The Dread Pirate Ladybug, Ch 10
Chapters: 10/13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Implied death, may contain horses
Chapter Summary: have you ever gotten the impression that everything around you is trying to kill you? if you’re not australian, you may be in a fire swamp
Chapter Warnings: Actual violence, blood tw, blade tw, attempted murder, animal death, fire cw, poorly written romance
AO3
Marinette held her sword in one hand, and Adrien’s clammy palm in the other. She tightened her grip in reassurance as she peered into the twisting maze of the fire swamp.
The trees were everywhere, massive and gnarled and growing so close together that walking beneath them felt like descending physically into night. The vegetation was scant, but a thousand varieties of fungi curled and sliced from every surface, and lichen draped itself from the cathedral of branches overhead. A reek of sulfur and smoke lingered in the air. The ground wasn’t very swampy at all, hard and dry and carpeted with fallen leaves and an inauspicious bramble or two. A faint orange glow suffused the entire forest, but it grew more concentrated beneath this crust of debris.
Marinette pushed a small patch of blackened and decaying leaves away, revealing a network of phosphorescent fungus that seemed to pulse under the toe of her boot.
“Foxfire,” she said aloud, looking to Adrien. He was watching the ground with fascination, his bright green eyes shining in the reflected light. The eager curiosity on his face, which had been reluctant and heavy with fear mere minutes ago, filled Marinette with a fresh rush of affection.
“There’s an oxidative enzyme in the fungus,” she explained softly when he turned to her, unable to restrain her smile as he watched her with undisguised interest. “It’s the same process as fireflies. Don’t eat any of them though; a crewmate of mine did once thinking they were chanterelles, and regretted it… rather fiercely.”
Adrien pushed at the leaves with his own foot to expose a larger swath of the underlying variegation. The patterns shifted as he swept his sole across them, dancing like light reflected off of water. He gave a small laugh of delight, beaming at her.
“You’re right,” he told Marinette, a little breathlessly. “We can do this.”
“And what makes you say that, all of a sudden?”
“We’re standing in the middle of the Guilderian Fire Swamp, surrounded by poisonous fungus, and, quite likely, snow sand, spurts of flame, and smoke cats.”
“So we are,” she said cautiously, more than a little concerned about where he was going with this.
“In less than a minute, you’ve not only rendered the fungus harmless,” said Adrien, stepping closer to her, “you’ve made it beautiful. I don’t know how long we’ll be in here, and I honestly don’t think it’s going to be much fun, but we can at least survive. You, evidently, can survive anything.”
“Death cannot stop true love,” she repeated, with a wry smile. “And if I survive, I’m damn well taking you with me.”
He chuckled and pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead that warmed Marinette to the tips of her toes. She’d never get tired of those kisses, of these moments. She felt as though she’d been in a blizzard for five years, frozen and frostbitten, and she’d finally been welcomed back inside. The small and tender gesture was a warm drink pressed into thawing fingers, and her earlier rush of affection became a torrent.
He loved her.
He loved her and he hadn’t forgotten her, he hadn’t given up on her or found someone he preferred. He had been swept up by circumstances outside his control, as she had been, but he still loved her. In spite of—well—everything. Just about everything. She was honestly having a hard time understanding what she’d done to deserve it, given her behavior in the past 24 hours alone.
“I love you,” she told him, because it was the most important thing in the world that he know that. She couldn’t remember if she had said it earlier—she certainly hoped the kissing had been a clue—but even if she had just finished saying it, it wouldn’t have been soon enough. So she said it again, for good measure. “Adrien, I love you.”
He drew back from her forehead and looked at her with so much raw emotion that she wondered how she could ever have doubted his feelings for her.
“I love you too,” he whispered, “Let’s kick the fire swamp’s ass.”
They set off at a slow pace, Marinette slightly ahead as she was the one with the sword, their hands still tangled between them. Adrien wove as he walked, stepping on the patches where the foxfire glowed brightest, still excited by the phenomenon and the caustic ripples he could elicit. Marinette swept lichen and vines from their path with the flat of her blade, watching carefully for movement ahead. She sawed through an especially long and sturdy vine with the knife at her side, winding it around herself like a rope. It seemed a handy thing to have, given the circumstances.
Almost immediately, they discovered the flame spurts. Preceded by a low rumbling, the ground would break apart from below, and instantly erupt into a blazing column of fire, spewed from the crack for anywhere from a few seconds to longer than Marinette and Adrien waited around to see. The sulfurous smell intensified as these spurts roared to temporary life, revealing the flammable gasses that were their source.
Skirting one of these pyrophoric vents, Adrien began to look nervous again. His eyes watched the flickering geyser and he strayed a little closer to Marinette’s side, his free hand reaching out to clutch at her forearm.
“So,” he began, in a failed attempt to sound casual, “Dread Pirate Ladybug, huh?”
She smiled at him, the same smile she’d given him when he’d first made that connection.
“The one, if not the only.”
“…You lost me.”
“Pop quiz,” said Marinette, “how long has Ladybug been sailing?”
“Twenty years, give or take a few—” Adrien paused mid-sentence, frowning. “Wait a minute.”
She continued to smile, letting him work the timeline out on his own.
“So you’re… not Ladybug?” he asked, brow furrowed in confusion.
“Oh, I am,” said Marinette. She released his hand to wave her own through the air, gesticulating vaguely. “Let’s start at the beginning, I guess. I did promise you an explanation.”
Adrien kept one hand on her elbow, his eyes fixed on her with burning curiosity instead of watching where he was going.
“What I told you earlier—that was all true. And at first it didn’t really make a difference.” Marinette continued to sweep and slash the lichen and vines from their path as she spoke, watching where they were going so Adrien wouldn’t have to. “Ladybug was fairly apologetic, but still very firm: I had to die. Matter of principle, you know.”
“What changed?”
“I started talking about you,” she told him. “I don’t know that she felt guilty so much as she wanted to hear more, to be quite honest. She didn’t really believe me. Although I can’t blame her: You are a bit too good to be true.
“She had me go on describing you bit by bit��‘Eyes the color of summer,’ I said, ‘and hair like the autumn sun.’ I mean, you know me, I’ve no great gift for words, but I could wax poetic about your face for years.”
“See, I could probably, uh—wax pathetic about it. It’s more trouble than it’s worth,” said Adrien good-naturedly, tossing his short hair as dramatically as he could. “Wait! Wane pathetic. Final answer.”
Marinette laughed, curling her wrist so they walked just a bit closer together. Even this, simply talking, felt somehow more complete with him at her side. There were no awkward little gaps in the conversation, no haltingly explaining a joke that had failed to land—he encouraged her to speak the way he did everything, gently and earnestly, and what she had been sure ten minutes ago was the strongest love she’d ever felt now seemed only a vague fondness compared to the depths of her current affections.
“Anyway,” she continued, rolling her eyes at him, cramming her emotions away for a more appropriate time and venue, “she was interested now, at least a little, and by the end I knew I had her. She was unfortunately still pretty set on murdering me, as a pirate really can’t afford to let people think they’ve gone soft—particularly a pirate whose whole spiel is ‘No Survivors.’
“So I said, ‘I swear I won’t tell, that seems a pretty fair price for the whole not dying thing,’ or something to that effect, ‘and if you let me live, I will be your personal valet for five full years, and if I ever once complain or cause you anger, you can chop my head off then and there and I’ll die with praise for your fairness on my lips.’ And, you know, she seemed pretty interested. I don’t think anyone could frame five years of captivity and servitude as soft. She didn’t give in immediately, of course—she said, ‘Go below, I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.’”
Marinette stopped talking abruptly, and pretended to clear her throat to cover it up, not wanting to alarm Adrien or alert him to the enormous smoke cat she had just spotted following them.
Smoke cats, while rumored to be incorporeal and thought by some to be a will-o’-the-wisp variety of apparition, were unfortunately very real. They were named as much for their exclusive habitat—fire swamps—as for their coloration. With dusky fur that paled to silver at the roots, and a coal black marbling along the lengths of their bodies, they haunted the fire swamps like living shadows. Though it was often said they grew to be as large as lions, most were only the size of an especially big dog. They were principally ambush predators, drifting across the flickering forest floor or lurking high in the treetops as they stalked their prey. They almost exclusively had bright yellow eyes, and it was these that alerted Marinette to their presence as they watched she and Adrien pick their way through the swamp.
They glowed like embers, intent on their quarry, as the smoke cat sat perched on the bough of massive tree, its tail—the same length as the rest of its body—swinging like a pendulum beneath it. Though solitary creatures by nature, smoke cats had a deep partiality to fresh blood, and a tendency to frenzy. Marinette looked at Adrien, inspecting the healing wound on his temple to insure it had scabbed enough to keep him safe. Her wrist had stopped bleeding, and would be safe for a while, but she could protect it more easily than someone else’s head.
“Go on; what happened in the morning?” he urged, meeting her eyes.
“I cooked the crew breakfast,” she said simply, pulling him along so that she was in between him and the smoke cat, but still leading. “Their previous chef had been using pepper instead of salt, so they were thrilled with some reasonable pancakes. Ladybug ate seven of them and thanked me, said she’d most likely kill me in the evening.”
“But she didn’t,” said Adrien, smiling again.
“No,” she confirmed, smiling back. God, he was adorable. He was so excited. “By evening I had found ways to make myself useful. I reorganized their storage room, and fixed up a very poorly patched sail, and had a talk with the chef about seasonings. I worked out a plan for cleaning the whole ship, so the rest of the crew could cut back on time spent doing chores.”
“And that’s when she decided to let you live?”
“Honestly, I think she decided that the minute she didn’t kill me outright. But she kept saying that to me for years—‘good work Marinette, delicious pancakes, I’ll most likely kill you tomorrow.’ Except eventually I ran out of things to do to improve the ship, so she started me on ways to improve myself. Taught me how to fence, and sail, and somewhere along the way, we became friends.
“And then one day, she called me into her cabin. I was half-convinced my luck had run out and she was finally going to kill me, but instead she told me there was something about her that no one knew yet: She had a secret.”
Adrien squeezed her hand, his eyes sparkling and wide as dinner plates. “What was it?” he whispered, as if the fire swamp was full of eavesdroppers.
“’I am not the Dread Pirate Ladybug,’” Marinette told him, biting back a giggle at his enormous gasp. He clapped both hands over his mouth, and she thought it was only half theatrics—he seemed as genuinely shocked as she had been.
“She said, ‘My name is Bridgette. I inherited this ship from the previous Dread Pirate Ladybug. She wasn’t the real Ladybug either; her name was Jeanne, and she’d inherited it from a woman named Hippolyta. The real Dread Pirate Ladybug has been retired fifteen years and is living like a Queen in Kaokoland.’”
“But—why?” asked Adrien, lowering his fingers from his face only slightly.
“The thing about piracy—for-profit piracy anyway—is if you’re good at what you do, and you don’t get caught, it’s a very lucrative business. I mean, I barely keep anything, and I’m richer than our whole hometown combined. Bridgette went after a different class of ship than I did, and she got even richer even faster. And once you’ve made your fortune, why bother, you know?” She shrugged as she walked ahead, peering contemplatively up into the dense branches overhead. “They were all fairly eager to enjoy their spoils, but a reputation’s a difficult thing to come by. No one is going to surrender to the Dread Pirate Marinette.”
“I mean, I might,” said Adrien, chuckling at her heels.
“You’re biased,” she told him with a laugh. “You’d surrender just for a shot at flirting with me.”
“Well, true,” he agreed, a crooked grin splitting his face, “but I’d just as soon surrender out of blind terror. You’ve quite a temper, my lady, and…”
“And?” she prompted, tilting her head expectantly.
He didn’t answer.
“Adrien?” she asked, turning around to look at him.
Where he’d been standing a moment before, there was a blank expanse of sand.
Marinette swore loudly, ripping the vine off of her shoulders and tying a swift knot around a tree, wrapping the other end around her wrist and clenched hand, springing immediately into the bare earth.
Snow sand, a variety of dry quicksand, is found only under very specific conditions.
The Guilderian Fire Swamp has these conditions in abundance.
The finest grains of sand, silky and innumerable, were tossed and tumbled by the jets of marsh gas that wove under the hardened crust that composed the majority of the surface. Anywhere the ground was looser or lighter, it was fluffed up by these vents—anywhere it was thicker, they tended to result in flame spurts.
Moving through the snow sand didn’t feel like swimming, or even falling; it felt like floating. Eyes squeezed shut, a sailor’s lungful of air to hold, vine wrapped around her wrist, Marinette moved blindly through the powder. She’d dived in like an arrow, and though Adrien had doubtless been vertical while entering, he would know to spread himself flat as quickly as possible—or at least, she hoped he knew.
She swept her arms wide, feeling desperately for the slightest hint of her beloved. Did he have enough air? Had he kept his eyes shut? What if she found him and he couldn’t be saved? Had she come so far just to lose him now?
Her fingers brushed something hard and smooth, and she reflexively snatched it up, only to drop it as though scalded.
It was a hand, distinctly human, desiccated and detached from whatever pour soul had fallen into the snow sand’s pitiless grasp.
Gross. Gross, gross, gross gross gross.
She had to find Adrien. Immediately.
As though summoned by her renewed resolve, Marinette’s searching hands found something soft and warm, heavy and familiar. She drew him to her chest, pulling the vine in her other hand taut, wrapping it around her forearm as she hauled them both to the surface.
She broke into the open air with a dry gasp, Adrien’s head slightly ahead of hers. She pushed him onto solid ground as her legs kicked uselessly for traction, eventually flipping herself onto the mulch beside him. She brushed the sand impatiently from her eyelashes, breathing hard through her nose to dispel what had accumulated around her nostrils.
Adrien was lying still, his entire face caked in snow sand.
Marinette swore again, swiping what she could from his eyes and nose with one hand, while the other felt for a pulse at his throat. She sagged in relief when she found one, and felt the ragged breath in his chest.
She opened his mouth to check for any sand, finding it mercifully empty, though she could see a few grains in the back of his throat. He must have inhaled through his nose at some point, which explained the sound of his breathing.
She bent his left knee, drawing his left arm up towards his face, and rolled him gently onto his side, thumping him between the shoulder blades with the heel of her hand.
Adrien came awake with a deep cough, a plume of sand blossoming from his mouth as he hacked and convulsed with the effort. He opened his eyes as it subsided, a sliver of green amidst crusty blond lashes, a muddy tongue flicking over his chapped lips.
“Marinette?” he croaked, reaching for her automatically, his hand shaking as it curled into hers.
“Shh,” she hushed him, brushing the hair away from his face. “You’re alright. I’ve got you. Can you close your eyes for a minute?”
He did as she bade, probably more out of exhaustion than compliance, and she drew the canteen from her belt, pouring a slow trickle across his face. His expression screwed up as it passed over his eyes, and he licked his lips again on instinct. Without the sand in the way, his face was pale as a sheet, and Marinette rubbed comforting circles on his back as he wheezed on the ground.
“Thirsty,” he managed after she had finished cleaning his face. She helped him sit up, and after having him gargle and rinse, he took a long draught of water.
“Alright?” she murmured as he lowered the canteen. He nodded in response, dull eyes flickering to hers. He lifted his hands to her face, brushing the sand from her cheeks with shaking fingers. She laughed at him for being worried about her when he’d almost died, but closed her eyes obligingly beneath his ministrations.
“Thought I’d lost you,” she told him while he swept at her jaw, pressing her forehead against his with a small sigh. Her heart rate was only just beginning to slow.
“Doesn’t feel too great, huh?” he rasped, his voice still raw from the sand and coughing.
She felt a fresh wave of remorse for her actions over the past few years. “I’m so sorry I put you through that,” she whispered, opening her eyes. “I thought… I thought you loved her. I thought you were happier without me. Marquis of Carabas, free of his childhood fling, off to conquer the world. I couldn’t begrudge you that, no matter how much it hurt.”
“Chloé came to me and said I could either marry her or die,” said Adrien. “Honestly at that point I was pretty ready to die, but she set your parents up with a castle in Carabas, and I never had to pretend I cared about her or anything, so I figured hell, why not? Just because I’d never be happy again didn’t mean I had to take everyone else down with me.”
“I had my parents moved yesterday,” Marinette confided with a small smile. “I sent some of my crew to pick them up. They’re all set up with a little house in Guilder, never have to work a day in their lives again. Provided they believed I was alive, I guess.”
“I’m sure they did,” said Adrien, returning her smile. “They never really accepted it. We got the news and I just sort of… shut down, but they didn’t buy it. Your mother especially.”
“We’re a stubborn sort,” she said softly. She didn’t like the way he was talking; he was blaming himself for believing she had died. “Adrien, listen: It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. You did the best you could, you stayed alive—I’m the one who jumped to conclusions and left you all to fend for yourselves while I was off gallivanting across the seven seas.”
“You say that like it was easy,” he whispered, “but I can’t even imagine… if I had been in your place, and—and I came back to find you’d all moved on, that you were engaged to someone else—”
His voice broke, and she pressed her forehead into his more firmly.
“It wasn’t easy,” she admitted, because he needed to know that she cared. That she hadn’t just run off and abandoned him like his father, or gotten over him as quickly as she’d assumed he’d gotten over her. “When we got the news, I… it felt like I might as well have died, like what was the point? If I wasn’t doing anything worthwhile, if no one needed me, if I was just existing to be forgotten—”
“No one could forget you,” he broke in.
“That’s sweet,” she told him with a smile, “but grossly overestimates my significance. Not everyone is as aware of me as you are, you know.”
“They should be,” said Adrien, unapologetic, “but I’m sorry, I interrupted.”
“Well, I decided I was just going to be the best pirate I could be.” She shrugged, trying to play it off in spite of herself. He needed to hear it, and she probably needed to say it, but—it was hard to talk about. Just thinking about it had put a weight in her chest. “It was really the only way forward I could see. I’d… if I was never going to be with you, then I’d just take whatever road was at my feet. I had informants keep an eye on you, and my parents. I did what I could to make sure you were all safe. I hadn’t needed to get involved personally until yesterday.”
“You didn’t give up,” he murmured.
“On you? Of course I did,” she disagreed with a small, bitter laugh.
“No,” said Adrien, “on… living. On finding a way for yourself. I just did what other people told me, but you kept moving and learning and getting better and better. I only got prettier, and sadder.”
“It helped that I could still look out for you,” Marinette admitted quietly. “That I could still do things for you. Even when I was hurting, when I was so mad I wanted to turn up at the palace and scream at you—it helped that I knew I could. You didn’t have that.”
He shrugged, not meeting her eyes, swallowing thickly. They were so close she could hear the rasp in his throat.
“Besides,” she went on, voice growing a little stronger, “from what I hear, you were learning quite a lot. You weren’t just getting prettier and sadder. They were teaching you etiquette and politics and all that.”
“It’s not like I cared about it,” he laughed. “I know like six different ways to bow. It’s useless.”
“I certainly didn’t care about the things I was learning,” she told him. “I think we both did our best with our worst case scenario. We believed terrible things of each other, and—well—went a little off the rails, emotionally speaking, but we did our best. We tried our hardest. Sometimes all that meant was getting up in the morning, or eating enough, but… we did it. We made it, and now we have each other.”
The smile he gave her was radiant.
“We have each other,” he echoed breathlessly, returning her earlier pressure on his forehead. His eyes were half-closed, and Marinette’s own were having a hard time remaining open. Her blinks were slow and languid, lids heavy simply from his proximity.
The second kiss since their reunion was unlike the first, which had ultimately been a joyous affair, overflowing with emotion and affection and a fair amount of tears.
The second was slow, and sad, and carried the weight of what they had been through, the sharing of a burden they could never fully express.
Remorse heavy on the back of her tongue, Marinette pressed against Adrien’s chapped lips with a wordless catalogue of her every transgression. The years she’d spent doubting him, or cursing his name, or even wishing they had never met at all. The lies she had told him through her silence, the fate she’d led him to believe she’d met, the blindness she’d inflicted on him under the hands of his kidnappers.
This kiss was a question, an appeal for forgiveness she knew she didn’t deserve.
Forgiveness she received anyway.
Adrien sighed into the kiss like he was the one who needed absolution, so ready to welcome her back with open arms and an open heart that still showed the scars she had left. Her guilt beat into her with each thrum of her pulse, eating away at her, pulling her away from the beautiful creature before her. He deserved so much better than what she had put him through on the basis of an assumption—she left him with his own assumptions, to believe her dead and gone.
She began to draw away, opening eyes that had fallen shut and meeting Adrien’s gaze. She stilled at the weight of it, at the guilt she saw mirrored there, the desperation for her understanding, the strangled adoration he could never suppress. He followed after her, asking his own questions, seeking his own forgiveness.
She was only too ready to give it.
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“I’ve had it,” Chloé announced, reigning in the great white horse beneath her.
“Had what, Your Highness?” asked the Countess, almost absently. Her eyes were trained on her hounds, milling about the corpse they’d discovered.
“It,” said Chloé, throwing her hands in the air. “We’ve been at this for hours. Do they have the scent or not, Lila? We’ll never find him at this rate!”
“They have the scent,” said the Countess. She dismounted to inspect the body alongside her dogs, pulling off the silver cowl to reveal a shock of silver hair, and blue eyes clouded by death. “So this is the great Papillon. He’s not much in person, is he?”
“He looks to have been awfully tall,” said one of their guards, when she looked to him for an answer. He seemed nervous to even speak in the presence of the Countess and Princess Chloé.
“No one’s tall when they’re laid out,” said Countess Rossi with a disinterested sigh. “It’s a pity. I would have liked to take at least one for questioning.”
“There’s still whoever’s got my fiancé,” Chloé supplied with a sour pout.
“True,” the Countess agreed, brightening. “And if the forensics are to be believed, they’re even better than those we’ve passed. We might be in for a truly glorious bout of scientific discovery, Your Highness.”
“Let’s focus on catching them first, shall we?”
The Countess hummed thoughtfully.
“They’re heading into the fire swamp,” she said, pointing ahead of her baying hounds where they whined and paced to resume the chase. “Take a portion of the guard around to the other end.”
“Excuse me?” said the Princess, voice dangerously sweet. While the Countess was the closest thing she had to a friend, station was not to be forgotten, and she was not to be spoken to that way.
“I humbly suggest,” said the Countess, with a bow a little too elaborate to be anything but sarcastic, “that Your Highness and the most dedicated of her retinue move to cut off the escape of the fiend which has most recently stolen her beloved.”
“You should learn to curtsey,” said the Princess, signaling the guard to accompany her as she wheeled around to face the far end of the Fire Swamp. The Countess smiled. The Princess tended to criticize that sort of thing only when she had nothing else to complain about.
“I know how to curtsey,” said the Countess, “but it’s rather difficult when one’s not wearing skirts.”
“Perhaps I’ll have some better dresses made for you,” said the Princess.
The Countess stayed a while with her hounds, sousing out the order of events. Whoever they were tracking, whatever their motive: They were a fearsome warrior.
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“Ow!” said Marinette, clutching at her forehead where it had banged painfully into a low-hanging branch.
“Are you okay?” asked Adrien from behind her, chuckling. She turned a half-hearted scowl his way, sticking out her tongue.
“I’m fine,” she grumbled, “just got a bit distracted, is all.”
“By?”
“I was… checking for snow sand.”
The look he gave her was deeply skeptical. “Be honest: Were you thinking about me?”
She blushed in spite of herself. “No.”
“Oh my god, you were,” he said delightedly, brightening.
“Nope! No!”
“My lady, I’m flattered, but do watch where you’re going, won’t you? You can’t very well kiss me if you’ve knocked yourself unconscious.”
“Can’t very well kiss you if I’ve knocked you unconscious either,” she threatened weakly, laughing as he wrapped his arms around her waist. She leaned back against his chest, looking up at him over one shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said, though he grinned unapologetically in her face, “I didn’t think you were really thinking about me. I was curious.”
“You know what they say about curiosity,” she muttered, poking his nose with her own.
“Well hey, if it can kill smoke cats, we’ve got it made.”
“Maybe we won’t see any smoke cats,” Marinette suggested hopefully. The one she’d seen earlier could have been a fluke. “Maybe they’ll know better than to bother with us.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky!” said Adrien, almost as if he believed it.
“When have we ever gotten lucky,” she groaned.
“We’re together again, aren’t we?” he pointed out with a grin. “That’s all the evidence I need.”
“Well, if that’s luck, I think it’s safe to say we’ve taken more than our fair share,” said Marinette. She stretched up, kissing his chin before wriggling free of his arms, walking a few steps ahead of him.
“Considering all the bad luck, I’d say we’ve yet to break even,” he disagreed with a faint chuckle. “I suppose meeting each other at all was quite a stroke of fortune, but the things we’ve had to put up with…! It’s ridiculous. We’re owed a bit of a respite from bloodthirsty wildcats, don’t you think?”
“The way we’re talking, it’s more likely we’ve jinxed it,” said Marinette, laughing.
“What, like I’m just going to turn around and there’ll be a smoke cat?” he scoffed, spinning on his heel and swinging his arms in an exaggerated double take. He then paused, doing an actual double take. “Oh. Uh.”
“Don’t tell me.”
“We might have a, uh—problem.”
Marinette sighed, turning back, find Adrien locked in a staring contest with a reasonably small smoke cat, the former grimacing, the latter bristling.
“Shit, are—are you not supposed to look them in the eye? Is it like a dominance thing?” he asked Marinette, taking a nervous step back but not breaking the stare.
“I don’t know!” she groaned. “It doesn’t seem to be attacking, so maybe it’s just gonna let us pass? I’m sure it doesn’t want trouble any more than we do.”
“It’s so little… It’s like actually cat-sized. I thought they were supposed to be as big as lions,” murmured Adrien, edging back closer to her side.
“Yes, it’s adorable, now let’s get out of here before—”
Marinette’s words broke off in a startled yelp as she was suddenly pitched forward, twisting awkwardly mid-fall so that she landed on her left shoulder instead of her sword. Her back erupted in pain as something hooked and long and sharp sliced through her shirt and skin. Hot blood ran down her spine like sweat. She skidded across the crust of leaves and fungus, leaving a trail of smooth orange foxfire to illuminate her assailant: A colossal smoke cat, as long as Marinette was tall, with blazing yellow eyes and a furious snarl contorting its face.
Adrien squeaked, half a step closer to Marinette than he had been. The smoke cat’s glare flickered to him, and then back.
“Okay,” Marinette breathed, now locked in a staring contest of her own. Very, very slowly, she began to lift herself up with her free hand, turning so her saber was between her and the smoke cat. “Don’t move.”
The smoke cat hissed and spat, swiping at the toe of her boot. Every piece of fur on its body was standing on end, its bottlebrush tail out stiff behind it.
“Are you okay? What do we do?” Adrien whispered, frozen as he awaited instructions.
“Check and make sure your face isn’t bleeding.”
“What?”
“Please!” she pleaded, rocking slowly onto the balls of her feet, her knees resting against the ground with the barest pressure.
He obliged, his fingers coming away a little sandy, but dry. “Okay, I’m not bleeding. Now what?”
“Now go stand by that tree,” breathed Marinette, pulling a dagger about the length of her forearm from her baldric with her left hand. It glistened in the light of the foxfire too, much cleaner than her saber, which was coated in grime from their journey. Her back burned as she moved, muscles stinging where claws had torn through. “And maybe cover your ears.”
“What—” he started to ask, but Marinette lunged before he could finish, slashing the smoke cat’s parrying swipe with a backhanded twist of the dagger, what would have been a clean slice turning ragged at its recoil. Screaming in pain and fury, the smoke cat reared backwards, momentarily bipedal as it lurched away from a low thrust of the saber. Marinette swore as, having committed to the attack, she stumbled forward, losing precious seconds regaining her balance.
She struck again with the dagger, carving another piece of the smoke cat’s forelimb away. Tatters of bloodied skin and flesh dangled like ribbons from the joint of its wrist, and Marinette saw the white flash of sinew as it continued to hammer feverishly against her. She rolled her own wrist, securing her grip on the saber for another attack, eyes flicking to Adrien to make sure he was safe.
He hadn’t moved to the tree.
…She had gotten a little too used to people following her orders.
She let out a frustrated huff of breath as she rammed the saber forward and upwards, into what would have been the smoke cat’s ribcage—if it hadn’t sprung over her head.
It twisted acrobatically in the air above her, dripping gore across her outstretched arms, and landed on all four paws, only for its front right to collapse under the strain. It didn’t cry out, but the dulling of its eyes betrayed the pain. Marinette flashed it a fierce, victorious grin, daring it to attack again.
The smaller smoke cat, the one they had first seen, was now at the larger’s back, and was watching with wide yellow eyes, kneading at the branch it was perched on with eager claws that looked more like talons against the pale wood.
Marinette swore again, taking a pace to the right to get between the smoke cats and Adrien, who was watching somewhat anxiously, unwilling to cower but unsure how to help.
“There’s too much blood,” she told him, voice strained. “There’ll be more.”
“More blood?” asked Adrien, audibly gulping.
“More smoke cats,” she corrected. “Any of them that can smell it. They frenzy. Like sharks.”
“At least they’re not like eels,” he muttered. She heard him shift behind her, but couldn’t afford to turn around and see what he was doing.
Her shirt was sticking to her back as the blood soaked through the fabric, and her baldric sat heavily against the edge of one wound, chafing the broken skin. It’s just pain, Marinette reminded herself, settling lower into her fighting stance, it’s just your body complaining. She buried the sensation in the back of her mind, focusing instead on the memory of Adrien’s touch, gentle and soothing. Her heart was still beating frantically in her chest, but her breathing was deep and even. Panic and adrenaline made for clumsy mistakes, which she could ill afford.
The smoke cat tried to circle her, but as it moved she lunged once again, unwilling to make Adrien a closer target, even if the smoke cat wouldn’t attack him. It leapt onto its hind legs as she approached, surging forward with its claws splayed wide.
They met over the bare patch of foxfire where its initial pounce had landed her, the already disturbed leaf litter flying under their feet as they collided. Rather than using her saber, she pressed her advantage, slamming into the smoke cat with the full weight of her body. It yowled at the unexpected move, and they tumbled to the ground with their arms on either side of one another.
Marinette’s saber was jarred from her grip as her elbow hit the ground, but she kept a hold of the dagger, which had buried itself partway in the ground. As she yanked it free a spurt of flame burst into life, and she and the smoke cat instinctively rolled away from it, putting her saber out of her reach.
The smoke cat was slashing uselessly at her shoulder with its ruined paw, its left pinioned between them. As they rolled it managed to work it free, immediately scouring the side of her arm. Marinette bit down on the scream, forcing the pain away again; her left arm still worked, that was all that mattered. They stopped rolling as the flame spurt died, the smoke cat pinning her with its weight, snapping awkwardly as it tried to work its neck into a manageable position to rip out her throat.
With all the strength she could muster lying on her back, Marinette slammed the dagger in her hand into the smoke cat’s stomach.
It choked above her, yellow eyes widening as it wrenched away, taking the dagger with it. She struggled under its weight, still pinned, her right arm burning and numb all at once, her left still free. She pounded its side with a fist, trying to find the hilt of her dagger without being able to see it. The smoke cat reared its head back like a serpent poised to strike, and Marinette reached up to squeeze its ruined forearm, trying to loosen its hold as its teeth flashed above her.
There was a horribly wet tearing sound, and suddenly everything was hot and coppery and dark, and she couldn’t breathe—
“Marinette!” Adrien’s voice broke through, hoarse from stress and their earlier misadventures in the snow sand. The weight of the smoke cat vanished abruptly, and suddenly she could breathe again, and see again, and Adrien was kneeling over her and his hands were covered in blood, and he looked so distressed that it might well have been his.
“Please,” he was saying, begging, and she blinked up at him, “please, Marinette—”
“What?” she whispered, struggling into a sitting position, pushing herself up with her left hand, mindful of her wounded back. “What is it? Are you alright?”
He relaxed immediately, closing his eyes as he let out a shuddering breath. He bowed his head to press against her hand, which he clutched with both of his, and through the icy coldness of her fingers she felt the warmth of his breath.
“Am I hurt,” he murmured into her palm. “You’re lying on the ground, half ripped to shreds, and you ask if I’m hurt.”
“Are you?” she pressed, anxiously, fingers flexing weakly against him. She could feel the agonizing burn in her upper arm, but if she compartmentalized it, she wouldn’t be able to feel his hands around hers.
“I’m fine,” said Adrien, a little miserably. “I’ve never been so scared in my entire life, but I’m not actually injured.”
She looked around, piecing together what had happened as she scooped up a handful of dirt and began rubbing it vigorously into her wounds. The smoke cat lay a few feet away, her saber buried in its ribs, the smaller smoke cat cautiously circling as it tried to decide whether or not to approach the carcass.
Adrien had recovered the saber while she was pinned.
Adrien had saved her.
“Thank you,” she told him, looking back to find him frowning at her arm.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, ignoring her gratitude. She grabbed another fistful of mulch and rubbed it into the fabric of her shirt itself. “You’re going to get an infection!”
“Better than bleeding to death,” she countered with a breathy laugh. “Besides—we can’t walk around here reeking of blood.”
“Oh,” said Adrien, releasing her hand and getting to his feet, moving behind her, “the frenzying.”
“Right,” she said, fighting not to twitch as he began to press dirt into the wounds at her back. “That smoke cat should distract them for now.”
Adrien made an unpleasant noise in the back of his throat, dusting off his hands as best he could and standing back up. He helped Marinette to her feet more delicately than strictly necessary, steadying her with a hand against the small of her back. She rolled her eyes at him fondly, earning a broad wink in return.
Adrien set about dislodging her saber and dagger while Marinette scrounged up some lichen from a nearby tree, scrubbing halfheartedly at the drying blood on her uninjured skin.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Adrien asked softly, returning to her side with blades in hand. He’d wiped them somewhat clumsily on the fur of the dead smoke cat, but it was enough that she could clean them with the lichen and sheathe the dagger. “We can rest a while.”
“I’ll be alright,” she promised, smiling up at him as reassuringly as she could. “Besides, I don’t want to wait around and watch them cannibalize each other—or be stuck here when it gets dark. We should keep going.”
“Alright,” he murmured, eyes lingering on her injuries. His eyes were duller than usual, though not as dull as they had been when she’d first seen him that morning. He looked sick and scared and haunted, and it pulled at Marinette’s heart in unexpected ways.
“I’m sorry for scaring you,” she said, stepping in closer and wrapping her arms around his waist. She pressed her face into his chest, breathing in the smell of him, avoiding his eyes with renewed guilt. Was she ever going to stop breaking his heart?
He leaned his forehead against the top of her head, arms hovering carefully over hers to avoid her injuries. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I couldn’t—that I didn’t—I’m so sorry. I couldn’t protect you.”
“Could too,” she mumbled into his shirt, rubbing her nose playfully under his vest. “That would have gone much worse without you, Adrien.”
“I’m still sorry,” he said.
“Me too.”
They walked in silence for a time, Adrien taking the lead now that Marinette was injured, following her directions through the swamp. They were filthy and exhausted, but Marinette hadn’t been so optimistic in years; they were together again. Nothing could stop them if they were together.
They reached the edge of the fire swamp in the early evening, before the sky darkened but after the temperature had cooled, and together breathed a sigh of relief. The trees began to thin, and the reek of the marsh gas dissipated, and the world seemed somehow lighter in the balmy air.
“My ship is waiting in the bay,” said Marinette with a weary smile. “Admittedly I was planning on going around, but we did alright, all things considered. Didn’t we?”
“We lived,” he acceded, laughing faintly. He was swaying on his feet, still staring at her like she was the only thing he wanted to look at. Her smile widened, and she leaned in, pressing a brief kiss to his cheek.
“Excuse me!”
They sprang apart at the sharp shriek, Marinette pointing her saber automatically at the shrill sound, Adrien reaching instinctively for a sword at his empty belt. Marinette, searching for the source of the noise, found herself facing a small army, headed by two very fine women, in very fine dress, on very fine horses.
The first, evidently the originator of the scream, was sitting sidesaddle on an enormous white stallion, and looked absolutely furious. Her long blonde hair was pulled into an elegant braid, her blue eyes were flashing with rage and indignation, and her lily pale hands were clutching the reins so hard her knuckles were white as bone. She wore a dress of loose, flowing gold that accented the color of her hair, and shone in the sunlight against her horse’s fur. Even in this alien setting, she looked like the princess she was.
The second was significantly calmer; the only indication of displeasure was her pursed, painted lips, and a disdainful light in her eyes. Where the first woman’s face was soft and even naïve under her fury, this second woman was sharp and keen and intelligent. Marinette perceived more of her countenance than her outfit, registering only that she wore browns and reds, practical breeches, and leather gloves over six-fingered hands.
“You’re excused,” said Marinette to the first woman with a genial smile. She did not lower her blade. Her free arm (the injured one) snaked around Adrien’s waist, drawing him closer to her side protectively.
The Princess’s eyes bulged. “That happens to be my fiancé you’ve got your grubby little hands on!”
“Oh, really?” drawled Marinette. “And here I’d scooped him off a bloodthirsty crowd of criminals. I would expect one to keep a better eye on their fiancé than that, wouldn’t you?”
“Surrender,” hissed Chloé from her seat, face beginning to turn red. “Or prepare to die.”
Marinette laughed. “Die,” she said back, her left hand flexing around the saber’s hilt, “Or prepare to surrender.”
She heard more than saw the archers taking up a flanking position; the sound of crossbows cocking was unmistakable, even over the distant sounds of the fire swamp. Beside her, Adrien was looking around wildly, but Marinette kept her eyes trained on the Princess, watching the Countess in her peripheral vision.
“I will not repeat myself again,” said the Princess, in her shrill, angry voice, “Surrender!”
“Nor will I,” said Marinette, “Die!”
“Wait!” yelled Adrien beside her, his voice cracking at the sudden volume. Everyone—Pirate, Princess, and Countess alike—stopped and looked at him. His face was drawn with anxiety, his scab from the eels crusting over, particles of sand still dusting his scalp—and, as ever, he was beautiful.
“For what?” demanded the Princess, scowling down at him.
“Will you—will you promise not to hurt her?” croaked Adrien.
“What?” asked Chloé.
“What?” asked the Countess.
“What?” asked Marinette.
“If we surrender,” he clarified, licking his lips, “if I go back with you, will you promise not to hurt her?”
“She kidnapped you!” said Chloé, gaping between them.
“She rescued me,” he corrected. He leaned further against Marinette’s side, his warmth radiating throughout her—almost enough to thaw the chill of her disbelief. “Please, Your Highness—we were children together, and she means a great deal to me, and I ask your mercy. As—as thanks, for my safe return.”
Chloé frowned down at him, looking Marinette over as if trying to come up with a way to articulate her disgust.
“The Princess is not renowned for her mercy,” said the Countess, raising one eyebrow.
“All the more reason to exercise it here,” said Adrien. The desperation in his voice was palpable. “It’s—it’s a great story, isn’t it? The noble princess following her fiancé across the channel, rewarding his rescuer? The commoners would think so highly of you, Your Highness.”
Chloé looked pensive. “They would love that,” she mused, smiling faintly.
“There’s a hitch,” Marinette interjected, heart pounding in her chest. “You can’t very well bring me along, Adrien. I’m a pirate.” To say nothing of the romantic competition she so obviously posed.
“You’ll be safe,” said Adrien. “They’ll get you some medical attention. You will, won’t you?” He turned pleading green eyes to Chloé, swallowing thickly. “Promise?”
“Of course,” she said primly. “We wouldn’t want our dashing friend here to succumb to her injuries.”
Marinette narrowed her eyes.
“They’ll take you back to your ship, and—and grant you a pardon,” Adrien continued, looking back to Marinette. He looked so scared. “You’ll be safe.”
“And what about you?” she asked softly. “You’ll go back to Florin City and marry the Princess? We’re speaking of love, here.”
“I can live without love,” said Adrien. He pulled away from her grip, crossing the short gap to Chloé’s side. She helped him climb in the saddle behind her, smiling primly, her earlier rage vanished.
“See to it that her wounds are tended immediately,” she bade the Countess.
“Of course, Your Highness,” said the Countess, bowing her head respectfully.
“I thank you for the return of my fiancé,” said Chloé to Marinette, her eyes flashing so smugly and victoriously that Marinette felt like the smoke cat she and Adrien had defeated earlier. “You are of course invited to the wedding.”
They rode away, most of the horsemen following in their wake.
Adrien didn’t look back.
Marinette’s shoulders slumped as she watched them go, all the fight running out of her, her heart chasing after the fading silhouette of everything she’d ever wanted.
“Well now,” said the Countess, her sharp voice piercing Marinette’s reverie like a blade. “Come along. We must return you to your ship.”
“Spare me at least your lies,” said Marinette, rolling her eyes. “You’ve about as little intention to return me as I have to buy them a wedding present.”
“Truth, then,” said the Countess, spurring her horse forward a few paces, so that Marinette had to tilt her head back to keep her eye. The black and tan hounds swarmed around them, some whimpering excitedly. “I hope you enjoyed your time in the Guilderian Fire Swamp. I guarantee you that you’ll soon look back on it fondly as a deeply relaxing experience.”
“Are nobles naturally this dramatic, or do you have to take a class?” Marinette asked innocently.
The Countess gave an audible sigh, and clubbed Marinette with the pommel of her sword.
Her vision swam, and Marinette swayed on her feet and crumbled backwards into darkness.
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