💗 marinette (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bonnechance) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
genevrier2016-04-15 05:13 pm
bonnechance) wrote in genevrier2016-04-15 05:13 pm
💀 pour oublier ma peine immense
It had been a long and hard three years.
Ladybug had run out of fingers with which to count the sticky situations she and Chat Noir had been in because of Hawkmoth. But finally, finally, she and her partner had him dead to rights. As time went on, they had grown desperate, and they'd made mistakes - but nothing they hadn't been able to fix. He'd made mistakes, too, and that was how the two of them had managed to track him down.
Heart pounding, she cast her gaze down at the man that had been their adversary for so long. Hawkmoth stared back at the both of them with a dark glare full of loathing. There were a lot of things she had wanted to ask him when she finally caught up to him, but there was only one question she was actually able to form.
"How could you?" She whispered, her voice ragged. She was breathing heavily - the fight had taken a lot out of her. Out of her partner, and out of their enemy, too; had it gone on much longer, they all might have dropped dead out of exhaustion. "You hurt so many people."
Hawkmoth's eyes glittered, and he pressed his lips together into a thin line. Ladybug felt something roll down her cheek - sweat, she hoped, and not blood or tears, but she'd taken a hit to the temple earlier and she couldn't be certain that it wasn't bleeding (and in fact it was). But she was in better shape than him, at least. He was beaten down, he had lost.
All that remained was to take his Miraculous and make sure that Nooroo's power never, ever fell int the hands of someone like him ever again.
His refusal to answer stirred anger in her where there had once been pity.
"Men. Women. Children. You used them all - and for what? What on earth could have been worth it? I don't understand. Explain yourself, Hawkmoth."
He didn't answer. He looked between the two of them, seething. Ladybug scowled and knelt down in front of him, curled her fingers around his brooch, and yanked it away from his suit.
The magic holding his transformation together fell apart, and Nooroo emerged from the butterfly Miraculous at long last. Ladybug cradled him in the crook of her arm and watched as the facial features of their nemesis became clear.
A well-dressed man, middle-aged. Nobody she recognized. Without his Miraculous, he should have been powerless. Defeated. Done for.
She didn't catch his smirk until it was too late.
His hand darted into the suit jacket that hadn't been there before, and his fingers closed around something she couldn't see. "I'll make you understand," He snarled, and the next thing she knew his hand emerged from the jacket and the crack of a gunshot split the air. "Perhaps now we'll share the same wish."
There was a gun in his hand, Ladybug realized, as a dull roar and the man's twisted, bitter laughter filled her ears. He hadn't aimed at her. She turned toward her partner with dread.
He had aimed at him, and his laughter was not the laughter of a man who had missed his mark.
Ladybug had run out of fingers with which to count the sticky situations she and Chat Noir had been in because of Hawkmoth. But finally, finally, she and her partner had him dead to rights. As time went on, they had grown desperate, and they'd made mistakes - but nothing they hadn't been able to fix. He'd made mistakes, too, and that was how the two of them had managed to track him down.
Heart pounding, she cast her gaze down at the man that had been their adversary for so long. Hawkmoth stared back at the both of them with a dark glare full of loathing. There were a lot of things she had wanted to ask him when she finally caught up to him, but there was only one question she was actually able to form.
"How could you?" She whispered, her voice ragged. She was breathing heavily - the fight had taken a lot out of her. Out of her partner, and out of their enemy, too; had it gone on much longer, they all might have dropped dead out of exhaustion. "You hurt so many people."
Hawkmoth's eyes glittered, and he pressed his lips together into a thin line. Ladybug felt something roll down her cheek - sweat, she hoped, and not blood or tears, but she'd taken a hit to the temple earlier and she couldn't be certain that it wasn't bleeding (and in fact it was). But she was in better shape than him, at least. He was beaten down, he had lost.
All that remained was to take his Miraculous and make sure that Nooroo's power never, ever fell int the hands of someone like him ever again.
His refusal to answer stirred anger in her where there had once been pity.
"Men. Women. Children. You used them all - and for what? What on earth could have been worth it? I don't understand. Explain yourself, Hawkmoth."
He didn't answer. He looked between the two of them, seething. Ladybug scowled and knelt down in front of him, curled her fingers around his brooch, and yanked it away from his suit.
The magic holding his transformation together fell apart, and Nooroo emerged from the butterfly Miraculous at long last. Ladybug cradled him in the crook of her arm and watched as the facial features of their nemesis became clear.
A well-dressed man, middle-aged. Nobody she recognized. Without his Miraculous, he should have been powerless. Defeated. Done for.
She didn't catch his smirk until it was too late.
His hand darted into the suit jacket that hadn't been there before, and his fingers closed around something she couldn't see. "I'll make you understand," He snarled, and the next thing she knew his hand emerged from the jacket and the crack of a gunshot split the air. "Perhaps now we'll share the same wish."
There was a gun in his hand, Ladybug realized, as a dull roar and the man's twisted, bitter laughter filled her ears. He hadn't aimed at her. She turned toward her partner with dread.
He had aimed at him, and his laughter was not the laughter of a man who had missed his mark.
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"Really?" he asked, a little shocked. His father permitted that?
"What was it?"
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Marinette thought back to the contest, to her anguish over trying to come up with a design, and couldn't help but laugh at herself. It had been a little ridiculous, hadn't it?
"They were doing a contest at school, and your dad said that whoever won would have their design worn by you in a photo shoot, and... well, I didn't know you were allergic to feathers, I swear I didn't."
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Laughing hurt, but he still couldn't stop once he got the giggles. Laughing felt good, released endorphins he needed, left him breathless and teary-eyed and ribs ripping with pain.
It still felt good.
"Pigeons?" he finally asked, wheezing. "They're what get me the most..."
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...and honestly, it was good to see him laughing again.
"Pigeons," she confirmed. "I had sort of a... feather pattern on mine, and I thought a real feather would tie it all together, but then... your allergy, and..."
Yeah. He wasn't pretty when he sneezed.
(She loved him anyway, though.)
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"Did we at least get a good shoot out of it?" he asked, happily. "Do we have any pictures?"
It would be good, looking into the past with her.
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The words registered on her a moment later, and she blushed, but... somehow managed to smile through it.
"...I don't know if you kept any of the photos, but... your dad probably did...?"
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"I am a professional," he joked, but his eyes were dancing, and he cracked quickly. "Honestly, the photographers I work with are very good at what they do, and I'm sure your hat was awesome. It would be hard to fail."
He contemplated a moment. "Maybe," he ventured, "it might be online?"
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It should have occurred to her sooner, but... he was right. It very well might be online, and they could probably find them pretty easily.
In fact... she scrambled for her phone and pulled up the web browser.
"Yeah, it might be! Hold on..." A few quick words into the search engine, a click over to image search, and... yep, there Adrien was, in all his derby-hatted glory.
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"They photoshopped my bloodshot eyes and runny nose out," he added, on the verge of laughter all over again.
For a second, it felt almost like a memory. It felt his.
"You'd think Chloé would have remembered," he continued, without realizing what he'd said.
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...in retrospect, Gabriel had probably gotten a synthetic feather or something for the actual shoot.
But, wait-
"...Chloé?" she repeated, and then she remembered the way the other girl had stolen her design. But for Adrien to have brought that up - did he remember? Her breath caught, and she studied his face intently.
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"She was... there, wasn't she?" he asked. "In our class?"
It made sense, but he already knew it wasn't quite right. He frowned to himself, trying to remember how it was supposed to go. She was there- and though he consciously hadn't remembered, he knew it was a school contest, somehow-
... everything went back to being frustrating, blank.
He knew. He felt. Sorting those feelings out and attaching them to events was another matter.
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He hadn't really remembered, then. It had just sounded... familiar. Which was normal, because it had happened, he'd been there-
"Do you want me to give you the full context?" she offered. "Or would you rather see if you can remember it yourself...?"
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Though he knew Marinette wasn't judging him for it, it still felt like failure to say that he couldn't.
"Tell me about it?" he asked. "That might bring something up."
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Which would have been equally cool to see Adrien wearing, to be honest.
"...Chloé's design... also had a feather."
It had been a blatant ripoff of her own, but. She didn't want to badmouth one of the fe friends he could remember...
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A school contest. How had his father had the time? Had he? Had he gone, or-
The details materialized, and he wasn't sure if it was memory or just logic. Nathalie with a tablet. Chloé, carrying on...
Adrien didn't remember the words so much as the very singular action of Marinette's hands, flipping her hat over. The cool, confident, satisfied tone of her voice as gold thread glinted through the stitches.
It was a very clear memory, one of those moments, suspended in time. One of those pivotal snapshots, the emotional impression left by that realization.
"Yours won," he said softly, frowning to himself. "Because it was yours."
The context was foggy, the details a blur, but the impression was still there.
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It was sort of a depressing thought, and Marinette tried to brush it aside, to just be happy that he was starting to remember things at all.
"Yes," she said quietly. "Your father said I had a hat maker's hands."
...it was a compliment, really.
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"Fashion leaves your hands a mess," he explained.
"Especially in his earlier days, I remember my father's hands being stained with ink. Band-aids from slipping with his seam ripper when he was tired. Hatpin holes." He stroked his thumb over Marinette's palm with a faraway smile.
"It's why he has that habit of holding his hands behind his back," he confided. "He didn't like people seeing them."
He looked up with a tiny, wry smile.
"I bet Chloé didn't have a single needle mark."
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Marinette had wondered. She'd never once bothered to hide her hands, though, because she was rarely if ever scrutinized the way Gabriel was. Maybe if she'd spent as much time in the limelight as he had, she'd have developed that habit herself.
Instead, she'd developed a habit of blushing, and her cheeks darkened as Adrien's thumb stroked over her palm. Oh. She needed to focus, to keep her breathing steady... much easier said than done.
"...not a one," she confirmed with a small sigh, latching onto the slight topic change. If he could guess that about her even with the limited memory of the day, then Chloé must have been more accustomed to taking credit for other people's work than she'd thought.
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His heart gave a too-hard thump. Uh.
"She's... not very nice to you, huh?" he asked, sitting up a little straighter, a tiny bit awkward. He probably shouldn't have done that.
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Neither one of them had tried to pull their hands away. For all that Adrien inexplicably wanted to be close to her, she wanted to be close to him, too. That much as probably obvious even to him.
"Not very," she sighed. "We were in the same class for years and years. She's never liked me very much."
The feeling was mutual, honestly.
"...I guess I'm not always very nice to her, either."
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With his fingertips tracing the lines of Marinette's palms, he thought for a while, let the feelings and scraps of memory surface as they would. Marinette and Chloé would be fire and ice.
"Chloé is..." he trailed off, thinking of her. Her and her cello. Her and her anger on his behalf. Her and her inability to give up, her insisting on being his friend.
"Hard to expain." He sighed. "She does a lot of things she shouldn't do, says things she shouldn't say. We've known each other for a very long time."
Adrien looked up, at Marinette's eyes. "She has reasons for the things she does. I'm not saying they're good reasons, or that she's justified, or that she isn't downright mean and dishonest sometimes. But I know where it's coming from."
His voice grew heavier, and he looked down at their hands. "Part of it is my fault."
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He must have known that when he'd started at their school, then. He must have - and yet, he'd kept trying anyway. He'd kept trying to involve her in his life, to get her to relax a little.
She never had, but he'd tried.
Adrien could be so kind. It was what had made Marinette like him in the first place, and it was so obvious now that his kindness was right there at his core. If he could still be kind, even having gone through what he had, then... he was undeniably a good person, wasn't he?
But sometimes, that kindness could make him take on more responsibility than he needed to.
"Your fault?" she questioned, disbelieving. "I don't... see how even a little of it could be your fault. Chloé has her reasons, but she's ultimately the one who chooses to do what she does, right? ...her choices aren't on you any more than my choices would be or your father's choices would be."
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It was faulty logic, but not the way Adrien saw it.
"She listens to me. At least a little bit. But I've never called her out on it, I've never stopped her. I tried damage control, but... I've never really stood up for anyone, either."
Or at least, he didn't remember doing so.
"Staying quiet while watching it happen is almost as bad."
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...it wasn't strictly true. She could remember him standing up to Chloé on more than one occasion - but it had taken time. Time that he couldn't remember, at least not right now.
"You did call her out on things, though. ...more than once."
She met his eyes.
"But even if you hadn't, it's still not your job to control her."
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He gave her a tiny smile.
"I guess I got a little braver," he answered, squeezing her fingers. "I used to be afraid I'd lose her if I spoke up."
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