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On the day they first met, she smashed into him like a billiard ball into one of his mother's vases – all shards, sharp edges and guilt – and sometimes it feels like he's still picking up the pieces of his heart all these years later with fingers that prick and bleed and shake, his hands numb and aching in turns, and maybe he's a liar, but some things are sacred, and that day is one of them.
Adrien holds it close, even when everything else is stripped away from him.
(He's learned to keep the important things secret, so they don't get taken away. His father's house taught him that.)
He hadn't noticed at first.
"I'm Chat Noir," he says, and it falls out of his mouth so easily that it's like he's soaring. With every word of bullshit that falls out of his mouth he flies higher, drunk on exhilaration and freedom both; for the first time in his life he doesn't feel heavy, burdened with a life that he's just beginning to understand he doesn't want. He's free to simply exist, without artificial limits, without the disapproval of his father, which feels like a black mass inside of his chest, or like the end of the world, depending on the day.
Nothing he said that day was true. That didn't matter to him then.
(That was the only time he ever managed to tell her his name.)
He notices the way that she stammers the first thing that she ever says to him. It's cute. It makes her seem younger, but he can tell that they're pretty much the same age –
And then the explosions begin, and he knows that this is what they're meant for, this is their purpose, and it causes hot excitement to burst in his chest and race through every vein in his body. He can't stay away from the promise of something to do, something new – something worth it. So he lets his excitement move him, and runs toward the screaming instead of doing the sensible thing and running away.
He doesn't look back. She'll come, or she won't, and nothing he can do will change that.
But later –
Later, he thinks more about that stammer. He thinks about the careful, tense way she'd said, "You can call me Ladybug."
He thinks about that very first syllable. Ma –
Was she trying to tell him something, even then? Marie? Marguerite? Marcelle?
Did she mean to say it? Or did it come out of her mouth without thinking? Did it pour out of her like the first taste of freedom, so heady and all-encompassing that nothing else seemed to matter?
(Marianne? Martha?)
Was she trying to lie?
(Marina?)
———
She throws herself through the trap door, transforming as she goes, so that she lands as Marinette, not Ladybug. Tikki comes with her, of course, and Marinette catches her, still clumsy and unused to the post-battle ritual, the post-battle shakes.
("Adrenaline," Tikki told her, when her hands wouldn't stop shaking after Stoneheart. "It's nothing to worry about."
"You saying that makes me more worried," Marinette said doubtfully, but she tried her best to believe it. Tikki always tells her the truth.)
Today, it's more than adrenaline and nerves driving her.
"He lied to me!" Marinette says, dropping down on her bed with a thwoop of trapped air. The outrage in her spills out through her voice and her toes curling in her shoes; her nostrils are flaring with irritation.
Marinette hates liars.
(Chloé made sure of that.)
Tikki drifts down to sit on her knee, looking up at her with eyes that are suddenly old, the kind of eyes that have seen more of the universe than Marinette can conceive of. "Don't be too hard on him, Marinette," she says gently. "He can't help it. You have your burdens to bear, and so does Chat Noir."
"What does that mean?" Marinette asks, caught by the quiet, weary sympathy in Tikki's voice.
Tikki looks up at Marinette, her eyes somehow sad. "The miraculous is a very powerful gift," Tikki says with a kind of emphasis that unnerves her. "Did you think that gift wouldn't change you? I am the embodiment of creation, Marinette. All of creation. Take a second to think about what that means."
Marinette thinks very hard.
"You create life," she says slowly.
Tikki shakes her head. "Everything," she says softly. "I created everything. There's more to the universe than just life, though it is pretty important to you humans, so I can understand why you're so obsessed with it." She flashes Marinette a teasing smile, and automatically Marinette smiles back, though she can feel her brain expanding and it's not exactly a pleasant feeling. "I don't lie. You already know that. What you don't know is, I don't lie because I can't. When creation speaks, the universe rearranges itself to make it true. Whatever that might be."
Marinette's jaw drops. "Are you saying that everything you say comes true, no matter what it is?"
"No," Tikki says, shaking her head.
Marinette sighs with relief.
"Not anymore," Tikki adds.
She looks down at the tiny creature on her knee and swallows. Suddenly Tikki seems not just small, but concentrated, a focus point, as though everything in the whole world is bending toward her, listening...
Not anymore, Tikki said.
"Does that mean that's how it used to be for you?" Marinette asks hesitantly, pressing further even though she's not really sure she wants to know the answer to her own question.
Tikki nods. "Even now that we're bound to the miraculous, the universe is still listening. I can't lie," she says with finality, like a goddess come down to Earth to pronounce her verdict. "And when I'm part of Ladybug, neither can she."
———
Adrien stares at Plagg for a long time before he drops his head into his hands, sighing. "You didn't see her face," he says to his sneakers, thinking of the knives in Ladybug's eyes when they'd parted after the akuma. "She's never going to trust me – because of you," he snaps, lifting his head to glare at Plagg again.
Plagg shrugs. He's lying on his back on Adrien's desk, tossing a tiny ball of Camembert into the air, catching it, throwing it again in a discordant rhythm that's making Adrien's shoulders climb, millimeter after slow millimeter, toward his ears. "She'll get over it," he says.
Adrien scoffs, a deep, disgusted sound in the back of his throat. "She is not just going to get over it," he says witheringly. Unwillingly he sees it again in his head, the memory coming at him like it's been stalking him this whole time: her clear blue eyes snapping to look at him, narrowing, a sharp, disdainful look growing in them that cuts him to the core. "You didn't see her face," Adrien says again; he knows that he's repeating himself, but he can't help it. "She hates me now."
He knows that look all too well. He sees it at home all the time.
Groaning at the thought, Adrien slumps backward, resting his head against the headrest of his chair and staring sightlessly at the ceiling. For the first time in his life, he wants to impress someone so badly that it feels like a banked fire smoldering in his head, ready to flare into life at every opportunity to make Ladybug turn those clear eyes on him and really see him, like no one ever has...
And because Plagg is a nightmare demon from hell, Adrien will never be able to tell her anything real. Not as Chat.
Adrien wishes he could blame Plagg for his terrible luck, but his life has been like this for a long time. Plagg is the result of it, not the cause.
At least they're partners. At the very least, there's that. She needs him to help her fight the akumas.
(For now.)
Plagg throws the cheese ball into the air and catches it in his mouth, sighing in satisfaction as he swallows it whole. "Kid, you've gotta lighten up," he says mildly. "It's not like Tikki isn't going to tell her what's going on."
For a minute, Adrien doesn't get what Plagg means, but then it bursts into his head like fireworks, like lightning, and he rockets upright to stare at Plagg. "Wait, Tikki's her kwami? She's going to tell Ladybug?"
"Yeah," Plagg says with a shrug.
"But she'll know why?" Adrien pushes, his fingers clenching on the edge of the sofa. He can't just trust that he heard that right, not when he's so desperate to make sure that he's not imagining what he wants to hear that his stomach is fluttering with nerves. "She'll understand?"
Plagg rolls over to look at Adrien, his eyes narrowing slightly with some unfathomable emotion. It's a long, tense moment before he speaks again. "Yeah, kid," Plagg says, more gently than before. "Tikki knows me better than anyone. She knows why the scales have to balance this way. She'll make sure the bug understands."
And with that, Adrien has to be content.
———
Over the next two years, their relationship goes through its highs and its lows –
("Sometimes I don't get you," Ladybug mutters, her face buried in her own knees, hoping beyond hope beyond reason that he can't hear her. That he can't make out her words over the night wind whipping past them, carrying the lingering smoke left over from Robostus's rampage through the city and exhaust fumes and the hot grease from the restaurant beneath her rooftop perch; underneath everything else, there's a hint of cold, the first breath of fall creeping ever closer, threatening her perfect summer contentment.
Of course he hears her.
"Same, honestly," Chat says; when she peeks at him from the corner of her eye, he's leaning back on his elbows and looking up at the stars with a strange, twisted smile on his face. He seems so unconcerned. She knows that it's a lie, but what's underneath that?
Does he even know?)
But they work together better than Ladybug could ever have thought possible in those first days when she didn't know whether she could trust him or not. Chat has to lie. The miraculous makes him do it. But Chat is the one who decides what the lie is, and once he figures that out, his lies get more and more obvious.
When it's important, like in battle when Ladybug needs him to be clear, Chat just says exactly the opposite of what he means. Apparently that's good enough to satisfy the urge, or maybe his miraculous somehow knows that fights are more important than normal, that Chat needs to be at his best, not thinking up ways to let Ladybug know what he really means.
On patrol, it's usually quiet enough that Chat can be more creative with his lies. Sometimes he even leans into the role, spinning stories that he swears have really happened to him, but the glint in his eyes lets Ladybug know that there's about as much truth to this tale as one of Lila's. Secretly, Ladybug really enjoys those nights. Chat's fun, he has a sense of humor, and he's learned how to tell a story that keeps her guessing until the very last word.
Ladybug's compulsion to tell the truth is less of a burden in the suit – Marinette tends to be direct, at least most of the time, and as Ladybug, she's not often trying to lie.
Except when it comes to identities.
At first it's a lot of nervous laughter and frantic escapes, using her yo-yo to literally yank herself out of awkward and uncomfortable situations, before Marinette stumbles upon a way of dealing with the situation. She has to tell the truth, after all. But nothing says that she has to tell the whole truth. Marinette begins to learn how to talk around the subject, leading people to believe that she's saying something that she isn't, or selectively omitting details in order to mislead. To her dismay, Marinette learns that it's surprisingly easy to lie without telling a single untruth.
(She's not compelled to speak, either, and silence is the first tactic Ladybug uses, until she finds out that Alya is tracking which questions Ladybug chooses not to answer.)
"I couldn't get away at first. I really am sorry, Chat..."
"I don't know the Ladyblogger as well as I would like. She seems really dedicated, though!"
"Oh, that place? I've heard it's the best bakery in Paris, but I've never bought anything there."
The more she equivocates, the more she talks around the truth, the easier it comes, until Marinette realizes that she's started to do it in her civilian life, too.
"I got caught up in the akuma fight."
"I had to finish something important."
"I can't make it – a really big problem came up. I'm sorry."
Now, she reaches instinctively for it whenever someone surprises her or brings up something uncomfortable. Sometimes Marinette feels like her tongue is covered in a layer of slime that's only ever getting thicker and more disgusting; she can't get rid of the feeling, no matter how many times she brushes her teeth, no matter how much mouthwash she swigs.
She hates what she's becoming. But Ladybug is more important than her feelings.
Alya's the first person to notice the way that Marinette is changing. She's the one most familiar with language and how it can be used and abused to mean almost anything. Alya tries as hard as she can to reach Marinette, but she's so scared that Alya will figure her out...
It's not really a surprise when Alya starts spending more time with Lila. Lila's lies invite people into her life, instead of pushing them away. One by one, the rest of her friends begin to follow suit, casting uncertain glances at Marinette from behind library shelves and over locker doors as they whisper to each other, creating a thick air of silence that clings to Marinette like she's been dunked in the sewers. It follows her as she puts her head down, her books piled high in her arms to shield herself from the rest of the world, and goes to class without them.
It hasn't been that long since last year.
Marinette remembers how to be alone.
———
Once he's sure that Ladybug doesn't hate him, that her kwami's made her aware of the situation, Adrien revels in his new-found freedom. Between leaving the mansion every single day for school, a place full of other kids just like him where he can breathe, being able to transform into Chat Noir anytime that the walls of his room start to press down on him like they're trying to crush him into a small and docile thing, and now his new-found ability to lie to anyone, to their face, and be believed –
Adrien feels like he's finding himself for the first time in his life, like he's been given the room to be as extravagantly himself as he possibly can, as if someone turned up the volume on his personality and he's finding harmonies in the background that he never knew existed. Chat can make mistakes. Chat can say anything, anything at all, even if it's stupid, and it doesn't follow him around for three weeks while his father sends him copies of tabloid write-ups with terse comments scribbled in the margins.
I have taught you better than this.
What made you think that was an appropriate thing to say?
Do better, Adrien.
But no matter what Adrien does, better doesn't seem like it's within reach.
Exeunt Adrien, pursued by a bear. Enter Chat Noir, with a tongue full of lies.
Akuma fights were a little tricky until he figured out that his miraculous doesn't seem to care how believable the lie is, as long as he's not speaking the truth. Commands and directions don't count, unless he's trying to say that he's going to go left or something like that. Honestly, it's kind of interesting, the limits of what his miraculous considers a lie; Chat experiments with it until he and Ladybug are working together like a machine, like they've been partners for more than just a few months, like maybe they're connected on some kind of metaphysical level where they don't need words to communicate with each other.
And as Ladybug becomes more comfortable with him, with the situation that's bound them, she lets Chat in, lets him closer, giving him more and more access to the fascinating depths of her mind and the limitless courage and ferocity that blaze in her heart. And Chat loves her, loves her, loves her...
He's not sure that she knows. He can't bring himself to tell her that he hates her, and his romantic heart cries out at the idea, anyway.
Sometimes he fantasizes about finding her as Adrien and telling her how much he loves her, and needs her, that he'd do anything...
(Mostly only after he's been binging romance movies again.)
But even Adrien knows that's a bad idea.
His days at school are a haze of Ladybug Ladybug Ladybug hammering in his ears with his pulse, and all the while, Nino and Alya and Marinette are his whole world; they're the friends he made on his own, the ones he'll treasure forever.
Adrien doesn't notice the shift in himself until it's too late.
At first, he only lies to his father and Nathalie to get to the akuma fights. It's important, he argues with himself, and after a few weeks, it doesn't feel wrong anymore. It feels like he's getting away with something. It feels like the release of pressure, of a tightly pressurized can springing a leak, and the relief of it is so good that Adrien can't help the lie that slips out when he wants to go to a Kitty Section concert.
"I have to study tonight with my friends. There's a research project..."
And Nathalie believes him.
Concealing the exultation he feels costs him something, some small fragment of joy slipping away with the mask that he's forced to wear, but when Adrien gets back to his room, he spins in a tight little circle, his clenched fists close to his chest, and the bright smile on his face has lost none of its ecstasy for waiting.
After that brilliant success, Adrien tries to keep himself from lying for his own selfish reasons –
He does, he does, he tries –
But it's so easy. It's so seductively effortless that Adrien finds himself justifying it each and every time.
This one's really important, he tells himself.
Nino needs me there.
They're getting suspicious, I should make an appearance so they don't think something's up.
And the worst excuse of them all:
Don't I deserve this?
Deserve is a slippery slope, which is something Plagg could have told Adrien if Plagg wasn't sitting back to enjoy the chaos and the spectacle. Deserve is subjective and easily influenced by Adrien's growing frustration with his lack of control over his own life. As a justification, deserve comes with a certain amount of danger.
By the time that Adrien realizes what he's done, the thing that he's unleashed in his own chest, he's in too deep to back out. His lies are self-sustaining. At this point, it's harder not to lie to the people who are trying to keep him safe and confined in that huge house.
Sometimes he even lies to his friends.
Adrien tries not to, he really does, but...
"I was just around the corner! Sorry for showing up late!"
He's had a lot of practice lying with a straight face, and no one expects sweet, kind Adrien Agreste to lie, so he gets away with it for nearly a year before Kim happens to see him somewhere that Adrien really shouldn't have been. He makes an excuse, and his classmates seem to buy it, but later Adrien sees Mylène whispering something to Ivan, and Marinette gives him a thoughtful look before she turns away...
For the first time, Adrien realizes that he could actually lose these people if he's not very, very careful.
And even then, he can't make himself stop.
———
The classroom that Marinette sits in today is a very different place than it was in the beginning of the year.
She looks over the desks from her position in the back, her chin resting on her hand, and she considers the fractures that have appeared in what used to be a cohesive group of classmates. Chloé and Sabrina have withdrawn, keeping to themselves more and more as the days go by; Nathaniel has his head in his sketchbook and from the way that he keeps glancing at the classroom wall, his thoughts are clearly in the next room, wishing that he could be with Marc.
Mylène is one of Lila's court now, and that means Ivan's been dragged along with her, though he seems a little uncomfortable with it, and he's got his head down and he's scribbling in his notebook; Rose and Juleka are in the conversation with Lila and Alya and Nino, which leaves Adrien by himself. He's sitting a little closer to the edge of the chair than he usually does. Marinette frowns, tilting her head as she realizes that Lila isn't crowding him with her body. She's not harassing him.
What's going on over there?
As Marinette watches, Nino tries to draw Adrien into the conversation. Adrien talks to Nino, but not to Lila, and not to Alya or the others. Likewise, they aren't talking to Adrien, either. It becomes clear, when Marinette observes them for a few minutes, that the shifting politics of the class are pushing Adrien out to the edges, tolerated only because Nino wants him there.
As if he can sense her eyes on him, Adrien turns his head to look at Marinette over his shoulder, his face drawn and his eyes shadowed; but when he meets her eyes, he gives her a faint, wistful smile, and Marinette feels like she knows what he's trying to say without even trying.
I miss how it used to be.
She smiles back at him, wishing, yearning for the time her life was easy, and her crush on him was the worst thing she had to deal with. Simpler times. Better times.
Me, too, she imagines saying to him, and when his smile softens, she knows that Adrien's gotten the message. Ms. Bustier calls for their attention then, and Adrien turns back around with a poorly-hidden reluctance that makes a small part of her very happy.
But Marinette still doesn't understand why Adrien's being frozen out by half of the class. Did something happen while she wasn't around? But Adrien wouldn't do anything bad. Marinette refuses to believe that. And Nino is still talking to him, anyway, so whatever it was, Nino obviously doesn't think it was that bad, either.
She can't help thinking of last week, when Juleka caught him in one of those white lies that people use as social lubricant, the kind of lie that people tell to make life easier for themselves or the people around them. She wouldn't have believed that he could do that before, but had she ever really thought about it?
A little bit of the shine's worn off of Adrien for her. She likes him, yeah, but maybe he's not perfect. Maybe Marinette doesn't have to like everything about him.
And he's just a friend, anyway. Nothing's ever going to happen between them. Marinette resigned herself to that a long time ago.
Marinette smiles to herself, the same wistful, faintly sad smile that Adrien gave her, and looks down at her tablet to follow along with the class.
She's got patrol with Chat later; he's there waiting for her when she arrives, curled over his baton, his tail whipping irritably behind him. Ladybug takes a moment, takes a breath, getting herself into the state of mind she needs to deal with Chat's curse, and then she walks up behind him, making absolutely no effort to hide the sounds of her footsteps. Chat's ear flicks back toward her, but he doesn't look at her.
Ah. One of those nights.
Ladybug settles next to him on the roof and leans a companionable shoulder against his. "How's it hanging, kitty?"
"A little to the left, as always," he says, giving her a smile that's trying to be as sly and cheerful as usual and failing miserably.
Ladybug automatically translates that in her head. It's a lie, but it's too easy to assume he just means right, so he probably wears briefs or something.
(And curse Chat to the depths of hell for making her think about his underwear.)
The rooftops of Paris are broad and flat, and often entirely theirs, with no one else in sight unless she leans over to look at the people crowding the sidewalks below. They're alone up here. It should be the perfect place to talk to each other about anything: secrets, the miraculous, what they're going to do about Hawkmoth, patrol schedules...
But Chat can't really engage. And Ladybug doesn't like pouring out her heart and getting back nothing but jokes. It takes a special effort for Chat to talk her down when she needs encouragement, when it's all gone wrong, and it's not easy for him. It's not something he can do at the drop of a hat.
Sometimes Ladybug feels so lonely that she wants to cry.
Chat has to be feeling the same way, she imagines, looking over at him to see his profile; he's still staring down at something on his baton, a faint glow illuminating his face from below and lighting up his eyes.
She could look at it. He'd let her.
Ladybug turns her face back toward the skyline instead. Chat deserves his privacy.
After a few minutes, Chat heaves a sigh and snaps the top of his baton down, stowing it behind his back. "I've never been more on time for anything in my whole life," he says with another one of those meaningless smiles. "You, as always, are the picture of punctuality."
Ladybug scowls at him. She was only a couple of minutes late!
Chat laughs, this time full of honest amusement and affection; he leaps up, reaching down to give her a hand to her feet, but Ladybug grabs his hand and hangs on, making him look at her with confusion.
"You'd tell me if something were really wrong, wouldn't you?" she asks, searching his eyes for anything true, anything real. "Somehow? You'd figure out a way?"
He gives her a smile so quick, so practiced, that it can't possibly be genuine. Ladybug squeezes his hand, scowling at him. "Don't give me that shit, Chat. I'm serious."
Chat looks down at her, his hand caught between hers, his eyes slowly growing warier and solemn as he realizes that she really means it. He opens his mouth. Ladybug braces herself for whatever bullshit is about to come out of it, but then he shakes his head, a quick, frustrated movement, and drops down to his knees.
"Stay there," he says, his eyes boring into hers with so much intensity that Ladybug can't do anything but nod.
Chat goes around her and settles down with his back pressed against hers, his tail flicking against her thigh.
And then Ladybug freezes when Chat says "Claws in."
She feels the magic swirl around his body behind her and Chat's tail disappears. His body is the same, of course, but she thinks that he slouches a little bit more, like he's tired...
"What are you doing?" she whispers uneasily.
Chat – the boy who is Chat – sighs, leaning the back of his head against hers. "I'm tired," he says quietly. "I am so tired of lying to you, to my family, my friends, people at school. Lying to everyone I've ever met. But mostly you," Chat says with a little huff that might be a ghost of a laugh. "You're the one who matters, after all, and I can't even tell you how my day was without making a production out of it. I think..."
Ladybug can hear him swallow.
"I think I'm losing everyone," he says hopelessly. "Being Chat is changing me into someone I don't even recognize. Half of my friends aren't talking to me anymore, and the other half are only hanging on because of my best friend. He's going to run out of patience with me eventually, and then where will I be? Alone. Again. All because of this." Chat's snapping his words now, angry in a way that Ladybug almost never hears from him. Her heart in her throat, Ladybug reaches back to lay her hand on Chat's forearm.
"Kid – " That's Plagg, Ladybug realizes, with unease heavy in his voice. "Don't do anything stupid."
"I'm not," Chat says, and now he just sounds tired again. "I'm not going to do anything. I can't stop being Chat. What's the point? It's already turned me into this. The damage is done. And anyway, I can't leave you, or Ladybug. You're the only ones I've got left."
He sighs again, rolling his head against hers.
Ladybug has never wanted to hug someone as much as she does right this second.
"I'm not going anywhere, Chat," she says, putting as much assurance as she can into her voice. She squeezes his forearm to emphasize her words. "You're my partner. Yeah, it's hard sometimes. Yeah, I'd like it if you didn't have to lie, but you've never let me down when it counted. How could you think I'd abandon you? And your friends are assholes, if you ask me."
Chat laughs, sounding frankly miserable. "They're not," he says sadly. "Nobody likes a liar. One of them told me that... She's not talking to me, either, but she's not talking to anyone. That's what I was doing, stalking her socials. So I guess I can just hope that whatever's bothering her isn't me."
Ladybug squeezes her eyes tightly shut and turns to bury her face between Chat's shoulderblades and hug him as hard as she possibly can. She hates the tired, unhappy sound to his voice, as though he's given up. Chat is not allowed to give up. She won't let him.
Chat quits breathing.
"I'm not doing too well either," she confesses, her words slightly muffled through his shirt. Cotton, maybe; it's soft against her cheek. "Telling the truth is great until the truth is 'I was on the way home from an akuma fight' or 'I skipped three classes because Hawkmoth thought it was a great time to try to steal the Miracle Box'. I talk around the truth so much these days that I could be a politician," she says, nearly spitting the word. "My best friend doesn't trust me anymore. I don't think I can even call her my best friend anymore, actually... Who knew that you can lie without using a single word that's fake?"
He hugs her arms to his stomach, his back a tight line of tension. "I could have told you that," he says, not mocking her at all, but with a kind of tired empathy that feels familiar.
Ladybug laughs into his back. "So you're all I've got, too," she whispers. "You, and Tikki, and..." She remembers looking at Adrien across the classroom, separated as far apart as they could possibly be, the two corners of a class that doesn't want them anymore. And maybe Adrien, she adds silently.
"The two of us?" Chat says, patting her arm comfortingly and sort of hesitant, like he's not sure he's allowed.
"Against everything," she confirms, rubbing her face against his back. It's so nice to be able to talk to him like this, without artificial layers between them. "No matter what."
"Deal," Chat says, and the smile in his voice comforts Ladybug more than anything else could have.
This is enough. If this is the only true thing she ever gets to keep, this is enough.