Chapter Text
His lady is the perfect woman. She's strong, fast, skilled, witty, confident. She's charming, inventive, and has more cleverness than could possibly be measured. More than that, she's supremely kind, and patient with everyone she meets, including him. Adrien, otherwise known as Chat Noir, knew he could be more than a handful after donning the mask.
From the first time they'd worked together, she had effectively swept him off his feet and now he simply couldn't get enough of her. She was every star in a pitch black night, the afternoon sun banishing heavy clouds away, a breath of clean air in the height of spring. He loves her, plain and simple, loves her enough to try and pursue her and enough to keep trying even when she keeps dismissing his advances.
"Ah, my lady, good to see you. As usual, your presence proves to make even the nicest sunny day all the better." He leaps down from the light post to meet her as she retracts her yo-yo.
"Good to see you, too, Chat." Ladybug smirks, "All that sun, you should watch not to get burned."
"Ah, so you do care." He sweeps her hand up to his lips, kissing the back before she pokes him on the nose and giggles.
"No time to play around, we have a city to look after." She says and leaps again into the air, a flash of her scarlet tool hooking ahead of her as she commands it and he follows behind before she gets too far.
Such is their routine, their patrols and bouts with agitated akuma-possessed people peppered with banter that he would love to push past just the borderline of flirty, but leading a double life has taught him nothing if not patience. He loves her truly, the girl who single handedly put an end to his repressed misery, who accepted him and befriended him and trusted him like no one else had ever done before.
He wants desperately to know her name, the face behind the mask, but her wants come first, always. His respect for her is too great to ever take away her choice. She's already chosen, after all, not to tell him who she is even though they've known each other so long and they work outstandingly well together. He doesn't know her reasoning, but Ladybug is too smart a person not to have a good one. At least that's his opinion.
Sometimes, though, rarely, he sees a look cross her face. It's an expression he's seen only a fraction of a second at a time, but it's one that makes his heart drop into his stomach and his face screw with worry. He isn't sure how to describe it. Something like fear but more jagged, like sadness but far deeper, and all at once. Again, it's there for not even a second and he might've even been able to think he was imagining things if not for the fact that, always, she leaves directly after every patrol or mission without more than a word of goodbye.
"My lady?" He sees her turning away, her yo-yo in hand, ready to take off, "Ladybug?"
"Bye." He hears her say, almost a whisper, but she doesn't face him.
Her back tells him not to follow her more so than that one word. He's far more rebellious as Chat Noir. He wishes he could summon even a little bit of that disobedience to chase her silhouette instead of steering back towards the Agreste Manor.
Ladybug is strong. She is the epitome of confidence, of leadership and level-headedness. Adrien can't even imagine what causes such a woman, practically invulnerable, to make that expression. He asks Nino, headphones perched around his neck, about it without giving details to share his identity or hers. Nino looks at him sideways, lips pressed thin.
"I don't know, man. It's like play-dough or whatever, right? Change the shape to look however you want, it's still play-dough. I think it might be the same with people. A mask might make someone seem completely different than without it, but they're still the same." He answers.
Adrien doesn't really know how to reply to that, but thanks Nino all the same.
There are days when he's late to their meeting spot. He doesn't have the best luck and it isn't uncommon for him to get dragged into some situation or another that leaves him running behind. She's always waiting for him, though, looking out toward the west horizon to try and see his black mask and childish grin fly straight over from the usual direction. Most of the time, that's how it is except sometimes he's not coming from his house but somewhere else in the city and he'll see her like he doesn't have the chance to when she can glimpse him from far off.
Framed by a melancholy sunset, Chat Noir watches her sit as still as a statue on the roof of a building. Her shoulders are slumped and her back is curved in a way that looks like weight upon weight is pushing down on her. Her eyes, bright blue like a clear sky, look flat and doll-like with her mind a million miles away. A place he can't reach her.
Indeed, she often seems unattainable.
Like a spell, she'll hear a rush in the wind and snap her gaze over to him, a warm smile and cloudless azure meeting his eyes and he grins and thinks it must have been nothing. The twinge in his heart says otherwise, but he's scared to do anything but ignore it for now. So he reaches for her hand and kisses the back in greeting before she pulls away and gives him that bell-like laugh and a roll of her eyes.
He'd do just about anything to see her smile.
Hard truth hits him on what was otherwise an ordinary day. Lessons, fencing practice, photo shoots, feeding Plagg, an akuma attack just after lunch; it all goes down hill at that.
There's an errant villain running amok in the city, playing mind games with the people it sees and chasing off others that have the misfortune of crossing it's path. He and Ladybug are able to break the possessed object and purify it, but the bitter thing snatches the thread of revenge by muddling his lady's head in the last second.
That look, the one he's seen only a handful of times for a second a piece, is frozen on her face as he carries her safely to the sanctuary of an abandoned theater. Her breathing is fast and heavy, her eyes are wide and terrified. Her hands press to her ears as though to either block whatever is making her suffer or to keep it from spreading. He hears horrible clicks, her teeth grinding, and her nails drive into her scalp. He tries to pull her arms away but she yelps at the contact and he flinches in shock. She's shaking like she's caught in a blizzard, muscles tight and knuckles bent.
He's sick with worry and tries to get her to breathe normally but it seems she can't. When he tries to reach for her again, she clamors to her feet, swipes his staff and throws it into the rows of seats. She leaps into the air and swings with her yo-yo and he won't see her again until next patrol, two days from then.
He's left beside himself after reclaiming his staff. He can't follow her now, he's lost sight of her, but there's something he can't look away from anymore. He'd tried to hide it from himself, to believe it wasn't true, but his lady is in pain and he has no idea how to help her.
A cat in a bag, Adrien is disgusted that when they next meet he does as he always does: follow her lead. Usually it's a wise choice to do so, her strategy as impeccable as every other part of her is, but in this he knows that neither of them have control of the situation and he thinks that should warrant some new action from him but it doesn't. He doesn't know what to do.
However, Ladybug smiles when he dramatically bows in greeting her and she chuckles when she twines words around his feet to make him trip and she rolls her eyes with a deliberate sigh when he makes a cat pun. He isn't sure if what he's doing, acting as if it hadn't happened, is the right thing to do but it seems to him that anything that can make his lady laugh can't possibly be all wrong.
"Chat?" She says one night as they wind down on a roof top.
She's staring at her hands, lays them gingerly on her lap. The look in her eyes is reminiscent of the flat, absent look he's seen on her from just beyond her notice. Chat draws her attention away with a silly response.
"Meow lady?"
She smiles, nudges him playfully with her shoulder, mumbles, "Silly kitten."
"You won't make a stray out of me for it, will you?" His tone is unmistakably joking, he knows she would never, but she tells him so anyway.
"As if I could part with you." She grins mischievously, an excellent look on her, "There's no other man in the world who's as fun to tease as you."
"Me-ouch!" He laughs, pretending her words knock him over, "Now what did you want to say to me, my lady?"
Her folded hands fiddle very slightly and her smile falters only to a softened state as she looks at him, "I forget. Don't worry about it."
He's a superhero; patience, he tells himself, patience.
It isn't that Adrien's never heard of this kind of thing but, as stupid as it sounds now, he just never thought it would be the case with someone so close to him. He never expected it to be Ladybug. Doesn't want it to be.
The sleeves of her suit had been caught in the thick branches of the orchard they'd been fighting in. Having not used her lucky charm against the villain, she summoned it, with some difficulty, and out had popped a pair of spotted scissors. He'd carefully cut off her sleeves to free her, confused by her loud objections at the time, but holding her bare hands now makes it all come horribly together.
She tears her arms away from his grip and he lets her leave, lets her run from him with that same devastated look that's haunted him since he first glimpsed it. The image is now joined, branded, with that of her wrists. Little crescent moons punched scarring into her skin, some red, scabby and fresh, others pink, others white with age, some small, some dragged across her flesh, rough and thick. They bleed easily, the fresher ones, and drops of her blood have colored his gloves faintly above the black. There isn't anyone who would notice but him who looks closely.
He'd wondered many times what caused his lady trouble, what made her so upset in small glimpses. His eyes are wide and he doesn't even realize he's crying until salt water drips to mix with the red on his gloves. Adrien sits down, head between his knees as he cries quietly, hating himself for doing so but his heart aches to burst so the tears won't stop just by wishing.
How much agony must she be in to dig her fingernails so hard into her wrists that it cut through the skin? How many times must she have done it by the marks she'd had? How long had she been hiding her suffering under sleeves that some scars were already old enough to lose color? How recent that they'd reopened under his shaking hands? How long had she done it all alone?
Adrien feels lost, feels sick, can't bare to dwell on the answers.
But Ladybug, his lady, is more important than that.
He had always shied away from expressing the depth of his emotions, hiding behind quiet politeness as Adrien and hiding behind jokes and a mask as Chat Noir. It's scary, it goes against everything his father taught him, to show those parts of him but he doesn't care anymore. Even if it means he is weak, Adrien will show Ladybug how wonderful, lovely, irreplaceable he thinks she is if doing so will ease her burden even a little.
Chat Noir is at their meeting spot early. He sees her on the sky line and takes a deep, nervous breath, hands clenching over and over to dispel the twitch in his fingers. She lands, a guarded glint in her eyes accompanied by a painted smile. She's pretending to be normal, just like last time, but today he's changing the rhythm.
"Good evening, Chat." She says evenly, the false serenity of her smile still in place.
He bows as he usually would, but this time takes both her hands in his. Turning them palms up, Adrien kisses her wrists softly and quickly, hears her startled gasp before she pulls away.
She's clearly shocked, unable to look away from his hands, his bowed knee, as he looks up carefully.
When she finds her voice, it's breathless and stuttered, "W-well, we should get started."
He's never heard her stutter before. Never seen her ears turn so red, flushed up from her partially hidden cheeks. His lady has never reacted that way once to his greetings and that gives him a strange hope that she may yet let him in. It's still a long road ahead, however. Patience, he remembers, patience.
To him, his lady is the perfect woman and even after learning about more of her, the parts she hates, he still can't find reason to disagree with that opinion. She's still everything he loved about her before, but now he sees even more to love, to cherish the parts she hides in fear, and to help patch the wounds on her heart. The affection he thought could grow no more continues still and Adrien finds he doesn't mind if he drowns in it.