Then it was Rena's time to shine. I transformed while she was busy gawping at Ladybug, then explained the illusion I wanted her to create. She cottoned on fast, and filled in most of the details without being told.

She knew who I was by then, of course, so she must have figured I'd want an illusory Adrien to walk beside me out of the warehouse. She was a bit puzzled as to why I also wanted an illusory Ladybug--as far as she knew, Ladybug had been buried in that rubble the whole time, and had only been shaken awake when Marinette had fallen on top of her.

But she coped pretty well when I took off Ladybug's earrings to reveal Marinette's china-white face.

"Oh, you're fucking kidding me," she said.

What Paris saw climb out of the ruins was Cat Noir carrying an unconscious Marinette, Ladybug limping alongside them, and Adrien, looking thoughtful but unharmed, bringing up the rear. Hawkmoth was gone by that point, but it was caught on camera. Nadia Chamok was there to wave a microphone at us and ask us how we felt. I declined to answer.

Rena was silent on the way to the hospital, gritting her teeth to keep the illusion in place. I didn't have much energy to spare for her--I was too worried about Marinette--but I managed a feeble smile when we ducked into the lobby of an apartment building by the hospital, and she took off the illusion.

I transformed back into myself--I figured Adrien would have a marginally better chance of being allowed to stay by Marinette's side than Cat Noir. And, after giving me a surly look from head to toe, Rena transformed too.

"You're the best, Alya," I said, hoisting Marinette in my arms and heading for the door.

Alya just prodded me in the back and told me to 'hurry the fuck up'. Probably everything she said to me for the next few days would have a swear-word in it.

The moment we got to the hospital lobby, Marinette was hoisted out of my arms and whisked off on a stretcher. Alya and I tried to keep up with the doctors, as they wheeled her through corridors, asking us occasional questions about her injuries. But they managed to shake us off--there was a pair of big, forbidding double-doors that we weren't allowed through--and we traipsed back to the lobby to wait for news.

After ten minutes, we saw her parents whirl past, wringing their hands and knocking into things. I tried not to notice how pale her mother was. I tried not to think of them asking themselves how Marinette could have despaired like that, when they loved her so much. I wasn't just the one who had made her despair in the first place, I was the power-house behind the worst of it. But I couldn't tell anyone that. Maybe I wouldn't even be able to tell Marinette.

I wasn't sure how much she would remember. Sometimes the akuma-victims never recovered their memories of what they'd done--what had been done to them. I wanted that to be the case for Marinette--I didn't want her to suffer--but how was I going to start from the beginning, explaining what I knew and how I felt? Especially as I hadn't slept in twenty-four hours, or eaten anything besides hot chocolate.

Alya didn't speak to me much. She watched me fidgeting, standing up and sitting down again, absent-mindedly signing autographs for the nurses. Maybe she was still angry with me, but she saw that I needed some kind of distraction, because she opened up a game of scrabble on her phone and invited me to play.

It was probably good for both of us. When Nino turned up, and she raised her head to look at him, I saw that tears had been sliding silently down her cheeks without my noticing.

I didn't have the heart to make her play after that, especially after Nino folded her up in his arms. I moved a few seats down to give them some privacy--and to try and avoid hating them for being so lucky.

I lay down across a couple of chairs and dozed, jerking awake every half-hour to demand if they'd heard any news. It was hard to relax, even when they told me she was fine--if a broken leg, three fractured ribs and a concussion could be called 'fine'. My nerves had been wound up so tight. I'd been living through my worst nightmare for twenty-four hours, and I didn't trust the horrors to stop.

To my vague surprise, my father didn't turn up and order me home. I'd been expecting Nathalie to stroll in with an iPad screen at least, so that he could yell at me remotely. But the sun went down, Alya and Nino headed home, and still nobody came for me.

At about eleven, the bodyguard turned up and took a seat in the row of plastic chairs behind me. He didn't speak to me--but then he seldom does. I figured he had told my father that I'd lied about the unscheduled day off, and he was there as a silent reminder that there would be consequences. I didn't care. I didn't care if a whole plane-load of consequences landed on my head tomorrow, as long as he let me stay in the hospital tonight.

***

Something like silence settled on the hospital lobby. Fewer people were rushed through on stretchers, the chatter of the nurses, paramedics and porters became muted, or trailed off entirely. The smell of strong coffee replaced the sound of talk. I looked back once, at around midnight, to see my bodyguard asleep in his chair. I genuinely don't know his name. Marinette found out later, but I never asked her. I treasure my ignorance of that guy.

I was aching for sleep, but I couldn't stand the thought of going home while everything was still so uncertain. I didn't know if I'd really saved her yet. I didn't know if she would still be Marinette, after everything she'd been through. And I didn't know if she still loved me.

That shouldn't have mattered. At the very least, it should have been secondary to everything else. But it kept bobbing to the surface of my thoughts, no matter how much I tried to distract myself.

I read magazines, I pillaged the vending machine for snacks--that kept me busy for a while, because I'd never had cheap, unhealthy, mass-produced food before. I was fascinated by the candy bars and potato chips. They didn't exactly taste good, they just left a weird, compulsive film of grease on my tongue. I had to try them again just to be sure of what I'd really tasted.

And then I discovered the coffee machine. It was stationed just opposite the door to Marinette's room, and examining it gave me an excuse to linger there, and see what I could guess about the room beyond through the gaps in the blinds.

It looked as if only her mother was in there with her. Maybe the hospital staff had made up a bed for her father in another room. Bakers probably had to go to bed early.

I got myself a coffee from the machine--another rare treat, drinking coffee this bad--and wondered if I could use it as an excuse for going in there--if I could knock on the door and say, "Excuse me, Mrs Dupain-Cheng, I was just getting myself a coffee and wondered if you wanted anything?'

I tried out five or six coffee-related excuses in my head, but I forgot them all when I finally plucked up the courage to knock.

Mrs Dupain-Cheng came to the door. She was rubbing her eyes, as if she wasn't used to being up this late, but she smiled when she saw me.

"How are you, Adrien? I'm sorry she hasn't woken--she'd be so happy to know you'd stayed."

She hadn't asked me why I'd stayed, or whether anyone was expecting me at home. She had just accepted me, without any questions or concern, as if she knew how desperately I wanted to avoid talking at the moment.

She should have been a reassuring sight--she didn't look out of her mind with worry--but it was hard to meet her eyes. She reminded me so much of my own mother--the hushed voice, the warm, wordless acceptance. And the room disoriented me. I hadn't been prepared for the sight of Marinette, or the sound of the heart-monitor she was hooked up to. That steady, intrusive beeping made everything worse.

My mother was never in hospital, of course. One day she was there, and the next, she was gone. But I'd seen enough TV shows to associate the beeping of a heart monitor with desperate times.

Still, its rhythm was slow and steady. Marinette's leg was in plaster, and raised up in a kind of harness over the bed, but she wasn't hooked up to any tubes, and there was colour in her cheeks, as if she was still being Marinette--hopelessly clumsy but on fire with enthusiasm--in her dreams.

I realized Mrs Dupain-Cheng was looking at me expectantly, and I forced myself to say something.

"I... came to see if you wanted a rest. I can sit up with her, I don't mind. I've got coffee," I said, holding out my plastic cup, as if I thought she wouldn't believe me. "Please?" I added, when she paused.

She nodded and patted me on the shoulder. Just like my mother--no need for words when a touch or a smile would do.

"Promise to call me if she wakes up?" she said, gathering up her things from the chair by Marinette's bedside.

I nodded, and tried to return her smile.

When she left the room, shutting the door behind her, I listened for a moment--to the sound of her footsteps as they retreated down the corridor, to the remorseless beeping of that heart monitor.

"Tikki?" I said.

For the first time since we'd arrived, Plagg stirred in my pocket.

"Asleep under her pillow," he murmured.

"Are you sure?"

He poked his head out and gave me his most supercilious expression. I decided not to argue.

I sank down in the chair next to Marinette's bed, trying not to knock anything over. Flowers and cards had arrived already, and had been heaped onto the tables on either side of her bed. I wondered if any of them were from Luka.

She looked so pretty, in spite of everything. Her blue-black hair had been tied in its usual bunches. She was smiling faintly in her sleep.

It was such an inexpressible relief--not just to see her, but to see her looking so much like herself. I felt like I'd been holding my breath for twenty-four hours, and now I could finally exhale. I didn't know what she was going to say to me when she woke up, but I knew she was always going to be her.

After a while, Plagg crept out of my pocket and flew up to my shoulder. He pretended her was just stretching after his nap, but I knew he wanted to look at her too.

"Why didn't I see her, Plagg?" I said, leaning back in my chair. "I mean, forget that she has Ladybug's eyes, Ladybug's hairstyle, Ladybug's voice and Ladybug's figure. Forget all about Ladybug, in fact, and just look at her. She's beautiful. Why didn't I notice?"

"I have a few theories," said Plagg.

I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn't.

"Well?"

"You're not going to like them."

I sighed, and wondered if there was any way to escape hearing about them now. But, in a weird way, I wanted to know. I never wanted to be in that position again, where I had to reel from one horrified realization to another, as if they were all ranged round me in a circle, taking turns to punch me in the face. Where I only knew my true feelings when it was too late, and only knew my worst nightmare when it was coming true. I would face up to any number of unpleasant truths about myself to avoid going through that again.

"Well, look at the women you allowed yourself to notice," said Plagg. "Ladybug and Kagami. They're fierce and fearless and it's pretty hard to imagine either of them getting hurt. You never had to worry about them. But this one," he said, turning tender eyes on Marinette, "she was too real, too vulnerable, too easy to lose. You couldn't stay away from her, but you could cut down on the terror she inspired in you by screening her out, insisting she was just a friend, shutting down your brain whenever it tried to put two and two together. You're good at that."

I sighed again and buried my face in my hands. I wanted to throttle him, I wanted to burst into tears, and I wanted to laugh. All three at once.

"You mean I went through all this because I was afraid of going through all this?"

He gave me a forlorn smile. "Pretty much. But you did brilliantly. You could have shut down, you could have given up--you wanted to."

With an effort, I lifted my head from my hands and looked at him. "I'm not angry, Plagg. If she can recover from this, so can I. If she doesn't--if she has scars or complications, or even nightmares--I'm going to track him down, and I'm going to kill him."

"I'll help you," said Plagg.

I didn't know how long I had been thinking this. There'd been no time to dwell on the anger before--though I had known it was there.

It didn't really matter what he'd done to me, although I was sure I'd be having nightmares about this for a long time to come. But seeing Marinette like this--knowing she had been this injured, or worse, when Hawkmoth had decided to use her--made up my mind.

And it was liberating to finally make up my mind. I didn't have the burden of trying to find a good side to him, or trying to find something constructive to do with my anger. I hated him and he was going to pay. The end.

I leaned forward and rested my head on the edge of the bed. I guess I must have fallen asleep--or at least passed out--because the next thing I knew, there was a hand on my head, gently stroking me awake.

"Kitty," she said, in a voice that was sleepy and slurred.

I think if I'd been less startled, I would have stayed there and enjoyed the feel of her hand on my hair--I would have put off the moment where she pulled it back, as she inevitably did when she saw my face.

Her eyes widened--I could see the blush starting in her cheeks--but instead of blurting out something wild and meaningless, she took a deep breath and said, "But it is you. Isn't it?"

I opened my mouth, and then closed it again. I wanted to ask her how she knew, but I didn't trust my voice to stay steady, so I just nodded.

Again, I could almost trace her thoughts through her expressions. She looked pained and tender, smiling and wincing, as if it hurt to realize that I'd been Cat Noir all along, but she couldn't look into my face and be sorry.

"How did you-?" I managed.  

Her forehead furrowed, and she blinked hard, as if she was trying to pull herself together. "You said 'I am not doing this again'," she breathed. "It wasn't Adrien who sacrificed me last time. It was Cat Noir." 

I half-closed my eyes, realising how easy it was to betray yourself if you weren't paying attention. And now we both knew the truth. We were in trouble. 

She was still blushing--possibly she was still despairing--but she felt for my hand on the bed and managed a smile. "My kitty."

"My lady," I said, my throat tight.

She probably heard everything I'd been through in my voice, because her smile froze, and she tried to look into my eyes.

"Adrien... Are you O-?"

I shook my head to dismiss the question--although I guess it was also an answer.

"Just rest now," I said. "You've got a broken leg, three fractured ribs and a concussion."

"Oh. That must be why I'm talking to you so coheringly." She blinked and looked up at the ceiling. "Coheringly?"

On a sudden impulse, I leaned forward and blurted out, "Marinette, I've been so dumb-"

She blinked again, startled, but I pulled myself back from the brink of being even dumber. "Sorry," I said. "Time for that later. Rest now."

She didn't know what I meant. She must have been pretty out of it. I wondered if she would remember anything about this conversation tomorrow.

She leaned back against the pillows and shut her eyes. She still had my hand--she had placed it on her stomach, just below her bandaged ribs, without seeming to realize what she was doing. I didn't pull away.

Her breathing was slow and steady, and for a moment I thought she was going to go back to sleep. But then her forehead creased.

"Adrien?" she said, without opening her eyes. "Did I hurt anybody?"

"No."

"Did I hurt you?"

I tried to shake my head, but the enormity of the lie paralysed me. "Not your fault," I said, in the same tight-throated voice.

She opened one eye apprehensively. "I'm so sorry. If I'd known y--Cat Noir--had already lost somebody, I would never have asked him to leave me. It was all my own fault I got trapped down there--I shouldn't have relied on him to bail me out."

"Was it all your own fault?" I muttered, looking down at the covers.

She didn't understand what I meant at first. The concussion was still slowing her reactions. Then I saw her frown and try to sit up--only her ribs were bandaged too tightly.

"Don't you dare--"

"What are you doing?" I said, trying to force her back down without hurting her. "Didn't you hear me say you had three fractured ribs?"

"I'm not just going to sit back and let you blame yourself!"

"Oh, you are so Ladybug," I said, pushing her down on the bed a little less gently. "I can't believe I didn't see it before."

She lay still for a moment, but the creases on her forehead didn't go away.

"Are you disappointed?" she said, in a small voice.

I narrowed my eyes. "Disappointed? That Ladybug turned out to be the only person in the world I loved as much as Ladybug?"

"But... you loved me in a different way..."

Her eyes were shut, but her voice was gentle. She wasn't going to pretend it didn't hurt, but she didn't want to make me feel bad either. Like I said before, endless love. I could see it even when her eyes were closed now.

"I thought I did," I said heavily. "No, you know what? I don't think I thought about it at all. Plagg says I was trying to screen you out, because I was afraid of falling in love--only I couldn't stop myself from falling in love, I could only stop myself from realizing it."

I broke off. Her heart monitor was beeping so fast that the separate beats had almost blurred together. I felt a lurch of panic and dragged my hand away.

"Sorry. We can talk about this when you're feeling better."

She blushed, as if she'd been caught out, and then settled back against the pillows, looking adorably sulky. "Stupid heart monitor," she muttered, under her breath.

I smiled. "Marinette, I'm glad it's there."

"You meant it? What you said in the warehouse?"

"That I love you? Yes."

She looked down at the sheets. "Because it's OK if you don't feel the same way about Marinette as you did about Ladybug. It's messed-up, getting to know two different people and then finding out they're the same person. There's no right or wrong way to feel."

I stared at her. She was ploughing determinedly through this speech without meeting my eyes, as if she wouldn't have the strength to keep going if she looked at me. It was such a noble, selfless, Marinette thing to do--no, a Ladybug thing to do. At that moment, the two of them coalesced in my mind like they never had before. I lurched forward and planted a kiss on her cheek.

"Maribug," I said--a name that came to me on the spur of the moment, but felt oddly familiar on my tongue. "Maribug, stop it--stop being so you. But also, never stop being so you."

I kissed her cheek again, her forehead, and the tip of her nose--I guess I thought, in my sleep-deprived mind, that if I avoided her lips, the heart-monitor wouldn't reproach me with its beeps. But I was in no state to be restrained, and Marinette kissed me back, and in the end the beeps got drowned out by my own thumping heartbeat.

When I opened my eyes, her hand was buried in my hair, and she was laughing--or half-laughing and half-crying.

"Oh, what am I going to do?" she spluttered. "I'm so happy. How am I going to keep my mind on the job now I know you're you? How am I going to concentrate on supervillains now I know that face is under there?"

I laughed again. I loved how her imagination hurtled down these roads, without being able to stop itself. She had folded me in, and not just because her arms were round me. When Marinette talked to you, you were never on the outside. Everything was a wild scheme or an unbridled disaster, and she would invite you in, share it with you, speak to you as if you were part of it all. That breathy, confidential voice, the stream-of-consciousness babbling, the expressions--god, I could look at her for a hundred years and never get tired of her expressions! Why had I never realized how happy she made me?

I kissed her forehead and said, "Let me get your mother. I promised I'd wake her when you came round."

I headed for the door, but she called me back.

"Wait--Adrien," she hissed. "What do they know? Is everything...out?"

"No," I said. "All these flowers and gifts are for Marinette, not Ladybug."

"But how did you...?"

I told her about Rena's illusion. I told her how I'd led her into the warehouse where Ladybug had disappeared to make it seem as if she'd been there all along and Hawkmoth had just missed her in the rubble.

I guess I was boasting--Cat Noir got the better of me--because she was smiling and shaking her head by the time I'd finished.

"You were brilliant, Kitty. I can't believe you walked into that warehouse with no superpowers--with a real miraculous clutched in each hand--and just held them under the nose of the akuma-victim! And Master Fu let you!"

"Trust, princess," I said. "There was no universe in which you would have disappointed us."

This was an over-simplification, of course, but I didn't tell her about my misgivings. It's my job--as a model and as a superhero--to look more confident than I feel. And anyway, I hadn't doubted her ability to fight the akuma, I had just doubted her ability to love me.

She nudged me with her shoulder, smiling and self-conscious.

"You must have been very sure that the sight of Adrien would get through to me."

"Well, my face is my fortune."

She laughed. "Just don't underestimate your brain, that's all I'm saying."