LADYBUG'S PATROL WITH PIGELLA MARKED six weeks without Chat Noir.

Pigella had asked about him, not in the way Viperion had, but as part of the good-natured conversation she always made while they did their round of Paris. How is Chat Noir doing? and, I bet he can relax now that Hawk Moth is gone and, boy, it's been so long since I've seen him. Well-meaning, oblivious, that sort of thing.

Tikki often told Marinette that the Miraculous was not to be used for her personal motivations. When she was fourteen and trying to win Adrien's affection in the grandest, most convoluted ways, she'd hated that restriction. But over the years, growing up and calming down, Ladybug now appreciated the boundary as what it was: a safeguard.

It kept the lines between personal and professional clear. It told her when she had to think of the city before all else, and when she could think of herself. Lately, it was strange: she would lie awake on a non-patrol night, bone-tired and somehow unable to sleep, and she wanted to use her Bug Phone to call Chat Noir.

She wanted to say that the work wasn't done when the baddie was defeated, turns out. That there was a lot of pressure on her and the superhero team right now with the Peacock Miraculous still out there. That she needed him.

Lately, it was strange: that desire was purely professional—right?—and yet she admonished and convinced herself out of it the same way Tikki had when she wanted to yo-yo across Adrien's mansion's gate. Leave the voicemails for patrol nights, she decided.

The next week, it was Polymouse.

After she transformed back into Mylène Haprèle and scurried from the alleyway towards her house, Ladybug pulled her Bug Phone out immediately. She would call on her way home and try to make it back before Friday poured over into Saturday.

There was an early morning bakery shift waiting for her in seven hours' time.

"By the way," she launched into the voicemails now without a preamble. If Cat Walker had been at the other side, by now she would have gotten a polite notice that most unfortunately, Chat Noir was still away, but he would pass on her message. The void meant her kitty was out there, somewhere, listening to her. "That Cat Walker guy? What a character. You have very interesting fur-ends."

Silence, where there should have been a groaning laugh.

"That was a claw-ful pun," she continued. Crickets chirped. Not literally, seeing as the only wildlife in the heart of Paris were rats and pigeons, but still, Ladybug heard them inside her head. Was she going mad?

She was going mad.

She ended the call.

She'd boarded the same circular train of thought that had plagued her for as long as she cared to remember.

Ladybug was hesitant to describe her kitten as lazy or irresponsible. Forgetful was the most common excuse these days, because Chat Noir had once told her that the most fun he ever had was with her, on these patrols, fighting baddies. But the longer he stayed away, with no apology or explanation, the more Ladybug was concerned something was keeping him away.

Four years of working together, it still sometimes hit Ladybug how strange their relationship was.

She'd call them partners, but that word didn't encompass how her mind had been (tragically) rewired to preempt the cat puns that Chat Noir would make a split second later, and how she could easily recognise his laugh in a noisy crowd of hundreds. She would recognise the sound anywhere, and yet she didn't even know his name. Or his age. If he was a student, or if he worked, or where he lived.

Sometimes, back when he was around, she would stare and stare and try to figure out what parts of his face were real and which were fabrications of the quantum mask. These observations only ever inhabited a split second—like that moment they shared after Scarabella left and Ladybug returned, or before she left for New York—before she remembered herself, her responsibilities, the secrets she needed to resist chasing.

Ladybug would forcibly think, stop looking and then stop looking. The secrets were a good thing.

Now they had left her deducing why Chat Noir had vanished.

Deducing that Plagg would have found Marinette if Chat Noir had been injured, or worse. Unless Plagg had fallen into the wrong hands, like Nooroo and Duusu. And yet no supervillain had appeared. Was Chat Noir safe? What was he doing?

She kept fearing the day that she woke up to Plagg, holding the ring, needing to find a new wielder. Whenever she eased open the door to that line of thinking, a bolt of white terror would strike her square in the throat. She always slammed it shut and retreated.

A forceful tide of anger rose up in her chest.

Before Ladybug could reason with herself, she was double-calling. A light sprinkle of rain started, heralding what would probably be the fourth bout of rain this week. Her suit kept her warm, but not dry, and she walked quickly in order to make it home before the downpour.

Her voice emerged pissed off and sad. "Oh, my God. Forget the puns in my last message. I've started having one-person conversations to fill in your side of the dialogue."

She put a palm to her forehead. "As you can see, Chat Noir, it's dire. Your comedic skills have left a hole in the superhero team that I really didn't expect to exist. Hopefully, it will be filled when you return. Bug out."

Please. Please, please, please.

Come back.

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"You said what?" Alya hissed.

"Claw-ful."

Alya's brow furrowed. "Girl."

"I know." Marinette rolled over on her chaise longue and covered her reddening face with her hands. "I know. It was as bad as it sounds." A weak moment, a low in her impulse control.

She never fumbled over her words with Chat Noir. In the past, talking to him had been like talking to a best friend—but now, at the dial tone, she was simultaneously unthinking yet overanalysing her tone and her humour and her word choices. Why was it terrifying to leave a simple voicemail?

"Maybe he will find it endearing?" Alya chuckled, only half joking.

Her best friend sat at the desk, one foot tucked up and the other spinning the wheelie chair in half-revolutions. Files of akumatisation victims filled Alya's laptop screen before she clicked into the next person on her spreadsheet.

While Alya was steadily helping to thicken Heloise Hessenpy's evidence dossier, Marinette was spinning out. Helpful, totally. Since school let out for La Toussaint, she came over nearly every afternoon. Marinette's parents merely thought the girls were taking their last year of high school extremely seriously—which‌ was true, if the course content was everything in the Agreste case ring binder and the final exam was a Cour d'Appel hearing.

Marinette was much less productive than Alya. Her attention was diverted—stupid kitty—and with no reason to appear in public till school started again, she was aware her personal upkeep had suffered. She woke this morning with unkempt hair, raging dark under-eyes and a deathly pallor to her face, almost scaring herself in the mirror.

"I don't want to be endearing, I want to be terrifying. I want him to rue the day he walked out on me, and I want him to come back. Rue, do you hear me?"

Alya shook her head, as if the solution were the most obvious thing in the world. "So stop the passive aggression or weird deflections or bad puns. Just say I miss you, come back. Easy."

The thought had something twisting, hard, in Marinette's stomach. No, no, no. I miss you. She didn't want to say that out loud. It felt like falling on her own sword. She would much rather keep reminding Chat Noir of his professional responsibilities to Paris and the team and her.

"Who is it this Friday?" Alya continued.

"Ryuko, but she has already given me notice that she can't make it."

Kagami Tsurugi had a fencing tournament in Brussels over the weekend, and she would depart on Thursday. The organised woman she was, she had provided Ladybug a detailed schedule of her academic and extracurricular life the day she signed onto the forensic department.

"Maybe go alone instead of bumping the next person up," Alya suggested. "Clear your head, and this time, be completely sincere when you call him. No puns."

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Ladybug tried to take Alya's advice.

When the end of the week rolled around, she set out into the darkness, alone.

She started from the rooftop of Le Grand Paris, imagining Adrien milling about his lonely nights inside. It hurt to think of him. It hurt to hurt him.

Before Hawk Moth was unmasked, Ladybug had considered herself an expert at compartmentalising her personal and professional life. With her mask on, she became focused, decisive, and in control. The only times those qualities faltered were whenever Adrien Agreste came into the picture.

Every time Ladybug saw those grass green eyes, she transformed back into the clumsy, babbling schoolgirl she'd tried to outgrow. She was Marinette once more, getting to interview her longtime crush, and it was torture whenever she caught a whiff of him or noticed the veins in his forearms.

During their first few interviews, she hadn't known how to interrogate properly, but she was learning.

They usually met once per week. They dissected his work for Gabriel, the brand, Hawk Moth's appearance in Shanghai, and how his father chose all his hobbies and commitments for him. Gabriel kept Adrien locked up in that mansion-prison, dictating when he left and when he returned.

None of Adrien's perfect life had been voluntary. That was one of the coldest existences she could imagine. She had known this boy since she was fourteen, and every day since their meeting had only convinced her more that he was the love of her life. It wasn't a schoolgirl he needed right now.

He needed someone like Ladybug. To prove him innocent. To save him.

The things Heloise wanted to know about Adrien were only getting worse—better for the trial, but worse—and Ladybug kept thinking one day Adrien would decline to answer. "I'm sorry, but I don't want to talk about it," he should say, gentle but firm, and ask Ladybug to come back another time.

Except he never did. He always unfurled his head for Ladybug, letting her in with a scalpel and a camera, even as she could see the light in his grass green eyes freezing over. Emotional anaesthetic. She hated this part of the job.

Ladybug leapt down from the roof and landed on a ledge that wrapped around the second highest floor. She hoped his drinking didn't become a habit. On her patrols around the city, she yearned to knock on the window, check on him, and continue their conversations into the night, but...

Well. Her powers were not to be used for personal gain.

In the next arrondissement, Ladybug crouched atop a billboard and watched the lamp-lit streets of Paris.

A love struck couple was dancing underneath the moonlit clouds, visibly intoxicated, but walking straight and in good company. Aside from that, nothing. She waited until they slipped inside an apartment building to stretch her legs.

This district was clear. Ladybug's yo-yo wrapped around the chimney of a nearby building and she let the tension drag her through the air. A blur of darkness streaked across the sky. Ladybug's head whipped to face it, expecting to see Chat Noir leaping between rooftops, making his way to her. But it was just a pigeon.

Back at the rendezvous point, the Eiffel Tower was an ornate silhouette against the night sky. She smiled, nostalgia washing over her.

Her kitty loved heights. There was a time in the ripe middle of their partnership when they'd tried to finish patrols thoroughly but quickly, so they could test the limits of their powers—which was a code for playtime. Ladybug remembered how they used to compete.

Who could scale the Eiffel Tower the quickest? Who had the best precision launching themselves through the cavities in its metal frame? Who could land the furthest away if they jumped from the top? (Her, her, him.)

That ripe middle. After the lime green beginning when Ladybug felt like an imposter and refused to let her guard down for something as juvenile as playing with their powers. But before . . . this. Whatever this was. Whatever they had become. She shouldn't be feeling nostalgic about Chat Noir! He should be here, with her, on patrol.

He shouldn't even be giving her enough time and space to miss him.

This time, be completely sincere when you call him.

She called. His voicemail recited its speech. The tone beeped.

And Ladybug said: "Chat Noir, I really fucking miss you. I hope you're doing okay, wherever you are. Please come back to me soon. Bug out."

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A / N :

(please don't ever become a stranger

whose laugh i could recognise anywhere)