PLAGG WAS IN THE BATHROOM with Adrien when Ladybug returned to Le Grand Paris.

If there was any lingering doubt, seeing Plagg mewling encouraging words to Adrien, who was dry-heaving over the sink, cemented it. Chat Noir. Adrien. Chat Noir. The two boys she loved were one and the same, and instead of any measure of relief, she was devastated for all the things he'd had to endure alone.

"Adrien," she said. The faucet was running, and he looked up into the mirror when she stepped into the cramped space. His green eyes were bloodshot, cheeks ashen, the ends of his golden hair flattened and dripping.

Instantly his expression crumpled into anguish. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "There's— a sentimonster— on the loose. Me, Chat Noir, but different."

"Rena Rouge and Carapace have the situation sorted." Oh my God. It was really just the four of them—Adrien, Nino, Alya, and Marinette—running around trying to hold the city together. What an impossible, crazy fate; not the ones she chose herself, but the first teammate she ever had, the first boy she ever loved. The boy I love.

Adrien coughed once, his fingers gripping the edges of the sink tightly. "I thought I could fix this on my own."

She walked to his side, placing a comforting hand between his shoulder blades. "You still can. But not on your own."

Adrien's right hand scooped a palm of water into his mouth, which he prompted swirled and spat out. By the time he turned the faucet off, Plagg had helpfully brought a flannel for him to wipe his face with. He kept his face hidden in the cloth for such a long time that Ladybug finally noticed the soft trembling of his shoulders, his imperceptible hitching breaths, and forced his hands down with a gentle touch.

Adrien wouldn't meet her eyes. He stared at his shoes, silent tears dripping onto the tile, while she held onto his wrist. "My life can't be fixed. My dad is going to rot for the rest of his miserable life—however long that lasts—and you're going to get married to some fucker with horrible taste in jewelry," what? "and after the trial nothing will ever be the same with my friends again."

The corners of her eyes stung. Seeing him cry made her want to cry. Since the very start of the trial, she'd ached thinking about Adrien's burdens with his father, and later she came to ache thinking about Chat Noir and the unnamed person he lost. Now the two threads had twisted together, and her pain had likewise doubled. She hated not being able to fix everything.

"Yes, things will be different, and we'll be different," she sniffed, "but different can be good. Better."

With shaking fingers, she pushed Adrien's wet hair off his forehead. He let her, and at her touch his eyes fluttered closed. "Plagg said the same thing about Destruction. Things getting worse before they get better. Sometimes loss is necessary. I know," he said, Plagg hovering over his shoulder, saucer-like eyes filled with worry. In a voice composed merely of breath, "I'm just— it hurts."

"You've done far more than I could have—far more than you should have," Ladybug croaked out, fully crying now. Duusu was still inside him, likely under the command of this Pavona person, and Ladybug had no idea how to get the kwami out. She looked to Plagg. "How? How do we fix this?"

"I don't know," Plagg said miserably. "I don't know the extent of another kwami's powers. He needs to figure it out on his own."

Adrien opened his eyes, searching her expression. They were close enough that they could both just mouth words, and the other would decipher things perfectly. Ladybug ran the heel of her hands under her eyes and tried to shake some spare slivers composure out of her body. "Okay. It's okay. You don't have to do anything more. Just breathe."

"Just breathe?"

"Yeah," she whispered. Adrien's forehead came to lean against hers, shoulders slightly slumped to compensate for his height. "There's no rush. Whatever happens, I'm going to make sure you're safe."

"I trust you, my Lady."

She smiled, which shifted the features of her face just enough that the tips of their noses brushed. Being so close to him felt like an elixir of her own making, something magical that was soothing all the panic and guilt that clamored, constantly, in the back of her mind. Chat Noir calming her mania down, as ever. For everything that changed, there were some things that never would.

"I feel something," Adrien said, at length. He lifted his head. To Plagg: "Remember when you told me the story of the murder and the colours?" Again. What?

"Yes," Plagg said.

"I feel like there's a colour in me that shouldn't be there," Adrien informed.

Ladybug felt a flicker of hope. Plagg smiled, pressing both his front paws together. "Good! Try to isolate it, and draw it out of you. Have you ever rejected an akuma before?"

"No, but— uh... I've done a bit of it with amoks," Adrien confessed. Ladybug's eyebrows darted up her forehead. Later, she told herself. All questions answered in time.

Adrien shut his eyes and breathed deeply, in and out, chest rising and falling. His left hand shot out blindly and latched onto the marble counter for stability. The furrow between his eyebrows grew and grew, mouth twisting in a pained grimace, until finally—

"Duusu!" Plagg exclaimed happily, rocketing through the air to hug his fellow kwami. A blur of black and blue as Plagg twirled Duusu around and around in the air. Pulling away, he asked, "Are you okay?"

"Duusu," Ladybug repeated with relief. The kwami of Emotion put a tiny hand to his forehead and winced. "I'm so happy to see you. Who has your Miraculous?" He opened his mouth but said nothing. Damn it. Kwamis couldn't reveal the explicit identity of their owners. "How can we find your Miraculous?"

"Pavona," he whined, voice high-pitched and helpless. "Pavona's calling me."

"Fight it," Adrien encouraged, cupping his palm underneath the kwami. "Can you help us? Please, any information at all?"

"Pavona..." Duusu said, screwing his eyes shut as the pain in his head seemed to grow immense. "She'll be at the trial today— oh!" She.

In a flash of cobalt, he was sucked sideways, straight through the wall, into the early morning darkness, presumably careening for miles and miles until he landed back with the woman who was cruelly keeping him captive.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

"Chat Blanc just vanished," Alya confirmed, waiting in the alleyway where Ladybug usually rendezvoused with her. "Disappeared in a puff of blue smoke, at the time you said you broke Chat Noir's amokised object. I assume you've fixed everything?"

After Duusu was wrenched from their company, Adrien's energy had started fading quickly. She'd helped him into his bed and told Plagg to watch over him diligently. He'd covered his duvets with the quilt they made him for Christmas, and seeing everyone's designs again had been a sorely-needed reminder of all the happiness that still existed in their lives. There were people to keep fighting for, tomorrows that made all the dark nights worth it.

Now, hopefully, he was still sleeping. It was a few minutes past one o'clock, and court convened at nine in the morning. Ladybug wanted Adrien to get as much rest as possible before then.

Ladybug had only seen him close to unconsciousness once before, early in the investigation, when he was adrift on a sea of alcohol. This time, there was a youth and cleanness and peace about Adrien's face and demeanour, like a sky after a thunderstorm, with the lingering smell of the torrential rain that had washed the earth anew.

"Nearly everything," she said to Alya and Nino.

Alya drew the bottle of sleep elixir from her coat pocket and returned it to Ladybug. She stared at the glass for a long time, thinking of Chat Blanc and his numbness, all the alarming things that must have been dredged up from Adrien's true emotions.

Noticing, misconstruing, Alya said, "He wasn't awake. It was peaceful."

"Yeah," Ladybug nodded, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. "That's good. He deserves peace."

She threw the Lucky Charm to the sky, and this time no flurry of magic ladybugs came to sweep the streets and mend all damage. There was none; nothing physical, anyway.

Loosening his hold on Alya's waist, Nino stepped forward to return the Turtle Miraculous. Ladybug again stared at the item in her hand for a long time, but this time she came to a decision.

She looked up, mustering the energy to smile. "Nino Lahiffe, this is the Miraculous of the Turtle, which grants the power of Protection. You'll use it for the greater good," she passed the bracelet back into his waiting hands, "indefinitely."

Alya gasped and beamed, wrapping both arms around her boyfriend and squeezing tight. "Babe, congratulations!"

Nino brought the Miraculous close to his face, as if he was looking at it with fresh eyes, then emotionally met Ladybug's gaze. "Oh, my God. Is this really happening? Wait. Don't answer that, no take-backs." He slipped the bracelet back onto his wrist and tightened the band, then put the same hand over his heart. "I won't let you down, Ladybug. Oh, my God."

"It's very well-deserved, Nino," Ladybug said. "I need you two to listen closely for a few minutes more. I have a new plan, and it goes into action at today's hearing."

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

When Ladybug left to settle things with Carapace and Rena Rouge, who'd been called to help clean up his catastrophic mess, Adrien had wanted to stay up for her. Learning his identity must have been a shock. He wanted to be waiting for her when she returned, but after being rushed back into his bed, he fell dead asleep.

Adrien woke up next around dawn, throat hoarse and head pounding. A rectangle of faint light fringed his curtains, waiting for the sun to fully rise. He left the curtains drawn shut as he rose, shrugging a sweater over his sleepwear. The memories of last night trickled back like faucet drips, each a painful embarrassing reminder.

Where Pavona had always spoken in his head, Duusu had been completely silent. The kwami was so powerful he didn't need to speak. He just reached in and stirred up all the negative emotions Adrien had been trying to repress for the last handful of months, manifesting them into a cold sentimonster who crawled out of the window as soon as he'd formed. He'd been stupid to entice Pavona this way, stupid to bottle everything and pretend it was all under his control. While Plagg was gone seeking help, there was nothing to do but try his best to calm down.

It hadn't worked until Ladybug was by his side.

Nothing ever worked, or felt right, unless she was by his side.

The living room was equally as dark as his bedroom. By muscle memory he could make out the shapes of furniture and the piano. Adrien turned on the lamp beside the couch, and his heart squeezed in his chest. Ladybug had come back, and she'd curled up to sleep, tugging a throw blanket over herself and trying to spread the thin fabric over her body. Her chest rose and fell rhythmically, exhales longer than her inhales. Her eyes were shut underneath her mask, obsidian hair fanning out on a throw cushion.

Adrien swallowed. He loved her. He loved the way he used to (fifteen-years-old with the wind in his hair and his city twinkling below; red roses with thorns; blue eyes in the moonlight) but also in new ways (eighteen-years-old and battling his demons to stay by her side; holding her face in his mind when the nightmares came; leaning on her more heavily than he liked, his partner and confidante and friend).

These last months, he'd been running away as much as he'd been moving on. All or nothing, he'd said, but that was unfair. That was a scared child talking, wanting either a love he could predict and control or no love at all. His old demands (full honesty, unmaskings, no secrets) were defenses, and finally in the darkened room, he was seeing clearly. He could build a dam but not stop the river. Eventually he would need to learn to swim, to just navigate life's choppy currents. He could trust Ladybug not to hurt him—like the other people he'd loved. More importantly, if she did somehow hurt him, he could trust himself to survive it—like the other people he'd loved.

For the first time in his life, Adrien had looked into a mirror and knew exactly who was staring back.

Walking back into his bedroom, he took Marinette's Christmas-gift quilt and attempted to cover Ladybug. The hotel had central heating, and probably so did a quantum suit, but it was still winter, and the throw blanket was threadbare. But Ladybug murmured a groggy word, "wait," and rolled over, opening her eyes, sky blue in the golden light from the lamp.

Adrien could do nothing but stare.

She blinked, glanced around the darkened room, and in a ruinous cascade all the memories of the night before flooded back in. Adrien could see the events of the early morning playing out on her face, even through the mask. The shock of who Chat Noir was, his family secrets, his darkness, his corruption. Her features seemed so familiar, like a dream he'd been having from birth. Who was she?

Then she started crying.

"Sorry," she sniffled, covering her face, "I think everything's catching up to me."

Ladybug pushed herself to sit upright, tucking her feet and legs beneath the quilt.

He sat at the end of the couch. "Don't apologise, my Lady."

"Adrien—" Her words dissolved as she sucked in a breath, muffling her sobs into her palms. It was a complete reversal of his breakdown in the bathroom, a release that could probably only come when she wasn't on the job, when there wasn't a crisis to manage. How had he ignored how ragged she was running herself? "Chat Noir. You were here. Alone. Through all this."

Adrien shook his head, his hand reaching for her face. Ladybug allowed him to pull one of her hands away from her damp cheeks, let him lace his fingers through. "I wasn't alone."

A powerful emotion rocketed through her eyes then. He knew what it was, or what it looked like, but after five years of loving her his heart was almost too scared to hope.

Ladybug raised her head, wiped her tears, and took a singular calming breath.

Adrien realised what she intended to do and blurted, "No, you don't have to. Please, don't do this just for me."

"It's for me. Do you know why I've wanted to get a hold of Chat Noir lately? Because I'm in love with you, damn it." He didn't understand the manic sort of laugh that bubbled out of her throat. He didn't understand anything at all. "All this hiding has created more heartache than it's worth. Can I tell you? Please. Eye to eye."

Adrien was stunned. This was the greatest thing that Ladybug could ever give him, and he'd long given up on the idea of it. Some of that old excitement and curiosity unfurled in his stomach, hot like liquor, but he was too ensnared by the other thing she'd said—I'm in love with you, even despite all the mistakes he'd made, all his iciness and reckless behaviour—that he simply said, "Okay."

Ladybug gave him a tremulous smile. Shifting the blankets off her body, she got her feet and stood before Adrien on the carpet. Her hands opened and closed—hard fists, then tensely splayed fingers—like a piston releasing steam. "Okay," she muttered, working up the courage. "Here goes."

Adrien waited, heart in his throat.

"Tikki, spots off." A burst of magic illuminated the room, and when the pink sparkles faded, Adrien was look at Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

Marinette.

His Lady.

Marinette, noting Adrien's slack jaw and unblinking eyes, inhaled a nervous breath. "Hi."

"Hi." A slow-spreading wonderstruck smile.

"Adrien, the first time I fell in love with you, it was for everything you showed the world. Your first day of school, you gave me your umbrella because it was pouring rain, and you had me."

He remembered that day. A simple misunderstanding led him to one of the best friends he'd ever had. "Since then, as we got to know each other, I've thought you were the most sweet, sincere, generous person. For an equally long time I've been concocting these elaborate plans to tell you—but it never happened. When the trial started, I resigned myself to being too late. Too indecisive, and now the decision was made for me. I thought if I told you, I would be taking advantage of a vulnerable person."

He'd always known Ladybug had another boy in her heart.

Two years ago, a concrete rooftop, a clear spring sky, he pulls out a red rose for her even as he is mere seconds from transforming back. "I told you already," Ladybug rebuffs him, walking away tiredly. She props her forearms on the railing and leans her weight forward. "I'm in love with someone else."

"I know, my Lady, but if he weren't here, would things be different between us?"

"Well, you know, I can't even begin to imagine him not being here."

But it was himself all along. Heat rose into his cheeks.

"The second time I fell in love with you," Marinette continued, speaking more confidently and fluidly now, "it was for everything you hid from the world. I didn't realise how much I depended on my smooth-talking stray until you vanished, and I missed you. More than I've missed anyone in my entire life. When you came back to me, I saw your many charms and abilities in a new light. But you were hurt, and I didn't know how to help you—except for just being there, as the partner you've always known, and nothing more. I was so close to giving you up, both of you, in order to do justice to this investigation, so before I lose a third chance, I'm telling you now: every person you've been, every person you'll become, I love you."

Another memory bubbled up. It was similar to this moment, him sitting, listening to Marinette confess.

It is the night that the glacier is akumatised for the second time. After the fighting ends, Chat Noir visits Marinette on her balcony, stars twinkling behind her, and she works through the declaration she wants to give to the boy she loves. "There's been something I've been wanting to tell you," she says, expression soft yet strong, vulnerable but resilient. Chat Noir thinks it is one of the most beautiful things he's ever seen, all that fire and life in a single person. "But every time I try, it's like my brain suddenly freezes."

Him. She loved him. All along. How had he never known Ladybug was Marinette? Over his lifetime he'd probably spent hours, aggregate, staring at her atlantic eyes and midnight hair, but in his mind they'd been two very different people. A flowery meadow compared to a crashing tide. But his favourite parts of both were exactly the same—Marinette's willingness to help others matched Ladybug's, Ladybug's unerring tenacity and original thinking matched Marinette's.

He couldn't believe it. How was he so lucky? To have not only a guardian angel and a best friend, but to find both in one person? To have that person love him? Joy whistled through him like a summer wind, his heart soaring like a kite. She loved him—all of him—and would be by his side through the days to come; what else was there to ask for?

"Say something." Marinette self-consciously tugged on a pigtail. "I mean, you don't have to, but say something."

Shit. He'd been so swept up in this discovery that he'd forgotten his words completely.

Adrien stood from the couch. Marinette searched his face as he stepped in front of her, smiled when he softly ran the backs of his fingers across her cheek, her bare cheek, no mask covering it, nothing between him and her. His hand made its way to the ridge of her jawbone, and he tilted her face slightly upwards. A shared inhale, a moment of intense awareness, scanning eyes, shifting feet.

Then he kissed her.

Marinette let loose a gleeful exhale, throwing her arms around his neck, pressing her body closer. Adrien smoothed his palms down her back, settling in the curve of her waist, and felt some type of wall within his soul collapsing, letting in all the fresh air and sunshine. She tasted like sugar, warm like an open hearth, unspoken words on the tip of her intoxicating tongue.

"Wise words," she quipped. Whatever his expression was, it made her laugh—God, that laugh could save lives—and place another gentle kiss to his lips.

"Marinette," he said, arms still wrapped around her. He buried his face into her neck and breathed her in. "Marinette."

"Yes. 'Tis I."

"God," he snorted, "Marinette. How—"

How did you live two lives for so many years? Stupid question, because she did it the same way he'd done it.

"I can't imagine—" I can't imagine how hard it must have been. Another stupid comment, because he didn't need to imagine anything.

Adrien shook his head and tried again: "You said to me, earlier this morning, I've done far more things than I should have. Well, I think the same applies to you. I had no idea you had such a personal connection to this investigation. And that for it, you would sacrifice so much, so readily. You didn't need to give me up."

"I'm Ladybug," she said matter-of-factly, lowering her hands so they rested on his shoulders. "The city needs Ladybug more than it needs Marinette, so I'm Ladybug first, and Marinette second. I would give anything up."

"You're wrong," Adrien said. "Maybe I would be nothing without Ladybug, but Ladybug would be nothing without Marinette." What made Ladybug so great—her intelligence, her kindness, her commitment—were Marinette's qualities first. They always had been. "You're Marinette first. You're my lucky charm, and I love you for it. So fucking much."

"Still?" she asked, a brief shuttering of her expression. "I thought you needed to move on."

"After my father, I needed to leave some parts of my old life behind," Adrien agreed. Marinette looked away, disappointed. He caught her chin and made her look at him again. "I chose the wrong parts. I took the fear and left the love, but it shouldn't have been that way. I don't want it to be that way anymore. I don't want to be without you. I don't even know how."

His Lady's eyelashes fluttered as she blinked. Her lips, flushed rouge from kissing, split into a radiant grin. "You and me, then."

Adrien echoed her grin. Finally, he believed that everything would turn out okay.

"You and me," he agreed, "against the world."