When I woke up, there was sunlight, and the smell of jasmine tea. I stared blankly at the ceiling for a moment, trying to work out whether it had just been a really intense nightmare. But the ceiling wasn't my ceiling--it didn't stretch up for fifteen metres and end in an ornate chandelier--so I knew something was off.

I sat up so fast that my vision blurred, rolled out of bed, and managed to land on my feet. What kind of person would let me sleep until morning--and make himself a pot of tea--when Ladybug was out there, pinned under falling cinder-blocks, maybe already in Hawkmoth's clutches?

Or maybe not. That was worse, wasn't it? Because he wouldn't bother to capture a corpse.

I marched downstairs--I don't think I even stopped to check that I was dressed--and opened doors at random, following the scent of jasmine tea. I found Master Fu in his study, kneeling beside a pallet-bed that contained Tikki. Some of the soot had been cleaned off her skin, but her antennae were still bent.

I have no idea if Master Fu tried to speak to me. I went straight to Tikki, kneeling down beside her bed and leaning over her in a way that was probably gentle and frantic at the same time.

"Tikki," I whispered. "Is she alive?"

Tikki stirred, but didn't open her eyes. "No--I--I don't know. I can't feel anything."

I put my hands over my mouth, but I could feel the desperation burning in my eyes instead. It would get out somehow.

"Please, Tikki," I managed to say.

For a very, very long time, she didn't answer me. She was whispering feverishly, but I couldn't string the noises into words, no matter how hard I tried. I was sagging by that point, curling up around the pain, but I still took a deep, stupid, hopeful breath when her eyelids fluttered open.

"Wait," she said. "Yes. It's dark. She can't tell if her eyes are open. And there are things fluttering through the air above her, landing on her. Butterflies."

I stood up so fast that my vision blurred again, and rounded on Master Fu, who was arranging glazed, handle-less teacups on a tray.

"He's got her," I said. "Hawkmoth."

Master Fu didn't look up at me immediately. He must have wanted to get those cups just right. I had a sudden urge to pick them up and hurl them against the wall.

"If she's alive, then we won't have long to wait," he said grimly. "He will akumatize her before Tikki has recovered, because he knows that only Tikki's power can save her."

"But she's--she's injured too. Her leg's broken. He can't--" I stopped, realizing how little I wanted him to answer this question. "Can he?"

"I imagine," said Master Fu, "that he will give her some kind of flying ability. That way she'll still be able to get around. As for the rest, it won't concern him. It might even make things easier. The weaker she is, the more susceptible she will be to his control."

I reached out for something to steady myself. My hand found the teapot, and it took me a long time to realize that it was hot. Even then, I snatched my hand away slowly, as if I was moving through water. "He's evil," I said.

"He's desperate," said Master Fu. "Just like you." He lifted the lid of the teapot and stared thoughtfully into its depths. "Your emotional signatures are almost indistinguishable now..."

I couldn't take much of this in--though it turned out to be important later. I bunched my hands up into fists and said, "Plagg, claws out."

It was only then that I noticed the lightness of my right hand--the strange, naked feeling that comes from the absence of something you've worn day and night for months. There was no ring. And no Plagg.

For a moment, I was too bewildered to be angry. I didn't see what cause this old man had to make my life even harder than it already was. I looked at my finger and said, "Did...did you take my ring?"

"I need to talk to you," said Master Fu.

"There's no time--you said it yourself!"

"There is always time to stop and think. You think she would go charging off like this?"

That quietened me--though it didn't exactly calm me.

"Well?" I said, tightening my lips.

"I think Hawkmoth has unwittingly stumbled upon your worst nightmare."

For some reason, that made me even angrier. Maybe it was the thought of Hawkmoth 'unwittingly stumbling' into this--as if he hadn't meant it. As if he hadn't trapped her and used the akuma-victim to bring down the building on top of us. As if he wasn't keeping her in the dark.

I clenched my jaw in an effort to keep my voice steady, and said, "My worst nightmares were never as elaborate as this."

"Well, exactly. You are afraid of losing someone you love again. He can sense it. Even I can sense it, and I don't have his powers. I think he might use it against you--or possibly against Marinette."

I stared at him. It was the first time he had ever used her real name to me. It was the first time since I'd woken up that I'd allowed myself to think of her as Marinette instead of Ladybug.

It lashed out at me again--my sweet friend, soft-hearted and sensitive and fourteen years old--lying abandoned in the dark. And before that--all the things that I now knew she had suffered because of me. It was too much. I wasn't old enough for this. Why in God's name had he picked two teenagers to be superheroes in the first place?

I think I would have sunk to my knees if Tikki hadn't been there. Even in her feverish state, she was sensitive to other people's feelings. She half-sat up on her pallet-bed and whispered, "She's not afraid. She trusts us. He won't find it easy to akumatize her."

"That's what I'm afraid of," said Master Fu.

I narrowed my eyes. "You think he'll try to akumatize me?"

"I think he will use your negative emotions to akumatize Marinette."

"Can he do that?"

Master Fu heaved his shoulders into a shrug. "With certain, closely-aligned people. Brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, partners. Your despair will prove too tempting a target for him to ignore, and he only needs to find an answering chord of despair in Marinette, no matter how small--" he looked away from me "--or how well-hidden."

He probably thought he was being tactful, but his words slammed into me like a wrecking-ball. How could Hawkmoth fail to find an answering chord of despair in her? She'd been in love with someone who didn't love her back for years--someone too oblivious to pick up on her feelings, someone who pestered her for romantic advice and forced her to come on his dates with other women.

Oh God, it was never finished. There was always some new angle to this nightmare--some fresh, horrific realization that could make it even worse.

"I want my ring back," I said faintly.

"If you were me," said Master Fu, "would you give the power of destruction to someone so angry?"

I straightened up. "If you don't give it to me, I'll go and fight him on my own. As Adrien. And I'll be killed, that's certain. What you have to decide is whether you want one certain death on your conscience or lots of uncertain ones." I held out my hand for the ring. I was suddenly sure he wouldn't refuse to give it to me. "You trusted me once," I said. "I don't think you abandon your trust that easily."

He smiled. It was a very weary, watery-eyed smile, and as soon as he'd given into it, he turned sharply and started to pour the tea. I realized for the first time that he was powerfully upset--it was just that he was old, and used to conserving his energies. He didn't get upset in the same way I did. It didn't mean he was heartless.

"Well," he said stiffly, "you are correct, so far as it goes. I never intended to keep the ring from you. And I'm quite sure that, if I had tried, Plagg would have found a way to steal it and sneak it back to you."

He glanced at the record-player, where Plagg was sitting, almost invisible on the black lacquer-work. He was curled up in his usual sulky pose, but he wasn't sulking. His ears were pricked up, his muscles tensed, as if he'd been preparing himself to spring. I didn't know what he had been about to do--snatch the ring, claw Master Fu's face, or hold me back if I tried to attack him--but I knew he had been about to do it for my sake.

"I needed to make you stop and think," Master Fu continued. "Hawkmoth thinks he is torturing you, by forcing your loved one to embody your worst fears, but he is actually giving you an opportunity. If you can control your fear, you can control the akuma-victim."

I wanted to laugh and say 'Simple as that, is it?' But I wanted that ring, so I kept my mouth shut.

He dropped it into my palm, and Plagg flew to me, perching on my shoulder and giving it a little, reassuring squeeze with his claws. I tried not to look at him. I didn't know that I'd forgiven him for letting me break Marinette's heart. But I felt better, all the same.

"You have a plan?" said Master Fu.

"Yes," I said, sliding the ring onto my finger and clenching my hand to keep it there. "No. I don't know."

I had the beginnings of a plan, but there was a huge blank space in the middle of it--the space that I guessed Marinette was going to occupy. I didn't know what she would look like--what powers she would have--what it would do to me to see her animated by my own despair. You couldn't plan for something like that.

"I need the others," I said, "but I don't know how to find them. I don't know who any of them are, except for Chloe."

"Leave that to me," said Master Fu. "I suggest you go home, try to eat something, check in with the people who will be worrying about you." He caught my surly look and smiled. "That is, the people who will notice your absence. Believe me, you'll know when it has started."

I nodded. The thought of eating turned my stomach, but I needed something to keep me on my feet. And even the huge, marble-floored, empty house, even the thought of seeing my father--or not seeing him, which is the usual situation these days--seemed comforting to me now.

I don't hate him, you know. His arms are chilly and his expectations are immense, but in one way, at least, I've never disappointed him. I'm good-looking. He thinks that's a virtue--better than courage, way better than kindness.

In a way, it's easy to see how you could equate good looks with being a good person. All my life, people have beamed at me--gasped at me--exclaimed 'Oh, how adorable!' Everywhere I went, they were glad to see me--sometimes too glad, but I was seldom around them for long enough to realize that. I thought everyone was warm and kind and full of joy. My first photo-shoot, when I was five, I didn't even notice the camera. I was just playing in the park with my mother. I knew I was wearing special clothes and I wasn't allowed to get them dirty, but I was having so much fun that I was barely aware of anything else. The photographer said afterwards that, if joy could have broken a camera lens, he would have found out that day.

That was how it was until my mother disappeared. I'd known nothing but joy and kindness and comfort all my life, and suddenly--overnight--the joy and kindness were gone, and the comfort wasn't all that comforting.

So, in order to keep the darkness from rushing in, everything--every question, every thought, every scrap of curiosity in my head--rushed out.

It all had to come back now--I had to out-think Marinette. And I didn't care if it brought the darkness with it.