna stop Hawk Moth. Fortunately, Marinette has her own back-up plans…

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Anchor by @liiinerle

“Marinette. Please take that sabre out of your neck.” “Right. Thanks. I forgot it was there.” She grabbed hold of the guard and pulled; the blade slid out like it had only been run through butter. After dropping it on the floor, she picked up one of the teacups and picked up a biscuit from a tin she’d brought in; she placed the biscuit on the saucer plate and handed the whole thing to Kagami, who could only really resign herself to accepting it. —– Marinette has raised Kagami from the dead, and also happens to be dead herself. It turns out some bad choices were made in the past. But that doesn’t mean they’ll lead to bad outcomes for them now.

I love this, Marinette’s incredibly blase about being a zombie - which makes sense, given how long she’s had to get used to the idea. And she’s waited so long, tried so hard to bring Kagami back as well, though if she didn’t WANT to be back, she’d accede to that request. Luckily, Kagami doesn’t seem to mind as long as she’s with Marinette XD.

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Galaxy In Your Eyes by @liiinerle

Arriving in Paris, Kagami almost immediately finds herself assaulted by a dark, infectious butterfly. When she wakes up, a ladybug-themed superhero is standing over her, and her eyes are like holes into an empty, vast, and incredibly alluring universe… An AU where the two main Miraculous function differently from the norm.

Nice Marigami fic here! Or should I say, Ladygami - technically Marinette doesn’t exist, only Ladybug, who’s an immortal creation goddess, or something like that. But she still fights to protect Paris from Hawk Moth alongside Chat Noir, who is still a normal, squishy human underneath the suit.

Anyway, there’s a but of inspiration from Nimona here, with a lot of people being scared of Ladybug because she’s a bit… out there, especially when she shapeshifts to have like, 6 extra arms and a lobster tail. Kagami’s into it though XD

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Accidents Are Also Miracles by @liiinerle

After a few turbulent days where four new people discover her secret identity, Marinette loses faith in her ability to keep the secret hidden. Wracked with doubts and insecurities, she pleads with Alya to take over as Scarabella, but she still can't let those worries go. Especially not once Monarch starts taking a particular, and personal, interest in her.

Along the way, she also starts to date Kagami, and has to deal with changing feelings about herself, Adrien, Alya, Kagami, and the idea of being Ladybug. At the same time, Alya works to uncover Monarch's secret identity, while Kagami struggles against a controlling parent, and a girlfriend who seems bent on destroying herself - with or without Monarch's involvement.

Fantastic Marigami fic here! You’ve got three major POVs in this fic: Marinette, Kagami, and to my delight, Alya. I loved getting to see Alya cope with taking over as Scarabella especially.

But of course, this fic centers more around Marinette and Kagami, with Marinette struggling with Monarch targeting her, and Kagami struggling against her abusive parent, as well as both of them trying to navigate their relationship together when they know that not everyone will approve.

There’s also some other plots going on in here, like Sabrina breaking away from Chloe and becoming more independent (and closer to Adrien in fact), as well as a Lila takedown plot, though thankfully not one that involves demonizing other characters. While there are conversations about people believing Lila and siding with her, no one’s actually attacked for it except for Lila herself.

Oh yeah, and while this fic may not have much focus on Adrien, he’s still treated fairly and with respect, even when he messes up. He can make mistakes, but people understand where he’s coming from, and are still kind to him and want things to be okay, and to help him escape his abusive circumstances.

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Marcnath:

Day 7: Book by Andromeda612

During one of his works, Marc comes across a rather interesting book.

MarcNath AU fic here! Basically Marc is a super powerful warlock, and is brought in to help with the case of a lying witch who apparently caused a lot of problems for people, using her magic to help fool everyone. She’s actually dead by the time the story starts, and everyone’s trying to go back through and figure out what she’s done and why memories surrounding her seem to be foggy. Meanwhile there’s a book she left behind which appears to be sentient, and which Marc’s taken a liking too...

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don't you worry child by @mexicancat-girl

Marc and Nathaniel have a good life, married and living together in a cottage in the woods. But they consider having children at some point. Marc in particular really wants to start a family with his husband. He knows the fey are real, so he goes searching in the woods to find one to strike a deal. He may get a bit more than he bargained for in the process.

This is based on a tumblr post that’s been going around, which I think a lot of people will recognize as they continue going through the story. That post is credited at the end of the fic, so as not to spoil the plot.

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Confession Plans of Questionable Sanity by yellow14

Nathanael Kurtzberg has a confession to make. He’s in love with his big classmate Ivan. With the help of Marc, Marinette, Adrien and Nino, he’s going to confess, using increasingly complicated schemes. Marc meanwhile, is busy coming up with even more complicated schemes to sabotage those schemes so he can confess HIS feelings for his redheaded friend. Nothing could POSSIBLY go wrong with this, right? Written for the March 2023 gift exchange on the Miraculous Fanworks Discord forum for CassieTheweirdWolf.

This fic’s just really funny. These kids love to make things waaaaay harder than they need to be. But hey, everything ends up working out in the end, even if it’s not the way they planned!

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Evillustrator Reimagined by onewaywriteturn

A full, mostly-standalone rewrite of the episode "The Evillustrator".

Nathaniel never planned to tell anyone about his secret crush on his friend Marc, but his world changes when Chloe picks up his sketchbook and mocks his art in front of the whole class, inadvertently outing him as bisexual. Now as the Evillustrator, he has two objectives: to take vengeance on Chloe for what she did to him and to go on a date with Marc for his birthday.

At the same time, Marinette is already struggling to defend Sabrina from Chloe when she learns of the Evillustrator's crush on Marc, one of her good friends. And while getting Marc involved with an akuma fight is messy enough, the fact that Marc has secretly liked Nathaniel for a long time complicates the situation so much more.

If you ever wanted to see Evillustrator rewritten to focus around NathMarc, this is the fic for you! The two of them just PINE for each other so hard and are so convinced that the other person couldn’t possibly actually want to date them, even with Evillustrator making it uh. Exceedingly obvious XD.

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I'd Do Anything For $20 (To Feel More In Control) by Shroomifyiy

Bee!Nathaniel AU one shot (because I think he's silly teehee) Nathaniel hated keeping secrets, especially from someone he cared about. But unfortunately, it's not up to him to decide that. Marc feels hurt from Nathaniel's actions. He just wants his boyfriend to be honest with him. Hawkmoth is a bitch ass motherfucker. Enough said.

Fun Nathmarc fic here! I love seeing Nathaniel's interactions with Pollen, and him cope with the strain on his relationship with needing to run off all the time to go fight akumas with only the flimsiest of excuses. He loves Marc deeply, as deeply as Marc loves him. But Marc's getting suspicious and wondering what's going on, and Nathaniel doesn't think he can tell him.

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Handle With Care by @dragonchris

AU where soulmates can feel each other's emotions. But having a soulmate isn't always beautiful and romantic. Sometimes it's messy. Sometimes it hurts. Marc and Nath have to learn what that means for them.

This was cute, I loved seeing how Nathaniel and Marc both thought about their soulmate, and how they cope with the aftermath of Reverser in this AU. Helps that Alix is a platonic soulmate of Nathaniel's here (Nathaniel has two soulmates).

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Lukadrien:

When feelings are too big for words by ClockworkCaptain

When Luka takes a gig playing for a drag show he's falls hard and fast for the drag queen Buttercup who uses her performances to work through her own emotions. Meanwhile Adrien's been using drag to work through his own emotions and thinks maybe Luka coming back into his life and showing interest might mean a second chance. Made for @mlsecretsanta 2022

One of the issues I tend to have with Luka shipfics, and with Lukadrien especially (though I think Lukanette actually has this problem worse) is how Luka tends to disappear within the fic and the pairing, feeling more like “The Love Interest” than his own person. Not so here! While most of the intrigue surrounds Adrien, I still got the sense of Luka being his own person, not just existing in the fic for Adrien.

I adored Adrien getting to display an aspect of himself through persona and performance - that does align well with how he approaches Chat Noir - and overall I just had a lot of fun with this fic!

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forever (and a little bit) by @rainbow-arrow

Now the world was out of tune. It was messy and blurry and Luka could not fathom waking up tomorrow and accepting his new life. He had less than nothing. How could he care about anything when the better half of his melody was replaced with silence. --- see also: Luka's villain origin story

This is a tragedy, don't go into it expecting a happy ending. Adrien breaks up with Marinette because he's upset over her lying to him about his father's fate and not telling him he's a sentimonster, and gradually becomes closer to Luka instead, first as a friend and later as a lover. There are fragments of story from the future that let you know this love story isn't going to last...

It's rated M, though I think that's mostly because of Adrien's injuries. I can see why it's M rated, but I think most teens should be fine reading this.

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Two is Company by Shadownoble

Adrien’s father wants him to play for an upcoming party. Only this time he won’t be doing it alone.

This Lukadrien fic's adorable! Luka's got selective mutism, which Adrien takes in stride. I love how their relationship develops, they're smitten with each other! Though of course while Gabriel brought the two of them together, he's an obstacle too. Because he's a dick.

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Julerose:

How Could I Not? by SorryJustAnotherPerson

In fairy tale books, Princesses were saved by nights from ferocious dragons. Those books were not their story, but Rose was happy to flip over a new page with her Juleka every single day. Many years ago, she was put to this tower by her parents and her kingdom, along with a fire breathing dragon, so she could find her prince charming one day. How foolish for them to not calculate her falling in love with the dragon. I mean seriously. How could she not?

I love fairy tale type stories, especially fractured fairy tales. And Juleka being a dragon is awesome. This is just a fun and adorable story.

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You’ll be the prince and I’ll be the princess by @mexicancat-girl

With Team Miraculous now full-time holders, Ladybug has them patrolling in pairs like her and Chat Noir. New partners Pigella and Purple Tigress get along phenomenally, their easy banter and similar wavelengths making working with each other a joy in and out of combat. But sometimes Tigress is surprised just how close she is with her partner. Sometimes she tries not to feel too guilty thinking about it.

There’s some nice Julerose here! I love them kinda getting into a lovesquare with each other, though it’s not as much of a problem as it is in canon since it’s reciprocal in every relationship and they’re both down for a poly. It’s fun, and I love the “Luka attempting to woo some of his love interests” plot going on in the background XD.

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Chlobrina:

Tides of Time by JayJoy3000

Chloe, to her disdain, attends a prestigious university in London where she happens to run into her traitorous, ex-best friend who left Paris years ago without an explanation. But Sabrina is not the shy pushover she once was... Or, the one where Chloe Bourgeois absolutely does NOT spend months pining after Sabrina Raincomprix. No, that would be ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.

I love how this fic handles Chloe, this is a Chloe who's realized her parents are crap and decided to try to be better, and made some real friends with Juleka and Luka (and seems to be on decently friendly terms with the rest of the class, but they don't come up much), but still has a ways to go, with not really understanding why Sabrina ghosted her, that Sabrina wasn't as happy as she thought.

Also at the beginning of the story Chloe still believes she's straight. Chloe is the ONLY one who believes Chloe is straight XD.

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Hanahaki by @generalluxun

First fic: Late Bloomer

On what might very well be the last night of her life, Sabrina Raincomprix pulls out a very special scrapbook, pressed between the pages is the past, the past she has never shared with anyone. She relives how she got to this moment one page at a time, preparing herself for the end. A phone call interrupts her self-imposed exile and brings news that could change her life forever. Even if it does though the question looms... change it how?

I love this series, how it shows how both Sabrina and Chloe have changed, how bad Chloe's circumstances are, and how much she needs help. She's not in good shape when Sabrina reunites with her - she's got a pretty severe eating disorder, for one thing - and Sabrina can't just... leave things like they are.

I love the delving into of Chloe's and Sabrina's psychology and viewpoints, and them both growing as a result (this is solely from Sabrina's perspective, but Chloe's the focus of the plot, so you see a lot of her).

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DJWifi:

Strangely Familiar by @sunfoxfic

Alya Césaire’s life is perfect. Indeed, between the success of the Ladyblog, how well she’s doing in school, and the fact that she’s a superhero who has never bore the weight of a crisis of epic proportions, her life almost couldn’t be better. Almost. But Alya has always been a go-getter, and so she’ll chase after that perfect life if it kills her. Which is how she ends up rushing to move out of her father’s apartment and in with Marinette, Adrien, and a complete stranger: Nino Lahiffe. And in fact, her life does seem perfect — she and Nino are fast friends. They spend a lot of time together and get to know each other really well. But in the end, fortunate situations will bear unfortunate truths, and she learns things about herself that aren’t quite comfortable. Like I said, though: Alya has always been a go-getter, and she won’t let new feelings deter her from chasing after her perfect life.

This is the single longest DJWifi-centric fic on AO3 (which is a travesty) and it is GLORIOUS. Alya and Nino are both well fleshed-out here, with their own problems and baggage they’re dealing with, but it’s easier together.

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disconnected by just_an_ordinary_fan

Lady Wifi believes she might be the only one who does not want to obey Hawkmoth's orders. When she sees another akuma hesitate in the battle, she finds she might not be entirely alone.

I actually wrote my own fic, Nullius in Verba, based off of this one. It’s short but has an intriguing premise, with all the akumas being transported to this warehouse after the fight’s over, having been basically forced to do Hawkmoth’s bidding. The akumas also don’t seem to remember who they were before, or even that they WERE ordinary people before, which is an interesting twist.

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Alyanette:

is it chill that you're in my head? by bringthestorm

Alya stared at the picture plastered across the homepage of every single tabloid and news site, whispering every curse she could think of under her breath. SHOCKING SECRET ROMANCE BETWEEN LADYBLOGGER AND PARISIAN SUPERVILLAIN REVEALED!!! the headline announced, casually shouting the words she had been dreading for all of Paris to read. --- Alya had always assumed that someday Paris would discover that she had secretly been kissing their most wanted vigilante, but she had never thought it would happen so soon. As the domino effects of her relationship with Ladybug go spiraling through her life, Alya turns her sights towards the one responsible: the elusive superhero Hawkmoth. AKA Someone outs Alya and her girlfriend so she retaliates by deciding to take down Hawkmoth

I recommend this to anyone who either A. Loves Alya and wants to see more of her in a starring role, or B., wants to see an AU where Parisians could feasibly believe that Hawkmoth is the good guy, and that Ladybug and Chat Noir are, if not villains, at least reckless.

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the best laid plans (of bugs and bakers) by @mexicancat-girl

Paris is buzzing with the appearance of a new ladybug-themed hero, Scarabella. Alya decides to use her second hero identity to help her best friend Marinette. A bit of her flirting with Marinette is bound to make Marinette’s crushes jealous and finally ask her out! Her plan is fool-proof…! Except when it’s not. Not enough people are talking about Scarabella flirting with Marinette. How can Alya properly help her best friend if the news can’t be bothered to cover Marinette’s budding romance with Scarabella and only posts things about Marinette with Chat Noir?! So Alya puts her all into her plan, upping up her flirting each time she appears as the newbie hero Scarabella. This totally does not backfire in any way.

I adore fics that center on Alya, I haven’t exactly been shy about that fact. This is a nice one for some Alyanette adorableness! (And some Scarabella and Chat banter, I really enjoyed reading that as well). “Fake” flirting to make crushes jealous tends to turn real very quickly, and this is no exception. It’s hilarious, Alya’s the last one to figure out that her romantic relationship with Marinette is very much real XD.

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Feluka:

Boomer!Luka: FeLuka Ending series by @19thsentry-blog

In the Shadows (the first fic in the series) summary:

On one side is Luka, 140-year-old Snake Miraculous holder and keeper of the Guardian's secrets, on the other is Marinette Dupain-Cheng, a relatively newly minted hero of Paris and Guardian of the Miracle Box. Each is looking to fulfill their promises to their now gone mentors to reunite the Kwamis and keep them safe. Sounds simple--until you throw in a rocky start, the Atlantic Ocean, Félix Graham de Vanily, and a whole host of secrets…and suddenly simple becomes complicated (story of Marinette's life, right?).

So this is obviously way outside my normal wheelhouse. I don’t typically read Lukanette fics, even ones that turn into FeLuka later on in the series (though boy it becomes apparent quickly that the author’s fascinated with FeLuka’s dynamic.) But this one is really good, with the best Luka-centric fics I’ve ever read, and some of the best Felix-centric content as well. I love how Luka has his own baggage here, with all the pressure of wandering around for over a century, looking after the few Miraculous he found, trying to keep what’s left of the Order alive, unaware of Fu’s survival or of the Miraculous user’s re-emergence in Paris. There’s a lot of focus on Luka’s own feelings and thoughts and problems, not just on helping other people with them.

The plot works even without the romantic aspect, so even if Lukanette isn’t a pairing that draws you in, I still recommend this fic, so long as you don’t actively dislike the pairing itself. And even though it’s a Lukanette fic, Adrien and Alya are treated fairly and with respect. Adrien may not end up with Marinette and is bummed about it, but the narrative is still kind to him overall, there’s clearly no ill well towards him, or Alya for that matter. (There are later fics in the series that focus more on Adrien just healing and coping and living after finding out that his father’s a villain and his mom’s been in the basement this whole time, and in the multiversal travel fic, Alya gets some standout appearances as Scarabella which are fun).

And FELIX - it’s clear that 19thsentry has this whole conception about Felix’s psychology. He’s wrapped in a ton of self-loathing until it started to consume him, made him lash out. Him being a sentimonster, wanting to get the Peacock Miraculous, actually gave him some direction for that at least. And he’s just in this pit of his own making, until he meets Luka, who can see through him when no one else can, who cares for him even though he doesn’t understand why, who’d been through so much over the years and yet kept himself kind. He’s attracted like a moth to a flame, infuriated that he cares, yet not able to stop himself from caring about this mysterious, infuriating musician.

Yeah if you can’t tell this is the series that really sold me on FeLuka as a couple.

Oh yeah, one of the fics in here is M-rated, and it does earn the M rating for sexual content, though it’s nothing too major.

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See This Chance by @19thsentry-blog

Luka died in 2016. Yep. Crushed by the Arc de Triumph when Mayura’s Robustus slammed into it. It was kind of a big deal, but once you’re dead, you’re dead—especially when there’s no Lucky Charm to bring you back. Luka’s been dealing with it in the typical ways. Written for FeLuka week 2023.

Yes, this is FeLuka. Not one of the typical ships I read, but I ain’t opposed to it, and this is a nice foray into the pairing. I love ghost AUs! Luka’s just fumbling around, unsure what to do with his incorporeal existence, until he starts haunting Felix. It’s an intriguing plot and I gotta admit, I wish it was longer so it could be fleshed out more, but what’s here is good.

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One-offs:

Come Take My Hand by @carelisswriting

Luka heard his soulmate for the first time when he was ten. All he knows about her is that she likes fencing. It's just a coincidence that Kagami likes fencing, right? (Lukagami Soulmate AU, written for the Miraculous Ladybug Secret Santa Exchange!)

I’m a sucker for soulmate fics, and this had an interesting take on it, with your soulmate able to hear you thinking only about the thing you’re most passionate about. Loved Kagami’s way of showing Luka she’s his soulmate especially!

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Attack of the Crystal Zombies by @trainsinanime

Kagami had spent more and more time hanging out with Zoé, talking about things like families, expectations and crushes on Marinette. It was only natural, probably, that she would help Zoé practice flirting. That was definitely a great idea. Granted, the deadly Akuma battle around them was a bit of an issue…

Quality Zoegami fic here! I loved how Kagami kept thinking she was bad at flirting, but it was sure working on Zoe XD. The akuma attack going on around them, interweaving with their conversation, added a bit of spice to the whole affair!

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All Of Them? Every Single One? by @liiinerle

It turns out that Marinette loves a lot more people than she’d initially thought.

This is hilarious and adorable. Tikki lays out how Marinette has a crush on basically every girl she’s met - and even girls she doesn’t know are girls yet XD.

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Emotional Mountain Ranges by @liiinerle

After Zoé’s attempted romantic confession to Marinette is interrupted by an incensed Chloé and Audrey Bourgeois, she’s left distraught and adrift, a crying mess in an alleyway far from home. Ladybug saves her from the incoming akuma, and tries to help her back on her feet - and Zoé wonders what she could possibly have done to earn this much attention from a superhero…

Lovely Zoenette fic here! I especially like how Marinette talks to Zoe, reassures her that she’s good enough, that she (as Ladybug) isn’t as perfect and composed as she thinks, and just… tries to get Zoe to have more confidence in herself. It’s mostly from Zoe’s perspective too, which I like since there aren’t a lot of Zoe POV fics.

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Swimming in Circles by @generalluxun

Life has moved on for Marinette Dupain-Cheng. She’s not where she thought she would be seven years ago, but she’s still in a good place. Classes, hobbies, friends, her life is full despite the lingering shades of her faded yet sweet middle-school romance. Then just as quick at the first time, someone drops into her life and turns her into an absolute mess once more. Love and crushes might be her undoing, but she’s got a little more experience this time to weather the storm. This fateful stranger stirs memories as well as emotions inside of her, and with a forthrightness her old self would be jealous of, Marinette takes the plunge.

So this is a Trans fic, with Marinette’s new crush being a trans version of a certain classmate who she doesn’t recognize, who’s changed a lot, for the better. I like how it deals with the baggage she has with that person, has her think that through.

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Three’s company by @torvalvt

Kagami has been doing her best for years to ignore her feelings for her friends. It doesn’t help that Adrien and Marinette insist on spending as much time as possible with her, even going so far as inviting her along on their dates together. If only the affection she felt for them wouldn’t get in the way of their relationship. Because it is growing harder and harder to tamp down her feelings with how close they are getting to her.

This is adorable. Adrien and Marinette really want Kagami to join their relationship and she just doesn’t dare hope for it. If you want some adorable Adrigaminette from Kagami’s perspective, I recommend checking this fic out!

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Stone Streak by kingxuppu

Ladybug and Violet Tigress had been fighting the mysterious Duskwing for eight years now. Through the years, the two have grown stronger together and even gotten married, they are waiting until they finally beat Duskwing to start a family. At least, that was the plan. When Juleka gets confronted with the realization that her friends are starting families of their own, she realizes just how badly she wants to be a mother.

Due to unfortunate circumstances, Juleka and Marinette get the chance to adopt Juleka's young modeling friend Adrien.

Maybe they aren't quite a traditional family, but with magic, rockstars, and fame, normal was never an option.

Via Discovery: There are actually two terms of venery for tigers, depending on the makeup of the group. The first is a streak of tigers and this refers to a female tiger and her cubs.

Now this is a rare pairing, there’s not a lot of Julenette fics! Adrien and Rose actually have some ship tease going on, the whole kid group in canon got broken up into two groups here, one that remained around canon age (so like 13) which notably consists of Chloe, Rose, and Adrien, and then I think everyone else are adults in their mid-twenties. It’s weird seeing Adrien as Marinette’s and Juleka’s son, but hey it works! I love how Juleka really showed Adrien the ropes on modeling and became a Mama tiger for him, the fic’s mostly just very sweet, though with a surprisingly dark final act.

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In Direct Opposition by @generalluxun

Alya Cesaire is a brand new student to Francis Dupont, to Paris even. The first student she meets is one Chloé Bourgeois, and Alya is determined to make a friend. Things advance Chaotically. Her new 'friend' is definitely a handful, and suddenly Paris has a supervillain and two brand new superheroes! Alya finds herself balancing a lot of things, trying to live up to her ideals and those of her icons.

And then reality seems to contradict itself.

As time progresses it seems to happen more often. Becoming a hero, battling villains, staying alive, working through friendships. Something is lurking, tweaking events at times, changing them, and no one seems aware. Alya will need all her wits to get to the bottom of this. Her investigative mind can only get her so far though, and then she needs to rely on her friends. This is not a foe you can beat head on.

I betaed this entire fic, it’s really good! I adore the focus on Alya’s philosophy here, her determination to be a hero, to help people and defeat evil - and that defeating evil means trying to reform the people doing bad things when possible, to try to save EVERYONE, even the “villain”. I thought it was really clever the ways Alya would redirect Chloe and subtly encourage her to be a better person, while also trying to get the people around her to give her a second chance and keep an open mind.

Also Alya and Chloe are an adorable sapphic couple XD.

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Herbs And Steam by @liiinerle

Juleka le Flor Blef, nature witch from near the forest of Couffaine, arrives at Eiffel Castle so she can partake in the Queen's Trials - a contest to determine the strongest witch in all of France. She wants to prove the strength of her magic, but when she arrives, her attention is quickly distracted by two very interesting women: Kagami, the princess, who seems to act nothing like a princess should; and Marinette, the blacksmith, who has created a magic all her own through metal, steam, and ingenuity. Juleka is immediately besotted with both of them, and needs to work extra hard to focus on her magic. Juleka also soon becomes aware that there is stronger magic at Eiffel castle than she had expected. For one thing, there's a tree in the courtyard put there years ago by a witch whose powers seem to surpass hers; for another, there's Alya la Pluvie Versaunt, who must be the most powerful mage Juleka has ever met...

Unusual poly here, there aren't a lot of Juleka/Kagami/Marinette fics! I love the world here, getting to see all these different witches honing their craft, and Juleka making friends with many of them - though especially the nonwitches Kagami and Marinette, of course XD. If you like some femslash or a good fantasy AU, this fic should scratch that itch!

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Graveyard Love Series by @liiinerle

A brief two-parter series which chronicles what happens after Lila dies suddenly, and Marinette finds out that she's the one saved as Lila's emergency contact on her phone. In part one, Marinette seeks answers with Alya's help - and what she finds ends up testing their friendship. In part two, Alya seeks to rebuild their relationship - and perhaps build it into something more.

First fic in series: Absent Soul

Just for a moment, Alya seemed speechless, her eyes as wide as the hallway was long. “You’re really going to start to believe her now?” Marinette sighed. “It’s not her I believe. I just… I don’t think she could manage all… this if it was fake. And besides… me, her emergency contact? That’s too bizarre to be a lie.” Even more than that, it was too bizarre to be true. So what could Lila possibly hope to achieve? “I’m not sure I agree with you,” said Alya. “But I’m not gonna let you go this alone. And I’m pulling you away if I smell anything cooking.” The thing was, Marinette wasn’t sure she agreed with herself. Nothing made sense. Even just knowing more would help settle the tumult in her brain, which felt like it had been speeding up almost imperceptibly for every door she’d passed through since the balcony. --- Marinette suddenly learns that she's saved as Lila's emergency contact on her phone... the same day she learns that Lila has been in a fatal accident. She is then pulled through a week of responsibilities and discoveries she never imagined having before, and a growing fondness for someone she once hated.

So this is fascinating, I love how it explored the insanity of whatever bizarre situation Lila has going on. Marinette's great here, she doesn't understand why Lila did the things she did, or what her background truly was, but if she had no one else, then at least she has Marinette to make sure her remains are taken care of properly. Though perhaps to a worrying extent. Thankfully, Alya's here as well to give support, and perhaps an intervention if things go too far. The second fic in the series focuses around Alya giving that intervention, of a sort.

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And Mark Ronson Can Get Stuffed by @liiinerle

Marinette gets a call from Vivica, Jagged Stone's guitarist, with a proposition. She wants a producer - and she's heard Marinette's the best one for the job. At least, that's what Jagged says, and well, the only real competition is Bob Roth... ... but Marinette still isn't prepared for the whirlwind of feelings she'll get spinning through her brain whenever she sees Vivica play. Or for the realisations she'll make about herself as she sits engulfed in a type of music that feels like it gets her, and gazes up at the angel who's holding the guitar.

So this is a RARE rare pair, I've never seen Vivinette before! Man though, is this a great first fic for the pairing! I love seeing Marinette's efforts to be the best producer she can be for Vivica, not totally realizing at first why she's so nervous and determined to be the best she can be for her... and then becoming all too aware of her feelings XD. I especially adore how enamored Marinette becomes with Vivica's songs, being deeply affected by them but unable to put her feelings into words well enough to give feedback.

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Stop Time by @liiinerle

— she put her hand on the page, blocking it so the words wouldn’t scream so loudly at her. They had screamed more than enough already. Gritting her teeth, she pulled her fingers together, crumpling the paper slightly — just enough that it didn’t look so pristine and mocking. It needed to be full of despair, in every possible way. “Marinette —” started Mullo. “No! Never again. Marinette is… gone, forever.” She let go of the paper. Now it lay alone in the light, as the last thing she could ever tell them. That she loved them, that she’d miss them, that she would never talk to them again. A suicide note. Of sorts. ----- Fu accidentally names Marinette as the new guardian, and not Ladybug. She's forced to fake her own death and go into hiding in order to get away from Hawk Moth. She finds a hiding spot in the Louvre, but there she's forced to face the effects of her going away by a very unexpected source: her friend Alix.

Definitely mind the tags on this one! But if it ain't triggering to you, then I highly recommend reading it. You can really feel Marinette's struggles here, with basically making herself homeless, unable to reach out to her friends and family, needing to steal just to feed herself and the kwamis, and then dealing with everyone in her life grieving... and then moving on. Except for a few people who don't...

It's just... it's really good, really heart-wrenching.

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The Only Love We Keep by @nemaliwrites

Zoé is used to wanting things she can’t have — loving people who do not love her back. She’s made peace with that. But as soon as she meets Scarabella, she’s a goner. Or, five times Zoé’s love wasn’t reciprocated, and one time it was.

I love this analysis of Zoe and her circumstances, her mindset, her philosophy based on how she's grown up. How she yearns for her mom to actually love her, but she just... doesn't. And how she finds friends who actually care for her, and someone who actually wants her.

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The Black Cat of the Family by Anonymous

To Felix, Chat Noir is freedom. Pure freedom, unhindered by anything (well, except perhaps a little too much dedication to Ladybug). He goes where he pleases when he pleases. He acts so ridiculous, like no one was ever watching, even when everyone was watching. He chafes at orders and authority, even when the orders are coming from Ladybug herself. He's free to be whoever he wants, in a way Felix only wishes he could be. So of course he starts flirting with the catboy. It also doesn't hurt that the superhero is easy on the eyes. Chat Noir, meanwhile, is simply trying to figure out how to reject his cousin without revealing his own secret identity. But when has anything in his love life ever worked out for him? Or, in other words: Somehow the Fathom-Graham de Vanily-Agreste family becomes even more dysfunctional in brand new ways.

This was fun, I liked the natural way Chat caught Felix's attention with his kindness, wit, and hidden depths. It makes sense why Felix would slowly develop a crush on him, while Chat just thinks that he's having fun with his cousin.

Also Chat's reaction when he realizes that Felix is, in fact, confessing his crush on him, is just priceless XD.

#ask #miraculous ladybug #ml fanfic rec #Adrino #Marigami #MarcNath #Lukadrien #Julerose #Chlobrina #DJWifi #Alyanette #FeLuka

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anna-scribbles · 1 year ago

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thirteen update 🎄⭐️🤕🩸

chapter 3: December

chapter summary:

“Has that been happening a lot?” Adrien asked quietly. “Your dad, getting sick like that?”

Felix’s eyes trailed slowly back over to him, face impassive.

“Yeah.”

“Me too. Well, with my maman, I mean.”

Felix’s eyes went wide, and he sat up quickly. He looked at Adrien, alarmed.

“Your mum?” He asked frantically. “Adrien, your mum’s been getting sick?”

excerpt:

It was snowing outside and Adrien couldn’t remember the English word for ��exhausted.”

“Try again,” said his tutor, Mr. Ferrel, in bored English. Frown lines creased along his brow. “Tell me about your ambitions. Why don’t you tell me how you feel about your exciting modeling opportunities, Adrien?”

Big fluffy snowflakes kept getting stuck to the tall windows on the other side of his room, painting his periphery in white. He thought distantly of old winters when he was little, when he’d beg to go lay down in the snow and make angels.

“I have many ambitions,” Adrien began, trying to translate and conjugate the English verbs before they left his mouth. “I like to be a student because I like reading and learning new subjects. It is very interesting. Now, I spend many time modeling, so this is one of my ambitions too.”

His English lessons had doubled in length recently, ever since Adrien had made a fool of himself in last week’s Teen Vogue interview. When asked about school, he’d mentioned that he was studying two languages, and flubbed the bit of English he’d been prompted to demonstrate. Adrien didn’t mind the extra lessons so much—he really did like learning languages—but by the end of the three hours, his brain was always swimming in words.

“Much time modeling,” Mr. Ferrel corrected. “Or ‘a lot of.’ Not ‘many.’”

“Sorry,” Adrien responded. “I do much time modeling—”

“It’s ‘spend,’ not ‘do.’” Mr. Ferrel frowned. “‘Doing time,’ in English, makes it sound like you are in prison. I believe you are supposed to like modeling.”

“I like it.” Adrien’s cheeks burned. “I like spending a lot of time modeling—”

The door to his bedroom flew open, saving him from further embarrassment, and Adrien and Mr. Ferrel both turned their heads. Maman glided through the doorway like a glimmer of light. She was dressed casually, in simple black jeans and a thick white sweater, her golden hair braided loosely to the side. A bright smile lit up her face.

“Adrien, darling!” she cried. “Come downstairs, it’s time!”

read on ao3

#thirteen #ml #my art #DONE. IT IS DONE.#IT IS ALSO NO LONGER DECEMBER BUT WE’RE ALL GOING TO IGNORE THAT OKAY🫶#miraculous ladybug #ml fic #adrien agreste #emilie agreste #felix fathom #felix graham de vanily

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aidanchaser · 9 months ago

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Regardless of Perfection: An Adrinette Fic, featuring Félix 4.5K Words; Rated G for General Audiences

Adrien is dumbfounded. His knee is glued to the floor and his hands poised in front of him, as still and unmoving as his heart, stopped in his chest and aching as it fails to function. He can feel the eyes of every patron in the restaurant, staring with the same shock and confusion he feels.

“No?” he manages to squeak out, not even believing the word as it leaves his lips.

But Marinette has aggressively slammed the velvet box closed. Her face is already pink, hastily turning red, and Adrien can see tears in her eyes as she shoves his hands away with so much aggression that she near topples him over.

“Don’t—” she manages to say, and, “You can’t—” but she can’t seem to find words anymore easily than he can. She stands up and runs from the restaurant, linen napkin falling to the floor.

Adrien is only vaguely aware of the waiter helping him stand, a murmured apology as he’s settled back into his seat. A bottle of wine is placed in front of him, “Condolences from the guests over there,” but Adrien doesn’t even see the gesture, doesn’t know who to thank for the wine he’s meant to drown his heartbreak in. The waiter clears Marinette’s plate and glass without a word.

Adrien had planned tonight perfectly—at least, he thought he had. Everything about today had gone so right, like Ladybug’s own Lucky Charm had made it happen. He and Marinette had seen a movie together that afternoon, had a lovely walk along the Seine, and then she’d gone home to put on a brand new dress for their dinner on the Eiffel Tower. Adrien Agreste, even famous as he was, had waited months for this reservation to come up. Even though he’d carried the ring on him for the last several weeks—just in case the moment felt right—he’d known that this was the plan. That tonight was going to be the night. It was truly perfect.

He’d carefully steered the conversation over dinner to their future together, to the plans they’d talked about over the years amidst dreamy sighs and giggles. She’d seemed excited—had he misread her entirely? He didn’t think so. He’d known Marinette for nearly a decade. Surely he knew the difference between excitement and panic and he was sure that she had been excited—nervous, maybe, because of course she must have guessed how special today was—but he hadn’t seen any panic in her, not until the moment he had opened the ring box.

Her face had dropped. True horror had filled her eyes. And she had said, “No.”

Actually, she had practically shrieked it as she shoved the ring box away.

Adrien still didn’t understand it. Marinette certainly wasn’t the sort of person to be upset about a diamond being too small or a ring being inexpensive. So the rejection had to be about him, and Adrien couldn’t fathom why, couldn’t identify what clue he had missed along the way.

He’d been nervous to propose, naturally, but he had never thought that Marinette would reject him, certainly not so dramatically. He didn’t think anyone had expected it. Even her parents and their friends were all waiting back at the bakery, ready to celebrate, convinced she would have said yes.

A new panic climbed Adrien’s throat as he imagined Marinette arriving back at her parents’ place, greeted with a congratulatory cake and champagne. He needs to call them, tell them the devastating news before Marinette reaches them.

But as his fingers alight on his phone, it begins to buzz. Adrien swallows and draws it out, unable to tamp down the desperate hope that it’s Marinette telling him she’s changed her mind—but instead it’s Nino.

Adrien answers and says nothing.

“Adrien, where are you?” Nino asks, voice thick with concern.

Adrien tips his head back against the chair and stares up at the ceiling. The warm yellow rings of lights glare down at him and he swallows down the mixture of shame and despair that begin to coil in his chest, familiar friends that have known him far longer than Nino has.

“Adrien?” Nino asks.

“I’m still here,” Adrien says, but with no more strength than he had managed to repeat Marinette’s rejection with.

“Where are you?” Nino asks again.

“I’m still at the restaurant,” Adrien clarifies. He doesn’t know where he’s going to go after this. Certainly not home. He considers the possibility of transforming into Astro Chat and disappearing into space.

“Listen, Marinette just called Alya, and Alya called me, and I really think you should—”

“It’s fine, Nino,” Adrien says.

“I know that’s not true. Do you want me to meet you somewhere?”

Adrien considers the prospect of company. He knows even if he does go home alone, Plagg will still be with him. He can’t truly be alone, unless he does decide to transform. Maybe he does need to spend some time on top of the Eiffel Tower, cloaked in Chat Noir’s magic and the silence of being so far above the world. Maybe he needs to spend a few days on top of the Eiffel Tower.

“I just want to be alone,” he says, fidgeting with the miraculous around his finger.

“If you need anything—”

But his phone buzzes against his ear, and Adrien loses the rest of Nino’s offer as he checks to see his cousin is calling him.

Adrien wonders how many phone calls he’s going to receive tonight. He wonders how many of them he’ll take and how many he’ll ignore.

He doesn’t think he should ignore this one.

“I’ll talk to you later,” he says to Nino, unsure exactly when later will be, and switches to the incoming call.

“Félix,” Adrien manages dismally. He wonders how fast word is spreading amongst their friends. He wonders if the news has already gone viral through a restaurant patron’s video footage.

“Kagami says I can’t kill her,” is all Félix says for a greeting, “but I will if you give me the okay.”

Adrien isn’t in the mood for Félix’s sense of humor. “Félix, I don’t—”

“I’m not joking,” Félix says.

Adrien rubs his eyes and runs his hand through his hair. “I’m going to hang up,” he says, wholly uninterested in Félix’s brand of comfort.

But Félix ignores this threat, and Adrien makes no move to follow through it it.

“Is there a possibility that she didn’t mean it?” Félix asks, voice turning from cold to cautious.

But Adrien doesn’t know how he could have misunderstood a loud, desperate shriek of, “No!” that seems to grow more violent as he turns the memory over and over again.

“She shoved me away and stormed out. I don’t think she could have communicated her feelings any clearer than that.”

Félix is quiet for a moment, and Adrien can picture him evaluating the evidence and trying to draw a picture of the event.

“Where are you?” Félix asks.

Adrien doesn’t answer.

He doesn’t consider himself a liar or even duplicitous in any way. He’s always genuine with his feelings—except when he isn’t.

Anger and heartbreak are too much for him, and he buries them deep, terrified that he’ll use them as weapons against others. He’s glimpsed, as much as the rest of Paris has, how hurt can be weaponized. He knows, too, the way that grief and heartbreak can make someone undesirable. He grew up in a home that treated sadness like a sickness, like rot that needed to be carved out. The last thing Adrien wants is for his friends and loved ones to see him at a low like this.

“I’ll be home soon,” Adrien finally says, avoiding Félix’s question.

“I’ll meet you there,” Félix says.

“Please don’t,” he says.

“You don’t enjoy being alone.”

And how could Adrien not cry at that? He’s been in shock—the rejection hurts, but he hasn’t truly felt it yet—until Félix trods on the roots of Adrien’s aching heart. He doesn’t enjoy being alone, and he wasn’t supposed to ever be alone again. He was supposed to have Marinette with him forever, but now…

He tries desperately to bite down the tears, but they swell up regardless. “I don’t understand,” Adrien chokes out, and his tears drip down his cheeks, like water through a crack in a levy. “I don’t understand what went wrong or why—” But his words fail him as his throat is suddenly consumed with a gasping sob.

He doubles over, one hand still clinging to Félix on the other end of the line and the other tightening in his hair like he can tear it out and his heartache with it. He leans against the table, unable to hold up his own weight as the burden of Marinette’s rejection bears down on him and an empty, lonely future spirals out before him.

“Tell me where you are,” Félix says, voice strangely tender.

Adrien screws his eyes shut, like he might be able to seal up his mess of tears or keep out Félix’s uncharacteristic kindness.

He knows the other restaurant patrons have to be watching, and all Adrien can think is how nice it would be to disappear. He thinks of how Marinette managed to flee the restaurant in her panic, and he wishes his legs would work and carry him out, too. He thinks if he hangs up the phone, he’ll be able to gather himself together just long enough to get out of here and find a place to become Chat Noir.

“Ah,” Félix says, “Nino just texted back. I’ll be right there.”

And Adrien can’t even protest, can’t warn him not to. Adrien certainly doesn’t want Félix to see him like this, doesn’t want anyone he loves to glimpse how utterly broken and devastated he is, but the words stick in his throat, drowned by the sobs he can’t fight down.

Adrien drops his phone onto the table, aware the call has gone dead and presses the heels of his hands against his eyes in an effort to stem his tears. He wonders how long he has until Félix arrives. Perhaps he can leave before his cousin gets here—

But there’s a gasp from the guests of the restaurant, a sudden rise of tension and fear that swells around him. Adrien’s skin prickles, familiar with the way a crowd’s mood changes before an akuma attack, but when he opens his eyes he sees no monster nor black butterfly searching for a victim. Instead, it is his cousin, dressed in the purple and blue hooded uniform of Argos.

Adrien should have guessed that Félix would manage to make a bigger scene than Marinette had.

As he reaches the table, his hand goes for Adrien’s shoulder, but Adrien shrugs him off.

“Please don’t,” he begs, unsure how he can bear Félix’s offer of comfort—unsure how Félix can bear his misery. Already, he can feel another swell of tears burgeoning. He curls into himself, burying his head in his hands, hiding what he can of his heartbreak.

Argos drops into the chair that Marinette had sat in not thirty minutes ago, and as he does, drops his transformation.

“I’ll stay until you’re ready to leave,” Félix says, voice still tinged with tenderness, and it only makes Adrien’s chest ache more.

Adrien is not used to people standing with him when he makes a mistake. He’s used to sharp critique and deathly silent meals. Marinette and Nino alike have been so gentle in their attempts to draw him out, to allow him to misstep without flinching, but this particular misstep feels so monumental. He doesn’t know how he could have read Marinette so wrong; he doesn’t know how anyone would want to sit with him through this.

Félix, at least, knows what it’s like to bury heartbreak and mistakes well out of sight and well out of reach. Félix knows the way perfection is not an achievement but an expectation, and he understands that something as ugly as grief is not fit for public consumption nor private indulgence.

Adrien draws in two shaky breaths, but they’re whole and uninterrupted by wild sobs. He thinks he has enough composure to speak again and asks, “Do you know where I went wrong?” He doesn’t care for how raw and ragged his voice sounds, and he reaches for his glass of water.

Félix picks up the wine that Adrien has left untouched and sniffs the uncorked bottle curious. He pours a little, swirls and sips it, then wrinkles his nose, and checks the bottle. His upper lip curls in disgust and finally, he turns his eyes back to Adrien. “Have you considered that you may have made no mistakes at all?”

Adrien shakes his head. “No—I must have done something—or said something—” he feels the tears threaten to crawl out of his chest again, and he presses his thumb and forefinger against his eyes to hold them back. “Alya might know. I can text her.” But when he reaches for his phone, he finds that Félix has already snatched it out of reach.

“Adrien,” Félix murmurs, “you cannot charm the world to your will by following a dance step diagram. There is no pattern to unlock, no measure of perfection that will make everything turn out right.”

Adrien grits his teeth, certain that what Félix says is true, but unable to accept it. If he could just be better, then things wouldn’t have turned out this way.

“I’m sure you did everything right,” Félix continues. “The date, the dinner, the tie, the ring…” Félix’s hand closes over the blue velvet box. “But sometimes, Adrien, things simply—” He stops as he flicks the box open.

Adrien’s heart sinks. The ring was the problem after all, wasn’t it? He should have bought something expensive, something that glittered. He had just thought that Marinette would have preferred something sentimental, so he had chosen to propose with his mother’s wedding band. Apparently it had ben the wrong choice.

Félix snaps the box closed and slides it back to Adrien. “I’m going to find Ladybug,” he says, and Adrien’s heart pounds with new concern.

“Ladybug?” he asks weakly.

Félix gets to his feet, but he hesitates as he eyes Adrien and his disheveled hair and tear-stained cheeks. Something in his tight shoulders sags ever so slightly.

“No, not Ladybug,” he says. “Adrien, I’m going to take you to Marinette.”

“Félix, I can’t—”

“I don’t think she meant to turn you down.”

Though Adrien is reluctant to believe Félix, his heart pounds with hope. “What’s wrong with proposing with my mother’s ring? I thought she’d think it was romantic.”

Félix scrubs a hand over his face. “Well, she didn’t.” His voice is once again flat and cold, void of the care he’d been displaying moments ago. His words, at least, show an awareness of feeling. “I’m going to take you to Marinette, and the three of us are going to have a very difficult conversation, and it is going to hurt, but it will be all right. Can you trust me on that?”

Adrien isn’t sure how he can, but Félix doesn’t make it sound like he has any choice in the matter. “How do you know it will be okay?”

Félix draws his mouth into a tight line. When he does speak again, it’s painstaking and slow, like poison being drawn from a wound. “Because you have people who will love you regardless.”

There is not much more room for discussion. Félix pauses only to call Alya—on Adrien’s phone, certain it’s the only way she’ll answer—and merely says, “Where’s Marinette?” before engaging in tense negotiations with Alya for Marinette’s whereabouts. He wins the interrogation, or at least Adrien thinks he must have, because as soon as he ends the call, he transforms back into Argos and scoops Adrien up in his arms.

Adrien decides that he prefers when Ladybug carries him, but he doesn’t have much choice in the matter, unless he were to suddenly tell his cousin the truth about the ring he wears on his middle finger. But Félix is clearly in a hurry to reach Marinette, and is uninterested in mortal means of travel. Leaping across rooftops with the power of the Peacock Miraculous is the best the two of them can manage.

He lands on Marinette’s rooftop, and Adrien stumbles out of his cousin’s arms, unsure he has ever dropped onto this rooftop as himself.

He does his best to scrub his cheeks free of any tearstains. His hair, he’s sure, is unsalvageable after their flight across the rooftops, and he does not even want to know the state of his suit.

Argos lifts the trap door without knocking and drops down inside. Adrien, suddenly aware that he has this brief moment alone, considers the risk of simply leaving.

But before he can quite manage a whispered, “Plagg, claws out,” Alya’s head appears from below. She gives him a sad smile and climbs out to meet him.

Adrien backs into the balcony railing, but Alya approaches anyway. She puts a tender hand on his shoulder and ignores the way he flinches. Even as he tries to shrug her off, she squeezes tighter.

“I’m really sorry,” she says.

Adrien refuses to meet her eyes. He can’t let her see the tears that are springing up all of a sudden. He doesn’t know why his cousin has insisted on this.

“For what it’s worth,” Alya says, “I don’t think she meant to turn you down. She’s… she’s really embarrassed, but she won’t say anything more to me than just that she panicked.”

Adrien doesn’t think that quite matches with his memory of the event, but his heart is racing again, brought back to life by the hope Alya is offering him.

“You should go talk to her. Félix won’t let me in there for whatever it is he wants to say, and I don’t know that I trust the two of them alone together for very long.”

Adrien isn’t entirely sure if that Alya’s fears are about mistrusting Félix—distantly, he remembers Félix’s offer of murder—or if they’re about mistrusting Marinette and her own scheming.

“I’ll go down there,” Adrien concedes, “but I’m not sure I’ll have much more to say.”

“Then just listen. And, hey, you know that no matter what happens, you and I are still friends, right?”

His chest swells and Adrien thinks this alone might break him. He isn’t sure how to accept this offer of kindness, of unconditional trust.

“Okay,” he manages, voice strangled with a whirl of emotions he can’t begin to name.

Adrien climbs down the ladder into Marinette’s bedroom and finds that Félix is once again without his magical costume. He has settled into Marinette’s desk chair as easily as if it was his own, while Marinette sits on the edge of her bed, head between her knees and hands locked behind her neck as if she is preparing for an earthquake or a tornado. Adrien considers mirroring her posture, but chooses not to, only because he is unsure where he would sit. So he stands, leaning against her windowsill, unsure how to begin this conversation.

“If you don’t tell him, Marinette,” Félix says, “then I will.”

Marinette’s whine is muffled by her knees and whatever she murmurs into her leg is fully unintelligible.

Félix sighs in exasperation. He takes his own ring—his father’s ring—between his thumb and finger and yanks it off. He turns it over between his fingers. “Adrien, have you ever wondered how you and I are so terribly alike in appearance even though we are only cousins?”

“Our mothers are twins,” Adrien says, almost automatically. He distantly remembers asking his mother about it once, and she’d said the same. She had said to never bring it up again, so he had done as she asked and never questioned her answer. Even now, it seems impossible to think otherwise.

“My mother can’t have children,” Félix says, and there is nothing in his tone nor expression that indicates how absurd the statement is.

Adrien glances to Marinette for some sort of clue or help, but she is still in a panic. His heart aches to see her like this, and all he wants is to sit down next to her and hold her. But he remembers how she pushed him away just an hour ago, and he remains by the window.

“Félix, that doesn’t make sense.”

“My mother can’t have children and neither could her twin sister.”

Adrien does not have the patience for this conversation. He rubs his eyes, aching and tired from the tears they have spilled. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“My father created me, and your mother created you, using the Peacock Miraculous.”

Marinette moans like a seasick sailor whose ship has made a sudden lurch beneath her feet. Adrien can only stare at Félix, stunned.

“Why would you say something like that?”

“Because it’s the truth,” Félix says, “and because I told Marinette.”

Adrien’s gut twists. He isn’t sure which part is harder to swallow: the idea that he’s a Sentimonster or the idea that Marinette rejected him because of it. His entire reality shifts before him, and he clings to the window’s ledge to make sure he stays on his feet.

“But you… you can’t be serious.” But even as Adrien says it, he can’t imagine Félix would be anything less than serious. His next concern, then, is that Félix has simply been horribly misinformed.

He looks to Marinette again, and he knows by the white in her knuckles and the half-formed sob that bursts out of her chest that she believes it.

“My father used this ring as the object to bind me to life,” Félix says. “Your mother chose hers and your fathers’ wedding rings.”

Adrien shakes his head, still unable to see truth in Félix’s words, but finally—finally—Marinette says something intelligible.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and hiccups on another sob. She lifts her head and looks at Adrien. Her face is flushed, cheeks tear-streaked and eyes puffy, red, and streaked with mascara. Though she’s still wearing the dress she had put on for their formal dinner date, the satin is wrinkled like she’s the one who took a journey across Paris’ rooftops in a superhero’s arms. “I didn’t mean it, Adrien, I swear.”

Adrien pulls the velvet box out from his jacket and looks at the ring inside. He still can’t wrap his head around the idea that this ring and his father’s ring, still attached to the necklace fastened beneath his shirt, are tethers that hold him to this world. He still can’t believe that he isn’t human. He feels human. He imagines that this night wouldn’t hurt so much if he were otherwise.

But more urgent than this absurdity that Félix has laid at his feet is Marinette’s apology. He stumbles over to Marinette and collapses onto the bed beside her. “Which part didn’t you mean?” he whispers.

Marinette hiccups again and tries to rub her eyes dry, but she only succeeds in smearing her mascara. The black streak bleeds into her hairline and her tears continue to fall regardless.

“The part where I pushed you,” she says, and chokes on another sob. “The part where I said no.”

Adrien plucks the ring out from the velvet box. “Marinette—”

“No!” she yelps again, and closes her hands over his. She falls off the bed, knees hitting the hardwood floor with a thud and she winces, but does not lose her grip on Adrien’s hand. He’s afraid she’s going to break his fingers

“Adrien, don’t,” she says. “I can’t take this.”

“But Marinette—”

“Please,” she sobs. She buries her face into his knees, tears and makeup soaking into his suit. Without looking up at him, she pries the ring out of his hand and slides it onto his own finger. “Adrien, I love you,” she chokes on another gasping sob, “and I cannot love you and wear this ring.”

Something new inside Adrien breaks, something he can’t name. He stares down at the top of Marinette’s head, and her hands holding onto his like he’s the only tether she has to this world. New tears fall from his cheeks, unattached to sobs. They aren’t sad tears, not at all.

Human or not, Marinette loves him. He’s not sure anything else matters.

He sinks to the floor beside Marinette, takes her face in his hands, and kisses her.

She doesn’t push him away. She doesn’t shriek and reject him. It’s the kiss he had expected, long and deep and perhaps a bit more wet than he had been prepared for. Even her hiccups, he thinks, ought to have been expected.

The chair beneath Félix creaks as he stands, and he coughs.

Marinette and Adrien politely pause their kiss, but they keep their hands intertwined and their foreheads pressed together.

“I’ll let Alya know we’re finished, then.”

Marinette tries again to wipe her eyes dry. “I’ll go—” She pauses for a sniff and a hiccup. “I’ll go tell my parents the good news.”

Adrien squeezes her hand. “Wait, one more thing.” He turns to his cousin, already halfway up the ladder steps. He supposes that Félix has given a lot of emotion today, and he shouldn’t be surprised his cousin is trying to slip away. “Why did you tell Marinette about the rings before you told me.”

Marinette sucks in a sharp, sudden breath of air and her hiccups vanish. Félix freezes on the ladder, but it’s brief. He shrugs and says, “I’ll let Marinette tell you that one.” And he leaves.

Adrien looks at Marinette, watches her worry her bottom lip and flick her eyes between her sewing machine, the box that he knows her diary is hidden in, and the dollhouse perched on her desk.

“Marinette?” he asks.

“Well—I—I mean—I can’t—I mean you can’t—” Marinette fumbles for the right words, but Adrien is used to this. He waits patiently.

“I’m Buglady,” she finally spits out, “I mean Luggybady. I mean—”

Adrien’s eyebrows lift. “You’re Ladybug?”

She swallows and nods.

He glances at the plain black earrings fastened in her ears. He thinks about the last several years of interrupted dates and how he hadn’t even noticed her terrible excuses for lateness because he was too busy thinking about his own.

Adrien works his ring off of his finger. He never removes it, and it requires a bit of doing, but once its off, he slides it onto Marinette’s finger.

“Adrien, I said I can’t—”

He leans in close, whispers, “It’s just my miraculous,” and kisses her cheek.

She swallows and looks down at the band, clearly thicker than the wedding band and with an unadorned place for a stone setting—a space perfectly sized for a glowing pawprint—and begins to hyperventilate all over again.

“But you can’t—I can’t—but Adrien—Chat—”

Adrien kisses her, and she sinks into it, panicked words and breath forgotten. There’s nothing more to be said between them.

Nothing about today went perfectly; nothing about this kiss is picturesque or even truly romantic. But Adrien wouldn’t trade today and all of its mess for anything in the world. He loves his lady, panic and stuttering and all, and he’s willing to admit that maybe it’s okay if she loves his mistakes and his secrets too.

#adrinette #adrinette fic #miraculous ladybug #miraculous ladybug fic #felix fathom #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #ml fic #ml #did i do anything i was supposed to with my day no but i did this

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fanfic-recs-01 · 2 months ago

Text

Daminette Fic Recs

So it looks like my posts are getting too big for Tumblr lol

I'll now be separating them a bit more and will have to make multiple parts for each post.

Link to Part 2

Updated 11/2/24

Marinette Dupain-Cheng/Damian Wayne

She’s Sunshine, She’s Grace, She’ll Punch You in the Face by Brinxiethebear *Finished*

~Marinette struggles to stay happy nowadays but what better way to change your mood than with a change of location? Adrien gave up his miraculous so he could start fresh. After all, his dad was in prison for being the super villain Hawkmoth and his other caretaker Nathalie died from over use of a broken Miraculous. So now Marinette is the guardian of the miraculous. ~

for us to collide by LadyLiterature *Finished*

~The story of Marinette stumbling upon the illustrious Wayne family over and over again, as well as the more infamous Bats, over the course of her many visits to Gotham. She, of course, charms the whole lot of them and finds that the same is true in the reverse.~

A Robin and His Lady by ProudGeek4Ever *Finished*

~Marinette lost her friends to Lila, Adrien was long forgotten and Chat Noir kept getting more irresponsible. Being a teenage superhero was stressfull, but Marinette's life takes a turn for the better when a chance meeting in Gotham changes everything. Damian changes everything.~

No, Mr. Wayne, You Can't Adopt Me! by ggomoz (ggomo_springtime) *Finished*

~Bruce's personal assistant is scarily competent---she seems to know the best decision at each time, predict emergencies, and is an expert at handling all of his children. But what if there's more to her than meets the eye?~

More Than One Secret by Tyshian *Finished*

~Marinette Dupain-Cheng has Secrets. Damian Wayne has Secrets. The pair together have Secrets.~

Reunions are... interesting if you’re a Todd by crazyjc *Finished*

~Alright, this is based on laraceleste's Tell Me More where Jason Todd is Marinette’s big brother with one exception—Marinette didn’t know where Jason was after she was adopted until after he died when she was ten. They were apart for three years here, as GCPD got her at 7.~

It's Just Indifference by dontyoublink *Finished*

~Marinette thought she would just get some inspiration for her designs when she headed to the park. As luck would have it, she also meets four (interesting? unique? slightly insane?) Americans. Frisbee, ice cream, and much-needed conversations ensue.~

World's Greatest Detectives, My Ass by Appleberry84 *Finished*

~Marinette figures out the Batfam's identities and decides to torture them.~

Leave it Behind by ShannonEsmerelda *Finished*

~Marinette Dupain-Cheng has grown tired of Paris, and the miracle box was no longer safe there. It'd been active in the country for too long, seen too much damage. She needed to find a place for both her and the kwami's to heal, while still having the ability to be a hero. So, why not Gotham? The city had enough crime for both her and the bat family without getting in each others way, right? Right?~

Report to HR by SimplyAnotherWriter *Finished*

~Look; Bruce liked Marinette. If the girl hadn’t already had loving and adoring parents that had spotless records and nothing incriminating about them whatsoever(Bruce had checked long and hard), he probably would have adopted the girl just like he had the others.

However, things wouldn't remain this perfect if Damian continued to try and mess it up by SCARING the poor girl!~

The Sun Who Lit Up The Night Sky by FandomQueen10325, leaping_lizard_babe *Finished*

~4 months after the defeat of Hawkmoth, the akuma class wins a trip to Gotham. While they are there, Marinette keeps attracting bad luck, and can never seem to stay out of trouble. The Batfam is very interested when they learn about what had happened in Paris, so they question ladybug.~

Travels of Passion by StarShine583 *Finished*

~When people as famous as the Waynes come to visit your city, the most you'd expect to get from them is a quick little smile. A hand shake if you're in the right place at the right time and extremely lucky. Marinette didn't really expect to get either, and she certainly didn't expect to get what she actually got.~

Of Birds and Bugs (revising and rewriting) by orphan_account *Finished*

~Marinette was a busy girl. Between her idol work as NeTi, and her duty as Ladybug, it was hard to do everything else, like being a good class president. Still, she was able to pull through.

Somehow, the class get's a trip to Gotham, sponsored by Bruce Wayne himself, and it looked like Marinette would be able to take a break for once.~

Dinner at Wayne Manor by littlefleetinglight *Finished*

~In the front hall standing in a line was Bruce, Dick, Jason, Tim and Damien; in that orders, with Alfred standing in front of them like an officer in front of his troops.

“Now, when Ms.Marinette arrives there will be no inappropriate language, no crude gestures or noises, and there will be no interrogation. Do you gentlemen understand?”~

#SunshineOfGotham by sixtyeightdays *Finished*

~All of Gotham knows Marinette, the Sunshine who's made her way into everyone's hearts. But so what if all of Gotham knows Marinette? Does her class know that they know Marinette? Of course not, why would they! But, well, let's see how they find out.~

Rockin’ the House by littlefleetinglight *Finished*

~It was another charity gala held by the Wayne Family; this one was raising funds for art programs across the world, and because it was for art there were artists of all types from all over, including the famous Rock’n’Roll artist Jagged Stone…and his guest.~

To marry an Assassin by PL_Panda *Finished*

~Marinette wakes up in a cell and later is forced to marry a member of the League of Shadows, who is also less than willing. Exactly what she was pulled in? And of course there is magic involved, so no cancellation. And apparently in Tibet ancient orders can marry minors off just like that. This was definitely not Damian's day. Or Week. Or month. He got married with a random girl...~

Who Needs Words? by AKP31E *Finished*

~After the defeat of Hawkmoth and the retirement of Suhan, Marinette’s life is just getting crazier. She doesn’t know how a soulmate could ever fit into her life, and sometimes she thinks the two letters on her wrist are just the universe’s joke to her, but she knows better than to bank on it. Her soul mark isn’t even a word. Who is going to say “Tt” to her?~

History Repeats by DesertSnowQueen *Finished*

~When Kitty Noire makes an appearance in Gotham, she finds herself drawn to a certain little bird whose brothers are far too entertained by this turn of events~

Magical Girl by Judysupremus

~Marinette accidentally portals into the batcave.~

The Power of Luck by FridayFirefly

~The Ladybug Miraculous had quite a few side effects, none more powerful and unpredictable than the power of Miraculous Luck. When Marinette's family relocates to Gotham, Marinette finds her Miraculous Luck leading her down a path she never would have expected, a path that leads straight to Damian Wayne.~

The events on a Saturday Morning by orphan_account *Finished*

~Marinette and Damian have been in a long distance relationship for over a year with (most) of the Batfamily not knowing at all until a young girl stumbles through a portal on a Saturday morning.~

Friendly Sunshine In Gotham by M1dn1ght_Star *Finished*

~Marinette is happy to be back in Gotham after a visit with Jagged several years ago. This might just end up being the perfect way to expose Lila once and for all, as a nice bonus to seeing her honorary family and boyfriend again.~

Daminette Soulmate AU by keeptellingyourselfthat *Finished*

~Tradition says that your soulmate will have another tattoo, something that relates to you. When they meet you, it is said that the tattoos start glowing a bright gold.~

Calling for Help by Dramatic_Squirrel *Finished*

~It's been a month since the Battle of Miracle Queen and Marinette has been struggling alone under the pressure of being the new guardian. With her training yet to have been completed, Marinette makes her first official decision as the new guardian, to ask the Justice League for help.~

serendipity by keeptellingyourselfthat *Finished*

~The last time Damian AL-Ghul saw Marinette was when they were twelve. He didn't think he would see her again. So, it's a huge surprise when he stumbles upon her in WE while exposing the liar of the class from France.~

In The Wrong Bed? by San_fics *Finished*

~“Like I said,” Jason yawned. “Eventually everyone in this family goes crazy.”

“I'm not crazy!” Damian protested. “She was here!”

“Maybe you just had a very realistic dream?” Dick suggested.

“I’m perfectly capable of distinguishing dreams from reality, thank you very much!” Snapped Damian. “She was real and she was in my bed!”~

Cat Cursed by TheStarfishAlien *Finished*

~The Cheng family carries a curse. Every other generation carries a second form, that of a cat. Their dual nature makes it difficult for those with the curse to fit in with society. Some flee permanently into the form of the cat, while others try their hardest to pretend that their cat form does not exist. Very few find a balance in the middle.~

Secrets, Masks and Family Gatherings by ggomoz (ggomo_springtime) *Finished*

~After nearly a year of being together, Damian finally decides to introduce Marinette to his family.~

living among the regular people of the world trying to blend in by another_cancer *Finished*

~Marinette was an assassin named ladybug that was supposed to kill Damian, but she didn't and now they meet again years later.~

New but True by yannowhatigiveup *Finished*

~Damian and Marinette are kidnapped from their lives to be betrothed to one another. Unfortunately, they were separated and missed the other greatly. Once realising that Marinette is in Gotham for a school trip, Jon, being the good friend he is, reunites them.~

Eons & Eternities by Utopian_angel *Finished*

~After dedicating many life cycles to an endless conflict between chaos and order, Ra's Al Ghul decides to use his last chance to form a union.

A union between their respective heirs that will last for eons & eternities.~

Use Your Brain by Judysupremus *Finished*

~Marinette and her class go to Gotham. What happens when she has to rescue Chat Noir from Batman?

The is silly, potentially crack.~

An Awkward Reveal by Miraculous_786 *Finished*

~Who can blame Edward Nygma for being protective over his adopted daughter?

The very daughter who was dating Damian Wayne right under his nose.~

The Bride that can Break Bones by LovesWifi *Finished*

~Marinette and Damian are betrothed and that's all you need to know.~

Senses by Alexiessan *Finished*

~Marinette never thought that she would be among the 0.1% of the population to have a soulmate, and yet, here she was.

She wasn't ready for her life to change drastically because of it.~

A Welcoming Change by Brinxiethebear *Finished*

~Damian Wayne always saw himself in a certain light. He was calculating and cold and he always took his work seriously. He was what others would call the Ice Prince. He was a loner and by choice. The only people he ever really tolerated talking to was his family and his only friend, Jon. Mainly he just spent time with his pets.~

Never alone by Alexiessan *Finished*

~For a moment, ever since Lila came into her life, Marinette thought she would lose everyone dear to her. Turns out, if she keeps trying, she can do anything and make everything turn out for the better.

Contrary to her belief, Marinette was never alone.~

#8024 by SimplyAnotherWriter *Finished*

~“Inmate #8024 of Gotham Asylum Institution. State your name.”

“Marinette Dupain-Cheng.”

How had she come to this, you might wonder? Well... It wasn't as long of a story as you would think.~

Summer in Gotham is a time for the Akuma Class to relax and oh wait are those assassins? by baby_blue24680 *Finished*

~After hearing a brief description of the class dynamic of the Akuma Class, Mayor Bourgeois all but blackmails Bruce Wayne into sponsoring a trip to Gotham for the summer semester, believing that it will lead to fewer akumas. Word travels to Talia al Ghul, who decides to give an old friend a visit and literally and figuratively throws an engagement at Marinette.~

Four times the Ladybug magic teleported Marinette to where she would be safest, and the one time she was already there by EditorOfEverything *Finished*

~This is part one in a five part series. I have never actually completed a fic before, so this is kind of my NaNoWriMo goal for myself, I guess... So, without further ado, here is four times the Ladybug magic teleported Marinette to where she would be safest, and the one time she was already there~

The Bug, the Bird and the Bats by whoscountinganyway *Finished*

~Everyone knows that Damian Wayne doesn't have any friends; he pushes away anyone who wants to get close to him, denies those close to him the knowledge that he cares, vehemently refuses to be in the presence of wanna-be suitors. He simply isn’t social.~

The Eyes are the Window to the Soul by Brinxiethebear *Finished*

~Have you heard the saying that the eyes are the window to the soul? In a world where soulmates are common, one might think that soulmate marks dealing with the eyes would mean something tremendous, and they would be right.~

In Which Damian Needs a Tutor and Marinette Needs a Job by kceedraws *Finished*

~It starts with an offhand comment on Tim’s birthday.

Damian blinks. “It looked like what?”

“Lit,” Richard repeats. “Isn’t that what you kids call it, with the music and dancing…?”

“I don’t follow. The video had rather dim lighting, if you asked me.”~

Freezing Fate by boldlyanxious *Finished*

~Like everyone, Marinette received her soulmate journal when she was ten. She was excited about all the possibilities it offered, but she never expected her soulmate to show up a few weeks later to take the journal away from her.~

Gotham For Two by multifandomscribette *Unfinished*

~Marinette Dupain-Cheng organized a spring field trip for her class but of course things didn't go as planned and she is still shunned by her class. Cut off from her formed support system and almost completely alone in the most crime ridden city in the world, Marinette meets Damian Wayne via his dog, Titus and she might not be so alone anymore.~

Lost And Found by FridayFirefly *Unfinished*

~The thing Marinette wants most in the world is a Soulmate. But no matter how much she tries to convince herself that her perfect match is out there, she still has her doubts. In a world where your Soulmate finds the things you lose, Marinette only ever seems to lose things. In eleven years, she's never found a single thing her Soulmate lost.

Until the day she does. That's when it all begins.~

The Paris Problem by newdog14 *Unfinished*

~Damian Wayne, one time assassin, present-day vigilante, and entirely uninterested in getting the normal teenage experience. Marinette Dupain-Cheng, part time superhero, full time guardian, and very much wishing for the days of being a normal girl again. They’ve been brought together by circumstance and common enemies, and they’ll never be ordinary, but together they might just find a new normal as they work together to solve The Paris Problem.~

Damian Wayne by deathsong *Finished*

~ the class goes on an exchange program to Gotham, and Lila decides to say she's dating the billionaire's son, Damian Wayne. Who is sitting like three seats away from her.~

#fic recs #batfam #daminette #damian wayne #miraculous ladybug #marinette dupain cheng

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starsfic · 21 days ago

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Hollow Wedding: Reactions and Aftermath

Summary: People react and figure out what to do next after Kagami runs from the wedding.

“I can’t believe this,” Alya said.

That was the third time she said it.

“I can,” Nino said, leaning on his elbows and staring at the table with wide eyes. “I mean, I didn’t think about it, but five cancellations isn’t a coincidence, it’s a pattern.”

“But Adrien’s not like that!” Alya burst, staring at Marinette and Nino with wide eyes. She looked lost. Marinette wished she could throw her a line, but she was just as lost. “Adrien’s your best friend! And there were akumas too-”

“Not all the time,” Marinette pointed out. She wished she had a journal to track it. “Only about half of those cancellations were because of akumas.”

Alya blinked. “But Adrien’s not like that!” she repeated. “I mean, sometimes, he can be clueless, like with Lila, but he’s a good guy!” She stood up as if preparing to drag Kagami out of the bathroom where she was washing off the wedding. During the entire time at the juice bar, she had been staring at her. “She’s probably lying. You shouldn’t-”

“What would have happened if they got hurt?”

Alya blinked again, her anger dying down. “What?”

"What would have happened if Adrien or Kagami got hurt?" Marinette felt her fingers clench into the material of her skirt. She barely knew Kagami and had very negative feelings about Adrien at the moment, even more at the memory of Lila, but the thought of either one getting hurt made her feel sick. "Not even from an akuma, Paris is still a big busy city." She looked up and stared Alya down. "What would have happened?"

Nino spoke for her, his eyes horrified. "Gabriel would have blamed us."

"He would have ruined us, Alya," Marinette said with a nod. "And Adrien didn't care, if he even thought of us. He didn't think about us when Lila was around, so tell me, WHY ARE YOU STILL HUNG UP ON HIM?!" She didn't expect the scream her voice became, and based on Alya's wide eyes, neither did she.

"...I..." Alya closed her mouth, covering it as she thought. "I just..." She closed it again, sitting in silence. Marinette stayed silent as well. She could wait for years for Alya’s answer.

"I don't know," she finally admitted. "I honestly don't know. I should have moved on by now, you're right." She closed her eyes, took in a deep breath, and held it. When she released, she opened her eyes. "I'm sorry, Marinette. You're right. I should have gotten over the idea of you guys dating a long time ago."

Marinette was tempted to forgive her, but she refused. This would be like a lot of other issues in their friendship, like the embarrassing Instagram pictures or Alya’s constantly going through Marinette’s things. It would take time.

“Yeah,” she said. She stood up then, brushing her hands on her skirt. And that suddenly reminded her that she was still wearing her fancy dress. “I’m going to go get changed and check on Kagami. Nino, I think you should tell Nathalie at least that Kagami’s staying the weekend.” She wouldn’t be surprised if Kagami left tomorrow morning, but saying “the weekend” would give her time to collect and consider her options.

Nino gave her finger guns. “Got it, dudette. Do you mind if I raid your fridge too?” He winced. “The food wasn’t great, and I’m still hungry.”

“Yeah,” Marinette said. “I have some frozen stuff, so if you guys want to do an appetizer spread, go ahead.”

She headed out of the kitchen, heading to her bedroom. The shower was silent, but she didn’t think about it as she opened the door.

Then her brain processed what she was looking at.

“SORRY-!” Marinette screeched as she slammed the door.

She stared at the door, her mind scrambling. What she had seen was Kagami’s pale skin gleaming, her lithe figure in the middle of pulling the shirt Marinette had laid out for her. Her hair curled freely at the ends, reminding her of her childhood crush on Joan of Arc.

The door opened.

“Sorry!” Marinette repeated, staring at Kagami. “I should have knocked-” The shirt she wore was made for Marinette, who tended to be on the thicker side, meaning that on Kagami’s slender body, it hung off, revealing a freckled shoulder. “I- I’m sorry. How are the clothes?”

Kagami didn’t take the out, though. “You have no need to apologize, this is your apartment.” She looked down and plucked at the shirt, which had an adorable hamster on it. “The clothes are comfortable. Thank you for giving me an outfit.”

“It’s no problem,” Marinette said, stepping around Kagami to step in. There was a stack of neatly folded clothes on her bed. The Miraculous Box was left untouched, thankfully. “I just wanted to let you know that Nino’s making some food and he’s also texting Nathalie to tell her that you’re staying the weekend. You don’t have to stay the weekend, but I figured Gabriel would give you that time-”

“I don’t mind staying for the weekend,” Kagami interrupted. Her hands began to fuss with the edge of the shirt. “Unless you mind?”

Huh. “No, I don’t,” Marinette said, grabbing some pajamas. “I know some of the girls want to get to know you more, and so do I.”

Kagami blinked and, for a second, a pleased smile flitted across her face before she turned, giving her privacy to change. “So do I,” she said. “For example, have you ever fenced?”

That brought up an old memory. “I wanted to,” she said. “At first, because like a lot of teenage girls, I wanted to whack things with a sword.” A snort made her look back, realizing that Kagami’s shoulders were shaking. “Then I got my crush with Adrien and- this is so stupid,” Marinette felt her hands rise to her face at the memory. “But there was a place free in his fencing class and my friends and I did this whole stupid scheme to get in it so I could spend time with Adrien.” “Did it work?”

“Nope,” Marinette admitted. “But Nora, Alya’s sister, heard us groaning about it and she got me into kickboxing.” She finished pulling up her shorts. “Looking back, I’m really glad that it didn’t work out, because I would have stabbed myself or someone else.” She sighed. “But I’m bummed that I never got into it.”

There was a long pause. “I could teach you,” Kagami offered. “I help at Adrien’s old fencing class, sometimes.”

Marinette’s heart, for some reason, skipped a beat. “You would do that?”

Kagami turned, giving a polite nod. “You have been so kind,” she said. “Letting me stay on your couch-”

“You don’t have to stay on the couch, I don’t mind sleeping there this weekend-”

Kagami held out a hand. “You are a wonderful person, Marinette,” she said, her tone thick with sincerity. “Spending time teaching you how to fence is nothing.”

Marinette nodded. “We can see if we can buy any equipment tomorrow?” she offered.

“That sounds wonderful.”

-_-

Adrien was pretty sure he was going to die.

Kagami had just walked into the hall, walked up to him, and told him they were divorcing. While he had been processing that, she had walked up to her mother. Whatever she said, Ms. Tsurugi was furious.

And now they sat around the dining table, staring at him.

“...Care to explain why you have another woman?” his father asked. “You and Kagami have been in love for a long time.”

“Well, not really?” He needed to be honest. Surely, they would understand. This wouldn’t be a repeat of Lila’s reveal. “I mean, Kagami’s a great person, but I don’t love her. She looks like my crush, so I needed to be honest with her.” He tried for a smile.

There was a long silence as both Ms. Tsurugi and his father stared at him. Adrien felt beats of sweat prickle up as he realized that he had said something wrong. What it was, he wasn’t sure, otherwise he would’ve fixed it.

Tsurugi finally stood.

“The marriage is being annulled,” she said, her tone broiling with anger. “Furthermore, I am pulling from our agreement.”

Oh shit.

His father stood up, his eyes wide and frantic. “What- but- You can’t, simply because my son is an idiot!”

Adrien flinched at the insult and the sudden chill in the air. Ms. Tsurugi spoke then, her words cool and calculated. “I am not pulling out because your son is an idiot. I am pulling out because you are an idiot, Gabriel.” His father sat down, and Adrien nearly checked his pulse. “You and your wife have made your son an idiot, and it shows.” She leaned forward. “What would happen the moment your son took control of your business, Gabriel?” Her nails screeched against the table. “It would have sunk because your son has no idea of the real world. You have willingly doomed your company and you wanted to tie my daughter to your sinking ship.”

His father gaped, but before he could say anything, Nathalie walked in. “Sir, madam, I have news about Miss Kagami’s whereabouts.”

“That’s great!” Adrien said. “Where is she?”

“She is with Miss Dupain-Cheng, Mr. Lahiffe, and Miss Cesaire, and will be spending the weekend with them.”

…wait.

“Mr. Lahiffe also took the time to inform me that you have been repeatedly cancelling events with your friends and Miss Kagami,” Nathalie said, folding her hands. “I was not aware of this, considering to my knowledge that during those times, you were out of the house and with your friends.”

Oh fuck. Oh, fuck.

Adrien had always intended to introduce Kagami to his friends, but stuff had happened. Akumas, his restricted schedule, trying to convince Ladybug to date him…eventually, it got to the point where he was pretty sure he could never introduce her because of this.

Fuck.

"So," Tsurugi said, straightening up and paying no attention to his crisis. "She's safe?"

Nathalie nodded. "While we have our thoughts about Mr. Lahiffe, Marinette Dupain-Cheng is one of Adrien's most trustworthy friends. She will take good care of Miss Kagami, I assure you."

Tsurugi nodded. "That is good to know. My lawyer will be here by tomorrow to settle matters." She turned to the door and walked out without another word, leaving the dining room in silence.

Adrien's relief at her gone disappeared when his father and Nathalie turned towards him. His father's shock was still there, but it was being covered by a cold veneer of rage. "What..." he started, gripping the table. "Were you thinking?"

"I just-" Adrien started, trying to think of an excuse. At first, it had just been the akuma attacks. Then he got the idea for the romantic picnic, and it seemed like the best way out. Nino and his friends knew his crazy schedule and his father didn't exactly think highly of Nino. "I, look..."

"Let me see your phone," his father said, holding out a hand. "Whoever you kept lying for deserves to know."

"No!" Adrien said, placing his hand over his pocket where the burner phone he kept for Ladybug was.

"I refuse to indulge you in this idiocy," his father snarled. "You have lied to everyone for over seven years. What would have happened if you or Miss Tsurugi had gotten hurt during one of your little games?!"

Adrien felt a scoff come out. "The cure would have fixed us."

A fist slammed down and the table cracked. "THERE IS MORE DANGER THAN AKUMA ATTACKS!" his father roared, and Adrien felt himself shrink back. He had never seen his father so angry before. He had heard him throw things out of anger once, back when he stole that book, but seeing the fire in his eyes was different. "WHAT IF YOU HAD GOTTEN MUGGED?! KIDNAPPED?! MURDERED?!"

Nathalie stepped forward as his father panted. "You don't know this since I screened your mail, but there are quite a few of your fans who have spoken about stalking you and murdering you so nobody else could have you," she said. She wasn't serious, right? Adrien felt his doubt die as she stared him down. "I would have expected Lila Rossi's behavior to have made you understand."

That was a low blow.

"So," his father said, leaning back. "Give. Me. The Phone."

Adrien felt his hand move on his own, pulling the burner phone out. He could just send out a mental prayer that they never used their hero names. The moment it hit his father's palm, there was a soft chirpy ding!

Adrien immediately lunged for it, but his father was already opening it up. His eyes scanned the texts, and his anger grew more visible. “She…” Gabriel closed the phone and let out a hiss of air. “Are you sure you two are friends?”

“Ye- Yes?” Of course, he and Ladybug were friends.

Gabriel handed the phone over. “Friends don’t treat each other like that,” he said, his voice cooling. He slumped over, massaging his eyes. “I can’t believe…” Without finishing his sentence, he stood up and walked out of the room. Nathalie followed him out, giving Adrien a look that was hard to decipher.

Adrien looked at the text. Logically, he needed to talk to Nino and try to figure things out there, but it was Ladybug. His friends could wait, his lady couldn’t.

BugOut: I really hope you were joking about waiting for me to crash your wedding, because that is fucking unfair to your partner. I just found out my friend has been dragging his fiancee on for years now.

BugOut: If you’re really like that, I’m so disappointed in you.

The screen went dark.

-_-

Kagami settled into the couch with a sigh, drawing the soft red sheets around her.

The furniture at Adrien’s home had always been stiff and uncomfortable, like Gabriel Agreste. If there was anything she had loved about Adrien, it was that he tried to make it gentler sometimes.

Here, the couch was warm. It was a touch bumpy, with some stains here and there, but it felt alive. Earlier, Nino and Marinette had battled in a video game, jostling and teasing each other, Alya encouraging them as Kagami watched, filling the room with life. The pajamas she wore were unlike the red silk she wore usually, but if she focused, she was sure she could smell Marinette.

You’re really pretty.

Her face warmed at the memory, with Marinette’s cheeks pink and a little unsure smile on her face. Adrien had blushed before at her, yes, but now Kagami wondered if it was truly at her. She wondered if he was seeing his other girl then.

…did it matter?

Kagami shook her head. No, it didn’t. Right now, she was sitting in a place that was warmer than anything else. The windows glimmered with Paris’s lights. Tomorrow, she and Marinette would meet up with the rest of Adrien’s “friends”, giving Kagami the chance to make friends that Adrien had denied her, and buy fencing gear. By next week, hopefully, she and Marinette would have their first friendly match.

Her mind created the image of Marinette pulling a fencing mask off, smiling at her.

She couldn’t wait.

#my writing #ML #Miraculous #Miraculous Ladybug #Kagaminette #Marigami #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #Kagami Tsurugi #Nino Lahiffe #Adrien Agreste #Alya Cesaire #adrien salt

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nixthelapin · 11 months ago

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A Jekyll&Hyde type akuma whose power is to bring out a hidden or repressed part of your personality (but like, making two of you instead of switching in one body), and when Chat gets hit suddenly there’s both “normal” Chat (I’ll get to that in a sec) and Cat Walker/Patte de Velours at the same time.

(Cue Ladybug freaking out upon learning they’re the same person)

“Normal” Chat looks the same, but is just a bit more intense (since this is Adrien’s way of “letting loose” to not be how he is as a civilian, he’s not too different, but because of the split he does lose some usual traits). I.e. *heavily* flirting with LB, going at it with the puns, more agressive and impulsive with the akuma, doesnt like following orders (especially with the remaining feelings of anger towards the partnership being put further into question as LB prefers CW), heart on his sleeve

Cat Walker is also not super different to the episode he was in, but is also more intense thanks to the akuma: all business- no nonsense, doesn’t laugh at jokes (even in a “I’ll laugh if you want” way, like in Kuroneko), cordial to LB, follows LB’s orders to a T (to the point of not making his own decisions in battle), calm and collected (almost emotionless, even with that plastered smile)

CN starts to hate CW as the fight goes on, because LB seems to prefer him (and she’s understandably getting annoyed with CN’s impulsivity). CN gets territorial, saying that he’s LB’s partner. CW: “then why did she replace you with me?” (Man, look at all the self hatred in Adrien’s psyche!)

So CN runs off and leaves them alone to fight the akuma. This ticks LB off even more, but she has an akuma to deal with- and she has CW- so she lets him go.

As the fight goes on, some of the same issues from Kuroneko occur, so she also gets frustrated with CW too.

Since he’s acting more extreme than normal (more like someone awaiting orders than a partner due to the Jekyll&Hyde thing), it causes more problems (like him waiting for her decisions leaving openings where he could’ve done something proactive)

She actually blows up at him, asking why he didn’t do anything (“I was waiting for you to tell me the plan!”), and she says he should be able to think on his own, he doesn’t need her to tell him everything, but- “I thought I was just being what you wanted.”

(He’s shocked and genuinely hurt- though it’s still pretty quiet emotion, subdued and apologetic)

And that’s when it clicks for her what becoming CW was back in Kuroneko. He was molding himself for her. And this version of CW is even more of that. She realizes just how much CN suppresses, not just for her, but for everyone- why else would this be a major aspect of his personality?

(Also, Patte de Velours? Velvet Paw? That’s basically saying he’s been declawed. Yikes.)

She makes CN get his butt back to the fight (or she finds him- he may have been doing something while away like talking with someone, maybe Alya or Nino, or Luka). CN and CW argue more, with insults. Then she goes on a whole rant/lecture to them about how important they both are, both to her and to each other, how they are one person, and their traits are both important, but each extreme is not great. Ex: instinct/impulse and service/obedience (the key is self control, so that your emotions aren’t controlling you, but neither is another person). He is allowed to be both! Neither personality is bad, and hating one is just hating himself- he can’t just reject a fundamental part of himself.

She makes them agree to work together to defeat the akuma. It’s awkward at first, but they get a rhythm by seeing where each one is needed in the plan (LB does still do that, but how they follow is more fluid now). Two cataclysms now! Yay! (Maybe they used their powers already and have to de transform, and they see themselves as Adrien- the same one, not different, and it gets through their skulls. Idk I’m spitballing).

They have a quick talk between the two about accepting each other, it won’t be easy, I’m nervous, we’ll be okay (“yeah, I think we will :)”), etc.

Ends with them combining back with the ladybug cure. Surprise! His outfit is combined too! (Honestly, I just want the ponytail with the fluffy hair)

LB and CN have a talk after recharging about everything. CN apologizes for lying about CW and explains why and how he did it. LB didn’t realize how much he hid. She never meant for him to change or hate parts of himself. He thought she didn’t like the CN parts of him, but LB promises that isn’t true. She admits she did get… annoyed, but never hate! She loves both sides of him. Besides, CW didn’t work out that first time, remember? (Though she very much leaves out her intense crushing being the deciding factor there)

CN admits he feels more, well, not whole, exactly, he’s actually still pretty uncertain about what all this means for “who he is,” but… he can at least say he feels less like he has to perform all the time. He loves being Chat Noir, but he is exaggerating a bit when he transforms, in part to be not like his civilian life. He tells her he’s not like that as a civilian, but he’s also not like Cat Walker. But he’s not really sure who “he” is yet. (What I’m getting at is Oblivio!Adrien- dorky, but not over the top, in love, trusts his lady to make the plan, but is still proactive, etc.)

LB says that’s okay, he doesn’t have to figure it out right away. But she’ll be there to help him figure it out.

END

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mochegato · 1 year ago

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Thank You, But No

“Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!” Marinette uttered in a combination of mutters under her breath and exasperated groans. She was running late to meet Tim for dinner, which admittedly, wasn’t new or surprising, for either of them. It had become so common for one of them to be late, they had a punishment for it, whoever was late had to pay for the meal, or the next one if they missed the meal entirely. Which was fine for M. Co-CEO of a billion-dollar company, but she could NOT afford another dinner. Not even a Batburger dinner.

Not that Tim would force her to pay. He’d brush it off and pay with a smile, but she didn’t want him to have to because he was being generous, which of course he always was. He was the single most generous, thoughtful, considerate man she’d ever met, and she’d met Adrien, Luka, Nino, and her dad, so that was saying something. He was brilliant and funny and understanding. He was an absolutely amazing person and even better boyfriend.

Which isn’t to say they didn’t have issues… such as their propensity for getting wrapped up in whatever they were working on and being late for dates or missing them entirely, as mentioned previously. But they always made it up to each other and made sure the other knew how important they were. Or at least they tried. Maybe they weren’t as successful as Marinette had thought. That would explain why there was still an underlying feeling that something was off. It was tiny but niggling.

That feeling always stopped her from feeling too secure in their relationship and her actions. She wanted nothing more than to build a life with Tim, but that niggling was holding them back. They were just short of fully trusting each other. She knew why she was holding some things back. She wasn’t ready to tell a man she didn’t fully trust about the nineteen little gods and innumerable troublesome monks that came with being with her. But she couldn’t figure out what was holding him back if it wasn’t that her constantly being late made him doubt her commitment.

So she needed to get to the restaurant before him, but everything that afternoon seemed to be colluding against her. She’d narrowly avoided having to go to the warehouse or to a customer to handle random issues several times throughout the day, the issues seemingly getting increasingly significant as the day went on. She’d spent the entire day putting out fires and now was running late.

But! She was only a block from the restaurant. She could see the awning as she ran and although she was late, she was still earlier than Tim typically was, so there was a very good chance she would be able to beat him. She grinned as she picked up speed, weaving between people as she flew toward the crosswalk.

However, that is when Gotham struck. Just as she reached the street corner, a car exploded in front of her. Everyone immediately backed away and lowered themselves closer to the ground as they edged away from the explosion. Marinette, however, froze after crouching down rather than backing away.

She studied the scene taking in every detail, searching for anyone in need of immediate help and calculating where her help would most be needed. But nothing appeared to need attention. The explosion was controlled and concise. Only the car itself was damaged. She couldn’t even see any bodies, not even the driver.

She cautiously moved closer to the exploded car waiting for the rogue’s next move. But nothing happened. She stood warily and moved slowly toward the restaurant. In all likelihood, it would still operate as normal. The incident wasn’t large enough to garner Bat attention. The cops would appear eventually. Nothing that any Gothamite would take note of the next day, really.

She kept her movements tentative as she crossed the street. Something seemed off, something she couldn’t quite identify and it was disconcerting. It almost came as no surprise when she felt herself suddenly drifting off into a black void mid-step.

><><><><><><><><

Sensation flooded back to Marinette with a drawn-out groan. Her head was fuzzy. Her limbs were weighed down. She snuggled into the luxurious sheets wrapped around her. She loved these sheets. They were silky and soft and… she shot up into a seated position, eyes wide… and they were definitely not something she would be able to afford.

She instantly fell back onto the bed with a whimper, clutching her now throbbing head, and looked around through her fingers. It took a few seconds for the scene around her to register. She was in a grand room. Her entire apartment could fit in this one room. She eyed one of the paintings on the wall. Just that painting alone was worth more than everything in her apartment combined.

There was only one family she knew personally who could possibly have a room like this. She sat back up slowly to examine the room again. It had to be Wayne Manor… some hidden, supremely pretentious room in Wayne Manor. Oh no! Did she pass out and Tim found her and took her home to Wayne Manor! Instead of his own flat for some reason… Oh, this was a catastrophe. It was so embarrassing.

She collapsed back onto the bed with an embarrassed groan, her eyes clamped shut. There was a lot more gold than she had ever seen in Wayne Manor before. Why would he have taken her to Wayne Manor and this room? What was she supposed to get from this? There had to be a message in this bizarre behavior, right?

“Finally awake I see.” Marinette’s eyes shot open. That was not Tim’s voice. That wasn’t even a male voice, so it definitely wasn’t Alfred’s voice or one of Tim’s brothers either. She sat up warily, eyes darting around rapidly to find the source of the voice, which was considerably more difficult than it should have been in the cavernous room. She froze when she finally located it.

A tall, lithe, impeccably put together woman sitting in a shadowy corner leaned forward, but didn’t say anything, choosing instead to stand gracefully and observe Marinette impassively. After a few long seconds under her scrutiny, Marinette shifted uncomfortably in the bed, pulling the opulent sheets tighter around herself. Her gaze broke away, nervously taking in the room around them in greater detail, now knowing with certainty that they were not in Wayne Manor. “Where am I?”

The woman stalked closer to Marinette, her movements intimidating in their precision and control. “Somewhere far away from any heroes. Somewhere nobody can find without a guide. Somewhere not even your dear Detective would be able to find you.” Her voice was without the cruelty Marinette would have expected considering the content of her statement.

It was that contrast more than anything that made her register her words. “Who’s ‘my detective’? Do you mean Sabrina’s dad! He’s not a detective! He’s just an officer. And he can’t even find his badge half the time. Sabrina has to stop over and find it for him most mornings. Saying I’m somewhere he can’t find doesn’t narrow it down. It could be his guest room… except for the whole,” she motioned to the gilded room.

The woman studied Marinette with a complete lack of emotion on her face except for a single brow arching. The effect was like being completely transparent before her, which was a feeling Marinette was familiar with from that glass akuma. But this was worse. This felt more invasive, more revealing. “Interesting.”

“I’ve never had someone creepy say that to me and not have it mean something bad,” Marinette observed petulantly.

The woman’s lips seemed to strain to stay in their perfect pout. “You may want to keep your mouth closed if you value your tongue.” Despite the war on her lips, her voice was even and commanding, bordering on cold.

“You guys may have kidnapped the wrong person then,” Marinette grumbled.

“Oh no, no, I don’t believe we did,” she hummed, her eyes twinkled with something Marinette couldn’t identify.

The urge to reach up and feel for her earrings was overwhelming, but Marinette refused to give in. If they didn’t know who she was already, the movement would signal the truth. It was a clue Marinette was not willing to give. A blank façade fell across her face. “And I would recommend speaking clearly and sparsely when you are brought to the throne room,” the woman advised.

Marinette’s façade immediately dropped as her brows furrowed. “The what now?”

“My father is not known for looking kindly upon fools,” she continued as if Marinette hadn’t spoken.

Marinette blinked at her. “Did you just sa…”

“You will put those on,” the woman interrupted sharply and motioned toward the clothes laid out on the bed. “There are no cameras or microphones in here, so you don’t need to worry about that, if my word means anything to you.”

“It doesn’t,” Marinette answered instantly but did turn in the direction indicated, noticing the clothes for the first time. Even without touching them, she could tell they were extremely high quality both in the fabric and in production. It would easily be the nicest, most ornate outfit she had ever worn. It was truly an inspiration for her. However, it would also easily be the skimpiest thing she’d worn in public other than her bikini. It was so tight and skimpy, it looked like something a comic book artist designed for a female superhero. It was most definitely not what she wanted to wear when she was brought to face whoever was behind all this. “Thank you, but no. No, I would prefer not to.”

“You will put it on, or you will wear nothing,” the woman warned firmly, “which I’m sure my father will also enjoy, both the result and the process of stripping your current clothes from your body scrap by scrap.”

Marinette’s eyes widened with every word, absolutely confident in the honesty of her words. She looked back at the clothes that she would be wearing. “Right… I will… put those on.”

“Wise choice, you may yet survive the night,” the woman nodded and turned. “The dressers will be in soon.”

“I know how to…” Marinette ripped her eyes from the clothes to the woman, but she was already gone, “… dress myself,” she finished lamely to the empty room. She finally allowed herself to reach up to her ears with a groan at the lack of earrings. She was going to have to do this, whatever this ended up being, without her powers and then somehow search what she was positive was a ridiculously large complex for her earrings.

She let out a long, deep breath and started putting the clothes on by herself. “It’s not like I’m a designer or anything,” she grumbled. “Not like it’s my entire job to come up with an outfit, accessories, hair, and makeup. What would I know.”

><><><><><><><><

Okay, so maybe she didn’t know what was expected for this particular occasion, because just like the room, there was considerably more gold involved in her outfit, accessories, and even makeup than she would have ever used on her own. And in all honestly, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to get the hair accessories actually stay in their artfully styled placement, especially with all the sharp movements she kept making around the women helping style her and the guards escorting her to their destination, the throne room, if the woman was to be believed, which Marinette was inclined to do, about that fact at least.

As soon as she entered the room, pushed at the end of a few very sharp swords was actually a far better description, she had to fight her jaw dropping. She’d thought the last room was ostentatious, but this new room made the last room look like a cheap, roadside motel that hadn’t been updated since the 70’s. The room was covered in gold details and ornately carved, deeply stained woodwork. The ceiling was far above her like the grand entryway of Wayne Enterprises. Operas could be properly sung in this room. Centered against the back wall, a raised platform towered, demanding attention in its size and ostentatiousness.

A single chair sat at the apex with an ancient man seated, just as impeccably dressed as the woman earlier had been. A step down and behind the chair was a line of other chairs, a few fille empty. One of the seated figures was the woman she had seen earlier. As before, the woman gazed impassively upon her, like Marinette’s discomfort and fear was beneath her consideration. The two others in line only vaguely resembled one another, some not at all, but Marinette surmised they were all his children and the empty chairs for even more of his children.

She stopped at the bottom of the short staircase to what must have been considered the throne and waited to be acknowledged. The man, who had to be the father the woman had spoken of earlier, stared at her with a similarly intense gaze as his daughter, but significantly more sinister and creepier. She had to stop herself from fidgeting under it.

The longer it went on, the more uncomfortable it became until she had to say something. “Um… hi,” she offered uncertainly, adding to her discomfort with a small, awkward wave.

“Hello…” he responded. His voice was exactly what she had expected from his appearance, bold but empty and dripping with smarm. “… Guardian.”

Marinette lifted her head slowly, eyes wide in horror. “Oh no,” she gasped, barely louder than a breath.

“Welcome to my throne room,” he stated with no indication of warmth or welcome in his voice. “You, my dear, you have the immense honor of becoming my bride.”

Her eyes somehow managed to widen even further at his words despite her actions being sluggish, the world around her not quite registering as real. “Oh… no. No, no, no, no… no. No, thank you, no. No, no. Thank you but no. No, no, no, no…” she shook her head woodenly then looked back up at him and pursed her lips. “Noooo.”

“You will join me, and I will make you my queen.” The sinister glint in his eye and eerie curl to his lips suggested he believed this was an incredible honor. Marinette could not quite see what proof he had to back that up, but she suspected he was one of those men who based their personal value on delusion rather than evidence.

She was sure a statement like the one he had just uttered was supposed to be a request, but it was stated like a command. A statement of fact, like ‘the sky is blue’, ‘water is wet’, ‘this situation is messed up.’ “Que…Oh, no. No, I’m not really the royalty type. Queen? I wouldn’t be… I hate velvet!” she finally exclaimed. She stomped her foot and crossed her arms over her chest to accentuate her point.

His vile smile dropped, his lips instead forming into a hard, thin line. “I realize you may believe you are unworthy of me. Your ability to realize your inferior status is one of the reasons you will become a perfect wife.”

“Oh… no,” she muttered, shaking her head, her eyes unfocusing. “Adrien warned me something like this would happen if I moved to Gotham.”

“But I assure you,” he continued, completely oblivious that she had said anything, or that she was no longer listening, “you are not as far beneath me as you may believe, Guardian. With your given powers and my natural strength and intelligence, we will have many strong brilliant children.”

Marinette’s eyebrows disappeared under her bangs. “Oh… no. No, thank you. No. I think we should reevaluate that decision… maybe tweak it… just a bit. I can’t… I’m already dat...” She stopped short, offering a strained smile instead. It was a decidedly terrible idea to mention Tim to a madman.

What she wouldn’t give to have Tim there with her. She wanted nothing more than to be able to bury her face in his chest and have him wrap his strong arms around her. But at the same time, she couldn’t imagine anything worse. He was safe where he was, far away from what was happening to her. No, she didn’t want Tim with her. What she wanted was to get out of that room, find her earrings, and get back to Tim’s embrace and not leave it for a week.

She shook her head to try to concentrate back on where she was. “How about…” she forced air out of her lungs, “no. No, no, no. You have kids!” She motioned toward the seats behind him. “You already have MANY kids. You do not need me to have ‘many.’”

“I need better,” he bellowed.

Marinette gasped and straightened up to her full height, which granted, even if the man had been on the same level as her and standing, would not have been much against the towering man, but she refused to accept his statement unmatched. “Okay, rude. I think maybe they need a better father.”

“Silence!” he thundered. His voice echoed throughout the chamber with a ferocity and strength, she was surprised nobody except her flinched.

The woman from earlier almost imperceptibly shook her head, just enough to catch Marinette’s eye but not enough to catch anyone else’s. “Right. Silence. Shutting up, sir,” Marinette grumbled grudgingly.

“Start the ceremony,” he commanded.

In the blink of an eye, Marinette was shoved forward and up the stairs, tripping frequently on her skirt she hadn’t been given time to gather up, a skirt that managed to cover almost nothing of her legs but still drag under her feet, until she was next to the ancient man while another man in a significantly less ornate outfit was ushered into the room in front of them. “Wait, now?” she exclaimed, looking around frantically. She could not get married! Not like this. Not to him. It was supposed to be Tim. They were supposed to build their relationship, develop their trust, then get married.

No, this couldn’t happen. “Oh, no. No, this is all happening a bit f…” the word died in her throat when quicker than she could track, a dagger dug into her throat, hard enough for beads of blood to appear at the knife’s edge, but only that much. She wasn’t sure if the restraint was luck or because he didn’t want his ‘wife’ to bear visible scars, and she was not willing to find out. Especially considering he was able to do it without standing and she still had no clues where her earrings were.

The new man cleared his throat and looked between the two of them anxiously, his eyes begging Marinette for forgiveness she was too dazed to be able to give. He cleared his throat when she didn’t respond and continued anyway. “We are…”

“Skip to the important part,” the ancient man growled. Marinette tried to back away from him but the guards behind her must have anticipated the response as before she could move a millimeter, she could feel the points of their swords digging into her bare shoulder blades.

The man offered a strained smile. “Isn’t the entire ceremony the imp…” he froze as the dagger that had been at her neck, suddenly appeared at his, drawing rivulets of blood.

“Do you wish to continue your insolence?” her soon-to-be-husband hissed. He waited a few beats while he stared down the petrified man. “Do you?” he demanded louder. When the man shook his head sloppily, the dagger disappeared so quickly Marinette couldn’t say where it went.

The other man’s eyes darted between the two of them again, sweat mixing with the blood running down his neck and staining his collar. “Do you…”

“I do,” the ancient man barked impatiently.

“Right…” The other man nodded anxiously and turned to Marinette. “Do yo…”

She shook her head so rapidly the man in front of her blurred. “Oh… n…”

“She does,” her betrothed cut in loudly.

“Okay, yeah, I suppose that can… can count,” the other man stammered. He was slowly inching away from the couple, putting as much space between him and them as he could before he was able to sprint out of the room, and Marinette had never been more jealous of anyone in her life. “I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

“What?” she exclaimed. No. No, no, no, no. No. She could not be married. Not to this man. This was not the future she planned. Her heart sank as the man’s lips puckered and he pulled her closer against his body.

His predatory grin dropped when an explosion sounded nearby. “What,” he seethed. He glared at the wall closest to the explosion like it was solely responsible for the disruption and hissed when the sounds of fighting carried into the room. “Impossible!”

The sounds increased in volume until it was so loud, they could almost make out the words being screamed in the fight. It quickly became apparent the fight would breach the throne room in moments. The ancient man shoved Marinette away with such force, she sprawled on the floor and scrambled to keep from falling off the stage, but his eyes never left the door to check on her, not that she would have expected him to. He pulled out his sword from wherever he had secured it, she still wasn’t sure where that was, and wielded it in preparation.

“Father,” the woman from earlier said quietly but forcefully, “we must leave before he comes.”

“I am not afraid of him,” he hissed, his eyes still glaring at the door in anticipation.

“No,” she agreed, but Marinette could see the roll of her eyes behind her father’s back. “But a battle that need not be fought is a foolish one.”

He hissed and tucked his sword away as he whirled toward the back of the room, rushing with his daughter toward a hidden door, his other children already long gone. “How did he know?” His voice was lower than it had been since she met him, but still managed to carry through the room.

The woman pointedly ignored Marinette as she moved behind her father. “Likely a tracker. Did you check her for a tracker?”

“Of course I checked for a tracker!” he thundered and turned on her, attempting to stare her down.

The woman raised an eyebrow but refused to cower at his vitriol. “Then I suggest having your men do a better job next time.”

The man growled but moved through the door his daughter had been urging him toward with a final flourish of his cape. And just like that, he was gone and the room empty as his guards had all disappeared without a sound and through some mysterious, possibly magical means, because they certainly hadn’t gone through the door at the front of the room or the door the man and his daughter had disappeared through.

She searched the room for their escape route, hoping to follow their lead. Following that man and his family seemed like an absolutely terrible idea. The last thing she needed was him remembering she existed and trying to take her with him. Going out the front door would lead her straight into the fight, which without her earrings, seemed like a worse idea. But she needed to get to her earrings and she needed to get them now, before anyone else found them. And that was all assuming the man didn’t realize she was Ladybug as well as the guardian and take the earrings with him.

She started down the stairs swiftly, intensely inspecting every centimeter of the side wall as she moved. She had just caught a slight irregularity in the wall when the front door slammed open and several figures rushed in. She squawked and attempted to find a place to hide, but she had managed to position herself directly in front of the stairs when the door opened. She could not have selected a more exposed location in the room if she tried. Even if she’d been at the top of the stairs, she would have been closer to the back door and would have had the chance to get to it before they could get to her.

It took a full few seconds for her to register that the figures rushing toward her were not a threat. In fact, she recognized them. The Teen Titans were there. The Teen Titans had come to rescue her. She furrowed her brow. No, that couldn’t be right. There was no way they’d come just for her. There had to have been something else going on and she was just a collateral bonus.

Red Robin rushed ahead of the rest of the team, directly toward her. He reached her in mere moments and reached out for her like he was afraid she would disappear if he didn’t, but he stopped just short of touching her, his hands hovering over her body as though he would be able to sense any damage that way. “Marinette! Marinette, are you okay?” She blinked at him and nodded numbly. Maybe she was wrong. There was no way for them to know her name if she wasn’t the objective. “Are you sure?” he asked again.

She quirked her head to the side to consider his voice, his lips, his expression as he examined her. The way his brow furrowed just slightly and his lips pursed a touch, like he was afraid of showing too much emotion and giving away his hand. She wished she could see his eyes. She could almost picture the frantic darting of his panicked blue eyes hidden behind the white lenses of his mask.

Her eyes widened as her subconscious realization became fully conscious. “Oh my… Oh no. No, no, no. Really?” she exclaimed, taking a step back to get a better look at him and yep, there was definitely protective padding built into the suit, but she knew those arms, she’d spent a good half an hour tracing her fingers over the edges of those biceps, triceps, and deltoids just the night before.

“Mar… Mademoiselle?” he asked cautiously.

She closed her eyes and dropped her head back with a heavy sigh. “I’m never going to live this down.”

He raised an eyebrow at her response, but his eyes quickly zeroed in on her newly exposed neck, almost reaching toward her neck, but diverting his hand to run through the hair she’d brushed out of his face that morning. “Are you sure you’re okay, Mademoiselle?”

“Mademoiselle? Really?” She righted her head to look him in the eye, raising an incredulous eyebrow at him until his shoulders fell slightly and he smiled sheepishly.

He finally allowed himself to reach out and touch her, starting by tenderly tracing the skin around the cut on her neck, his touch so tender and cautious, she almost couldn’t feel it. She slowly stretched her neck to give him a better view without ever taking her eyes off his, waiting for him to satisfy his fears and assure himself of her safety, knowing he wouldn’t be able to move on until he had.

His eyes slowly moved from her neck to her clavicle, arms, stomach, and legs, his fingers trailing the path his eyes forged. His brow furrowed at the goosebumps that trailed his fingers. His eyes jumped up to meet hers, realization dawning. He quickly removed his cape and draped it over her shoulders. “It’s insulated,” he murmured. “I know how cold you get.”

He pulled the cape closed around her and ran his hands down her arms a few times, his eyes never leaving hers. He took a breath and slowly reached up to remove his mask. The look in his eyes took her breath away. There was such a depth to them, almost boundless with emotion, almost limitless with devotion. “How did you know?” he asked softly, close to a whisper.

Marinette cupped his face tenderly. She gently traced the skin around his eyes where his mask had sat. “I’d know you anywhere,” she answered in the same breathless tone.

He searched her eyes, hoping it conveyed all the relief he felt at finally having her in front of him. “I’d find you anywhere,” he whispered. Her eyes suddenly watered and she collapsed into his arms, body shaking as she cried and digging in deeper when he wound his arms around her.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m here. You’re safe,” he repeated over and over in her ear like a mantra. He kept repeating it until her tears eased. He pulled back just far enough to meet her eyes. “I’m here and you’re safe. I’ll always rescue you. I’d tear the world apart to protect you.”

She was no longer crying but her eyes were red rimmed and broken. He suddenly felt overwhelmed again and pulled her to him to reassure himself she was still there. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry he took you,” he muttered into her hair.

She shook her head. She could feel his lips rub against her hair with each shake. “It’s okay. It’s not like it was your fault.”

He pulled away to meet her eyes again so he could convey how earnest he was. “It… Marinette it was,” he affirmed, regret and guilt bleeding from his voice. “He knows who I am and… has a bit of an obsession with me. He took you because of me.”

She met his eyes firmly. “He didn’t. It wasn’t about you. He thought I would produce good kids for him.”

Tim jerked his head back and wrinkled his nose at the thought. “Ew.”

“Right?” she exclaimed with a false lightness.

“But Marinette…” He groaned and removed a hand just so he could run it through his hair and immediately settle it back at her waist. “…you have to know, you came to his attention because of me. It really was my…”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she repeated more forcefully. “It wasn’t Tim. I can’t exp…” she let out a frustrated groan and met his eyes with renewed determination. “It wasn’t your fault. I need you to believe me even if I can’t say why. Not yet. Not here. But soon.”

He shook his head, his lips pursed unconvinced. But, instead of focusing who to blame, obviously him, he focused on her; her safety, her health, her emotions, her in his arms when he was terrified he might never see her alive again. His eyes traced her face, his fingers trailed after in a tender embrace until he slid them over to tuck her bangs behind her ear. “How are you? Really?” he whispered.

Marinette dropped her head onto his chest again and nuzzled into his arms, letting his warmth and security seep through her skin and into her bones. “It was horrible. I didn’t know when I would see you again.”

He tightened his arms around her as if it would protect her against that possibility. “I’ll always come for you,” he reassured, his voice just loud enough for her to hear… and Superboy, but that was irrelevant. “Are you hurt anywhere else? Was it just your neck?”

She shook her head against his chest, refusing to reduce any contact between them. “No, nowhere else.” She suddenly jerked back and looked up with wide eyes. “But he… we’re married.”

Tim blinked at her. “Wait, what?”

She shook her head blankly as her mind started running through the repercussions. “He… there was a ceremony,” she rushed out. Her words were coming out so quickly, they almost merged into a single word. “There was a ceremony and a holy person, I think, that didn’t want to but he did…”

“Did you say I do?” Tim cut in before she could spiral too deep.

She shook her head as she blinked, her mind still racing but on a different track now. It was all a bit cloudy, but her mind ran through all the events of the past hour as well as she could remember it. “I didn’t… it didn’t seem to be an important factor.”

“Then you’re not,” he assured her confidently.

“But…”

“She married?” he asked over her shoulder. Marinette whipped around but Tim kept her in his arms, pulling her closer when Marinette squeaked and tried to jump away from the figure behind her.

“No,” the woman from earlier confirmed. “Father skipped through that part. Don’t worry my dear. You’re not my stepmother. You are uncorrupted.”

“Uh…” Marinette tried to edge away from her, unsure how to respond. But Tim held her tight, which had to mean he didn’t think she was a threat; Marinette however still wasn’t convinced.

“And I’ll keep him away. I’ll convince him he is wrong about you… though we both know he’s not, don’t we? Speaking of, here are your things,” she handed Marinette a Hermès bag filled with her clothes, “all of your things,” she said pointedly. Marinette took the bag and looked in warily to find her clothes, but more importantly, her earrings at the very top.

“Thank you,” Marinette gushed, offering the woman a smile for the first time.

The woman nodded. “Keep the bag and the outfit. You’ve earned it.”

“Oh… no,” Marinette deferred and held the bag out away from her. “No, thank you.”

The woman scoffed. “The bag is mine, go ahead and keep that for yourself. No association with my father. Used Bruce’s money, actually, so no guilt.” Marinette was so overwhelmed by everything happening she almost didn’t register Tim’s snort at the woman’s comment. “Sell the gold from the accessories or donate it. I suspect that’s the kind of thing you would like. Father won’t notice.”

“Thank you, Talia,” Tim offered with a nod.

“You’re welcome, Tim,” the woman, Talia apparently, nodded back. “Keep her safe. She’s more valuable than you know.”

Tim looked down at Marinette, his gaze swimming in adoration. “I intend to.” When he looked back up the woman had disappeared again. “Should I be worried about that? About her interest in you?” he asked Marinette lowly.

“I am,” Marinette grumbled. “It’s probably the smart move.” She leaned her head back on his shoulder and let out a relieved sigh when he tightened his embrace and guided her out of the compound and toward their plane.

“She’s the one that told you where I was?” He nodded without looking at her, his eyes scanning the area to ensure all threats had been removed. His team seemed to have fallen into step behind them, keeping a bit of a distance to give them privacy, but Marinette could feel their eyes darting to her frequently. “She mentioned Bruce. You know each other well?”

He nodded. “A bit too well sometimes. Other times…” he kissed her temple letting his lips linger and pulling her closer when she melted into it, “other times I couldn’t be more thankful for her.”

Marinette cocked her head to the side with a hum. “She’s a bit creepy. Sexy!” she added quickly. “But creepy… which is usually a combination I hear about from booktok men, not real women.”

Tim snorted “Booktok, huh?”

“Zoé,” Marinette shrugged. “I know far more than I want to.”

“Ah, yeah, I can see that,” he snickered. He urged her on ahead of him up the plane’s rear ramp, following close behind her, making sure he had at least one hand on her at all times. He waited until she was at the top before speaking again. “She’s Damian’s mom.”

Marinette whirled on him instantly. “She’s what!”

“Yep,” he answered, popping the p.

“With Bruce?” she clarified.

He let out a deep sigh. “My family is a bit of a mess. This is really just the tip of the iceberg.” He shook his head and motioned toward some seats, finally removing his hand to pull out a strapped in container, pulling out a few blankets and pillow. “Ready to go home?”

She nodded tiredly and collapsed back against him, sagging against him until she would have fallen down if he hadn’t wrapped his arms around her waist. He sat down, pulling her down into the seat next to him and wrapped the blankets around her with tender, gentle movements.

She watched him move, her affection for him growing with each soft pat and caring rub. “Will you stay with me?”

Tim looked up from the blankets to meet her eyes with a fond, understanding gaze. He brushed her cheek softly and opened his mouth to respond but closed it quickly with a furrow of his brow. “Why don’t you stay with me? Forever?” he added hesitantly.

She blinked at him. “Tim! Are you…”

“Yeah, yeah, I am. Asking you to move into my home, I mean. Well, no, it would be our home,” he rambled. “I’ve wanted to ask you for so long. The only thing holding me back was,” he motioned toward his suit and then around them. “And now that you know…”

Marinette stared at him; mouth slightly ajar in shock. Her mind tried to process all the possible implications, the benefits and dangers. Was it too soon? They hadn’t been dating too long, but they’d been dating long enough for her to know him and know that she loved him and that’s what mattered, wasn’t it? The emotion, not the time.

Was it too dangerous? If she moved in with him, it was going to be difficult to hide the kwami, and yeah, he was probably in a better position than most to understand what it meant to be a Guardian, but it still wasn’t a secret she was willing to share. He would only be the third person she’d ever told. Alya and Adrien were the only people she’d told and the prospect of adding another person to that list was terrifying.

Was she in the right place mentally to make the decision? And if she wasn’t and if she made the wrong choice, would it destroy their relationship? If she said yes just because she was in need of some stability in that moment, but then after a few weeks needed space, would going backward in their relationship harm it? But then, it really wasn’t an in the moment decision. She’d wanted to take the next step in their relationship for a while but had been too afraid. It felt like Tim was hiding something and now she knew what it was.

But all the processing meant Marinette was dead silent for a while too long. Tim’s arms loosened around her, not dropping, but not as tight as he started backtracking frantically. “I mean, if you need some time… This was probably the wrong time. I shouldn’t have…”

The uncertainty in his voice kicked Marinette into action. “Tim?”

“Yeah?” he asked tentatively. She could feel his hands clench almost like he was fighting pulling them back.

She pushed forward and placed a firm kiss on his lips, pulling away after a moment just far enough to whisper against his lips. “Shut up.”

“Yeah, I can do that,” he grinned moments before he pulled her closer to kiss her deeper. He wound his fingers into her hair as hers found his shoulders to hold him against her, reveling in the feel of him, the assurance that he was there, it was him and not someone else. He seemed to need the same assurance, his hands running over her and squeezing her frequently. They didn’t part until one of his teammates passed them and cleared their throat to remind them they were not alone.

Marinette settled back into her seat with a giggle and rested her head on his chest with a contented sigh. “Please take me home… to our home.”

He grinned and dipped down to place a tender kiss against her forehead. “Are you sure?”

She smiled brilliantly. “Oh, yes. Yes, please.”

#maribat #timari #timinette #Timari January #Timari January 2024 #prompt - tender

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generalluxun · 5 months ago

Text

Half-Baked, An ML fanfiction.

So this comes out of my 'Chloe goes back in time' AU. set after she's stolen the black cat Miraculous, but before the repercussions of that have really gone full swing.

This AU came about mostly from asks, so the tag can be searched on my blog for getting up to date on our collective ramblings for it.

Super short Summary: Post S5 Chloe goes back in time into her Origins-timeframe body. She is angry at everyone and everything. She gets herself akumatized early on and steals the Cat Miraculous from Cat Noir(who wasn't taking things seriously, it's S1) Seeing it's Adrien she freaks, breaks akumatization and runs off before Ladybug arrives. Adrien is keeping who stole it a secret(though he tells LB he lost it) hoping he can get it back himself to make up for losing it.

Fic is under the cut because it is 4172 words. I'll also be posting it on AO3 tomorrow.

With the smell of fresh baked goodies taunting her nostrils, Marinette dodged between racks laden with hot trays and mixing bowls of fresh dough. She was already late for school, but seeing her parents frantically running around made her pause.

“Dad?”

Tom flashed her a big smile but immediately turned and fled into the back. Her mother turned from where she was scooping still-warm pastries off cooling trays and into boxes too soon. “Honey, your father and I are very busy today. A large catering order came in unexpectedly. It was extremely short notice, but you know your father.”

Marinette couldn’t help but puff up a little, “It’s the Egyptian opening at the Lourve, right?”

Sabine paused. “Why, yes honey. How did you-”

Marinette gushed, “I knew dad was bummed about missing out on it, so yesterday I took a few freshly baked pastries over to the museum before school. I managed to find a way back to the curator’s offices and wouldn’t leave until he tried one. You should have seen the look on his face! ‘Young lady I think that is the best confection I have ever tasted.’ It looks like it was worth being an hour late.”

Marinette froze mid-pantomime. Her story had run away with her again, perhaps to a few places her mother didn’t exactly need to know.

Whatever Sabine’s thoughts, she kept a gently serene face. “That’s… very clever dear. Only… perhaps you could ask before helping next time? This really is such short notice.”

Marinette winced. “Is it really? I could help! I can just call in sick, then I would be able to-”

Rushing back towards the kitchen, Marinette snagged her foot on one of the giant mixing bowls. She tripped and collapsed into it as it spun, coming to rest blinking up into her mother’s even more concerned looking face. Sabine reached down and helped Marinette extract herself, brushing some wayward flour dust off her backside.

“No, no, that’s quite alright, dear. Your father and I will handle it. It’s not as if sleep is necessary every night. On your way now. You don’t want to be late, again.”

That last word carried the only hint of maternal reprimand, but it was enough. Marinette let herself be ushered out the door. On the way to school she managed to convince herself everything would be okay. It would be fine. It wasn’t the end of the-

The Agreste Limo pulled up in front of the steps to the school, and ‘end of the world' took on new meaning. Adrien got out, but his walk up the steps had none of its usual spring. Even knowing the truth, it was hard for Marinette to overlap the image of him with Cat Noir. Hard, and maybe a moot point.

Marinette shook herself. No. Not a moot point. We will get the ring back. I will get it back. Anyone can make a mistake. She hop-stepped to catch up with Adrien and gave him her biggest smile, “Morning, Adrien!”

He might not know it, but he’d helped her become Ladybug. Now it was up to her to return the favor.

------------------------------------------------

Time was not on Marinette’s side though. Not even half the day had gone by when the school shook as if in an earthquake. Sirens sounded in the distance. Alya had her phone open to a news cast before anyone else even had theirs out.

“-eaking News. A giant man…monster…thing… has once again been sighted in downtown Paris. Police are on their way, but as we approach the presumed akuma I have to wonder, what can they hope to do? Will Ladybug and Cat Noir show up once again to save our fair city?”

Nadja’s voice rose clearly from the tiny screen. Marinette couldn’t make out the akuma clearly as the helicopter circled though. All at once the helicopter lurched.

Nadja turned to ask someone off screen, “What’s that smell?”

The camera jostled, the helicopter lurched again, and the image went dark.

Marinette jumped up, “We have to do something!”

“Do something?” Kim blurted out from the back before anyone else. “Ivan got turned into a giant monster and almost turned half the class into crepes! What are you gonna do? …No offense big guy.”

Marinette heard Ivan mumble something even as she watched Adrien’s shoulders slump in front of her. She had to think fast. “What am I gonna do? I’m gonna go to the bathroom! Can’t think on a full bladder, right? Haha. Ms. Bustier can I go please?”

Another rumble shook the entire classroom.

Nino scrambled to his feet, “It sounds like there won’t be a bathroom to go to pretty soon.”

Ms Bustier raised her voice clearly but gently, “Alright class, everyone out. We rendezvous at the park. Stay with your seatmates.”

Sorry Alya. Marinette bolted for the door.

It wasn’t until she set eyes on the akuma that Ladybug’s forebrain took control back from her reflexes. Fear grabbed ahold of her and queasiness dropped her on unsteady legs on the nearest rooftop. The akuma was huge, topping even stoneheart. It was visible head and shoulders above the rowhouses. The only saving grace was a strange familiarity. It was dressed like a baker, complete with toque on its head and giant wooden peel in its hands.

The combination of silliness and fear forced a nervous giggle from her lips. The giggle reminded her that she was alone this time, her partner couldn’t help her. That sealed her lips once more with fear. It’s all up to me, alone.

Doomsday scenarios pressed into her thoughts even as the akuma strode on in the distance. What’s its power? Why is it here? What is the item? Where is it go-

Ladybug’s brain did the math and drew the line from the akuma right through the school towards… Our bakery!

She was in motion instantly, vaulting two streets closer. She was crouched for another leap when her senses shoved another fact through her emotions. Screams.

Screams weren’t surprising, but the tone was wrong. The akuma swung its peel and something scattered below it. If only for a cat’s sight. Screams of fear turned to joy then fell silent.

Ladybug balked again. She had to think. Emotion wanted her to act, but she couldn’t afford to be wrong. How close could she get? The akuma moved on and she followed from a distance, trying to pick up any clues she could. How close is too close? The akuma plowed through a building in its way. More screams of fear, a swing of its peel and fear turned to joy then silence again.

She needed to get closer. But-

Ladybug was stuck.

----------------------------------------------------------

“Go away!” Chloé stalked across the square, away from the class.

Sabrina trotted after her. “But, Chloé… we’re seatmates! We’re supposed to stick together.”

Chloé spun around and screamed, “Stick together? Is that what you call it? You sure didn’t stick with me when I needed it! Save me the trouble and go play with your new friends right now. Go!”

She jabbed a finger over Sabrina’s shoulder, but didn’t wait to see the results of her outburst. Her stomach felt hollow and sick. Her fingers tingled and her eyes itched. She wanted to scream until she ran out of air, but that hadn’t done any good before. So instead she was getting away from the others as fast as she could. Chloé jogged across the street from the park and was around a corner in seconds. Sabrina didn’t call after her again.

For some stupid reason that made the sickness in her stomach worse.

Chloé stalked blindly, immune to the cracking of masonry and the heavy tread that threatened to knock her off her feet. Out of her tunnel vision a single figure resolved in the distance. Red, spotted, standing still on a rooftop. Ladybug.

She was just…standing there. The crunch of another building rang out but the hero didn’t move. “DO SOMETHING!” Chloé howled at her, unheard.

She hated Ladybug. Ladybug was lame. Ladybug was a loser. Ladybug was a failure. Ladybug was a traitor. Ladybug… was a hero. Ladybug was supposed to be saving the day. The thoughts rattled around and fought until Chloé squeezed her eyes shut and dug her nails into her hair in frustration.

With a sudden clarity Chloé’s eyes snapped open again. She whipped a hand around in front of her. “You! Come out now!”

The black cat kwami sparked into existence, anger evident on his tiny features.

“Tell me how to transform!” she demanded.

He crossed his arms smugly and replied, “hmmm Mm mffm Hmm.”

Chloé growled, “Talk! You can talk! Tell me!”

The Kwami gasped but still grinned, “That’s the one thing you can’t order me to do, Miraculous or no.”

“Rrraaaaaggh!” Chloé pointed at the distant Ladybug, “She’s not doing anything. Tell me the password or we’re doomed!”

Plagg crossed his little arms, “Give me back to my rightful holder, and she’ll have a partner again.”

Chloé stomped her foot, “No! I can do this! I know what to do better than any of them do right now! I’m the hero!”

Pagg seemed unimpressed. He rolled his eyes,”You? Nobody would make you a hero. What would you even do with a miraculous?”

Chloé's world narrowed again,to a haze of red with a floating black blob in the center. She advanced on him, “I’ll cataclysm the stupid akuma. I’ll cataclysm stupid Hawkmoth. I’ll cataclysm everyone and everything that gets in my way. No one will take you away and nothing will stop me this time.”

She was seething. Memories of disappointment, failure, and humiliation broke down into the core emotions and blended into a hateful spiral. She waited for the next barb to come, but instead Plagg’s green eyes turned towards her with a spark of devilish curiosity in them.

“Really?” he drew the word out, “That just might be interesting to see.” One fingerless hand thrust at her face. “Don’t think I’m out of tricks though. You just watch yourself. It’s ‘Plagg, Claws out.’”

Emotion spoke before thought could form, “Plagg, Claws out!”

----------------------------------------------------------

The akuma waded through the remains of the school and Ladybug knew she had to act. The bakery was at hand, and though she couldn’t see from back here, she could just imagine her father standing out front with a rolling pin. She still didn’t have a plan. She hadn’t risked getting close enough to get a good look. It had seemed prudent, but a nagging voice whispered she might just be too scared on her own. Had Cat No- Adrien been brave enough for both of them?

She tensed for a leap, but a sound like a thunderbolt stopped her. A black blur streaked at the akuma. It struck clean, staggering the giant, and clung before scuttling across the akuma’s bulk.

Ladybug was airborne before she had time to doubt. The blur had resolved into a person, a cat person. Her foolish heart leapt for a moment at the impossible idea her partner might have returned. No- it wasn't him. This person darted and leapt from point to point, tearing at the akuma. Buttons, hat, pockets were all ripped and torn. The akuma reeled and swatted at the attacker. One meaty hand connected and sent the black-clad fighter into the pavement in an impressive crater. Ladybug didn’t even have time to gasp before the fighter leapt from the cracked road and was back in the fight.

Ladybug landed, still one block away. In part she was still gathering information, in part she wasn’t sure how to engage with that black buzzsaw in motion. She had time now, her partn-

The other fighter was buying her time.

Ladybug was still trying to understand the ferocity of the assault. The -Ladybug mentally decided on cat hero just to organize her thoughts- was fended off time and again, taking blows that had to hurt. They were -she was- was relentless though, rebounding from being knocked clean through nearby buildings.The akuma’s apron fluttered to the ground like a torn parachute.

It clicked, akumatized object!, just as the akuma found space to swing its bakery peel. This time Ladybug could discern pastries showering down from the end of it. The cat hero was crouched for another leap but instead raised her head and sniffed the air. She reoriented herself and pounced… the confections.

Ladybug had her info. She raised her yo-yo, “Lucky Charm!”

--------------------------------------------------------------------

The smell was irresistible. Chloé dove at the showering pastries, and she wasn’t the only one. Civilians swarmed out from everywhere, her classmates among them. Each and every one scrambled for the treats. There was no stopping it. Chloé bit down on a tart even as she scooped up half a dozen croissants. That she was aware of the compulsion made it worse. She growled around oozing jam and ground her teeth on buttery crust.

The too familiar feeling of helplessness was poison in her veins. Control, she needed to have some kind of control. She couldn’t stop so she pushed in the other direction. She crammed her mouth full until her jaw ached and she could barely breathe. It worked! She had a muffin in each hand but she could move freely again.

She launched herself at the akuma again.

A patch, no. A giant thermometer, no. She broke and broke. The muffins were goo, smashed against her palms. She couldn’t breathe but she wouldn’t stop.

Wouldn’t. Did. She bent double while crouching for another jump. Trying to inhale had dragged a chunk of her food-muzzle into her throat. She choked, coughed, heaved, choked again, and gasped for air. Her stomach twisted around the magical treats she’d already swallowed and dropped her to her knees.

Ziiiiip *thwip*

She was wrapped in a too-familiar away, airborne, grabbed, thumped on the back. She was spun again, free, something was shoved up her nose. Her overstimulated senses finally managed to focus. Her vision focused. Ladybug stood before her, with a tissue box in hand and polkadot tissues up each nostril.

Chloé hissed, “What do you think you're doing?”

“Saving you!” Ladybug grabbed her arm, “What do you think you are doing?”

Chloé pulled free and snarled, “He’s got an akumatized item on him somewhere, I’ll find it.”

Ladybug reached for her, “Do you have any idea what it is?”

Chloé recoiled and scanned. The akuma had turned away from them. It looked over the Dupain-Cheng bakery of all things. A petty part of her wanted to let it smash the place. That part of her became one more thing to be angry at.

She bared her teeth over her shoulder. “No, but I’m not the kind of hero who stands around doing nothing.”

She vaulted away with a protest lost in her wake. She landed and jumped again, elation mixing with rage. Her claws scored the doughy skin on the back of the akuma’s neck, checking the downward bakery-dooming swing of his peel. He swung it at her instead, showering her with sugary bait that no longer had any power over her. Her mouth was open, panting as a part of her breathing. What next? She picked a target and broke it. Then another, and another.

“The peel! Destroy the peel!” Ladybug’s voice rang in her ears.

Ladybug was a loser and probably wrong, but that wooden peel sure was big and this sure would be fun… “Cataclysm!”

She met the akuma’s swing with an outstretched hand. A grove’s worth of wood turned to powder at her touch. The butterfly flew free.

*Thwip* -snap- Ladybug caught and purified it. The akuma shrank to a befuddled looking baker. Chloé stood victorious in the center of a wasteland of violence and destruction.

Elation beat out anger, for just a moment. She threw her head back, spread her arms and, “Raaaaaaaaaaaaaggggghhhhhh!”

-------------------------------------------

The primal scream from right beside her made Ladybug cringe and fumble the lucky charm she had been about to toss into the air. Once she recovered herself the fact that the crisis had passed gave her a moment to actually evaluate her erstwhile companion. Evaluate, and remember that she was not a partner, she was a thief.

A ragged looking thief. Her blonde hair -did the cat miraculous make the user blonde?- was a voluminous mane down her back, bedecked with black metal hooks and barbs throughout. She turned post scream to give Ladybug a maniacal grin, revealing her needle-like fangs in place of incisors. Her heterochromatic eyes, one blue and one green, were feline as Cat Noir's had been, and her pupils were currently giant black moons swimming in color.

“What are you looking at, Ladybum?” The thief drawled, raising the hand still dusted with cataclysm remains and flexing her fingers slowly.

Her gloved fingers ended in wicked looking black ‘claws’. She wore black leather, that much remained consistent too, but her V-neck collar was torn, not tailored. Lastly, in place of Chat’s amusing belt-tail she had a razor thin wire wrapped around her waist with a heavy cat's paw pendant hanging from the end.

Ladybug narrowed her eyes, “You stole Cat Noir’s miraculous.”

The thief turned her hand, revealing the paw print ring with three toes left. “Finders keepers.”

Ladybug swapped hands and spun her yo-yo up, “Give it back.”

“No!” The thief lunged, catching Ladybug’s yo-yo mid-spin.

Ladybug countered, wrapping her line around the other girl’s arm ensnaring her. The thief’s other hand went for Ladybug’s neck. Ladybug blocked the lunge with the remaining length of her string, but the other girl’s palm pressed within scant centimeters. They were locked taut. Whoever gave ground would lose.

Those wild eyes were narrowed to slits. No akuma had ever scared Ladybug this badly. The anger melted from those features but the fingers still stretched for Ladybug’s throat. Ladybug felt a prick against her skin. “It has to be a pun, doesn’t it? Of course it does. Call me… Purrge. I’m going to turn Hawkmoth to dust, and anyone in my way.”

Ladybug strained. Her own anger fueled a push that took Purrge’s claws from her skin. “You’re crazy! I’m taking that ring back. You don’t deser-”

*Chirp* *chirp*

The overlapping sounds cut across the tension. Purrge’s eyes darted to Ladybug’s earrings. Ladybug’s were drawn to Purrge’s ring. Her mind raced. Has it been three or four?

Purrge’s lips curled into a sharp fanged grin, “You used yours first. You think you can take me down in time?”

Ladybug wanted to, oh she ached to, but there was more riding on this than personal satisfaction, but how to- A very slight easing of the pressure against her line; was it a ceasefire? Ladybug took a chance.

She pulled back, letting the line go slack. No claws cut off her breath. She didn’t wait. She scooped up the lucky charm and turned, “This isn’t over! Miraculous Ladybugs!”

Ladybug tossed the charm even as she began her swing. Triumphant cackling bubbled up behind her. She didn’t look back. Paris rebuilt itself as Ladybug swung further away, seeking out a quiet spot and settling for behind a dumpster.

Marinette burst from the shadow of the dumpster at a run. If she got back quick enough maybe she could catch a glimpse. Maybe there would be a clue. Maybe she could get her partner back.

There wasn’t, and she couldn’t. Not yet at least. All that awaited her was the rest of the class. Alya almost knocked her over, grousing and shaking her by the shoulders while delivering a friendly but stern dressing down. At least she wasn’t the only one gone. Chloé had unsurprisingly run off and still wasn’t back. It took some of the heat off at least.

A few of the class, plus her parents, were gathered around a baker who sat head in hands on the curb. Marinette recognized him immediately, from even before the akuma. She scooted into the semi-circle.

“Mssr. Levure?”

He looked up in confusion.

Marinette gave him a guilty smile, “I’m Marinette Dupain-Cheng.”

She saw surprise, anger, then guilt pass over his features.

She continued, “I’m sorry. I think I’m at least partly responsible for all this. I convinced the curator to switch bakeries. I just wanted to help my family… but I didn’t stop to think about how doing it this way would impact them, or you. I know my dad and he’ll run himself into the ground to do all this work. Not only that but our bakery will probably be closed so he can do it. All our other customers will suffer.”

Marinette looked at her parents, who watched her with proud curiosity. She looked back to Mssr. Levure.

“Maybe… both bakeries can share the catering? I’ll make signs. We can promote both and have an even better, more varied selection for our guests. Would that be okay?”

Marinette held her breath. Mssr. Levure, her dad, and her mom held one of those ‘glance and head tilt’ conversations adults so often did. Then he stood and brushed his hands off before holding one out to Tom. “A temporary partnership?”

Tom shook hands, smiling. “Done.”

A small cheer erupted from the half dozen onlookers, and Marinette had the satisfaction of righting at least one wrong today. Still, there was one other�� She looked around and spotted Adrien sitting by himself.

“What a day huh?” She announced her presence.

She might be right next to him, but he was still sitting far apart. “Did you see? Ladybug’s got a new partner.”

“Partner?! Oh no no, that’s not what it looked like to me at all. More like a new enemy, or a stray cat, or an enemy cat, or a stray enemy. There’s no way Ladybug would just replace her partner.”

Adrien turned to face her for the first time. The hope on his face was heartbreaking. “You really think so?”

Marinette fidgeted. Instinct said he needed a hug, but, but… he was… and she was… Nervous laughter bubbled up without warning, “Ha! Sure sure No way! Oh look! It’s Alya! No one knows Ladybug like her. She runs the Ladyblog! Why don’t we go ask her together? I’m sure she’ll know! Come on!”

She waved her arms frantically to signal Alya, kicking herself internally the entire time.

---------------------------------------------------

On a rooftop balcony nearby Purrge landed hard. What should have been a hero landing turned into a stumble, a stagger, and a few lurching steps. A flash of green enveloped her, then Chloé collapsed face first onto the pavement.

Plagg zipped in a wide loop through the air, “What a debut! I think you broke three whole blocks before Ladybug put it all back together. Crack! Boom! That was fun, and you still beat the akuma, so Master Fu can’t yell at me!”

Chloé’s persistently prone repose caught his attention.

“Kid? Kid?”

He floated over, sitting atop her head, no response. He turned an ear down against her skull, then floated to her back to do the same.

“Tsk, You gotta let the timer run out when it wants to, kid. You’re still pretty small.”

This got a response. The fingers of one of Chloé’s hands curled into a white knuckled fist for the space of a breath before uncurling again.

Plagg hmphed.

A CCTV camera, set up for security footage but never watched, recorded something odd that day. The blanket from Chloe’s bed lifted itself by a single point and dragged itself out to the balcony(after one of the balcony doors mysteriously rotted off its hinges) The blanket was spread haphazardly over the recumbent heiress.

A little later the trashcan in the suite tipped itself over, and trash began emptying itself onto the floor.

------------------------------------------------

“Master Please! Calm, Master! Here, your beads.” Wayzz hovered nervously with the prayer bracelet in his hands.

“Calm? Calm!” Master Fu paced between the gramophone that hid the miracle box and the small TV in his room. He would stare at the TV, then go reach for the gramophone, then pace back to the TV.

When he turned to Wayzz his face looked pained and afraid, not angry. He pointed at the TV, “How can I be calm when… that?!”

Frozen on the TV was a still frame of Ladybug and a Black Cat wielder who was obviously not Cat Noir, locked in a struggle.

“The Cat Miraculous is out there in an unknown holder’s hands. It could be in danger. The Ladybug could be in danger. If Hawkmoth were to get his hands on the Ladybug…”

He went back to the gramophone again and laid his hands atop it,

“We must get it back. We must be careful, but we cannot delay. Ladybug will need help in the meantime, someone she can rely on, a power that can aid her when there are so many variables in play.”

“Master, do you mean…?”

Fu keyed in the secret combination to open the antique player, and reached for the Miracle Box hidden within. “Yes Wayzz, him.”

#miraculous ladybug #ml fanfic #Chloe goes back in time AU #marinette dupain cheng #chloe bourgeois #adrien agreste #plagg #original akuma #ml au

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miraculouslbcnreactions · 3 months ago

Note

I will forever hold the opinion that Chat Blanc should’ve been a nightmare, hallucination, or otherwise hypothetical/not real scenario rather than a real event.

I can get behind something happening that causes a rift between Ladybug and Chat Noir, these kind of character plots can be interesting if done right, but they never should’ve given a legitimate reason that Adrien shouldn’t wield the power of Destruction or that Ladybug can’t actually trust him with information (or at all). Because the potential of Chat Noir actually becoming Blanc because he knows her identity (while not the full reason, that’s the big one to Ladybug) makes him way too big of a risk to keep on the team, and therefore almost justifies her distancing him (narratively at least, I don’t actually think that was the right move, even in this context, kinda like how she didn’t tell Chloe she couldn’t be Queen Bee anymore right away).

I will never get why the writers are so intent on making one of their main heroes seem unfit for the job. If he’s not fit for it, then he never should’ve been a hero in the first place! And yet that’s somehow not the story they’re trying to tell here? Oh, he is a good fit for the Miraculous? Then stop trying to make him incompetent or dangerous!!!

I actually don't mind Chat Blanc being a thing. I even have an ideal version of it that I'd love to see play out with pretty visuals for all the big dramatic scenes.

The idea that Chat Noir can be akumatized doesn't make him a bad hero because the message should be that everyone is capable of being akumatized. Rena Rouge, Queen Bee, and Carapace were all akumatized during the season two final, but they kept their roles on the team. I have no problem with that. Marinette has almost been akumatized multiple times and she never considered giving up her miraculous, nor should she. Everyone is going to have dark moments. It's not some massive failing.

The problems with Chat Blanc are:

The way time travel is used, making Bunnyx god

Adrien being able to lose while Marinette is there, which should never happen in a power of love show

The fact that the writers are using Chat Blanc to argue that Adrien can't be trusted with the truth

The fact that the writers present Chat Blanc as Marinette's failing/an identity reveal problem

I think the first two issues are self explanatory, so let's focus on the final two as they're insane writing choices.

Adrien learning the truth during a fight with his father is a great setup for him being akumatized! I don't have any issues with it. Remove Marinette from the scene and Adrien going full Chat Blanc is fine by me! The problem is that this isn't being presented as a warning that Adrien needs to learn the truth outside of the final battle (reasonable and what I thought this episode was doing at first). It's being presented as an argument that Adrien can never be told the truth because he's just too weak and unstable to handle the truth (asinine). If that's really what they're going for, and it does seem to be, then Adrien is completely unqualified to be a hero.

Similarly, past Marinette being the one to stop Chat Blanc doesn't bother me. The problem is that adult Bunnyx does nothing to contradict Marinette's conclusion that this means that Chat Noir can never be told the truth. That's not the right takeaway here, but Bunnyx doesn't contradict it. She actually goes so far as to throw Alya under the bus. Rude, Alix! Rude. And really weird since Marinette will willingly tell Alya her secret identity within a few episodes, which Alix should know? Alix's knowledge of the future is really confusing.

Bunnyx: Do you know how Cat Noir found out about your secret identity? Ladybug: I think so. When I went into Adrien's house as Ladybug, he probably saw me. He figured out that Ladybug is Marinette because of the note written on the gift. But I'm not sure what happened next. Bunnyx: He probably told his friend Nino, who told Alya, who wrote about it on the Ladyblog. Ladybug: Mm.. They would never do that. But Adrien probably told someone, who told someone else, and so on, until it was all over the news! The best-kept secrets are the ones you never share.

That final line from Ladybug should have been met with Bunnyx saying something like,

"There are times when it's good to share a secret! This just happened to not be one of those times, but this outcome isn't guaranteed. It's just what happened in this specific scenario. Another time, not sharing could lead us here. Don't let fear of the future keep you from doing what logic says is right."

Something, anything, to imply that Marinette wasn't at fault and that secrets are complex things. Instead we get yet another wacky implication that an identity reveal will destroy Ladybug and Chat Noir, so they have to keep their secrets or give up their miraculous. Yay!

All that being said, my ideal Chat Blanc would not work in canon's padded-to-shit writing, so I do agree that it was a bad call. Chat Blanc only makes sense if the end goal is plot progression. Instead, it's used for plot stagnation and I hate it!

#nixthelapin #ml's wacky morals #chat blanc my beloathed #chat blanc salt #ml writing critical #ml writing salt

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miraculousystuff · 3 months ago

Text

Oops

Adrien was having a good day. It was relatively stress free, as Lila was ‘doing charity work with Prince Ali’, meaning she couldn’t come to school. She still had modeling with him, unfortunately, but his father had allowed him to bring his closest friend. Marinette! As he was walking with Marinette, she asked him about everything. She used to stutter all the time around him, but now she didn’t, but he didn’t know why. It was clear that Marinette was in awe of everything, and if he had thought that she had never been to a photoshoot, he certainly knew now. She smiled at her adorable curiosity, and he could have sworn he heard Plagg say “Just a friend, hey?”.

Marinette noticed his staring and giggled. “As you can guess, I have never been to a photoshoot before.” Marinette smiled, and sat down next to him. Adrien could feel her excitement. It was so adorable. The moment was ruined, however, when a screeching voice came into play. “Adrien! Hi! I just arrived from charity work!” Lila yelled. Adrien looked up and rolled his eyes, while Marinette snapped her head towards the voice so fast she could’ve gotten whiplash. As Lila drew closer, Adrien had to restrain himself from moving back. It seemed that Mari noticed his uncomfort, because she leaned in and whispered. “It’s ok, just ignore her.” Then she began a conversation with him about Ladybug, knowing it would comfort him. Finally Lila reached them.

“EXCUSE ME! WHY IS MARINETTE SITTING IN MY SEAT!” Lila shouted, sounding aghast, mood changing completely. Adrien was this close from strangling her when Marinette spoke up. “Actually this is my seat. I got exclusive permission from Gabriel Agreste, so you can stand or sit on the floor. I really don’t care.” she said cooly, and went back to talking to Adrien, who soon became comfortable with the conversation. Lila, albeit dumbfounded, was persistent. It seemed she had a change in tactic, because then her entire demeanor changed as she started loudly so everyone could hear. “Ooh, are you talking about Ladybug! Yeah, I just had a picnic with her last Saturday and-” she was cut off by a rather bored Marinette “Wrong. She was out of town on Saturday. That’s why she used the horse miraculous to teleport back and forth.” she said lazily, as if Lila truly wasn’t worth the time of day. Adrien was in awe. Marinette’s version of the high road is better than his. Lila, on the other hand, was furious, but couldn’t do anything because of the numerous staff watching her for her rather loud boast about her connection with Ladybug.

The entire solo photos, Adrien was thinking about that conversation. More importantly, the Marinette part of the conversation. Or, to sum it all up, Marinette. He watched with a genuine smile as Marinette sketched some designs, clearly inputting some knowledge she was learning from one of their head photographers, Claire, who she was currently talking to. It seemed that Claire was enjoying it too, telling so many details about how if you put a collar a certain way, it would look better in and out of photos. As the filming came to an end, Claire noticed the dopey grin on his face and whispered to Adrien “You like her!” Blushing profusely, Adrien responded with his just a friend crap, to which Claire rolled her eyes, but didn’t push it.

“Either way, she is an absolute gem. And beautiful too. She could be a model. She’s perfect, and definitely better than Rossi. I don’t know what Gabriel see’s in her.” Claire smiled, before walking away. Adrien was in shock. Claire was one of the heads for a reason. She had a particular talent for choosing amazing models, and to hear that not only was Lila a bad model, Marinette would be perfect? Well that certainly puts things into perspective. Needless to say, Adrien’s constant daydreaming about Marinette continued, if not more so. “You’re thinking about Marinette aren’t you?” Plagg interrupted, almost bored at blondie’s sheer obliviousness. “How did you know?” Adrien said, shocked. “Well the dopey grin, the lovesick eyes, the sparkly thoughts-” Plagg smirked.

Before Adrien could respond however, it was time for the double shoots. Ugh. He walked in. “Romance! Summer Romance! That is what Parisians want!” Vincent bellowed cheerfully. Immediately, Lila clung to him and smiled sparkly as her death grip left marks. And it hurts. Through a grimace, Adrien forced out a smile, stringing along with Lila. But even that worm under the rock could tell that the photos were terrible. “No, no, no, no, NO! Zis is not right! Your mama brings you spaghetti not leftover, moldy cheese! That smile is not in love! It is fake! You know what, take 5 minutes, while I sort this mess out.” Vincent groaned as Adrien practically ran towards Marinette, who greeted him with her ever-so vibrant smile. He waved, but immediately her smile turned into concern as she noticed the bruises on his arm, and immediately got the first aid kit.

“Oh my god Adrien what happened to you!” she stressed, as she quickly rubbed some Dettol on it. It stung a little, and he hissed, but before Adrien knew it, the pain was gone and his dopey grin was back. And unfortunately or fortunately, depending on the perspective of whom you choose, Vincent noticed. “Oh my goffings! That smile! Zat is ze smile zat we want! This girl! She iz beautiful! Claire! She is perfect!” Vincent gushed. Lila, however, was not happy. “Excuse me! I am beautiful! Not Mari-trash! The audacity! I can get you fired!” Lila shrieked. Vincent rolled his eyes, and turned to Marinette again. “Oh please model for me! Please! I need you!” he pleaded to an incredibly shocked Marinette. But she took one look at Adrien’s pleading eyes, and didn’t even HESITATE to agree. “Sure!” Marinette said enthusiastically, much to Lila’s extreme displeasure.

“Yes!” Vincent cheered, but Lila was having none of it. “HOW DARE YOU LET MARITRASH DO THE PHOTOSHOOT! SHE IS UGLY! NONE OF HER FRIENDS LIKE HER! SHE HAS ALL THESE FAKE CONNECTIONS, YET SHE CALLS ME OUT ON MY LIES! LIKE IT’S MY FAULT THAT HER FRIENDS ARE IDIOTS! I WARNED YOU IN THE BATHROOM DUPAIN-CHENG! NOW YOU’LL PAY FOR STEALING MY JOB AND MY ADRIEN!” she lashed out at Marinette, about to punch her, when Mari caught her hand, then judo-flipped her so she landed on the floor. Lila, still throwing a tantrum, yelled indignantly. “ASSAULT!” she yelled, but no-one cared. “And done.” Claire smirked, as she played back the video of her confession. Lila went dead silent as she realized all her lies were about to come crumbling down. So she chose the easy way out. A threat.

“No! I WILL GET YOU FIRED IF YOU SHOW THAT VIDEO TO ANYONE, OR IF YOU LET MARINETTE DO THE SHOOT!” Lila screamed, but it had no effect. Eventually, Claire called security and she was kicked out. The video was sent to the class. They almost freaking flew to the park, about to literally murder her. Alya was so red and Marinette could literally see the steam coming out of Alya’s ears. Kim and Alix looked ready to beat her up, and even Mylene looked somewhat scary. They turned on Lila immediately, and apologized profusely, but Marinette forgave them easily. Adrien however, was not happy. “What did she mean she ‘warned’ you in the bathroom?” Adrien said, his voice so dangerously low that even Plagg was impressed. Marinette gave a squeak of surprise.

“Oh umm, I have to go, teach my umm fish to swim!” Marinette said twisting her ribbons and hurried away, but before she could get more than two steps away, Adrien grabbed her hand and pulled her back, making her turn towards him and making the ribbons fall out all together. His breath was temporarily taken away as Marinette’s hair fell loosley down to her shoulders. But he went back on task immediately. “What did Lila do to you Marinette?” he asked, and Marinette blushed. “Oh umm, I was about to trip and fall over a puddle of water and then she warned me and then now she thinks I owe her?” she said. Marinette knew it was a pathetic excuse and so did Adrien. He gave a scoff of disbelief. “Lila doesn’t HELP people Marinette. Tell me the truth.” Marinette’s blush reduced. “Adrien, I can’t.” she said, her head hanging low.

It said everything to Adrien. “She threatened you!” Adrien growled, completely ignoring the angry shouts from behind them. “I-” Marinette tried to say, but once again was interrupted by Adrien. “Why didn’t you tell me!” Adrien almost yelled. “Well because you told me to take the high road and I listened and it probably wasn’t a good idea to tell you, plus then you would get mad and-” She was once again interrupted by Adrien. But not by words. No.

Because Adrien Agreste was kissing her. And needless to say-

She kissed back.

They shared this moment for about 30 seconds before they were interrupted by loud cheers from behind them. “OMG ADRINETTE IS A THING! IT’S A THING! THE SHIP HAS SAILED!” Alya hollered over the cheers. And in the middle of all the blushing, cheering and awkwardness Vincent grinned in satisfaction. Why? He caught the whole thing on camera. He had a feeling Mr Agreste would like these photos.

Fin

#lila salt #lila rossi #adrienette #Akuma class sugar #Adrienette #alya sugar #adrien sugar #marinette sugar #miraculous fanfic #miraculous ladybug #cute #overprotective #overproyective adrien #Lila exposed #Lila sucks #mlb fandom #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste

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marinettesaltprompts · 3 months ago

Text

It's Morphin' Time

Prompt by @rukatofan89

Time for an Adrien Sugar prompt (with some Marinette salt) and a different crossover that is rarely used.

Adrien (Like in many salt fics) has lost his ring, friends, home and fortune save for the trust fund his mother set up for him before his birth and being the teenage son of Hawkmoth, finding any work or going to school has proven impossible and is living in a crappy apartment trying to milk his finances as long as possible since his aunt and cousin refuse to even acknowledge his existence. He was barely able to hold onto the rings that held his Amok by claiming he never had them. All the while, Ladybug is Paris’ darling hero and in spite of his efforts, Chat Noir is remembered as either a failure or a joke.

This changes one day when Adrien returns home after another failed job hunt to find a tall anthropomorphic dog with black hair and blue scales in his living room. Before he can get a word out the stranger knocks him out and he wakes up in a white interrogation room. His first thought was that someone ordered his arrest or one of his fathers’ victims wanted payback. Looking up however, he sees two men watching him. They’re both wearing black but one of them as an equal amount of green on him.

“You sure you don’t want to witness this?” The one man asks, turning to the man with the green.

“Your power, your choice.” The other man said. Adrien noticed the man had a strange pair of bracelets on his wrists. “Either way though, I approve.”

“Cool.” The first man says as the other turns to leave. “Tell Tanya I said hey.”

“I will. After I talk to Krueger about his capture methods.” The second man replies as the door shuts behind him, leaving Adrien alone with the other man.

“Look.” Adrien begins as the man sits down. “I had nothing to do with my father Akumatizing people.” He’d been interrogated with every method short of torture after his father and Natalie were arrested. While there was no hard evidence linking him to Hawkmoth, it didn’t sway most people. And he never revealed his identity as Chat Noir publicly after Ladybug had outright derided him in an interview after loosing his ring.

“We know.” The man interrupted him. Between Space Patrol Alpha, Grid Battleforce and the various computer experts they had connections to, he knew Adrien was innocent. “We also know you fought against him, Chat Noir.”

Giving a groan, Adrien put his head in his hands. “What do you want? I don’t know who ladybug is, and she won’t even talk to me. I don’t have a miraculous or a means to get one.”

“Actually.” The man replied. “We want to hear your side of the story, how you got your powers, and what led to you falling out with Ladybug.”

Adrien was a little skeptical at first, but something about this man put him at ease and made him want to trust him. And so, he began his tale, meeting the old guardian on his very first day of school. Receiving Plagg and becoming Chat Noir and his and Ladybugs’ fights with the Akumas. How their relationship went from being equal partners to her having power over him, keeping more and more secrets, and how he never received any training like Ladybug did outside of ONE meeting with the old guardian. Of how she left him to fight Akumas to go retrieve other heroes and how he was never allowed to know their identities and how she even banned one person from being a bearer again because HE knew her identity. Then his tale turned to Ladybug becoming the guardian and him eventually losing his ring before Ladybug and the other heroes took down his father. Eventually, he ended his story on a tangent about Lila’s’ manipulations and how they led to him becoming ostracized by his former friends once her lies were exposed.

As he listened to they young mans’ tale, Zack Taylor, the original Mighty Morphin’ Black Ranger had to struggle to keep his poker face. While they never exactly asked WHY Zordon had chosen them to become the Power Rangers, he always treated the five, and later six, of them equally and never asked them to keep secrets from each other. If their mentor had pulled with Jason what the old guardian did with Ladybug, Rita wouldn’t have NEEDED to brainwash Tommy into being the Green Ranger. And in spite of what Parisians might think (honestly, who put what in the drinking water there?) they knew Chat Noir was a capable hero, if not a little socially and emotionally stunted. Heck, if both he and Adrien were heroes at the same time and place, they’d probably be bouncing puns and jokes off each other the whole fight while everyone laughed. Zack couldn’t help seeing a bit of his teenaged self in the broken hero before him.

“Thank you, by the way.” Adrien said, taking a drink of water.

“What for?” Zack asked, pulled from his musings.

“Letting me get that off my chest.” Adrien answered. “I think your the first one who’s cared about my side of the story, ever.” He snorted. “Everyone just took a few bad things and immediately thought the worst of me.”

“You’re welcome.” Zack smiled back, a little stunned by this. “Could you do me a favor though?” He asked, reaching into his pocket.

“What?” Adrien asked as Zack put a weathered gold coin on the table and slid it to him. Looking at it, he noticed it had an image of a Mammoth or Mastodon on it.

“Hold that coin and tell me what you feel.” Adrien gives a sigh and picks up the coin.

“I swear, if a little mammoth comes out of this thin.” He’s cut off as the proxy power coin glows and a black light envelops his body. Zack smiles, because sitting before him now, was a new black Mighty Morphin’ Power Ranger. His successor has been found. He will teach Adrien to become the new Black Ranger and once his training is complete, give him the actual power coin.

A few highlights for Adrien’s’ new life as an apprentice Ranger.

-Zack explains that several older rangers are seeking successors and convincing Adrien he’s worthy of the power.

-Training with Ninjor at his temple when not training with Zack.

-At one point Adrien runs into a bitter but repentant Chloe. He and Zack see her attempting to rescue kids during a monster attack and short list her as a possible apprentice ranger.(Early SPD maybe?)

-Therapy sessions with Karone. (not a bad person to talk out past issues with I think)

-Meets Minh Kwan (Romance or brother sister relationship-you decide)

-Gaining a new best friend in Jayden Shiba (I can’t help feeling they’d bond over learning to be normal ‘teenagers with attitude’)

-Meeting the Mystic Force Power Rangers who not only sever his connection to the Peacock Miraculous but also transfer his Amok into a surgical pin which Dana Mitchell (Lightspeed Rescue Pink Ranger) then implants inside his body.

-Finding out at a massive get together that not only do ALL the Power Rangers know each others identities, they help each other on both sides of the mask. Many rangers (the rest of the living OG MMPR team included) welcome him to the ranger family (He cried happy tears that day) a few lawyer rangers begin looking into his aunt and many of the goings on in Paris and allow Adrien to reclaim his wealth, even if he doesn’t need it.

-Eventually, a new red, pink and blue ranger are picked to join Adrien and Minh as the new Mighty Morphin’ team and they become fast friends as their predecessors did.

One day, a new villain crawls out of the woodwork and the new rangers investigate activity in Paris. Team Miraculous is overrun by literally hundreds of foot soldiers and when the rangers appear to help, end up getting in the way of finishing the monster. Eventually, they manage to stop the attack, but when Ladybug goes to thank them Black Rangers tells her to stay out of the way and to “let the actual heroes do their job.” The rest of the rangers back him up while gently chiding him, which he accepts with grace.

As more monster attacks are repelled by the rangers, Team Miraculous keeps looking more and more inept in comparison. (Considering they don’t have the support network the rangers do or training it’s unsurprising.) They aren’t dealing with Akumas attempting to capture their Miraculous anymore, they’re dealing with monsters trying to outright kill them all. Support for the team is at an all time low and Ladybug is low key losing it.

Things come to a head when Marinette is watching footage of the ranger battles and recognizes Chat Noir from a pun black ranger makes. After the next battle, Ladybug swoops into a (thankfully) empty battlefield and demands Adrien give her his morpher because “If you weren’t worthy of a miraculous, you aren’t worthy to be a ranger.” Minh leads the rangers in ripping into Ladybug for this, firing off her failings as a hero and for how she treated their friend. She doesn’t back down and sicks the rest of the team on them (albeit some are reluctant) when he refuses her again.

As the fight breaks out, the battle is witnessed by SPA who quickly puts out a call for reinforcements. Soon the five rangers are joined by their predecessors (who now use the proxy coins only when needed) Tommy and Katherine Oliver, Ninjor, The Mystic Force, The red, pink and Titanium Lightspeed rangers, The Samurai Rangers, the red and Quantum Time Force Rangers, and the recently promoted Commander Kruger. During the fight, Ladybug fixates on Adrien to the point that Tommy pops the Dragon coin out of the Master Morpher and tosses it to him so he can use the Dragon Shield and Dagger for added protection.

With sheer numbers, and Adrien’s’ knowledge of the Miraculous powers, they are able to whittle down the team to just Ladybug, the replacement Chat Noir, Rena Rouge, Argos and Ryuko. Argos (After realizing he can’t control his cousin) then uses an Amok to create a 'Sentizord’ for the five of them to pilot. In response, the current MMPR team call the Dinozords with Adrien also calling the Dragonzord. The fight begins but the Sentizord is amazingly fast, allowing it to damage the Megazord and Dragonzord. Albeit this does exhaust the Sentizord as the fight draws on.

Ladybug comments during the fight that no matter what team Adrien’s on, he can’t win. After all, they only beat Hawkmoth AFTER he lost his ring. The fury surges in Adrien and he calls out.

“MASTODON, LION, THUDERZORD POWER!”

The other rangers give their own calls and five bolts of lighting hit the damaged Dino Megazord, recharging and transforming it into the Thunder Megazord. Rallying the Dragonzord with the dagger, the two charge the worn out Sentizord, eventually knocking it backwards and the heroes out of it for them to be captured by the other rangers.

After the fight, Su-Han attempts to recover the Miraculous in his usual bullheaded and ham-fisted way. It goes about as well as you think it does. After being interrogated by Grid Battleforce yields no answers, the red Cosmic Fury ranger Amelia Jones uses her telepathy to read the Celestial Guardians’ mind and finds that the Guardian order is behind a global rash of child kidnappings to restore their numbers by 'conscripting and indoctrinating’ them into their order. The temple is soon captured by a large team of rangers from every team and spearheaded by Adrien’s’ team.

Later, in the same interrogation room he met Zack in, Adrien sits across from Marinette. Tikki floats next to her but she dose not have her Miraculous. When asked what’s going to happen now, Adrien replies that as the world court isn’t ready to handle magic users, so they will defer to them. That said, they understand that Marinette was manipulated and conditioned by a pair of cult members (Fu and Su), but was still a good hero before they interfered. So, SPA and Grid Battleforce will hold onto the Miraculous until she and the other heroes have completed both psychological counseling, and a full ranger training course. From there, they will see if the heroes want their Miraculous back, and if they are truly worthy of them. (Spoiler alert, some of them don’t, and aren’t) As he leaves the the room, Adrien turns to the girl he once loved, but now feels only pity with a dash of hope.

“And Marinette, may the power protect you.”

OP Note: This prompt actually reminds me of some of my old crossover ideas I had for Power Rangers (albiet non-salt related), so I really like this idea, though I think it would be even better without the salt parts.

#Marinette salt #Adrien sugar #Adrien salters can stay mad #submission #Crossover with Power Rangers

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flightfoot · 2 months ago

Note

Any fic recs of Adrien dealing with the fallout of finding out his dad is hawkmoth?

Oh yeah, this is a popular plotline and tends to lead to some great fics!

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Bubblegum Soul by @wehadabondingmoment

"The impulse to throw away his ring, to slam it on the ground and watch its metallic splinters chap away at his soul, got more tempting by the second. Maybe, for a moment, he would learn what it meant to be alive." (Or: Hawk Moth has been defeated and Adrien is suffering more than ever. Armed with unhealthy coping mechanisms and the knowledge that he apparently isn't human, he embarks on a journey of self-discovery.) (Except that his father isn't quite ready to give up just yet.)

Poor Adrien. His father's defeated, but that doesn't mean that he's alright. Dealing with finding out that he's a sentimonster via his father attempting to order him around... that's harsh.

And it doesn't help that while he gets one ring back pretty quickly, he doesn't realize that he has a second amok...

If you like angsty sentiadrien fic, this'll be right up your alley! It's M-rated, but I'm not sure why. Maybe because Adrien's just kind of in a bad headspace?

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Disintegrated Pancakes by @scribeofrhapsody

Adrien had started expecting the family breakfasts. He had NOT been expecting his father to collapse in the middle of one.

I’m shocked I haven’t seen more of this sort of thing, with Adrien finding out his father’s Monarch via seeing the Cataclysm wound. I love that Alya gets involved in this, being the person Adrien runs into after fleeing the room, and then Adrien getting to talk things out with Gabriel and Nathalie. Thankfully Gabriel is at least not completely incapable of being reasoned with here, or things could have gone worse than they did. It’s a nice little read, though with an ambiguous ending (at least at the time when I write this).

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all of your flaws and all of my flaws (are laid out one-by-one) by @coffeebanana

Ladybug and Marinette have both been acting strangely since Monarch’s defeat, and Chat Noir would give anything to know why—to be able to help them. He just…didn’t expect his answers to come when Ladybug drags him to his father’s statue in the middle of the night along with a bag full of spray paint.

If you felt unsatisfied with Adrien being left in the dark about Monarch, with Ladybug lying about Gabriel being a hero, this is a great fic to read. Marinette’s breaking down keeping this secret, seeing people treat Gabriel as the hero she told people he was, until she finally snaps and has to do SOMETHING, has to tell SOMEONE the truth.

Which Chat takes pretty well! He knows how persuasive his father could be, and he’s mostly just relieved at finally hearing someone say that Gabriel wasn’t a hero. It’s still a lot to cope with though.

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Of Crisp Days and Crispier Cakes by @scribeofrhapsody

Gabriel wants to not be sick. Adrien wants to make a cake. Nathalie wants a chill birthday. Maybe they can help each other. Maybe it’ll be a disaster.

So this starts off as just the cute fluff fic of Adrien and Gabriel attempting to make Nathalie a birthday cake that the summary indicates, but soon evolves into a more action-filled drama fic when Gabriel makes the terrible decision to akumatize a cashier while sick… a cashier who happens to be in the same shop as Nathalie and Adrien. Who are willing to put their secret identities at risk in order to save each other.

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After Irritation Do Us Start by @scribeofrhapsody

It was the most difficult decision of his life, but Gabriel did it. He let go of Hawk Moth. He moved on from Emilie. Now, all he wants is to enjoy life with his son and new wife. Unfortunately, a certain nephew of his seems to be determined to unearth what Gabriel needs to remain buried.

I love this look at what could have happened if during the season 3 finale, Gabriel had decided enough was enough and given up on being a supervillain, moving on with Nathalie instead. How much better things could have been if he’d just decided to stop - though Adrien still wouldn’t be happy to discover why Hawk Moth had suddenly stopped attacking.

Oh yeah, there’s an OC here called Gerald who Adrien’s puzzled by, since he’d never heard of this guy before the past year. At the end of the story you find out why he’s included in the story. It’s not a major thing, but it is kind of funny and fits well with the rest of the story.

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Family by @unecoccinellenoire

“You know,” Nino grins, “if you need advice on being a big brother in a year or two I’m sure I could help.” The bottom of Adrien’s stomach dropped out. — Adrien struggles with the concept of his father and Nathalie having children.

So this is a world where Adrien and Marinette managed to defeat Gabriel, taking his Miraculous, with them giving him an ultimatum: they won’t out him as being Hawk Moth so long as he doesn’t cause any more trouble and does right by Adrien. Gabriel does, in fact, move on finally to Nathalie, giving Adrien a lot of mixed feelings to deal with. He still loves them both despite everything, but he’s also angry at them and he definitely does NOT want them to have children, both because he thinks they’d like any biological child they had more (he’s also harboring guilt from indirectly being the cause of his mom’s death), and because frankly, they screwed up too much with Adrien for him to want them to inflict that on another child.

And then there’s also Adrien dealing with the realization that he’s a Senti on top of that and wondering why he and Felix look the way they do, what Emilie’s reasons were.

It’s mostly just Adrien getting to talk things out, navigating this emotionally fraught situation he finds himself in now that the dust is settled.

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and I thought I heard you sing by @into-september

When Hawkmoth has been defeated and unmasked, Marinette is left with two problems and no solutions. First, that Adrien is further out of her reach than ever before, and no-one can tell her how to get to him. Second, that Cat Noir is far more troubled than she knew, and the only thing she can do is wait for him at the place they agreed to meet.

It’s your classic “Hawkmoth’s defeated and taken into custody but that means Adrien’s in for a rough time” sort of fic. Everyone’s worried about Adrien and wants to give him what comfort and support that they can, but he’s being hidden away from everyone (which I mean, honestly that’s a good move), so that’s not really possible. Plus, Ladybug’s noticed that Chat’s having a tough time in his civilian life, which worries her.

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If only I could break free by megetstoread

It started with Adrien being upset about going away, but led to a lot of revelations.

Another Sentiadrien fic here! After telling Adrien that he’s being sent to London, Gabriel takes advantage of Adrien being distraught to akumatize him. Luckily Ladybug’s right there and deakumatizes him before he can even do anything, but it shakes both her and Chat, leading to her allowing him to tell her a lot more about his home life than usual, and for her and Adrien to investigate to see whether there might be more to Adrien’s inability to stand against his father than just psychological abuse.

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The Parable of the Caller by @nemaliwrites

A week after Hawk Moth’s identity has been revealed, Adrien finds himself with nowhere to go, nothing he can do, and worst of all, strange gaps in his memory he can’t explain. In a stroke of luck, he stumbles upon a burner phone filled with voicemails from one of the Saviors of Paris: Chat Noir himself, who disappeared following Hawk Moth’s arrest.

But with each new voicemail Adrien listens to, he’s forced to confront the fact that there might be some kind of connection between himself and Chat Noir — and discovering it might leave him more broken than before.

I absolutely adore this fic, it’s a fantastic character study for Adrien! Basically in this universe, Ladybug and Chat Noir talked about who should be Guardian, with Chat eventually convincing her that he should be the one to take it on, primarily due to the whole “the Guardian gets amnesia about Miraculous-related matters” situation, and wanting to protect Ladybug from that. Then he finds out Gabriel is Hawk Moth, they take him down, and he relinquishes the Miracle Box and his guardianship to Su Han - all without having a Reveal with Ladybug, since well, he’s not in the greatest shape mentally at the time.

It’s a real treat to see Adrien’s thoughts and feelings about one of the Heroes of Paris leaving him all these voicemails, treating him like this close friend for reasons he doesn’t understand, and just seeing Chat Noir as this outside person. He’s got a very different viewpoint on Chat when looking from the outside than he would from the inside, with being able to see his heroic and good qualities far more easily when he doesn’t know that he is Chat.

Also Marinette’s struggling in the background of the fic with the loss of her partner and guilt over sending Adrien’s father to prison. It gets touched on at various points, and you can tell that she’s having her own story off to the side that we’re just not entirely privy to, what with this tale being told entirely from Adrien’s perspective.

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drowning (in plain sight) by @buggachat

Everybody had expected Monarch's defeat to be a moment of triumph. Nobody had expected Gabriel Agreste, unmasked and mind frayed from continual abuse of the miraculous, crying out to all who would listen and making Paris certain of one thing:

His son, Adrien Agreste, is one of his sentimonsters.

And now he's missing.

Nobody can find him— not even the superheroes, and not even his closest friends. But Marinette, Nino, and Alya aren't ones to give up so easily. They'll find him, no matter what it takes.

(But, geez, would it kill Chat Noir to lend a hand?)

I’m sure everyone saw this one coming. If there’s one thing buggachat’s good at, storywise, it’s capturing raw, tumultuous emotions, frantic breakdowns as the characters desperately try to navigate bad situations. This was a real treat to read, as I’m betting most people reading this will agree, given just how popular the fic has been. It also has a ton of fanart, both by buggachat and by random fans, if you go looking for it (there’s a drowning in plain sight tag which I’d advise perusing).

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Not a Monster at All by @book-sandwich

Adrien Agreste overhears a conversation he shouldn't, and a revelation sends him falling onto the terrace of the only person he can trust: his good friend (?) Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

Takes place sometime after the first two episodes of season 5!

As you can probably guess from the title, this is a Sentimonster Adrien, Monarch takedown fic. Adrien’s going through a tough time, and Marinette’s just trying to be there for him as his whole world’s collapsing around him. Unfrotunately, they still don’t know what the object is, or how likely Gabriel would be to control Adrien if he hinted that he knew the truth, which leaves Adrien in a precarious position - still not having done an identity reveal doesn’t help matters.

It’s a really solid fic for the genre, though since it started up before the later parts of season 5, there are a few things that don’t match up with the canon information we obtained later on.

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Under Oath by @eoscenes

In the aftermath of Hawk Moth's defeat, Ladybug finds her heart torn between her schoolgirl crush and her superhero partner ― who returns, after an unexplained hiatus, more irresistible than ever.

⋆☆⋆

Gabriel Agreste is unmasked, and Paris rises up in the aftermath.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng must weather Paris' anxious protesters, ravenous reporters, a scattered team of judiciary investigators, and her conflicting feelings for two different boys. In the eye of this storm is the elusive Adrien Agreste, the primary witness in his own father's trial, who might just hold the secret to finding the Peacock Miraculous.

(If only she wasn't in love with him.)

Meanwhile, locked away in Le Grand Paris hotel, Adrien grapples with his responsibilities to a city that can't decide if it hates or loves him. Keeping his daytime persona and Chat Noir separate entities becomes even harder when Ladybug, whom he has finally decided to get over, starts visiting him at night, determined to figure his secrets out.

(If only he wasn't in love with her.)

When an unknown figure returns with the Peacock Miraculous, Ladybug and Chat Noir will have to save their city once more — or lose each other trying.

I love how this fic shows Adrien just breaking down over the reveal of Hawk Moth’s identity, he’s in a Very Bad Place for a substantial portion of the fic, and being a suspect and witness in the case does NOT help. It’s got the most detailed “Adrien suffering the consequences of the backlash to his father’s prosecution” plot that I’ve seen.

Still, things get better with time, slowly, gradually. It’s not all at once, or a completely linear road, but he’s got his friends, even after everything.

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run boy run by Anonymous

Nino was sprawled on the floor of his room with Alya when his phone chimed, in the quiet of a premature autumnal sunset. It was one of those lazy evenings that had become rare lately. Contrary to popular belief, he and Alya could get studying done when in the same room, and he was elbows-deep in late assignments, which meant his phone was on Do Not Disturb, which meant the notification could only have come from one person. ADRIEN 🐈: cmoe ove rnow ADRIEN 🐈: like riggt now ADRIEN 🐈: plag NINO: that is literally incomprehensible NINO: wait is that you plagg ADRIEN 🐈: mov faster

So this is a “Adrien finds out that his father is Hawkmoth and consults with Nino about what to do” fic, with Nino throwing Hawkmoth off Adrien’s track, though inadvertently at his own expense. Love Nino’s perspective here, and I always enjoy a good Hawkmoth-takedown fic!

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When the Morning Comes by @into-september

Gabriel Agreste has been unmasked as Hawkmoth, and the girl who was fighting him all these years turns out to be Tom Dupain's daughter. And standing between them is Adrien Agreste with his life in shatters that Tom Dupain has no way of piecing together. But baking is at least a place to start.

I love how this not only digs into Adrien’s character, but Tom’s as well, especially how both of them have been estranged from their fathers. I haven’t seen that come up much.

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missing person (at the window) by @coffeebanana

Adrien expected to spend another night staring at the ceiling and ignoring his friends' messages, as he'd done every night since his father was unmasked as Shadow Moth. But when Ladybug falls through his bedroom window, he gets a little more than he bargained for.

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This Distance Between Us by @coffeebanana

After defeating Monarch, the search for the Peacock Miraculous brings Ladybug and Chat Noir to a hotel room in London. But it's hard to enjoy the victory when Ladybug can't figure out why Chat's been so quiet, why he seems so sad. How's she supposed to help if she has no idea what's wrong?

This is a great Sentiadrien fic, with Chat freaking out about it and feeling like he’s not worthy of Ladybug’s affections, but not telling her what’s actually wrong because he thinks she won’t want him anymore if she knows. Of course, he’s wrong about that. Also there’s a pretty intense confrontation with Felix, pissing Chat Noir off is a bad idea.

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Waiting series by @11jj11

First fic: Waiting

Every night Ladybug sat atop the Eiffel Tower, waiting for her partner.

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Temporary Place To Stay by walkingonthestars

Caline Bustier hears the news. Caline Bustier worries about her student, whose father has just been exposed as Hawk Moth and arrested. Caline Bustier impulsively takes in said student. Caline Bustier does not know the half of what she's just gotten into.

#adrien agreste #gabriel agreste #ask #ml fanfic rec #miraculous ladybug

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