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madibug · 2 years

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the finale

The 6th and final part of too little, too late

(Originally based on @sabertoothwalrus comic here ♥)

Also on Ao3!

A heartbeat.

Then Adrien comes alive.

He shoots to his feet in a blur, Eagle’s liberation wiring through him like molten electricity. The sensation wracks down his frame in heavy sheets, washing away every ugly fear and shaky uncertainty that had been inside him only moments before.

When he gasps, even the air tastes different. Sharper. Thrumming with energy.

Everything, down to the storms in his mind, seem calm and comprehensible and he realizes with a jolt that he can hear it - tinkling in the folds of a place he hadn’t known existed until now��

The song of time.

He quiets himself, and listens.

The thrum of it swells all around him, twisting on the back of the wind caressing his cheek, intense in its intricacies, pouring and pouring through the now open floodgates. And when the notes finally crest into an ending, nothing has ever been clearer.

“Adrien?”

Adrien blinks his eyes open. Uncanny and Eagle are standing a few paces away, watching him with twinned, held-breath expressions.

Slowly, Eagle asks, “How do you feel?”

But that doesn’t matter anymore. Those parts of Adrien’s brain have been shut off, and the only thing remaining is his determination to save Marinette.

“I’m fine,” he answers, “Everything is a lot clearer to me now.”

His eyes flick down to his father’s ring, still gripped in his palm. He tucks it over his thumb. The only finger big enough that it fits snugly. He waits for the swoop of despair and hurt and dread - but they never come. Whatever pain and loss awaits him on the other end of this liberation isn’t reachable now.

Adrien looks up to address Uncanny. “We’ll continue as planned. May I have the butterfly miraculous, please?”

Her expression twists with guilt. It’s all Adrien needs to see to know something has gone horribly wrong.

“Yeah,” she says, “About that…” then turns to share a harrowing look with Eagle.

Adrien says, “What happened?”

Uncanny ducks her eyes to the floor, looking like she might be sick.

“We thought you weren’t going to be able to fight with the state you were in,” she begins, voice wavering unsteadily, “We thought someone else was going to need to wear the butterfly miraculous to deakumatize Gaiabug. And since Jessica already has Liiri we thought, I don’t know, maybe I could give it a try but -” her cupped hands come up, shaking, to reveal the butterfly miraculous. She says, “We didn’t know they can’t be worn by androids.”

Adrien’s eyes fall to the brooch. Directly down its center is a large, damning crack.

Instantly he feels the effects of the liberation flare up inside him, rushing in to meet and counteract the dread that the sight invokes in him, neutralizing it instead into a reaction of numb indifference.

Bunnyx’s voice passes through his mind:

Be adaptive, be flexible. Don’t let the disruption of one path or course of action derail you from your goal. Shit happens, you understand? The point is to keep moving forward.

Adrien takes a slow, deep breath and says, “Call the others. I need Luka here, now.”

“I won’t be able to puppet my illusion very easily from this distance,” says Rena. When Uncanny and Eagle had returned with her and the others, she had been the first to swallow and process the bad news of the damaged butterfly miraculous. “So if we’re going to make a new plan, we need to do it fast.”

“I already have a new plan.” Adrien turns to Viperion. “We need your second chance, now.”

“Now?” Viperion asks, eyebrows furrowing.

“Yes, now. Without the butterfly miraculous we’ll have to change three important aspects of our plan,” Adrien explains, “First, we’ll now need to secure the second ladybug earring in order for me to don the ladybug powers. Second, I’ll need to conjure and use a lucky charm to secure a magical ladybug reset. Third, we’ll have to now locate and destroy whatever object is holding the akuma to de-evilize it and free Marinette.”

“Piece of cake,” Carapace croaks hoarsely.

“I know it's more dangerous this way,” Adrien says slowly, “But the plan should still work. The most precarious element is identifying the akuma without Gaiabug retaliating by lashing out or hiding it.” His eyes flick to Luka. “Should be easy if she doesn't remember our previous attempts to find it, right?”

Understanding dawns in Luka’s eyes. “You want me to use my second chance so we can identify the object holding Gaiabug’s akuma?”

Adrien says, “Yes. Then you’ll reset to this moment and tell us what the object is, so that she won’t know that we’ve identified it.”

“Sounds like a solid plan,” says Eagle.

Viperion nods in agreement. “Let’s do it.”

Adrien says, “Rena, use your illusion to start drawing Gaiabug this way. Viperion only has five minutes once he’s used his second chance, and I don’t want him to have to waste half of that time crossing the jungle to reach her.”

“On it,” Rena says, pulling her flute around to play a quick, flighty tune. “She’s on her way.”

“Uncanny,” says Adrien, “Can you tell me how close Gaiabug is now?”

“Yes,” Uncanny says, turning intently to the left. “She’s approaching from the east. One thousand meters away, now. Nine hundred fifty. Nine hundred.”

The ground begins to rumble beneath them.

Adrien turns to Viperion, “Go, now.”

Viperion pulls his wrist up and twists the snake. “Second chance!”

An instant later Viperion’s body is thrown backwards, tossed off kilter as if he has been thrown back into this moment instead of beginning in it. His back hits the ground of the jungle, hard, loose rocks vibrating on the ground around him as Gaiabug draws closer.

His chest is heaving, and his eyes are wide.

“What happened?” Adrien falls to his knees at Viperion’s side. “What did you see?”

“The akuma“ - Viperion swallows, voice raspy - “The akuma it’s - it’s her earring. The Akuma is inside the ladybug earring Gaiabug is still wearing.”

No.

Adrien’s eyes fall closed

Voice shaking with horror, Rena says, “But that means -”

It means they can’t destroy the ladybug earring to release the akuma, because then there will be no way to conjure a lucky charm. It means Adrien will have to don an akuma-ridden pair of ladybug earrings and gamble the probability that he’ll be able to still transform and accomplish the task. He has never heard of such a thing, transforming with an akumatized miraculous, and can’t know if it’s even possible.

But impossibility doesn’t frighten Adrien right now.

Right now, in the liberated state he’s in, the only thing that is actually managing to get through the steel-laden bunker entrapping his fears, is the idea of losing Marinette.

He opens his eyes.

The wind is fluttering through the low-hung tree branches around them, rustling the leaves into a song.

Keep moving forward.

Adrien turns his attention back to the others. They’re in a fit of panic around him, verging on the edge of hysteria.

“Everyone calm down,” he says, spreading his hands in a placating gesture. “This doesn’t affect the plan. Not really.”

Rena gives him a look like he’s lost his mind. “In what way does this not affect the plan?!”

Adrien squats to reach for a stick on the ground, and begins to draw a visual representation of his plan and strategy.

He says, “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

It happens like this.

The others scatter into their various assigned places around the clearing, and Adrien remains standing at the edge where he can be visible as live bait.

It had taken a bit of convincing to get the others to agree to this - Rena especially - but there wasn’t time to deliberate with Gaiabug already headed their way. They had to trust that Adrien could handle this.

The last gamble they have to play.

The jungle floor rumbles underneath Adrien’s feet as Gaiabug approaches, up the pads of his feet and vertebrae of his spine to rattle his teeth.

The sound of Gaiabug’s approach is thunderous, a cacophony of crunching wood and rip-roaring shrieks echoing around him, caging him in. He can just make out her form through the still drowsy morning light fogging the treeline, a jagged silhouette moving towards him with frightening, inhuman agility.

Come to me, he thinks as the adrenaline in him spikes, let me save you.

Her silhouette grows closer.

And closer.

Adrien adjusts his stance and speaks clearly into his com, “Now, Rena.”

Rena’s mirage hits Adrien at the same moment that Gaiabug crashes through the treeline into the clearing in front of him. Adrien sees the moment that she sees him. She goes from monster to mouse in an instant, the sight of him making her lurch to a wrenching, stupefied stop. And it’s like in doing so she draws the rest of the world to a pause - the air between them hanging in rigid suspension.

Adrien doesn’t dare even breathe.

The sight of Gaiabug in the flesh is nothing like seeing her on the screen of Bunnyx’s burrow. She is so much more harrowing in person than he had anticipated. He can feel the efforts of the liberation warring inside him, straining to smother the dread and heartbreak that the sight of her invokes.

She’s nearly unrecognizable, more tree now than girl.

The wood in her eyes has spread. It overtakes the complete upper half of her face now, leaving just her delicate mouth and jaw still pink and human. Her hair is another story. Fallen loose from its ties, once silk-soft strands have hardened to individual branches, clacking faintly as they resettle into stillness after her speedy arrival. They are the only part of her moving. The rest of her has clenched into dangerous stillness, watching Adrien with those unseeable eyes. Unsettling more is her stance: more beast than biped. She’s crouched low to the floor, arms and legs showing hints of her escape from the banyan tree; she must’ve torn herself from it, because she is still half entrapped in it now, gnarled, reedy forearms tangled into a mess of torn roots where her hands and feet should be.

An eldritch creature left to the forest to be forgotten.

All Adrien can see is Marinette.

And all Gaiabug can see is the illusion Rena wants her to see; that Adrien is in possession of the butterfly miraculous, and has donned and activated its power. Even in this state, some part of Gaiabug knows that this means she should obey - even fear - him, but he can also see the gears of calculation whirring in her mind. If he gives her enough time, she’ll figure it out.

Adrien says, “Hello.”

Gaiabug’s entire demeanor rustles like the rising shackles of a wary dog, a snake cornered and ready to strike.

Adrien dares moving forward. He steps out into the dappled dawn light, letting her see him, and reaches for his jacket flap, slowly revealing the butterfly miraculous pinned just inside - which has also been hit by Rena to appear intact and uncracked.

The moment Gaiabug lays eyes on it she jerks forward, a terrible, chilling sound grating up her throat like a warning.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he’s quick to say, not wanting her to take it as a threat, “I want to offer you a trade.”

She stops making that grinding noise, head slowly tilting in consideration.

“Trrraaade?”

Gooseflesh raise in waves over his skin as he hears her speak for the first time. Her voice - it’s different. Disturbing. Just this side of not-human. Although, he has the strange feeling he has heard this kind of tone before…

Then it hits him. Years ago, on his way to the dentist, Adrien had passed by a cat perched atop a hedge engulfing an old, wrought iron fence. It had been making this sound - this terrible, unsettling sound almost like it had been trying to imitate human speech, a sort of ‘wubububub’ that at some points he could have sworn formed actual words. But it still sounded wrong. Alien. Like those kinds of sounds weren’t meant to come out of a cat.

That is how Gaiabug sounds now.

“Yes,” says Adrien, holding himself perfectly still as Gaiabug starts to slowly stalk forward. “A trade. The butterfly miraculous, for one of your many miraculous’.”

She hisses, “Caaan’t havvve earrrrring.”

“I don’t want the earring.” Adrien says, “I want the rooster talon.”

This, it seems, is not what Gaiabug was expecting. Her head tilts again, almost curiously.

“Wwhhyy?”

“I have my reasons. And besides, the butterfly miraculous would fare far better with you in your… current state, don’t you think? Call it an investment in insurance.”

Gaiabug creeps forward another step, wooden eyes never leaving Adrien’s face. Never blinking. Adrien forces himself to do the same. To remain just as unwaveringly sturdy under her gaze.

“Do we have a deal?”

She moves another step closer, into the light of the canopy. “Yesss,” she hisses, “Dealll.”

They are an arm span away from each other now.

“On three,” Adrien says, reaching into his jacket flap. “One.” Gaiabug slips the rooster talon off of her thumb, the strike of Orikko’s light leaving her and returning to the jewelry in a flash. “Two.” Adrien grips the butterfly miraculous, beginning to tug. “Three.”

Everything happens at once.

Adrien rips the miraculous from his jacket - effectively ruining the mirage - and deposits it onto Gaiabug’s palm at the exact moment his other hand snatches up the rooster miraculous she’d placed there. He yanks it and himself out of Gaiabug’s reach at the same moment Carapace falls from the canopy directly above her.

“SHELTER!” He booms, and slams the shelled dome snugly over Gaiabug.

Adrien shoves the rooster miraculous onto his thumb before anyone can take their next breath, Orikko appearing in a flash before he’s shouting,

“Sunrise!”

The transformation crashes through Adrien, and he doesn’t waste any time once it has fully settled in his bones. He calls on the power of immobilization as Gaiabug - from underneath Carapace’s shelter - lets out an enraged roar, hand coming up blazing with her cataclysm.

His voice cracks the air like a whip, “Now, Carapace!”

Carapace is gone in an instant, leaping up as the cataclysm makes contact with his shelter and incinerates it to dust, clearing the path between them.

Lifting his quill, he points it directly at Gaiabug, her arm still outstretched from the cataclysm.

“IMMOBILIZE!”

Gaiabug freezes instantly.

But her eyes are still locked on Adrien. Whom of which quickly renounces Orikko to give her a few crackers, leaving him for the first time in full, maskless, Adrien Agreste glory in front of her.

He thinks he’s probably imagining the fissure of shock crackling across her face, those still human lips frozen on a parted gasp.

“Shit,” Carapace hisses as he comes up to stand at Adrien’s side. They take in the sight of their mutated friend in front of them with a somber air of reverence. “How long will that hold her?”

“I’m not sure,” Adrien says, voice sounding faint and far away even to his own ears. He can’t looked away from Gaiabug. He can’t even blink. “But I don’t think we should waste time finding out.”

He takes a tentative step forward. Gaiabug doesn’t move. Of course she doesn’t. She can’t.

Another step.

“I’m going to help you, Marinette,” Adrien says as he closes the space between them. Her eyes are still fixed on his, like a painting whose eyes follow you as you move. He lifts a hand to brush the backs of his fingers down her cool, wooden cheek. “I’m going to save you,” he whispers, “I promise.”

Then he lifts gentle fingers to unclasp the single ladybug earring still pierced through her ear, blackened by the akuma, and steps back.

It feels like falling out of his own gravity, and for a moment he has to steady himself. Resolidify the steel in his bones.

Then he raises his hands and slips the earring into his ear.

Carapace’s voice carries over to him, softly somber. “Are you sure about this, Adrien?”

Adrien turns to meet his gaze. “It’s okay,” he says, as much for him as the others listening in, “This will work.”

Carapace lets out a shaky exhale. “Just be careful, okay?”

Adrien gives his friend a small, but fierce, smile. Into the com he says, “Be ready with your second chance, Viperion. If something goes wrong, that’s our only insurance.”

Viperion responds dutifully, “Ready when you are, boss.”

Adrien’s eyes flick back to Gaiabug, then fall closed.

“Tikki, spots on.”

It’s like being struck by lightning.

The ferocity of it crashes through the crown of his head down into the rest of his body in debilitating droves, and the moment the power of creation tries to latch itself to his nerves he knows.

Something is deeply wrong with Tikki.

Instead of coming back into himself in a transformed state, he is instead launched deep into the depths of his subconscious. A foggy place only darkening as the ground beneath him shifts and crumbles and shakes, a hole fastly opening to swallow him into nothingness.

Then - a spark of pink light, flittering across the edge of his vision.

Adrien lunges for it before it can skip away, and he feels his fingertips just barely brush the ends -

His touch ignites an explosion of sunlight.

He’s deposited into the warm hold of a memory - but no, Adrien thinks as his eyes span his new surroundings, that’s not right. This is no memory of his if a memory is what it truly is.

He is sitting in front of a golden landscape, the tail of the burning sun tucked behind the black horizon, its bleeding brilliance saturating the entire world into a concerto of sweltering colors. He’s on a hillside, above a tidy valley cupped around a lulling lake.

And walking along its edge are Adrien and Marinette.

He watches with astonishment as this version of himself - for it clearly isn’t the real him - cajoles Marinette with gentle prodding, coaxing her into an easy, weightless dance. They float around the lake edge with all the effortlessness of two lungs breathing in harmony, pulled into each other as if chasing the other’s gravity - desperate for it; Unable to survive without it.

They twirl and twirl and twirl across the ground until they’re spinning out onto that glittering lake surface, melting into the colors of the landscape as it begins to undulate and melt together, so that they are just another swipe of oil in the hundreds making up the painted landscape.

Then, that spark of pink light again.

There and gone it goes in a flash, and this time when Adrien leaps for it, he knows what it is.

Or rather, who.

“Tikki!” Adrien calls, but his voice sounds like it’s bubbling up from underwater. “Please! We need your help!”

“I’m sorry, Adrien,” Tikki says, but her voice is all wrong. Distorted in a drooping way that reminds him of melting plastic. “I can’t seem to - “ and her light flickers, glitching between purple-black and pink-white, like she’s infected with an illness quickly spreading.

The golden landscape melts into that endless void of blackness all around him. His ears begin to ring.

“Tell me what to do,” Adrien pleads, before she can blink away entirely, but he can hardly hear his voice now. “Marinette needs us, Tikki! Please!”

Tikki’s voice comes broken up like static. “Cr - eee - ate. Creeee - ate. Crrrreate.”

“Create?” Adrien echoes, eyebrows furrowing; “Create what?”

But Tikki doesn’t respond. Her light has gone out, blackness enveloping even sound from existence. He squeezes his eyes shut - or at least he thinks he is. It’s hard to tell even where his body is in space while surrounded by so much darkness… He didn’t know anything could be so black.

If only he had something to lighten the dark, a candle or a match or a -

Memory.

In an instant Adrien tries again to squeeze his eyes shut, calling upon all of his composure and clarity of mind so that he can visualize in perfect detail the warmth of Marinette’s brightness, the exhilaration of knowing he is the object of her affections - him, Adrien Agreste, when she could have her pick of anyone, when she could choose the man in the moon and it still not be a bright enough fit for her golden soul.

And she chose him.

Flares go off in bursts all around him at the thought, dazzling displays of light twisting and morphing through the vast void as he holds tight to that feeling.

He can sense an unsteadiness in his tether to Tikki - unsettled like the crumbling edge of a cliff, moments from fully collapsing if too much pressure is applied.

So he leans as far away from that edge as he can.

Vaulting himself instead into the place in his subconscious that he has carved out for Marinette, clusters of memories spiraling into view like twinkling stars sewn into the canvas of a night sky. He leaps out towards the brightest, warmest star within reach, fleeing the vast void of Tikki’s fastly deteriorating mindspace.

“Crrrrreeeate” - Tikki’s garbled voice beckons from behind him - “Chhaaarrrmm.”

And then he is falling full bodily into the memory he’d leapt towards, the opening to Tikki’s void swallowing back closed behind him.

He’s deposited onto the scene of Marinette’s birthday party, the two of them standing close under a sparkle of fairy lights in the middle of the floor. Her eyes are full and bright and burning, looking up at Adrien as if her next breath depended on their continued close-proximity. He watches himself hold the small gift box out to Marinette, pasted into his old selves place in the memory and thus only able to watch as it unfolds.

It’s different watching her open the lucky charm he’d made for her now, after everything that tonight has revealed. Now, Watching the pure delight that sparks in Marinette’s eyes makes him ache with regret.

How could he have been so, so blind.

He hears himself say, “I always carry the lucky charm you gave me wherever I go, and I think it works pretty well!” as he pulls out the matching lucky charm that Marinette had gifted him first. He still has it now, tucked away in the pocket of his suitcase back on the private jet.

“You’re so wonderful!” Marinette is saying. “Oh, ah - it’s wonderful! Uh - oh, what a charm! The charm - I mean, I’ll wear the charm. With luck! Basically, um, thank you?”

The ache in him worsens. He feels his longing for Marinette only growing here, so close to this too-real feeling. It would be so easy for him to continue to hide here.Would be so easy for him to let the memory whisk him away from the real life nightmare awaiting him.

But not easy enough.

Because this Marinette, here in the safe folds of his memory, doesn’t need him. This Marinette doesn’t have a heartbeat, doesn’t have a clock counting down above her head, doesn’t know that Adrien is Chat Noir or that a - literal - apocalyptic heartbreak awaits her only months down the line.

This Marinette doesn’t need rescuing. The one waiting for him on the outside of his mind, imprisoned in a shell of her own making, does.

Adrien feels himself - this version in the memory - wrap a hand around Marinette’s lucky charm, and he focuses all of his attention into the sensation of its weight on his palm. He can still feel the ladybug powers coursing in the background of his mind - like the soundtrack of crashing waves in his ears - but like Tikki, they are unstable. Crumbling the longer they’re handled.

And so Adrien treads very, very carefully.

He squeezes phantom fingers around that phantom lucky charm, entire body locking up from jaw to heel as he forces the memory - the ladybug powers - to bend to his will. It doesn’t matter how unsettled the ground becomes as he wades into Tikki’s domain. Right now, he has enough fortitude and presence of mind to stabilize the both of them.

Create, calls Tikki’s voice in his mind.

And then the not-so physical lucky charm in his hand becomes very tangible indeed. He gasps, fingers clenching white-knuckled on the wooden string of beads as the ground finally gives and he falls.

Fast.

And awakes into chaos.

The jungle is swirling in a cyclone around him, trees the size of skyscrapers and roots like furious pythons lashing through the air as Gaiabug - at the eye of the storm - manipulates it all as if a conductor of her own personal calamity.

Her arms are thrown out wide in the air, even her mouth wooden now, open and shrieking. The sound rips through the air, so ferocious in strength that it causes the dome of Carapace’s shelter around them to quake.

“Adrien!” comes Rena’s voice from behind him.

He can barely hear her over the cacophony of sound he's been thrown into.

Her hands are suddenly at his back, helping him sit up, and he can see the others scattered in various states of readiness around them, all poised for the moment Gaiabug breaks through the creaking shelter.

“Carapace,” Adrien rasps, swallowing to wet his dry throat as he pushes himself the rest of the way up. Then, louder so that the person in question can hear, “Carapace!”

Carapace’s head snaps over, hands still outstretched to hold his shelter in place as he peers at Adrien over his shoulder.

“Adrien,” he says, a look of relief quickly cracking into panic when he sees that Adrien isn’t transformed. “It didn’t work?”

“It did,” Adrien assures, vaguely aware of Rena’s gaze snapping over to him, “But not in the way you might think.”

“Oh my god,” Rena says, “For the people without liberation brain, please?”

“Everything will soon make sense,” Adrien says.

“That isn’t an explanation, Adrien!”

Adrien turns to Carapace. “You need to retract your shelter, and detransform to recharge Wayzz’s strength.”

“Uhh, sure thing boss,” Carapace says, “Just as soon as we find a way to avoid getting pulverized by the all-powerful jungle guardian waiting on the other side.”

“No,” Adrien says. “Retract the shelter now.”

This time, it isn’t just Carapace and Rena looking at him like he’s lost it. Every single person under the dome turns to give him that look now.

“I’m going to break the ladybug earring and release the akuma,” Adrien continues, unruffled, “When I do that, I need you to create a shelter around the akuma so that it can’t get away until we can use this.”

He unfurls his palm, and reveals to them the lucky charm he’d taken from the ladybug infused mindspace of his memories, now colored red with black spots.

“Oh, thank god,” Eagle says, Rena nearly sagging to the floor in relief as Uncanny beams and Luka laughs victoriously.

Carapace whoops, “Oh shit! It worked! You did it, dude! You actually did it! I mean - of course, I never doubted you for a second.”

Adrien rolls his eyes unheatedly as Eagle shoves at Carapace’s shoulder.

Rena starts, “But how did you - actually, you know what? Nevermind. You can tell me when all of this is over. It’ll make for great exclusive content when I write about this moment on the Ladyblog.”

Adrien smiles. A true, genuine smile - the feeling of warmth spreading and pooling low inside of him at the rejuvenated optimism in her voice. At the idea of all of this soon being over.

He tells Rena, “I promise.”

Gaiabug unleashes another devastating blow of roots and bark against the dome, and it gives an answering, foreboding groan like the wails of a wounded animal. Any moment now, the shelter would give.

“Alright.” Adrien reaches up to unclasp the akumatized ladybug earring, taking it off to hold it in his palm. He finds a flat stone and sets the earring on top of it, bringing his heel over it as he meets and locks eyes with Carapace. When he gives him an answering nod, Adrien says, “Now.”

His heel crunches the ladybug earring against the stone, feeling as well as hearing the metal snap at the exact moment the shelter flickers out of view above them.

Wayzz swirls into existence at Nino’s shoulder, tiny arms already outstretched to accept the food being handed to him.

Adrien’s eyes drop to the squirming, vibrant purple akuma under his foot, then flicker over to Gaiabug, who has frozen in wait as the deakumatization process begins. It drains out of her from her feet up, a billowing cloud of purple and black erasing the wooden girl and leaving behind Marinette, inch by blessed inch.

Wayzz has finished his food now.

Nino shouts, “Wayzz, shell on!”

The transformation ignites his silhouette in blinding green-white light, and then Carapace is standing at the ready once more, eyes already poised on the fleeing akuma.

“Shelter!” A soccer ball sized shell encloses the akuma in the air, and it drops like dead weight to the ground, successfully trapped inside.

But Adrien isn’t watching the akuma anymore. He’s watching Marinette reamerge from her wretched stasis.

Finally.

His feet consume the distance between them before his mind can make the conscious decision to move, arriving at Marinette’s side like a communicant taking to worship.

Her soft, beautiful features reappear as the wood is peeled back, until she has finally been restored to her former self, stumbling and all. She sways unsteadily - eyes squeezed closed - and Adrien catches her. Their forearms pressing flesh together as she falls against him, Adrien’s cupped under hers in his capture of her weight. Dark, sweet lashes fan wide over the delicate skin of her cheekbones. She slumps against Adrien, soft noises leaving her lips while she comes back into herself.

The kwami’s hover above them where they’d reappeared alongside Marinette; Like the other members of the team- like the very air in the jungle - they hang in anticipatory silence.

Adrien can’t tear his eyes from Marinette’s wakening face. Her eyelashes begin to flutter. Her nose scrunching as she turns to press it against Adrien’s chest.

“Mmph,” she grumbles.

Adrien whispers, “Marinette,” his breath rustling loose strands of hair by her ear. Gently, he lifts his fingers to tuck them behind her ear, the backs of his knuckles brushing her jaw.

Then her eyes snap open.

She tosses herself away from him - not making it far, enclosed in his hold as she is, the pair of them folded around one another on the jungle floor - her eyes swiveling up to peer at him like a stupified owl.

“Adrien!” She squawks.

Her arms instinctively rise to push them apart, but Adrien doesn’t let her have an inch. He tightens his hold on her, sliding the flats of his palms around to cup her back, thrilling at the splash of red bursting across her cheeks.

“Marinette.” Adrien lets out a breathless laugh. “You’re okay.”

It feels as if a new star is being born inside of him. Burning, burning, burning him from within. The rational part of his brain is telling him it’s the effects of the liberation in action, but a larger, more prominent part of him knows it has everything to do with seeing the light returning to Marinette’s eyes. Which are currently enormous, flitting all over Adrien’s face in a frantic scurry as she blinks sporadically - like doing so will clear up the situation she’s found herself in.

“Y-Yes,” she says - and he decides in that moment that her voice is the sweetest sound he’s ever heard, “I’m okay.” Her eyes flick sidelong to lock with Rena. “But I’m beginning to think I may have missed something big.”

Rena, teary eyed (and doing a remarkable job holding herself back so that the two of them can have their moment) says, “Huge, girl.”

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” comes Carapace's voice, sounding strained. “But we do still have the issue of what the hell we’re gonna do to de-evilize this akuma.”

The two of them look over to where he’s poised above said akuma. Marinette’s eyes immediately drop to it, then fly to the crushed ladybug earring on the flat stone beside it.

Adrien feels the noise Marinette makes as much as he hears it. A gutted, wounded sound reverberating up from her throat as the realization strikes. Her hands shoot up reflexively and when she feels her ladybug earrings gone, her fear erupts on her face.

“Oh god,” her voice wavers, a dew drop posed atop a shivering thread. “Did I -” she turns those breathtaking azure eyes back up at him - “Did I get akumatized?”

“Yes,” Carapace says, before Adrien can so much as open his mouth. His arms are quivering with the effort to keep the shelter corporeal around the akuma, mere moments from transforming back. “And it’s a long, terrifying story that we can all tell around a campfire sometime, once this akuma has been de-eviled.”

Marinette’s eyebrows furrow in concentration. “It won’t matter without a -“

“Lucky charm?” Adrien says, holding up the one he’d pulled from his mindspace.

Her face lights up instantly, a relieved gasp punching through her lips.

“I-It’s the lucky charm I gave you,” she says, trying to school her tone even though Adrien can tell that the sight of it pleases her. Then in the span of a moment, that soft expression leads to confusion. “But the earrings,” she says, “How did you - ?”

In a conspiratorial tone, Viperion says, “We’re all still waiting to hear that ourselves.”

“Hello,” Carapace stresses, “The akuma!”

Marinette transitioned into her Ladybug demeanor with impressive ease, her back straightening, brow hardening.

“We can use the rooster to conjure the power of the yo-yo, which can be used to de-evilize the akuma.” Then, that steel-boned manner softening shyly as her eyes flick over to Adrien. They’re still tangled together on the floor, her smaller body practically cradled in his arms. “Then you can throw your lucky charm, and reset the world.”

Adrien just blinks at her as he processes her plan - such an obvious, but simple plan he can’t believe he didn’t think of it - before his face is bleeding into a helplessly smitten smile.

His hands fall to grip hers, and squeeze. “I am so glad that you’re back.”

“Oh!” Marinette’s cheeks erupt with that beautiful rouge splash, wide eyes blinking quickly. “Oh - uh, well, I -”

“Get a room!” Eagle calls from their left, hands cupped around her mouth to project the words.

If possible, Marinette grows even redder, her stammering revving into fifth gear- and Adrien wants to kiss her.

He wants to kiss her so badly that he aches with it, the feeling enveloping him all the way to his toes. But not here. Not yet. There’s still one more thing he has to do.

So, still grinning like a dopey fool, Adrien squeezes Marinette’s hands one last time before rising to cross the space to the trapped akuma. He tightens the talon on his thumb and says,

“Orikko, sunrise!”

And so the world is reset, every trace of their battle erased. Everything but the memories, and the hours that have passed.

The sun is still rising on the new day around them, now clear of the jungle debris and towering trees. The seven of them stand scattered in a tidy, cobble-stone lined courtyard, vibrant roses spilling buds and perfume all around them. Adrien hears, tucked somewhere out of view, a private fountain trickling. Now all completely transformed back, they make a rather stupefied picture, still waiting for the surreality to wear off.

They had done it.

They had saved the world.

They had saved Marinette.

She is standing a few paces from Adrien, golden sunlight haloing over her shoulder. The liberation has long since worn off, but even still there isn’t a trace of reservation or fear in Adrien’s body as he covers the distance between them in three swift, decisive steps, a very faint part of his brain noticing Rena shepherding everyone else out of the courtyard so they can have privacy.

“Adrien,” she says, barely above a whisper.

He feels like he might shake apart, the relief inside him is so fierce.

“Marinette.”

Neither one has so much as blinked since he stopped in front of her. Then, at the same time they’re both blurting,

“I’m sorry!”

And clamp their mouths shut at the unexpected synchronicity, which leads to them bubbling into laughter immediately after.

Adrien says, “But we don’t have to talk about that right now. We’ll have plenty of time later. Right now I just -” and he takes a huge, filling breath, knowing that there’s still work to be done, there’s still the matter of Shadowmoth’s identity. But he refuses to give up this golden moment quite yet.

An hour, yes, then he’ll be ready to get back to work.

“Let’s go to breakfast,” he says, “You pick the destination. Any place you want, we’ll go.”

Marinette lets out a flustered, ringing laugh. “Don’t think I’ll let you get off that easy,” she teases, “I want to know everything that I missed.”

“I love you,” Adrien says. He steps forward to capture her hands between them as he does, thrilling at the way the words make her eyes gleam, the way they take her breath away, “Anything else, I can tell you over breakfast.”

The emotion unfolds on her face in waves, her mouth working, bright eyes gleaming with brimming tears.

“Oh, Adrien,” she gasps, “I -”

Another step forward, brilliant morning light spilling between them as Adrien drops his forehead to rest against hers.

“I know,” he whispers, and with those words feels her finally let go of the last whisps of tension in her body. She surrenders against him and he supports her weight as if a gift bestowed upon him.

The future is theirs to create, and Adrien can’t wait to get started.

♥️ F I N ♥️

Part 1 . Part 2 . Part 3 . Part 4 . Part 5

#adrien agreste #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #ladynoir fanfiction #adrienette fanfiction #ml fanfiction #sabertoothwalrus #marichat #ladrien #ml #too little too late #2L2L #madi writes

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defnotmadie · 8 months

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the one thing i want to be able to do as a writer is make people come back to something ive written. i want that piece of text to haunt them, i want their thoughts to be briefly consumed by this. i want this to be something they remember long after its time. thats the one thing i want to do

#madie rambles #rambles #ramblings #fan fic writing #writer things #writblr #writeblr #writerscommunity #writing #writing goals

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sarcasticac3 · 1 year

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They say April showers bring May flowers

But I would take a barren field

Over this torrential rain.

#poem #poetry #spilled poem #spilled ink #my writing #Madi writes

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madigoround · 1 year

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Across the lake there’s a little house with a fire going in the chimney.

I imagine that the residents are cozy and warm, content on this chilly late November day.

I imagine that they have never known pain or sadness.

Down the beach a little girl squeals with excitement, enjoying the playfulness of a youth I hope she isn’t forced out of too soon.

I’ve been sitting in the rain by the water for so long that now it’s only a drizzle.

I’ve been sitting in the fog but now it’s lifted and I can breathe a little easier.

The sounds of the gulls and the gentle rhythmic lapping of the water are a dear lullaby.

The sand underneath my shoes will follow me home, nestled in my socks serving as a memory of the peace I go searching for.

I seek sanctuary with the universe, give myself over to it and listen quietly for its whisper “it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

#I drove up to lake Anna to clear my head and was the only one on the beach (probably because it was raining lol) it was nice #madi writes #my poems #Madi writes poetry #I know one of those is my tag for writing I can’t remember which though #might adjust the tags later #I might adjust the writing itself later lol #just relinquishing this to the universe

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astoryisqueer · 11 months

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luke arnold woke up this morning with one thought and one thought only and that was the silverflint agenda happy fucking pride month

#i gave him my copy of meditations to sign #and UNPROMPTED he decided to write ‘i’ll wait a day a month a year’#as if that isn’t silver’s own declaration of love to madi AND flint #mirroring thomas’ own declaration to james #AND I DIDN’T EVEN ASK HIM TO #he said i’m rebuilding this fandom with my own two hands #happy pride bitches #black sails #silverflint #long john silver #blacksails

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strnilolo · 7 months

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oops

summary: the blind, deaf, and mute baking challenge is put on pause when you accidentally injure yourself.

word count: 883

warnings: cursing, mentions of blood, mentions of injury, mentions of knives, mentions of hospital visit, use of y/n, she/her pronouns, only proofread twice, lowercase intentional.

an; thank you guys so much for the love on my last two posts! please send in requests, i would love to hear what ideas you guys have.

||navigation||

driving to the emergency room instead of filming a vlog with the triplets was not how you imagined your night going. everything was perfectly fine when you started filming, you and nick weren’t allowed to hear, matt wasn’t allowed to see, and chris wasn’t allowed to speak. all was well, until you needed to cut open the bag of cake mix for the boys to use.

before the chaos..

“okay we need to get a bowl” you loudly explain the first step to the boys, unaware of your volume. chris grabs your shoulders and ushers you to lower your voice, to which you attempt.

“matt don’t move, i’ll get it” you hastily run over to matt before he can get to the cabinet containing the glass bowls.

“n/n hush, we can hear you” matt laughs standing back as you get the bowl yourself.

“what??” again, as loud as you can be without physically yelling.

“he means shut the fuck up” nick shouts grabbing your head, forcing you to look at him. you laugh, almost falling over in the process. chris grabs the box, reading the instructions to hopefully get the actual baking started, when you grab the knife needed to cut open the bag of cake mix.

“here let me cut it open” you grab the bag from chris, taking it and the knife to the trashcan so you don’t make a mess. holding the bag in one hand, you bring the knife to the side you were holding, your first mistake. slicing the plastic open, you immediately are hit with a stinging pain in your finger.

“oh fuck” you drop the bag onto the counter, taking your headphones off.

“guys i cut my finger open, holy shit” you begin to panic, holding the wound on your finger as blood drips at a rapid pace down your hands, onto the floor.

“what?” matt rips off the blindfold that was once over his eyes. chris and matt rush to you, leaving a confused nick, still jamming out to his music.

“what happened” nick shouts, now also rushing over to your aid.

“ i was trying to cut open the bag for chris and i cut my finger” you try to explain as calmly as possible, failing as a tear makes its way down your face.

“let me see it” matt grabs your hand, but you jerk back instinctively.

“y/n i have to see how bad it is, i need to know if you need to go to the hospital” anxiety on high, matt snaps at you, grabbing your hand once more. nick places a hand on your shoulder, giving it a comforting squeeze.

“okay, this is going to need stitches, let’s go. chris turn off the camera, and get in the car” matt rushes you all to the car, grabbing paper towels on the way out to stop the bleeding.

now all three of you sit in the car, you in the passenger seat so that matt can see you, while chris and nick are in the back seat, leaning forward to make sure you’re alright.

“did i ever tell you guys i hate blood” you laugh tearfully, squeezing the napkins over your finger.

“y/n you worked at a hospital when you were younger, how do you hate blood?” chris leans over your shoulder, watching your bleeding hand cautiously.

“an ANIMAL hospital, chris, it’s completely different” you correct him, closing your eyes to stop yourself from thinking about your injury.

“we’re almost there, as long as i don’t get pulled over you’ll be fine” matt grabs a few paper towels from his lap, urging you to change out the ones that are around your finger.

“matt do not get pulled over for this, im fine. stop speeding” you hand the paper towels to nick and shove your hand into his lap.

“i don’t want to do it, i’ll throw up”

rolling his eyes, nick begins to unwrap the paper towels from your index finger, revealing the severity of your injury, or lack there of.

“it’s not too terrible, it’s deep but not long. you should only need a few stitches” nick finishes wrapping your finger, and rubs your arm to comfort you.

arriving at the emergency room, you are immediately seen, as you’re actively bleeding, and the doctor tells you and the boys that you got lucky. the cut will only need to be glued shut, and bandaged.

finishing your wound, the doctor tells you to stay away from knives and to be more careful.

“how did you cut yourself, you weren’t even blindfolded?” matt laces his fingers with yours, the hand that you didn’t cut, of course, and leads you to the car.

“very carefully”

“well now we know, don’t trust y/n with knives, or sharpe objects, or around blood, even though she worked at an ‘ANIMAL’ hospital” chris mocks your emphasis on the word animal, lightly shoving you towards the car.

“HEY! she’s clumsy she could have tripped over that branch and DIED” nick dramatically places an arm out to stop you from ‘falling’.

“i’ll never live this down will i?” you roll your eyes, stepping aside so matt can open your car door.

“nope” matt smiles, making sure you’re fully in the car before shutting the door.

|| likes, comments, and reblogs are always appreciated :)

🏷️ @bananabread-nana ||

#matt sturniolo #matthew sturniolo #matt sturniolo x reader #sturniolo edit #sturniolo triplets #sturniolo triplets x reader #nick sturniolo #nicolas sturniolo #chris sturniolo #christopher sturniolo #madi filipowicz #sturniolo triplets fanfic #imagine #blurb #alice writes #pls reblog

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madi-writes-things · 24 days

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Nobody Pt. 1

(C.Sturniolo X Reader)

Summary:

Chris and Y/N never seemed to get along, but sometimes help comes from the most unexpected places

Word Count: 1,009

TW: Cursing, SH (not in detail, but it definitely happens and is talked about), Blood, Violence, Hurt Comfort, Not edited, Bad stuff under the cut

A/N: Hey guys, just wanted to pop in t let you know that my DM’s are always open if you need someone to talk to. I use y writing as a safe and healthy outlets for the destructive thoughts, but reading i these sorts of things isn’t healthy for everyone… keep yourself safe.

-Madi <3

Y/N’s POV

“”“”“”“”“”

“What do you want?” I ask when I see Chris walk into my room without knocking. I didn’t mean for it to sound so rude, but it just kind of happens when i talk to him. I don’t even remember why we hate each other, and i bet he doesn’t either… its just always been like this.

“Nick was too lazy to come upstairs…” he stared at me for a second before continuing. “We’re going out to film, do you want us to get You something for dinner?”

“I’ll just text nick what I want” as he leaves i wonder if he even cares. I only live with him because Nick and Matt begged me to come to LA with them after HighSchool. Nick and i have been best friends since eighth grade when I transferred to their district, and Matt has always been nice to me… but Chris never seemed to like me, eventually i stopped going out of my way to be nice to him.

I hear the door closes, quickly followed by the sound of Matt pulling out of the driveway.

“”“”“”“”“”

How did i get here? Nick would be so mad at me… he would never say it, but i know it’s frustrating when people you care about keep making the same mistakes. I look down at my thighs, realizing that I can’t even see the individual cuts through the blood. I should have just woken Nick up, if i had I wouldn’t be in this situation.

The tears have mostly stopped flowing at this point, and the adrenaline is dying down. The weight of what I’ve done starts to set in. I need to clean this up, I need to get help, I need to get Nic-

“What the fuck” as I look up I’m met with the icy blue eyes of Chris. Before I can process what is happening he is yanking the blade out of my hand and flushing it down the toilet. “Y/N, look at me… what happened?” Seeing the panic in his eyes makes me feel bad, he was never supposed to have to deal with this.

“Can you please get the first aid kit from under my bed?” The words roll off my tongue with ease. He just stared at me with fear in his eyes. “I’ll be fine, just go” with that he turned around and went to my room.

Chris returned a few minutes later, with my large first aid kit, and a gas station bag in his hands. I had been desperately trying to clean up some of the mess with toilet paper, but I was mostly failing. “Can you please sit on the side of the bathtub?” I stared up at him in confusion. “Please Y/N… please just let me help you clean up”

“do you even know what you’re doing?” His response consisted of turning his phone to face me, an article on how to clean self harm wounds staring back at me. “Fine…” I did what he asked and positioned myself on the side of the tub.

Chris started by wiping up what I had missed from the floor, quickly moving to sit in between my legs. As he started cleaning me up, I realized how intimate our position was. He wouldn’t look me in the eyes, but I could tell that he was holding back tears. After he stopped all the bleeding, and cleaned off the wounds he just stared for a second… and it broke me.

the tears started streaming down my face again, nothing could’ve stopped them. “Don’t tell Nick… he can’t know I’m doing this again.”

He finally looked up at me, taking a breath to steady himself before speaking. “again?” I just stared. He finished up what he was doing in silence before finally speaking. “Ok… I won’t tell Nick, as long as you let me help you with this”

“I don’t need help Chris.” He didn’t respond, causing me to panic. “Fine, but nobody can know about this.” He held out his pinky, I locked mine into his… an unspoken promise between us.

Chris disposed of any evidence, before carrying me to his room. I was too tired to protest, and it’s not like anyone would be up early enough to notice. He gave me a pair of sweats, and climbed into the bed with me.

“”“”“”“”“”

I woke up to Chris laying practically on top of me, his arm wrapped tightly around my waist. For a moment I didn’t mind… until I saw the time.

“wake up!” I shook him lightly, his eyes flutter open before widening at the position he was currently in. “I need to get up, me and Nick are supposed to go get breakfast for a video… he can’t know that I slept in here.” Chris quickly rolled off of me, and I rushed down the stairs.

As I made my way into the living room I could see Matt and Nick, sitting in silence. They looked at me at the same time, just as Chris came down the stairs to join us.

“Why are you wearing his sweat pants?” Nick stared daggers into my soul. “They must’ve gotten mixed up in the laundry…” I hated lying to my best friend, but he couldn’t know.

“I see… what’s your fake excuse for being in his bed this morning?” I looked at Chris quickly as we walked closer to his brothers. He met my eyes, unsure of what the right decision was.

“please Chris…” I whispered. “You promised me you wouldn’t tell him.” I see Chris make a decision, and before I can stop him he opens his mouth.

“We slept together.” He looked at me, apologizing with his eyes. I look between Nick and Matt, trying to judge their reactions. While this wasn’t ideal, it was better than the truth… until I saw Nick get up.

in a matter of seconds Nick had punched Chris across the face. After flexing his hand, he looked at me with nothing but hatred before walking away.

#madi makes things #madi writes things #chris sturniolo fluff #chris sturniolo imagine #chris sturniolo #chris x reader #christopher sturniolo #christopher sturniolo x reader #sturniolo triplets #matt #nick sturniolo #sh!reader #angst #hurt/comfort

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weretheones · 1 year

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Good Intentions

Plot: Daryl was certain something went wrong on that run, it was the only reason why you’d be so late coming back. Until, you proved him wrong. (Season 3-4)

Requested by Anon <3

Paring: Daryl Dixon x reader

Word Count:  1.7k

Warnings: so many italics lol.

A/N: a couple days late but I finally have a little holiday fic for you guys!! I hope you enjoy it <3

———————————————————————————

Daryl got it now.

The cold air numbed his fingers enough that he could barely feel the zipper of the bag he undid. Rick’s instructions fell on deaf ears, muffled by a pounding heartbeat as Daryl reached for the handle of his gun and forgot the bag the moment it slipped past his grip and dropped on the snow-dusted ground.

Every time a run had gone too long, or he came home covered in blood and guts, he never understood why you seemed so… out of place, so wild-eyed. He knew you cared, even if it took him all the months you spent practically yelling it for him to finally get it, yet he never quite let himself believe it was all for him. But his hands shook as he slid the gun into the back of his pants— cold, clammy, and weak— and even if the sensation sent a shiver down his spine, all he could think about was you.

“She’s been gone all day.”

The words left Rick’s mouth, cursed with that defeated tone in his voice like he’d been holding onto some idea that you’d be back any second until Daryl and the rest of the day’s run crew pulled through that gate instead. It was like all the blood had been drained of him, and a pale, shaky excuse of a man was the only thing left. For once, Daryl didn’t care what anyone might think, what jokes Glenn and Carol might whisper into his ear later on, not when something went wrong out there— he knew it. It’d been too damn long. The sun’s rays had slipped into amber an hour ago. Dusk was closing in, even if checking those snares should’ve taken you a couple of hours, at most.

“What route did she take?” Glenn asked between cautionary glances over Daryl’s worsening composure.

“The north turn. Said she’d wrap ‘round, gather the east snares then head back ‘fore the river.”

“That should’ve taken two hours, maybe three.”

Rick’s head fell for a second, before he sighed, “I know.”

“’N ya didn’t go out sooner?” Daryl finally snarled.

Rick inhaled like he’d been expecting Daryl to wind up so tight he had no choice but to snap. “I followed the path earlier… but ‘m not a tracker. Ya know tha’. We were jus’ ‘bout to go out lookin’ again.”

“’S been all damn day! She coulda needed your help hours ago!”

“She knows how to handle herself. She— she has her gun. Ya know how it’s like out there, sometimes ya jus’ get stuck waitin’ for a herd to pass or—“

Daryl scoffed and turned on his heel, “‘M goin’ out.”

Rick knew better than to try and stop him.

Of course, that was when an old, rusty car turned onto the prison’s road. It rolled up to the fences. Whoever was on guard duty must’ve recognized the driver because the first gate began to open, then the second, and soon enough they all saw your familiar face through the windshield. Flashing that bright grin of yours, you slowed to a stop just beside the group, jumping out of the car with nothing more than a bit of blood splattered on your jacket.

Glenn gasped your name as they all ran up to your side.

“I’m fine! I know I’m late, yes I’m sorry, yes I won’t do it again… but you guys gotta see this,” you rambled, so fervent— that crazy woman title Daryl gave you seemed fitting. You didn’t even give them the chance to ask questions, instead, yelling something about finally getting lucky and running around to the trunk.

“It's Christmas!”

Rick and Glenn shared a look.

“It is?”

“Well, it's cold.” You shrugged. “And I happened upon what must’ve been some charity drive right before everything fell apart. I got food, handmade scarves, even some toys.” You gestured to the bags filling the trunk of the car with that same crazed smile on your face. “So yeah, it’s Christmas! Or close to it.”

“How did you...?” Glenn trailed off, laughing at the piles of supplies practically overfilling the trunk.

You shrugged. “I got lost and found a road. Everything was piled into this bigger truck, but it didn’t run. So I kept looking until I found a car that worked, loaded everything up, and made my way here.”

You told Rick that the first box filled with knitted outer wear, comics and toys buried underneath, was for the kids. With a smile of his own building, he grabbed the edge and peeked inside just before you slipped a black beanie over his head.

“Your ears have been looking a bit cold since Carl stole that hat.”

Rick huffed a laugh at that, pulling the hat off his head to rub the fabric between his cold fingers.

“But the real present are those boxes there, each one filled to the brim with canned beans, corn, hell, anything you can fit in a can— it's there.”

That time, he smiled.

“Well, how ‘bout tha’.” Rick grabbed a can from the top, reading the label before squeezing your shoulder. The look in his eye said it all.

“Glenn.” You tossed him the car keys. “It's certainly seen better days, but you said you were looking for another vehicle for runs.”

Glenn chuckled thanks. There was no telling how long the thing would actually run for, but maybe with a little tune-up from Daryl, it could prove to be a worthy car. With smiles of their own, Rick and Glenn loaded into the packed car and drove it up over the field’s hill, ready to hand out the gifts to everyone huddling inside.

On the other hand, Daryl hung around, like that sinking feeling in his gut probably would for the rest of the night. His eyes flickered between you and the frumpy newspaper-wrapped ball in your hands.

“Ya alright then?”

“Alright? I’m amazing.” You grinned.

“Ya got blood…” He gestured to your top.

“Oh. It's not mine.”

He huffed, “Since when are ya runnin’ ‘round ’n puttin’ yourself in danger for some toys ‘n cans?”

“I wasn’t in any danger. It was one walker.”

“Still, ya could’a—“

You pushed something into his chest and he lost his train of thought.

“Hells this?” He grabbed the ball of newspaper, the weak pages crinkling under his lightest touch.

“It's your gift,” you answered. “What? You didn’t think I got you anything?”

Daryl looked down at it, at his gift. The first gift he ever got from anyone other than Merle— and even then, that was a rare enough occurrence that Daryl didn’t know what the hell to do.

There you were, with an expectant smile on your face, only growing brighter as the seconds passed. So he unwrapped it. The paper was weak from over a year of abandon and tore easily. Peeks of beige, red, and orange, until the newspaper was as forgotten as his bubbling anger and he was holding up a long piece of fabric.

“It's a new poncho since you keep giving me yours. Now you don't have to freeze on account of me,” you explained.

Daryl never minded sharing— not with you. He liked the way it smelt after you handed it back to him, and that pretty blush you got when you thanked him over and over. But he’d be lying if he said those nights it wrapped around you, instead of him, were easy. The cold was an unforgiving thing, after all, it didn’t have much sympathy for good intentions.

“Thanks. Tha’s uh…” The tips of his ears reddened. “Thanks,” he mumbled again, this time keeping his eyes on the poncho and away from your smile he swore could warm him better than any fire.

“Of course.” Your smile turned bashful, too. “It was the least I could do, considering everything you’ve done for me.”

Daryl really didn’t know what to do— or say— then. Familiar thoughts, encouraged by that warmth on your lips and the affection in your eyes, swarmed his heart again. There were things he wished he could say, things he wished he could do— if he was a different man, if things were different. For now, whatever those thoughts and wishes meant, it was all too fresh, too delicate, like the dusting of snow on the ground below.

“I have another gift for you,” you said and grabbed his arm. With a hurried pace and a playful grin, you lead him up the hill Glenn and Rick had driven up just moments ago.

“I know I shouldn’t have just gone off like that.” The smile on your lips was still strong, but Daryl could see the sincerity in your eyes. “I’m sorry. I just had to do this.”

Deep down, Daryl knew you didn’t need another lecture, but that pit in his stomach was still weighing him down; he couldn’t think rationally when it came to you. His mouth opened again, ready to lecture about staying out of trouble and only taking risks that were absolutely necessary because damn it, people were waiting here for you. Until his eyes caught sight of his second gift of the day.

Perhaps a bit less tangible than his new poncho, but it was warmer than anything you could’ve scavenged. The kids, once so apprehensive to be living in a place as grim and dull as the prison, were running around the courtyard with new gloves and hats. They played with ratty stuffed animals and dusty action figures between occasional throws of frail snowballs. Even Carl had picked up his baby sister, holding his oversized hat over her tiny head as he protected her from the incoming dustings of snow. Judith was giggling— they all were.

You glanced up at him, and it took everything in him to not adorn that same, stupid smirk you had. But a small smile slipped past— he couldn’t help it, really. The anger in him lifted the second he saw you alive and your skin unmarked by teeth or a blade. And the scene of his people, his family, happy and warm almost made up for that pounding in his chest, even if his heart still beat a second too fast for his liking. Although, this time, he could blame your tight grip on his arm and dazzling smile for that.

——————————————————————————

A/N: if you’re reading this, thank you! I hope you enjoyed this fic. please feel free to leave feedback, it helps so much and I love to read it. have a lovely day <3

#daryl dixon x reader #daryl x reader #daryl dixon x you #daryl x you #daryl dixon / reader #daryl dixon / you #daryl dixon fanfiction #daryl dixon fanfic #the walking dead fanfic #twd fanfiction #norman reedus #daryl dixon #daryl dixon oneshot #daryl dixon imagine #daryl dixon angst #daryl dixon fluff #twd daryl #twd fanfic #madi writes

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skynapple · 2 months

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What if MC looked different from her past lives, will he connect the dots?

Xavier x MC [A03 link]

Prompt from @nobodys-saviour: "If MC didnt look the same as her other lives do you think they’d still recognise her. [Would] Xavier?" [x].

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Xavier did not make a habit of making strong connections in his various "lives" he'd lived on Earth. The less he knew about mild acquaintances, the less there was to remember, making it easier to focus on more important things and details. Thus, his opinion of his new colleague was varied at best.

On some days, she surprised him with strength and fervor. On other days, her youthfulness presented itself, especially when chatting and gossiping with her work friends. Finding out they were neighbors was more of an irritation to him, since it presented the danger of her attempting to get to know him. He had half a mind to move when he realized she was persistent in attempting to get to know him, despite his frequent attempts to ignore her. There were times she tried to leave nice, neighborly things at his doorstep. He rarely, if ever, answered, and kept conversation polite but brief. It was merely the way he protected his many identities over time. If he had to sum it up, he thought she was nice, but a little meddlesome.

One day she came over feigning illness for some kind of game with her colleagues. Truth or dare? How childish. Xavier didn't have time for such trivial things. He let her leave with a small token of his, and sent her on her way.

He didn't understand her obsession with getting to know him. He could feel her eyes on her when he was in the office, and hear her asking questions about him. Occasionally she'd be texting him random articles when he still had no idea how she got his number. He passed her once while she was on another job while he was on his day off. Only out of the corner of his eye did he notice she was handing their coworker Tara a keychain. He had no idea how she noticed him quite literally all the way across the street with his hoodie over his head.

"Xavier!" She called out to him.

He almost wanted to pretend not to hear it.

"What is it?" He asked flatly.

"I made these for a few people at the office. Do you want one?" She was asking.

Tara nearly cut her off with excitement, holding hers up to show him.

"Look at it! It's so cute!! She's so talented. I had no idea she could make stuff like this!!"

He blinked at it - a little teddy bear keychain.

"No thanks." He noticed her disappointment and quickly tried to add, "Not really... my thing."

"Oh! Totally. But I can make other stuff!"

"I'm good." He replied quickly. "...Sorry."

And that was that.

Other than those brief instances, she never crossed his mind. His mind was occupied with his missions, with his goals, with her, the one from so long ago he was always thinking about. It was heart-wrenching thing realizing that he was beginning to forget her appearance, the scent of her hair, the rhythm of her laugh. The last time he'd seen her was centuries ago now. Late at night before sleep would befall him, he would see a flash of her in his mind, but it was never clearly visible. It terrified him. He wished he could draw so he could save some semblance of her appearance. Yet, all he had left of her was her lightseeker badge, and a little star.

After pulling an all-nighter in the no-hunt zone, the moment he began to turn back, another Wanderer attack came. His senses sharpened only briefly, launching himself skillfully at its weakest points, light evol creating a shower of light in his stead. Despite his skill, his body was not as responsive as he would hoped. The Wanderer swung large and struck his abdomen squarely and launching him several meters down. He gritted his teeth as his back connecting to the forest floor below them, wincing sharply at the pain and the wind being knocked out of him. In his moment of weakness, his lightsword had flung from his hand and landed a ways from him.

Before he could recover, the Wanderer launched back up, growling at him almost as if to sneer at Xavier's vulnerability. He began to brace himself for the effort of teleporting himself to his lightsword, which was normally a simple enough thing but now would require more excruciating effort through his brain fog and injury. Just when he was about to do so, a voice rang out through the night sky.

"Hey, ugly!"

A glint caught his –and the Wanderer's– attention as a woman stood off to the side.

Oh.. no. He thought, grimacing at the thought of anyone else not only holding his lightsword. The fact, too, that it was this specific colleague and caused a feeling of cold dread and irritation to course through him. There was no way this would end particularly well.

Then time froze.

She was swinging the lightsword up to the sky, resonating with it in a way that normally only he could as its rightful owner. Had she always had a resonate evol? He hadn't remembered if he paid attention to that when Jenna briefed him.

Maybe he was just tired. Maybe it was the moonlight and the setting in the forest that felt so starkly familiar. Maybe he had been yearning too long. In that moment, he thought he saw her.

She swung his sword like it was her own, with skill that had certainly taken him hundreds of years to master. Fearlessness and ferocity in her eyes that he hadn't seen in anyone else. She had a quality of dash.

He came to and stood, knowing there was no way she would defeat the large Wanderer on her own, but with her providing enough distraction, he could deal a final blow.

"Hand me my sword!" He called out to her.

"Here you go!" She lept over to him and handed it over, drawing her twin pistols afterwards.

For a split moment, the Wanderer examined them, he knew it was gearing up for a strike.

He looked at the sword in his hand and then to her, tired eyes giving way to clarity. One last push.

"Swords of the stars." He said quietly, almost a weakened whisper to himself as he rose it to strike a final blow, as if crying out to her to give him a bought of strength.

"We must always point in the same direction." She whispered back, replying in a literal sense as she pointed her guns at the Wanderer. The shock nearly stalled him but he was too focused on the task at hand.

Together the Wanderer came down in a flash of light.

As he reached out to collect the protocore, he examined it only a moment before turning back to her in disbelief.

"It's you."

She looked at him quizzically. "Duh, it's me. Xavier, I don't understand why you keep leaving me behind. We're partners! Maybe don't head into the no-hunt zone by yourse- Xavier!!"

The man was collapsing, finally giving way to the stress, shock, injury, and sleepless state his body had been in.

When he closed his eyes he could hear her voice, feel her arms around him and she dragged him to her hunter bike. The pieces of her personality and mannerisms began to come together.

When he awoke in a hospital bed, he at first panicked, having specifically avoided hospitals for particular reasons. Jeremiah would have his work cut out for him later. His next thought was,

She's...here?

There she was, staring out the window in the hospital chair beside him.

"Oh!" She exclaimed, noticing him staring. "You're awake. Good! I brought you some fruit. And this!"

She tossed him a small object and he caught it, a number of emotions coursing through him as he examined it.

"What's this?"

"I know you said you didn't want one, but I made one for literally everyone, even Jenna, so it felt kinda weird. I know you said bears weren't your thing, so I guess I tried to think about your light evol? A star's pretty close, right?"

He couldn't help but smile. "It's close... I guess."

She laughed, and it was the first time he paid attention to the rhythm.

She's here. She's right here.

#the lnds brainrot is real #madi writes #lnds xavier #lnds #l&ds #l&ds xavier #lnds prompt #love and deepspace #love and deepspace xavier #xavier x mc #what if #madi plays lnds

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runawayballista · 1 year

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new chapter: SPY × PSYCHO

Chapter 18/? Fandoms: Mob Psycho 100, SPY × FAMILY Relationships: Teru/Mob, Teru & Anya & Mob, Loid & Reigen Characters: Hanazawa Teruki, Kageyama “Mob” Shigeo, Anya Forger, Reigen Arataka, Loid Forger | Twilight, Kageyama Ritsu, Yor Briar Forger | Thorn Princess, Inukawa Mameta, Kurata Tome, Telepathy Club Additional Tags: SPY × FAMILY setting, Slow Burn, Comedy of Errors, Rivals to Rival-Friends to Rival-Lovers, Trans Teruki Hanazawa, expy cold war setting means Mob has a brand new complex about his powers, it starts out a little like three men & a baby in reverse except the 3 men are 2 psychic teens and they don’t even know about the baby at first, third-wheeling gremlin little sister Anya, Embarrassingly Oblivious Pining

Mob follows Anya into a shop to seek shelter from the rain and finds himself in a buy-one-get-one deal of trouble, while the Telepathy Club turns Teru’s search into a party. Reigen gets an unexpected phone call.

If Spy Wars has taught Anya anything, it’s the power of a good redemption arc, so when she realizes that the only two other espers at Eden College are one of the school’s top bullies and his new rival, she makes it her mission to make sure they become best friends — even if it means a little (a lot of) meddling.

Or: Teru’s ready to prove that he’s worthy of being Mob’s rival by any means necessary. Mob’s just happy to make a friend at his new school, but everyone around him worries he’s being bullied when the most popular boy in his year starts sticking to him like glue.

Or: Through a combination of coincidence, confirmation bias, and dumb luck, Loid becomes convinced that Reigen is a secret intelligence asset.

#mob psycho 100 #mp100 #spy x family #terumob #madi writes #spy x psycho

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madibug · 2 years

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the calm before the storm

Part 5 of too little, too late

(Originally based on @sabertoothwalrus comic here ♥)

Also on Ao3!

Bunnyx gives Chat a fast-and-loose run through of her plan, then ends it by saying the ‘finer details’ are up to him to decide. And when he just stares at her in horror, she continues,

“You see, there can never be just one plan. That would never work. One plan means one chance to get it right, and that’s not really my style.”

If possible, he feels more confused. “So there is more than one plan?”

She waves her hand in a clarifying manner. “Don’t think about it that way. Think about it like” - she cuts off, eyes wandering up and away as if searching for the words on the burrow walls themselves - “Time is everywhere and makes up everything, but it isn’t as static as people tend to think. The future’s always changing, right? Undulating intangibly around us, ebbing in and out of shape with our every action. And while it can be a docile force - if you have true intentions and a clear vision of your own future - it can also be a punishing one. So the true plan? Anticipate the unpredictability of time. Shift with it. Be adaptive, be flexible. Don’t let the disruption of one path or course of action derail you from your goal. Shit happens, you understand? The point is to keep moving forward. Make another plan. You have everything you need now, and I know you’ve got the brains up in that angsty little teenage head of yours to execute a victory no matter the obstacles thrown your way.”

He feels his bravado, which he’d been steadily gathering up until now, shudder and creak.

“You make it sound so easy.”

For a moment neither one of them speaks, a dozen heartbeats passing before Bunnyx finally says, sounding a thousand years old and ten at the same time,

“Did you know, time sings as it passes?”

Chat blinks up at her, taken aback by the words. “It sings?”

Something ubiquitous flicks through her eyes. “Yes. It sings. And if you slow down enough to actually, truly listen, you’ll always know what to do. The universe wants to guide you. We are all a part of it, caught in the inhale-exhale of its cycle. What are humans if not star energy condensed into wanting vessels? The vibrations of our souls ache to be in alignment with the unending rhythm of the universe, a song that has played since the beginning of time, and that will continue to play long after we’re both dead and gone. And it does not play in secret, but to guide. You just have to listen.”

Gooseflesh rise in waves over Chat’s skin as Bunnyx talks, and he experiences a strange strike of sorrow; the same foreign, tangling of grief that comes whenever his thoughts bring him too close to an existential crisis. But it’s somehow worse because it's Bunnyx saying these things. She might be older than him, but she’s still young - so young - to be talking as if from the experience of a hundred lives.

Hell, what does he know? Maybe that’s exactly what it feels like, being in here.

“Once Ladybug is deakumatized, once she’s - better,” Chat says slowly, “I’ll talk to her. We’ll figure something out so that you don’t have to stay in the burrow anymore.”

Bunnyx smiles, a weighty thing. “It’s that big heart of yours that makes me so confident you’ll succeed.” She leans forward to ruffle his hair as she says this, and he lets her, his heart constricting tightly in his chest as she does. “But I don’t need to be rescued. I’m where I need to be.”

With rising intensity, Chat says, “How can you be so sure about something so monumental? Where does that conviction come from?”

She gives him that look again that makes him feel like a child speaking to someone ancient, and says, “Experience, Kitty Noir. There’s no shortcut for growing up.”

Chat’s gaze falls. It isn’t what he was hoping to hear, right now.

Bunnyx, astute as ever, seems to pick up on this instantly. “You’re still feeling doubts.”

“How could I not?”

“Adrien,” she says, surprising him by saying his civilian name while he’s still wearing the bell and ears, but it's clear when he looks at her that this had been the point. “I think the issue is that you need to learn how to have faith.”

Like a knee jerk, Chat says, “I know how to do that!”

Bunnyx parries, “Oh, really? Then answer me this: I believe in you, Adrien. Can you believe in yourself?”

The words tangle the tongue in Chat’s throat. It feels like a loaded question… A familiar one. Like those that had plagued his restless nights over the last few months. (Although during those moments, the question hadn’t been so much ‘do I believe in myself?’ as it had been, ‘does Ladybug believe in me?’ It was only as evidence seemed to suggest no, she didn’t, that Adrien actually did begin to doubt himself. To question. Renouncing Plagg became all too easy after enough sleepless nights filled with nothing but self deprecating thoughts.)

But none of those insecurities feel relevant now.

None of those old hurts can hold a candle to the flame the memories of Marinette had ignited inside of him, so even if he might not believe in himself - not fully, not yet - he believes in his love for Marinette.

Fully.

Relentlessly.

A calm washes over him as these feelings only swell in size, as if in emphasis of their enormity, and he realizes: nothing else matters. Marinette loves him, and he loves her. That will be enough.

He meets Bunnyx’s steadfast gaze unblinkingly. “I’m ready.”

The pads of Chat’s fingers linger over the warm metal of the cat miraculous, snug in its spot under his second knuckle. He has grown so familiar with the weight of it that he thinks he could identify it in a pile of replicas all varying in density.

Yet in this moment, it has never felt heavier.

He’s standing in front of the burrow hole that Bunnyx has opened back onto his father’s private jet.

After she had opened the hole Bunnyx had stood beside Adrien and said, “I’m not going with you.” But he had already known that. “I need to stay in my burrow in case I need to jump back into the past at a moment’s notice” - and he had heard the unspoken in case you fail - but he had already known that, too. Can feel the gravity of the responsibility ahead of him.

If Bunnyx does have to step back in, he doubts it’ll be into a timeline where he - the Adrien he is in this moment - still exists.

Chat finally breaks the silence. “Can you tell him I’m sorry?” meaning this Plagg. He doesn’t look up from where he’s fiddling with the ring, twisting it in a circle around his finger. “Tell him - I’m going to make things right.”

“I’ll tell him,” says Bunnyx, “But I’m sure he already knows.”

Chat’s eyes flick up to catch the tweak of encouragement on her lips. He swallows thickly. Then grips the ring to twist and pull.

“I renounce you, Plagg.”

The ring comes off and Adrien is overtaken in green-white light, his hand coming out automatically to deposit it in Bunnyx’s hand. His capacities once again swoon as the gravity of the burrow dawns over his human perception, and Bunnyx quickly swings him around so that he isn’t facing the enormity of it, twisting him forward towards the open ended burrow hole.

Her hands squeeze his shoulders. “Good luck, Adrien.”

His hand comes up reflexively to grip the single Ladybug earring pierced through his ear. Then he steps forward.

It is dark in the jet kitchen. Utterly silent save for the underlying hum of appliances and the rattle of Adrien’s shallow breath. His sandwich is still open and half made on the counter to his right and the sight sends a strange jolt through him, making him twitch uncomfortably.

For a handful of long moments, Adrien remains totally still. Needing a moment to gather his bearings before facing everyone again. He isn’t sure how he’ll be received, after all.

Rena’s agonized eyes flash back through Adrien’s memory, then the shell-shocked state that Carapace had been reduced to, and finally Viperion’s downcast gaze, his remorseful silence... Adrien had left them all in varying states of distress and distrust, and now he is meant to lead them into what is undoubtedly the most dangerous battle any of them have ever fought. And, he can do it - he knows he can - but he just. Needs a minute.

The jet dips beneath him, a drastic shift in direction causing Adrien to sway and stumble to regain his balance.

Adrien’s eyes fly over to the portholes at the edge of the kitchen entrance. Before he’d stepped into the burrow the sky had been black behind them, but now they are filled with a color - while still dark - that is a different shade than night; too starless, too gray, a dusting of dawn behind meandering clouds.

He has to have been gone for hours, for the sun to be so close to rising. In the burrow, it had felt like minutes.

Suddenly, Adrien is feeling a lot more antsy about their time restraints.

He moves decisively out of the kitchen and into the hallway in search of the others, hoping they haven’t flown too far from Paris while he’s been gone. Beginning at the first door, Adrien opens and closes four or five doors - leading to empty rooms - before he hears the answering sound of footsteps clapping down the hallway behind him.

Adrien pulls out of the current room he’d been checking to see Nino racing down the hallway towards him, looking seconds from bursting into tears.

“Adrien!” Nino yells, “You’re back!” and flings his arms around him to drag him into a fierce hug.

Emotion bloats heavily in Adrien’s throat - he’s just so relieved to know he and Nino are still on good enough terms to exchange hugs.

In a watery voice, Adrien says, “Hey, Nino.”

Nino unleashes a tidal wave of words onto him - an apology, Adrien realizes as his friend barrels on, as if he’s rehearsed these words and has been waiting to say them to him once he got back. And Adrien is so astonished, so touched, that all he can do is listen.

But when Nino says, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t a better friend, dude -” Adrien has to pull him to a stop.

“Nino, you’re an amazing friend. I was just -” but Adrien doesn’t know how to finish that sentence, so he changes direction. “ I shouldn’t have thrown that conversation back in your face. I’m sorry.”

Nino’s expression goes severely serious, eyebrows cutting down in two sharp lines.

“Dude, no. I shouldn’t have said that about you - I mean, Chat Noir. He’s - You’re,” he sighs in frustration, scrubbing a hand down his face. “What I’m trying to say is: I should’ve been a better friend to Chat Noir . You’ve never let us down, in or out of costume. And I know you say you’ve forgiven me or whatever, but like - I won’t forgive myself if I’ve made you think you’re expendable because, dude. You’re invaluable.”

A warmness swells in Adrien and he yanks Nino back into another crushing hug. The two of them cling to each other in the tight space of the jet hallway, Adrien biting his tongue to keep the tears at bay.

“Are you done apologizing, yet?” Comes a high pitched voice from the direction Nino had come from, “Can we come out now?”

Adrien and Nino pull apart, and this time, there’s a peace in Nino’s eyes that Adrien feels reflected in his heart.

Nino claps Adrien on the shoulder and turns back to yell, “Yeah, you can come out! We’re cool.”

Wayzz, Trixx, and Alya step forward down the corridor into view. Which left Luka and Sass tucked somewhere out of sight, but Adrien hadn’t fought with them . Luka could probably sense the heavy vibe Alya is carrying with her down the hallway, and had determined their reunion didn’t need any more of an audience than it already has.

The three of them come to a stop a step or so behind Nino, Alya’s eyes locked to the floor. When they do lift, Adrien is surprised to see the sheepish shade in her gaze.

He realizes, suddenly, that he won’t be able to take it if Alya tries to apologize to him right now. All she did was care for Marinette and grieve when she was taken from them. She shouldn’t have to apologize for that.

Alya opens her mouth -

Adrien tips forward, brushing past Nino to crash into her. He wraps his arms around her in a bruising hug and she just stands there, frozen to the spot before a noise like a sob hiccups past her lips and her hands are coming up to match Adrien’s crushing hug in its strength.

“We’re going to save her,” Adrien whispers urgently against her hair, “I promise, we’ll save her.”

“I know,” Alya sniffles, “I know we will.” And when they pull back she drags her sleeve-clad arm over her eyes to wipe the tears. “So… Now you know?”

She doesn’t say the words out loud, but she doesn’t have to. Their shared knowledge of Ladybug’s true identity passes silently between them, and it hurts more than Adrien thought it would.

“If I had known,” Adrien begins, mouth working as he struggles to find the right words, “I never would have -”

“Adrien,” Alya says, hands coming up to cup his shoulders, head dipping forward to catch Adrien’s lowered gaze. “It isn’t your fault. Hey.” And then she shakes him, gently, just once to get his full attention, and when her efforts return his gaze to her, the look in her eyes is so indominably fierce that he doesn’t dare question what words leave her mouth next. “This is not your fault.”

But Adrien isn’t sure he can believe that. “Then whose fault is it?”

“Shadowmoth, of course.”

Their gazes snap to the side, because it hadn’t been Alya or Nino who had spoken. Coming down the long hallway alongside Luka and Sass, is Jessica Keynes, her kwami Liiri, and her sister Aeon.

“Jessica,” Adrien says, the name coming out sounding like a gasp. “Aeon? How are you here?”

Luka says, “Future Adrien got ahold of them.”

Aeon nods, while a look crosses Jessica’s face like she’s still trying to wrap her head around this time travel ordeal.

“Apparently,” Jessica says, “We’re pretty tight in the future.”

“Yeah,” adds Nino, like he can’t help himself, “And apparently there’s like a million of us miraculous holders all around the world and there’s a secret organization we’re all apart of -”

“Nino,” Alya and Wayzz admonish in near perfect unison, effectively making Nino’s mouth clamp shut.

“I - he told you about the future?” asks Adrien incredulously.

Wayzz says, “Yes, and you shouldn’t have.”

“It jeopardizes the continuity of the timeline, it’s true,” adds Sass.

“The dude was dying,” cuts in Jessica, her tone of voice defensive on older Adrien’s behalf. “If it was me, I would’ve done the same thing. More, probably.”

And it’s so unexpectedly sweet, hearing someone stick up for him, even his future self, that it makes fondness bead up in Adrien’s chest for her. If they are close in the future, he can already see why.

Her words set off a bout of debate amongst the kwami’s and their holders, and amidst the noise Adrien feels Alya tug at his shirt sleeve.

He turns to find her eyes brimmed with unshed tears, and she whispers, so the words can be for Adrien and no one else, “I told him, before you - before he disappeared. I told him about Marinette.”

The words hit Adrien square in the chest, then rise to bloat heavily on the back of his tongue. He swallows thickly, trying to comprehend this feeling inside him. It feels too enormous to dissect. It feels like if he tries, he might drive himself crazy instead.

He wonders whether the knowledge of Ladybug being Marinette comforted the older version of himself in his last moments, or whether it had just dug the knife in deeper.

Adrien’s voice comes out sandpaper rough, “Thank you, Alya. You’re a good friend.”

Her smile wobbles, her hand finding and squeezing his.

“So what’s the plan?” asks Jessica.

They’ve migrated from the hallway into one of the jet’s many boardrooms, the six of them filling up the upper half of the long, skinny table inside. It feels weird sitting at it with the others, the large straight-back chairs built for tall, broad men, not a ragtag bunch of teens. The fact that Adrien is the only one without a special power or miraculous doesn’t help; he feels like a child whose feet are dangling off the edge of a chair pulled up to the big kids table (even though his feet are, in reality, planted very firmly on the floor.)

Adrien tries to smother the feeling from existence.

“We don’t have much time,” Jessica continues, “Our moms were in an emergency Category Five meeting when we left New York, and if they haven’t noticed we're gone already, they will soon.”

Adrien makes a strangled noise. “Your moms don’t know you’re here?!” As if there isn’t enough to worry about, he does not want to add ‘the possibility of Majestia blasting in through the nearest door’ to the ever growing list.

“It’s okay,” Aeon assures, “They’ll still be indisposed for a few more hours. They’re trying to decide whether or not they should deploy heroes to eliminate Gaiabug, or whether the situation calls for something more… drastic.��

Adrien’s eyebrows furrow. “Drastic like how?”

Aeon turns to share a shuttered look with Jessica, who says, “Like dropping a nuke over Gaiabug’s location.”

“What?!” Adrien nearly shouts, the others chiming in with their own cries of horror around the table. “That wouldn’t just destroy Gaiabug - it could destroy the entire continent!”

Aeon’s gaze drops as if in shame. Shame not for herself, but for her moms’ hand in this type of decision. “We know. That’s why we came here to help you guys, to bring Ladybug back. Because without her power to reverse damage…”

“It doesn’t look good,” Jessica continues, “With Ladybug gone, the leaders of the world don’t see a way to go back and undo. Because there isn’t. They have to move forward and navigate the most realistic course of action given the circumstances of the real world. They don’t have a bunch of magical ladybugs to rely on, this time. Even if they could neutralize Gaiabug, reclaiming her territory would cost trillions of dollars and would jeopardize the lives of the heroes who would have to do the work. In their eyes, it isn’t worth it. In their eyes, if they can at least stop her foliage from branching off to the rest of the world, then at the very least an apocalypse can be avoided.”

Adrien’s heart is beating hollowly inside him, a sickly pound humming loudly in his ears. The words have instilled a terrified silence around the table, not even the kwami’s having something to add. Long moments pass, the room suddenly feeling smaller, and smaller.

It’s Nino that finally breaks the silence.

“But Bunnyx had a plan, right?” He turns to Adrien, frantically. “Right? You know what we need to do?”

The others are turning to Adrien now too, expectantly. Dutifully. But more than that, as if in search of reassurance. For a stark, blinding moment of clarity, Adrien’s vision flashes and he sees them for what they truly are. A ragtag bunch of teens, sure, but more than that a dedicated team of superheroes, capable of rising to the challenge.

Bunnyx’s voice echoes in his mind, ‘All of us have faith in you. The challenge of a leader then is to take that faith and place it back into your teammates.’

Adrien takes a deep breath, and starts talking.

Everyone disperses once Adrien finishes outlining the plan.

They stalk down the hallway like the procession of a funeral, grave expressions mirrored on every face as they scatter into different rooms to ‘get ready’, though Adrien guesses that’s really code for ‘needing time to process.’

Adrien lets them go. Lets them have the space they need to work themselves up to the battle ahead of them. It will be a daunting one indeed. He wanders around the jet as a way to occupy his racing thoughts, and he finds his nanny still sleeping outside his bedroom door on the couch there. Adrien huffs at the sight. It’s actually impressive - the fact he hasn’t woken yet. Maybe, he might even make it to the morning without ever having known that the world almost ended.

Adrien affords himself a single, selfish moment to imagine laying down, of falling asleep and awakening to find that everything had been a dream; his renunciation; Ladybug’s akumatization; the pain. But then he would have never found out Ladybug’s identity, and he realizes, more selfish still than his previous fantasy, that he wouldn’t give that up for anything in the world.

He goes to speak to the pilot.

Alya had told Adrien his future self had given the man order to circle high above Paris, both to stay out of sight and remain close to Gaiabug’s location. The pilot - a middle aged man who Adrien thinks is both a husband and a father - looks shaken and grim-faced when Adrien arrives, and they share a stilted greeting wherein he stares at Adrien like he’s a ghost (a reaction, Adrien assumes, is due to him having seen and spoken to the adult version of himself only hours ago) before his eyes jump compulsively back out the front windshield.

Adrien begins very gingerly, “I wanted to thank you, for not just landing the plane and running at the earliest convenience. I promise you will be generously compensated by my father when all of this is over.”

“Compensated,” the pilot echoes, voice wavering as his eyes flick back over to Adrien. He looks terrified. “All I want is to be able to see my family again. Can you promise me that?”

Adrien swallows thickly. The severity of their situation knocks into him again, just as ferociously as it had in the burrow. If their plan doesn’t succeed, he won’t be the only one to lose someone forever.

Adrien meets the pilot's eye with unwavering determination. “You will see your family again. I promise.”

The pilot exhales shakily, grip readjusting on the wheel. “What do you need me to do, kid?”

Adrien looks out the windshield over the clouds in front of them. The first shades of morning light hug the underside of the bulbous shapes, transforming the view into a painting of contrasting shadows.

“We need to be taken back to the center,” he says, “Back to her location.”

The pilot shifts wordlessly to comply.

Adrien's eyes fall closed.

Adrien is down by the hatch door, readying the parachutes for those members of their group that can’t fly (which is to say, everyone but Uncanny Valley and Eagle) when Luka rounds the corner to join him in the private space.

His fingers pause in their inspection of the bag, and he says, “Oh, hey.”

“Hey,” Luka says. He smiles in that gentle way that always makes Adrien feel calm and at ease in his presence, his eyes tracking unhurriedly over the progress of the parachutes. “Everything in tip top shape?”

The corner of Adrien’s mouth twitches. “Almost.” He lifts the parachute bag in his hands and gives it a pointed shake, “This is the last one that needs to be inspected, and then we’ll be ready.”

Luka hums. There’s something off about him, Adrien realizes now that he’s paying attention, a reservation to his actions. He notices it in the slightest delay to Luka’s movements, the way he won’t quite meet Adrien’s eye.

Adrien sets the bag down, turning towards Luka to give him his full attention. “Is there something you wanted to talk about?”

Luka’s eyes rise to his. He looks guilty .

“Luka,” Adrien says, surprised, “What is” -

The words rush out of Luka in a burst. “I’m so sorry.”

And Adrien just blinks, it’s all he can do. Of everything he had expected to hear, that hadn’t even been on the list.

“What are you talking about?” Adrien’s eyebrows pinch together as he steps forward. “What could you possibly have to apologize for?”

Luka says, “I’ve already known you and Marinette are Ladybug and Chat Noir for weeks now.”

It’s like a needle shot through glass, the same sensation in Adrien’s chest.

Adrien squawks, “How -?”

“It was when we faced Wishmaker.”

Adrien absorbs those words like he would something sour. The idea that someone has known his secret identity for weeks makes him feel off balance, forcing him to once again reframe his world view to accommodate the information -just as he had to do with Bunnyx.

It seems time miraculous holders in particular come acutely inclined at keeping Adrien on his toes.

“I had to use my second chance a few times that day,” Luka continues, “Usually do, during missions. Usually have to use it a few hundred times more, actually. So I don’t always tell Ladybug every detail of every reset I’ve run - there aren’t enough hours in the day, ya know? But after Wishmaker… I didn’t just leave details out. Ladybug outright asked me if I had found out her identity, and - I lied. I blatantly lied. Not only had I found out her identity, I had found out yours as well and I'm just - I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell the truth.”

Through all this, Luka has steadily been working himself up into a state that Adrien has never seen him in before; he’s practically shaking.

“Luka,” Adrien urges, stepping forward to touch steady fingers to his forearm. When he doesn’t resist, Adrien tightens his grip, trying to put as much reassurance into the touch as he can, wanting to give Luka something solid to ground himself to. “It’s okay. None of that matters, now.”

“You don’t know that,” Luka argues, his gaze finally coming up to reveal the burn of a fight inside of them. “How can you be sure that isn’t the exact misstep that set us all tumbling down this cursed timeline?”

Adrien takes a moment to consider this.

“Maybe it was.” And when Luka gives him a look like he’s sprouted a second head - no doubt expecting Adrien to refute his words of doubt instead of spur them on - he continues, “Maybe that was the catalyst that set these events in motion, but I really don’t think it matters. Not anymore, at least. People make choices every day, Luka, some of them a lot worse than telling Ladybug a lie.” And then, meeting his eyes with a look of pointed intensity, “We all made choices to bring us here. Don’t try and take that weight alone . You’ll only drive yourself insane.”

Luka skews his gaze sidelong at him. “Bunnyx’s burrow did a number on your head, didn’t it?” His lips tweak as Adrien laughs. “And maybe you’re right, maybe it doesn’t matter anymore… But it’s been eating me alive and I just - I had to tell you.”

A quiet moment passes where neither one of them speaks.

Eventually, Adrien says, “She wouldn’t have been angry, you know.”

Luka gives him a dubious look, “Are we talking about the same Ladybug?”

Adrien snorts. “Alright, maybe she would’ve been mad if she had found out yesterday or last week. But I have a feeling after today, everything is going to change for the better.”

“Optimism,” Luka says with an approving lip-tweak, shoulders visibly relaxing from the rigid line they’d been in moments before, “I like it.”

They share a smile. It’s still such an overwhelmingly warm and bright feeling being with a friend, even in a situation as frightening as this.

“I would’ve done the same thing, by the way,” Adrien says, partly to make Luka feel better, partly because it’s true. If their places had been reversed and Adrien had been the one to find out Ladybug’s secret identity, he wouldn’t have willingly volunteered to forget the information either.

Pensively, Luka says, “I think I lied because knowing made me feel better. After me and Marinette broke up, I knew she was keeping something from me, that she wasn’t being truthful. I thought, you know, ‘she’s still in love with Adrien.’ And while I still believe that last part,” Luka emphasizes with a pointed look, making Adrien blush, “I guess finding out she’s Ladybug made me feel better because everything finally made sense. And I… I didn’t want to go back to feeling the way I had felt before finding out.”

Adrien nods. “I know how that feels. To want to be trusted with the truth and then be denied it.”

Luka’s eyes pass over his face, considering Adrien, though he can’t even begin to imagine what he might be thinking

“Luckily,” Luka raises a pointed eyebrow, “Everything is about to change, right?”

And Adrien repeats, more for himself than for Luka, “Everything is about to change.”

Fifteen minutes later everyone is suited up and strapped into parachutes, poised in a loose huddle around the now-open hatch of the jet.

Paris is ablaze below them. The panoramic view rolled out and pinned to the shadowed, still-sleepy horizon, Gaiabug’s thick foliage broken up only by the occasional fire.

Adrien’s eyes scour the obscure landscape below, searching for Gaiabug’s towering banyan tree. When he spots it, his heart constricts painfully in his chest.

I’ll save you, he thinks, Just hold on.

Finally, he turns to regard his team.

The wind is whipping wildly through the space, causing a riot of everyone’s hair and making them have to nearly shout in order to be heard.

Adrien says, “We ready?”

“As ready as we’ll ever be,” Carapace quips, sounding shaky despite his attempt at levity.

With more believable confidence, Uncanny Valley says, “We got this.”

Adrien says, “And everyone’s sure they know what to do?”

“We’re the distraction,” Eagle says, using her thumb to draw a line in the air between her, Rena, Carapace, and Viperion.

Rena continues, “We’ll lure Gaiabug out of her nest and keep her occupied while you and Uncanny locate Shadowmoth and his miraculous.”

“And I’ll use my second chance as soon as the two of you arrive to deakumatize her,” Luka adds, “Just in case something goes wrong.”

“Perfect,” Adrien says, feeling a rush of pride for them all. “I couldn’t have asked for a better team.”

Flattered but modest smiles shuffle around the group, until Eagle huffs and gently shoves at Adrien’s shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, “Just don’t get killed, alright?”

“You too,” and speaks to all of them when he says, “Take care of each other.”

“We will,” Carapace reassures him, standing a little taller and broader as he makes the declaration. He is the shield of the group, after all.

“And you take care of him,” Eagle says to Uncanny, meaning Adrien. “Don’t let him do anything stupid.”

Uncanny nods, wearing a small, dutiful smile that hasn’t wavered since her transformation into her super form. “Yes, ma’am.”

Then a moment of silence as they all look around at each other. It occurs to Adrien that this might be the last time they’re all gathered together like this, intact and in one piece.

He shoves the thought fiercely from his mind.

“Good luck,” he tells them.

“Good luck,” they echo in return.

Rena and Carapace drop first, Rena to deploy the illusion and Carapace to protect her as she does. Eagle and Viperion follow swiftly after them, and then it’s just Adrien and Uncanny Valley perched alone on the hatch’s ledge.

“Thank you for coming with me to locate the butterfly miraculous,” Adrien tells her, “Thank you for being here at all, actually.”

Uncanny just smiles at him. “It’s very brave what you guys are doing, saving the world is no small feat. And I live in this world, don’t I? The least I can do is help.”

“Still,” Adrien says, “I need you to know I appreciate it.”

“I do,” she says, “You’re a very gracious leader. If I wasn't already working for my moms, I would be very proud to have a place on your team.”

A stinging pressure springs to Adrien’s eyes at the words, and he has to turn to look through the open hatch out over the panorama outside to keep the tears from fully forming and spilling over.

“It wouldn’t be my team without Ladybug,” he says, croakily.

Uncanny holds out her hand for him to take. “Then let’s go bring her home.”

Paris is eerily quiet.

Nothing but the faint whiz of the wind parting around Uncanny Valley as she flies over the canopy of Gaiabug’s foliage, Adrien grasped securely in her arms. He knows from the silence that the others can’t have intercepted Gaiabug yet, and his heart hangs suspended in his throat in anticipation for the initial clash.

The resulting sound of which, he’s sure, will be unmistakable when they do hear it.

The rousing sun is a vivid line on the horizon in front of them, minutes from pouring out onto the world. It is a stark reminder of their looming deadline. A manifestation of that time ticking down.

“There,” Uncanny says, “Target acquired.”

Adrien turns to look up at her, seeing her purple eyes trained on a spot below, silver and gold features clinically neutral. She’s in full superhero mode now.

He says, “We’ll wait until the others engage Gaiabug, then” -

He isn’t able to finish his sentence, cut off by an ear-splitting shriek piercing the air. It is a frightening, deafening sound. The world rumbles in its wake, shivering, quaking, as Adrien’s heart rate spikes into a painful pace.

Gaiabug is awake.

His eyes drop compulsively to the jungle below. Fear lurches through him as he watches Gaiabug move through the trees, knowing it must be her even though the canopy conceals her from sight; she disturbs entire patches of trees as she moves, making her trajectory traceable like a snake slithering beneath sand.

“I think they’ve engaged her, now,” says Uncanny.

Adrien feels off balance. He turns away from the jungle to look up at her, needing to blink a few times before her words truly register.

Eagle’s voice comes in over their coms before he can find his voice.

‘Mama bird has left the nest, ‘Canny. Better shake a tail feather before she catches up with Rena’s illusion.’

“Copy that,” Uncanny replies, and instantly begins to descend towards the canopy.

Using her third eye, she cuts a clean opening in the canopy for them to pass through and they sink into the alien, underside world that Paris has become. More unsettling still is the knowledge that every tree they pass, used to be a Parisian.

Adrien forcibly averts his thoughts from that path of thinking, and takes a steadying breath.

They’ve reached the ground now. Adrien’s feet crunch pebbled soil as Uncanny deposits him gently on the earth, all while his eyes track over the tangled landscape. The mangled, shadowed shapes of the twined tree trunks surrounding them, the seemingly undulating awnings above, the jungle floor, unnaturally clear of debris. Small seedlings - sprouted close to the large, interspersed tree trunks - are the only thing Adrien can see cluttering the floor besides the moss covered lianas, meandering lazily up from the earth.

The trees in this area of the jungle don’t have their roots exposed like the ones Gaiabug had puppeteered in that memory Bunnyx showed him, and he assumes this is because they’re pretty far from her nest - the giant banyan tree. Most likely, the trees, and their roots, become more sentient the closer to the nest that they are.

The jungle hangs in a hush so pristine that Adrien can hear the whirring of Uncanny’s elegant inner workings.

They’re alone.

His eyes pass slowly over each tree as he walks.

“You can tell which one used to be Shadowmoth?”

Uncanny nods, her gaze already tracking slowly around them. Her eyes come to land on a twisting tree to her left, and she blinks. Then points.

“That one,” she says, “I’m sensing three foreign anomalies present in that trunk.”

Adrien’s eyebrows crease. “What’s the third one? He’s only supposed to have the Butterfly and Peacock miraculous’.”

Uncanny shrugs, “I can’t tell that much… Maybe he had a third miraculous in secret?”

“Or maybe it’s a recent addition.” Adrien’s eyes narrow on the tree Uncanny had pointed out. “And you can cut them out without damaging them?”

“Affirmative,” Uncanny says, “But we’ll have to do some work… Just give me a moment.” She walks up to the trunk in question and holds a hand against the bark, expression concentrated as she feels around - leaving mental markers, perhaps - before stepping back and unleashing the laser of her third-eye.

It slices the trunk in half, leaving a stump a foot taller than Uncanny as the topside crashes to the floor beside them. The echoing boom of its weight hitting the floor makes Adrien’s shoulders hunch up on a wince.

Hopefully, Gaiabug hadn’t heard that.

The next lazer trims a neat block off the top, and Uncanny catches it as it flies into the air above her. It’s about the size of a soccer ball. She sets it softly on the floor and tells Adrien to, “Stand back,” before using her lazer with more precision and care to carve out three small, wooden nuggets.

Then she plucks the clumps up and tosses one over to Adrien, producing and offering a small carving knife in addition.

“We’ll have to carve them out the rest of the way by hand, otherwise we run the risk of my lazer accidentally damaging them.”

Adrien takes the knife and sets diligently to the task. He starts on the edges, carving like you’d shave off the crust of an apple. He’s intensely aware of the time restraint they have, and that the distraction the other’s are posing for Gaiabug might begin to fail at any moment, but tries to force himself to remain calm and focused.

“Aha!” says Uncanny from beside him, already holding up an unearthed miraculous. “Is this the right one?”

Her excited expression slumps back into scrunched concentration when Adrien shakes his head no.

“We’re looking for the butterfly miraculous. That’s the peacock.” And while good to have - good that they’ve recovered it - it won’t help them deakumatize Marinette.

Another shave, and Adrien catches a glimpse of silver. Another shave. Another. And then the wood in the center starts to crumble, cracking open to reveal -

Adrien’s breath strangles off in his throat.

It isn’t a miraculous.

It’s his father’s wedding ring.

Adrien’s entire vision pulses black as he’s plunged into disorientation. Confusion and denial barrel the air from his lungs. A muffled ringing hums in his ear as everything tunnels to the single loop of silver in the center of his palm. Very faintly he recognizes someone is saying his name - shaking his shoulder - but he doesn’t have control of his body anymore. He’s watching himself from a distance, falling away from himself as he sinks down, down, down.

His dad is - oh god - his dad is -

“Adrien!”

Adrien lurches back into himself and snaps his eyes up to meet Uncanny’s. She’s kneeling in front of him, the first hints of emotion finally leaking onto her face - furrowed eyebrows, frantic eyes that calm only when they finally lock with Adrien’s.

“Oh, thank god,” she says in a rush, “I thought you’d been hurt or something. What’s wrong?”

Adrien’s hand unfurls in his lap, and Uncanny’s eyes snap down to take in the ring.

“This was - this was the third anomaly,” Adrien says, his own voice sounding far away and numb, “It’s my father’s wedding ring.”

A horrible look of realization washes over Uncanny’s face at those words, and seeing it only serves to kick-start the panic inside him into full gear.

Adrien says, truly realizing it for the first time, “My dad is Shadowmoth.”

And then he stops breathing.

Time, inside a panic attack, can be a funny thing. Untraceable, slippery. And he loses his grip on it entirely. His vision blurs to flashes of color and shadow, ebbing in and out of clarity. The words play over and over in his mind as if in an echo chamber.

His dad is Shadowmoth.

Adrien thinks he might be sick. He screws his eyes shut and hones his focus on trying to calm down; It’s a battle just trying to work air down his throat and into his lungs.

Between a painful inhale and the next, Eagle is landing with a thud on the jungle floor in front of him.

His eyes track up to her face, dumbfounded as to how she got her so quickly - how much time has he lost? - but Eagle is looking at Uncanny.

“What happened?!”

He hears her like a howling on a distant wave, lost at sea.

But that isn’t right. He is the one the tides are pulling farther, and farther from solid ground.

Uncanny says something that Adrien doesn’t hear, her and Eagle exchanging a few more words before time turns all watery and diluted in his brain once more, and the next thing he knows Eagle is kneeling down in front of him, determination burning in her eyes.

Voice solemn, she says, “I’m so sorry, Adrien. I wish there was a way that you could process all of this in your own time, but time is the one thing we don’t have to spare. Hopefully you won’t hold it against me, using it without your permission.”

Adrien can only blink at her blearily, vision blurring, lungs burning.

She lifts her hand, palm pointing towards him, and enunciates loud and clear, “Liberation.”

Part 1 . Part 2 . Part 3 . Part 4 . Part 6.

#miraculous ladybug #ladynoir #miraculous ladybug fanfiction #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #adrien agreste #ml #ml fanfiction #too little too late #madi writes #my posts #screaming from the top of my LUNGS it is finally here!!#only one chapter more now and it is ready to be published next wednesday ♥♥#so excited for everyone to read

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