genevrier | ∞ vous soyez de retour

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∞ vous soyez de retour

It happened gradually.

So gradually, in fact, that at first, it was nearly impossible to see it coming.

Adrien had always been busy, and spring was the height of stress and deadlines when it came to the fashion industry. It wasn't so odd that his days were more tightly packed than ever. Though his friends were understanding, he missed them, told himself that one day soon, he'd have enough time to see them as much as he liked.

The thought kept him going even when he became too exhausted to run nightly patrols. The third time Ladybug caught Chat Noir yawning, she'd started to become visibly concerned. Though he held it together well for the most part, joking about his "catnaps", it became more and more clear that he was utterly exhausted by the time patrol rolled around.

Exhausted people made mistakes.

The first time it was a gash above his eye. It was nothing that couldn't be fixed with a bit of Lucky Charm and a good scolding, a gentle touch and a promise to pay more attention, My Lady, really, he was only distracted by you-

The second time it was a broken shoulder, and he couldn't hide it from her any longer. It had been an explosive fight, one of the few they'd ever had, and Chat had finally agreed to start cutting patrols to a couple nights a week in favor of more sleep.

From there, it was a slippery slope. Shoots became fashion shows became concerts became tours, and then school ended. Nino called less as Adrien broke more plans. Chat Noir showed up for fewer patrols, and when he did, it was difficult to find his partner -- Ladybug had grown used to doing things on her own. Their nights together were rare now, and one night Chat fell asleep with his head on her thigh, sprawled out on the top of Notre Dame until the sun came up. It was Saturday, and she let him sleep.

He woke with her fingers in his hair, turned until his lips touched them, and opened his eyes. Ladybug hadn't pulled away.

It was the last good night.

Events converged, blurred, until Chat Noir became a desperate, fleeting mirage, a shadow that only appeared when there was a fight to be had. A flurry of jokes and smiles before he vanished into nothing at all. Adrien retreated more and more behind his daylight mask as his friends stopped texting him, and he perfected his model smile.

One day, while he was in London, Adrien watched the news.

He watched Ladybug fight alone.

The night he got back, the night he got word, Chat Noir waited up all night on the old radio tower. He sat awake in the silence of the city he loved, feeling that he would never see it the same way again. The future stretched out in a twisted path he had no way to see the end of, but tomorrow, he would leave.

Chat Noir never saw his partner. Instead, he left a letter, an envelope folded and tied tightly to the maintenance handle.

The morning his flight left for America, it rained.

The first day at school, Adrien's seat was empty.

The rumor circulated, then was confirmed: New York City.

The next time an akuma showed up, so did someone else: a young man in green, with a shield capable of repelling any attack. Honest, loyal, a worthy partner and a better friend.

But he was not Chat Noir.

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In the years that followed, Marinette kicked herself for not taking better notice of the signs.

Something had obviously been going on, but she had never thought that Chat Noir would just leave. Both of them had their own separate lives behind the masks - she knew that - and his was especially demanding at times, but in the past, his busy days had eventually evened out into something more manageable, and they'd gone back to the status quo eventually.

This time, it didn't happen, and by the time she found his letter on the radio tower, he was already long gone. The rain had damaged the pages, smeared the ink, and all that was left of her partner was his signature and a smeared my lady.

She didn't know what the letter had said. She might never know, but she'd kept it nonetheless, carefully hidden away in her desk drawer next to the small box her earrings had appeared in. Waiting. Hoping that she would get the chance to ask him someday, though those hopes had grown weaker and weaker with each day, week, month, and year that Chat Noir didn't show his face on the streets of Paris.

Ladybug missed him. She missed him so much that she didn't have the words to express it, though she was pretty sure the boy who had appeared shortly after his disappearance had an idea of it. She wasn't proud of it, but in the early days of her partnership with Jade Turtle, she hadn't exactly been... welcoming. Stung by the loss of Chat Noir, and endlessly suspicious of anyone who claimed to have a Miraculous after the Volpina incident, she'd kept him at arm's length at first.

But they'd worked past it. They were friends now, and they made a good team, albeit a less ruthless one than she and Chat Noir had been. Master Fu must have realized that, because a year later they were joined by another new hero, a girl in yellow who looked as sweet as honey - until the gloves came off and she entered the fray.

Honeybee was her sword, and Jade Turtle was her shield, and she treasured their support while trying hard not to think about how it took two other Miraculous wielders to do Chat Noir's job.

Even now, almost three years later, she found it hard not to miss him. Especially when an akuma appeared at the Aquarium de Paris, catching all of them by surprise because it had been at least two weeks since the last incident. Jade Turtle had been on the scene first, shielding visitors and ushering them out, and he'd managed to almost empty the entire place by the time Ladybug arrived.

Somehow, somehow, the akuma was manipulating the water, allowing the sea life to emerge from the tanks without drying out. Fish could be vicious. She knew that, but what really had her worried were the jellyfish, two of which were flanking the akuma while another two were dealing with her and Jade Turtle. Somehow, one of them managed to wind a tentacle around his wrist - the one attached to his shield. With a yowl, he dropped it, and the shield clattered to the floor.

Ladybug's eyes went wide and she threw out her yo-yo to try and wrap it around the creature, to pull it away from him, but then the akuma smirked and snapped her fingers, and and electricity crackled in the air around the jellyfish, the current running up the string and sending Ladybug to her knees.

"Aaaargh—!"

It wasn't her finest moment.

Adrien had spent years following the blogs, the news, the many stories, the endless whispers. He'd built a spiderweb of sources, a map of her in his mind, keeping up with the things she did, the things she endured.

At first, he'd expected to have to give Plagg up, but the old cat had slowly blinked at him and asked if he wanted to stop being Chat Noir -- and they both knew the answer to that. So Adrien kept the ring on, kept his friend close, and kept his ear to the ground.

The appearance of Jade Turtle had done a number on Adrien's heart, had left him cold and saddened, sure it was only the beginning of some type of end, but it had done anything but become what he'd feared. Instead, the unfamiliar hero had become a welcome one, and he was inexplicably grateful for the protection he provided when Chat no longer could. But no war could be fought defensively, and Hawkmoth was a brutal foe.

The addition of Honeybee helped to drive back the constant anxiety, but not permanently.

Busy as Adrien's life was, he needed an escape, and Chat Noir began to reappear. It was in small ways. A derailed train somehow stopping short of a catastrophic impact, handprints on the metal. A falling child, caught by a formless shape with green eyes.

New York grew safer, with the promise of a shadow for those in peril.

The stories spread. Los Angeles knew him as a guardian angel. London claimed him as a werecreature, with a tail and glowing eyes. Rome, Hong Kong, Berlin -- it was the summer of magic, the birth of legends, and the whispers only grew as the years went on.

Three, to be exact.

Three years before Adrien finally turned eighteen. Three years before he graduated, before he announced that he was taking the summer off. Before he informed his father than he was going home.

So Adrien arrived home to an empty house, threw open the shutters, and let the sunlight stream in. He let in the air, let out the dust, and let himself breathe. For the first time in years, the Agreste manor felt the stirrings of life.

It was the night, however, that called.

Even if Chat Noir knew he wasn't ready.

Life had its own path, and once more, he found himself drawn to what he was meant to be.

Only one person caught the descent of the black-clad figure making the impossible leap onto the roof of the building. One girl, armed with a camera phone. One girl with rapidly widening eyes, who gave a quick intake of breath the microphone only barely caught:

"Chat Noir?"

Inside, chaos had already taken hold. The area was already flooded with a half-inch layer of seawater, and Chat stayed well out of it, leaping first for the top of the displays, coming up through the shadows.

The baton came sailing from nowhere, knocking the yo-yo free of the connection with the creature, breaking the electrical current.

A moment later, Chat's boots hit the ground right in front of Ladybug, his back to her as he flipped the baton into his hand, swirling it once before he spread his hands, tilted his head.

His voice was deeper now, but the purr was the same.

"Looks like you're floundering here, aren't you..." slowly, he turned to look back over his shoulder, a glint of green eyes, a flash of teeth.

"My Lady?"

Impossible.

Ladybug saw the baton, saw the black blur of Chat Noir hitting the ground in front of her, but she couldn't believe her eyes. The electricity must have taken more out of her than she realized, she decided as she yanked her yo-yo back and rewound the string. She was seeing things. Not good. If her vision was bad, then Jade Turtle would be on his own until Honeybee showed up, and if she wasn't keeping an eye on the news, then who knew when that would be—

He spoke.

Even after three years, his voice was achingly familiar, and her eyes widened at the sound of it. They only got wider when he looked back, when she caught the green of his eyes and the flash of his teeth.

"Chaton...?"

She'd hoped and prayed for him to return, dreamed about this, even, but every time without fail she woke up alone to face a new day without him. Her mouth felt suddenly dry. If this was her mind playing tricks on her, then her mind was cruel - too cruel.

There was movement in her peripheral vision, and with a gasp, she realized that while she'd been staring, the jellyfish had surrounded Jade Turtle. In the water of one of the tanks, a seashell-shaped necklace at the akuma's throat glinted, and she raised a hand in the water before snapping her fingers again.

Ladybug didn't know what that meant. She didn't see anything else, not right away, but there were sharks in the tanks further into the aquarium, and if they were coming, then -

But Chat Noir was here, after being gone for so long, how could she focus on anything else?

What if he disappeared after the fight was over, the way he did so many times before he vanished for good?

She shook her head and bolted past him, heading for the akuma's fish tank. "Take care of those jellyfish! I'll - I'll stop her before any of her reinforcements show up!"

Chaton.

As she called out for him, Chat Noir felt the shiver of it all the way down to his toes. It felt like home.

A huge grin spread across his face, and with renewed determination, he fell into place with her, taking her orders as naturally as breathing.

"Friends close and anemones closer, right?" he answered leaping into the fray, reaching out to scoop up Jade Turtle's shield before tossing it to him. With a sweep of his staff, he caught the tentacles and ripped them free.

"Maybe a little too close for comfort," he added as Jade Turtle sputtered, then took a place beside Chat -- only to be seized by the scruff of his costume and pulled close to Chat's side as he extended his staff, getting them up high and out of the water, where the electricity wouldn't be able to reach them.

... and then unceremoniously thrown into the same tank as the akuma.

Jade Turtle hit the water with a yowl and a splash, and broke the surface with a "come on!"

Chat grinned back at him from the top of his staff. He'd always wanted to try that -- and throwing him into the tank meant the akuma couldn't attack him with electricity anymore... unless it wanted to fry itself too.

It turned out that tossing Jade Turtle into the tank was exactly the right thing to do.

Because the akuma had turned its attention to Ladybug, and before their eyes, its hair took on the consistency of seaweed, lengthening, stretching, reaching out for her - if it managed to get around her neck, the results could have been disastrous.

But the akuma's attention was drawn to the surface of the water when the other hero splashed in, and Ladybug was able to back up in the tank, swimming for the surface and reevaluating her plan.

There was one akuma. Two - no, three of them, with the distinct possibility of a fourth on the way. They could handle this. They could definitely handle this.

But better to be safe than sorry...

"Lucky Charm!"

What dropped into her hands was a net, and her brow furrowed as she examined it. A moment later, though, it hit her, and she looked up to Jade Turtle on the opposite side of the tank. She kept hold of one side, then tossed the other to him, actually managing a smile.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?"

The akuma was below them. If they could catch it in the net, then it would be child's play for them to take its necklace.

While the two of them were going fishing, Chat Noir could deal with the pair of great white sharks that were making their way toward him, drawn to the battle from where they had been swimming around in their tanks shortly before.

The outrage over being tossed was short-lived. JT had been working with Ladybug for years now, and he was no stranger to being thrown where he needed to be in times of crisis. Still, it didn't help his bruised pride.

His growl caused bubbles to break around his nose, and he kicked, breaking the surface as Ladybug did.

"You betcha," he responded, stowing his shield on his back and grabbing the other end of the net as Ladybug threw it to him. After adjusting his goggles, he braced for the dive, ready to go with her.

From the top of his staff, Chat Noir guarded their backs, staying away from the jellyfish on the floor, along with the growing pools of saltwater -- and groaned aloud as the sharks began to circle.

"Oh, great," he mumbled. "What do I look like, a catfish?" When the sharks paid no attention to the pun, Chat snorted, then added, "Not feeling too chummy, I see-"

With a leap, Chat somersaulted over one of the sharks, bracing off another tank to launch himself at the other, slamming into the gills. The creature reared in pain, and Chat winced. While he was keeping them distracted, he didn't much appreciate having to hurt them.

As he hit the wet floor, the spiderweb of cracks worked its way up the glass behind him. It wasn't enough by far to shatter it, but it gave him an idea.

Inside the tank, Jade Turtle and Ladybug weren't having as much luck. Though they were strong swimmers, the akuma was stronger, with her powerful tail and her tendrils of seaweed-hair. Every attempt to catch her with the net had failed so far, and the heroes were hindered by their need for air.

At least... until Cataclysm shattered the side of the tank, and everything went spilling out -- including the akuma.

Edited 2016-06-14 08:24 (UTC)

Ladybug's lungs were burning, but she couldn't bring herself to head for the surface. They had to catch the akuma. They had to-

Cataclysm.

The glass cracked, splintered, and snapped away, and the three of them were expelled from the tank in a rush of water. Her head broke the surface and she gasped for breath as she maneuvered the net, casting it over the akuma as they surged forward and then pulling back to keep it in place. This time, it worked. The akuma, out of its element, was well and truly caught.

Ladybug tossed the other side of the net to Jade Turtle to tie it off, flashing him a grin and a thumbs-up, before leaping over the net to come face to face with the akuma.

"Don't think you've won," The akuma snarled. "My pets will eat you alive, and then they'll spit up your Miraculous!"

But Chat Noir had the sharks occupied, and the jellyfish's tentacles weren't moving quickly enough to stop Ladybug from reaching in and gripping the necklace. She tore it away, dropped it to the ground, and stomped on it to break it.

Ladybug watched the small, white butterfly emerge from the broken necklace, and just like always, she unwound her yo-yo and caught it to purify it.

Chat Noir might be a little distracted, watching that in person when for the last three years he'd only have been able to see it in videos caught by the most reckless reporters in Paris (read: Alya). Or maybe he was distracted with keeping the sharks off them.

But he would most likely notice when a hand closed around the back of his collar, and unless he reacted quickly, he'd find himself dragged backwards and then shoved up against a wall, Honeybee's forearm shoved into his throat, her eyes narrowing into slits as the akuma returned to normal and the damage around them was magically restored to its former state.

"And just who are you supposed to be?"

Some Chat Noir lookalike? A copycat? She'd seen neither hide nor hair of him in the two years she'd been behind her mask, and there had been no sightings of him for the year before that. His sudden appearance was suspicious, and she wasn't letting him anywhere near Ladybug until she knew it was safe.

Unfortunately for Chat Noir and his reflexes, he did not react quickly. Not with his eyes on Ladybug, not with the beginnings of a smile lighting up his face. Years of this. Years of missing her, of not being able to tell her how much he wanted to be there, of wanting to fight at her side, and-

He was pulled aside and slammed up against the wall by a very angry looking Honeybee, who wasn't looking the slightest bit sweet on him at the moment.

Chat choked, reaching up to grip her arm, and kicked his legs ineffectively. He might have fought back, but he wasn't trying to hurt her.

"Chat-... Noir?" he gasped, practically a squeak against her forearm.

His Miraculous beeped loudly, and Chat cast his eyes toward Ladybug.

"As if we're going to believe that," She huffed.

But... it was the truth. The beep of his Miraculous was proof of that, and it came mere seconds after Ladybug's own Miraculous beeped - they'd used their abilities within moments of each other, after all.

Ladybug seemed more or less convinced, if also conflicted, but Honeybee kept her arm exactly where it was.

"How do we know you're not another akuma? If you think I'm letting you lay a finger on Ladybug, you've got a-"

"Honeybee, stop."

She fell silent when Ladybug spoke, and a moment later she drew her arm back to allow Chat Noir some breathing room. She didn't look happy about it, though, and the look she gave him was lingering and suspicious as she stepped away.

"...we don't have much time," Ladybug murmured. "We're both going to turn back soon."

But in spite of that, she wanted to stay here, wanted to find out where he'd been and why he had left and why he'd come back and how long he'd be here for. She was doing her best to keep her cool, but there was a wariness in her eyes - how long before he vanished again?

She'd hoped he would return for so long that hoping he would stay now was painful.

Chat returned the look as Honeybee stopped with just one word from Ladybug. He wheezed slightly as she stepped back, but after taking a full breath, seemed okay, and his eyes stopped on his partner.

... years.

It had been years.

They'd both gotten so much taller. They'd filled out, muscles and curves replacing lean waifish fragility. Her hair was longer than he'd ever known it to be, her cheeks not so round, her nose not so delicate. But it was her.

He knew her, knew her voice, her eyes.

She'd called him.

Chat Noir had no way of knowing that the look in his eyes was all the proof of his identity he'd ever need. There was no manufacturing that emotion, that relief and joy and longing, along with the lingering grief.

Chat swallowed, then slowly opened his mouth, taking a step forward.

"Ladybug-"

She had been partnered with Jade Turtle and Honeybee for longer than she had been partnered with Chat Noir, but he had been her partner first. That counted for something, explained the butterflies in her stomach that had nothing to do with Hawkmoth as she looked at him.

It didn't explain why she flinched when he took a step forward, though. If he asked, Ladybug wasn't sure she'd have any kind of an explanation, save that there was a part of her that worried this was a dream, and that she was going to wake up and he'd be gone, again.

"Chat Noir," She whispered, standing her ground despite the overwhelming urge to turn and run, or to throw her arms around him and never let go. She didn't know which urge was stronger.

She swallowed hard.

"Are..." There was so much she wanted to ask him that she had no idea where to start. "Are you back for good... or is this just a visit?"

The disappearance of Chat Noir was well-documented and endlessly speculated upon. Honeybee and Jade Turtle had no reason to trust him, had every reason to believe the reappearance of Ladybug’s long-lost partner was a trick, a ruse. Some cruel ploy by Hawkmoth to shake them from their purpose.

It made sense that he would fight for them. That he would earn their trust. Akuma could even mimic the powers of a Miraculous user… and nobody had clearly watched Chat Noir use Cataclysm.

… but Ladybug knew better. He could see it in her eyes, in the pain he wished he’d never had to put there. The others might have thought her flinch was wariness. It was, but it was more than that.

Chat Noir knew that look. He knew it more intimately than most, because he’d experienced much the same thing.

Abandonment.

Until now, he’d never realized just how deep it had to have gone. He knew she’d miss him, sure, but he’d never expected it to be like this. Like he’d torn something out of her and taken it with him. Like he’d hurt her so badly, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to open up to the chance of it happening again.

She hadn’t been alone. She’d had friends, partners, people that showed up as soon as he’d left to fill the gap in her life. She could rely on them as she never had him, and she’d known them longer – twice as long as that breathless, wonderful year that had changed everything about him.

One year, followed by three, and she still hurt this badly.

The knowledge shook him to the core. It showed in his eyes, that second of pain and realization, before he responded instinctively, as he always had. He stepped forward. Once, then again, until he was in front of her, close enough to touch.

“I will never… ever,” he breathed, “Leave you again.”

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