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jesus-otaku · 4 years ago

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Title: La Pucelle et la Coccinelle (Epilogue)

Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug

Word count: 601

Final part! I’m so mad at myself for not posting this or part 12 until now, but better late than never I guess. The ML Big Bang of 2017 was my last major participation in the fandom before I dropped off the Tumblr grid for a while, so this fic is still very near and dear to my heart. It’s nice to be able to share it with my followers here in its entirety at last.

Tikki pointed to the statue. “Who is that supposed to be?”

________________________

“I'm gonna be so late!” Marinette wailed as she scrambled up the stairs of the metro exit. “Alya's going to kill me!”

Tikki popped her head out of Marinette's purse, holding onto the side with one hand to keep herself stable as the purse swung back and forth. “You still have a couple minutes before Kim and Alix start their dare, don't you? Relax! It'll be fine.”

“But I just got off the metro, and the Jardin des Tuilieres is huge! It'll take me forever to find them! I knew I should have taken a different line to get there!”

“Just let her know you'll be a little late, then,” Tikki suggested. “I'm sure they wouldn't mind waiting for you.”

“I guess I don't have much of a choice,” Marinette groaned. She slowed down to dig her phone out of her pocket, and called Alya while she speed-walked down the street. “Hi, Alya? Yeah, no, I'm on my way right now! It's just, I was on the wrong metro line, and it dropped me off kind of far away, but I swear I'll be there soon. No, really! I'm coming up on Place des Pyramides right now. I'll see you in a minute. Where are you guys?”

Just then, Tikki noticed the tall statue they were approaching. Three flags waved behind the golden figure, who rode atop a charger and carried a battle standard in their right hand. As Marinette drew closer to the statue, Tikki noticed the figure's long hair swept back into a knot at the nape of its neck. It was a woman.

“Okay, by the Place du Carrousel, got it, I'll be there really soon!” Marinette faltered as Tikki, transfixed by the statue, tapped her side. “Uh, yeah, I'm practically there already! Seeyousoonbye!” She hung up and looked down at Tikki. “What's wrong?”

Tikki pointed to the statue. “Who is that supposed to be?” She had her guesses, but it was a woefully inaccurate depiction if she was right.

Marinette looked up at the statue, and then back down at Tikki. “You're thousands of years old. Don't tell me you've never heard of Joan d'Arc. She totally kicked butt during the Hundred Years' War!”

Tikki smiled. That was certainly one way of putting it. “I've heard of her.” As they drew up beside the statue and Marinette prepared to cross the street, Tikki flew out of her purse. “You go ahead and have fun with Alya and the others. I think I'll stay here for a minute.”

Marinette looked at her in wide-eyed confusion. “But what if somebody sees…?”

“It'll be fine,” Tikki promised her. “I won't be seen. I just want to pay my respects to an old friend.”

Marinette's eyes went, if possible, even wider as she understood what Tikki meant. “You mean—”

“You're going to be late,” Tikki reminded her. “Go on. I'll tell you everything later, I promise.”

Marinette probably would have argued, but her phone buzzed with an impatient call from Alya, and so she gave up and started her dash across the street to the garden. “I'm coming right now!”

Tikki sighed fondly—Marinette really was hopeless when it came to making it to things on time—and then turned to look up at the statue. The gaze was a little too stern to be Joan's, the hair too long, the face too time-worn, but the confidence Tikki remembered so well was there, in the set of the statue's posture and the way it held its banner aloft. She drifted up to the statue's face and nuzzled its cheek.

“Hello, Jhennette,” she whispered.

#drabble #mbb2k17 #miraculous ladybug #miraculous fanfic #la pucelle et la coccinelle

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jesus-otaku · 4 years ago

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Title: La Pucelle et la Coccinelle (part 12)

Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug

Word count: 2650

Discovered while updating my fic master page last night that I never did finish posting this fic here. So I am rectifying that. This is, by far, the most brutal chapter of the entire thing, and may or may not have made me cry while writing it, just as a fair warning. (Also tw for this chapter for some implied/attempted sexual assault.)

Tikki's heart sank. She knew, at that moment, that there would no longer be any mercy for Joan.

________________________

Joan's hair was shaven close to the scalp and she was given women's clothes after her abjuration, which she put on when she had been brought back to her cell. Tikki rejoined her there, sneaking in through the outer wall to avoid being seen by the guards.

Her charge sat in the corner of her cell, staring blankly at the wall across from her, her hands folded limp and unmoving in her lap. “I abjured,” she said in a hollow voice when Tikki landed on her knee with the earrings. “I have betrayed my counsel and my God.” A single tear made its way down her cheek. “What have I done?”

Tikki started to nestle against Joan's hand to comfort her, but the cell door creaked open again, and she was forced to phase through her charge's skirt instead to hide from the guards who entered.

“What could you possibly want with me?” Joan asked them, still in that terrible hollow voice.

“Come now, vachère, is that any way to talk to us?” one of the guards taunted. Joan was yanked to her feet.

“Let go of me!” The hollow tone was gone from her voice, replaced with the keening edge of panic.

“Not so confident without your heretic's garb, are you?” the other guard remarked in a disgustingly honeyed tone. “Under all that bravado, you're just a woman like any other.”

“I said, let go of me!” Tikki could tell from the way she was bracing herself that Joan was doing her best to pull away from the two, but her chains were hindering her efforts. She couldn't even break their grasp. “Let go! Stop touching me! Stop touching me!”

“Aw, but didn't you change for us, vachère? This is so much easier to remove than that pesky hosen.” Someone's hand tugged at Joan's skirt, and Tikki's heart leapt up into her throat. She needed to find somewhere else to hide—but where? And how was she supposed to conceal herself from the guards and protect Joan at the same time?

“Get your hands off of me!”

“Ouch!” The tugging at her skirt stopped. “The witch bit me!”

There was a harsh slapping sound, and Joan went tumbling to the ground.

“You bitch,” one of the guards said. “Mark my words, la Pucelle, we are not finished with you.”

When Tikki finally dared to come back out from her hiding place, Joan had one hand pressed to a hideous red welt on her tear-stained cheek, and her other clutching at the disheveled collar of her dress.

The guards made good on their promise. Over and over, they grabbed her, cornered her, fumbled at her clothes and their own, only stopping when Joan bit or got in a good elbow to the gut. The men's clothing which she had been wearing before was dumped in a sack in one corner, a deliberate temptation in the midst of the sexual harassment she was enduring. But she stubbornly kept wearing the dress she had been given.

Until, on May twenty-seventh, the guards stole her dress while she was in bed.

They dumped the male clothing out onto the floor in front of her, laughing the whole time, and stuffed her dress into the sack. Joan sat bolt upright in her bed and stared at the men's clothing as if she thought they might be poisonous. They may as well have been, knowing the consequences she would suffer if she put them on.

“Please, return my clothes to me,” she said to the guards.

They laughed again. One of them pointed to the men's clothes on the floor. “There are your clothes; put them on.”

“You know as well as I that the judges have prohibited me from wearing this clothing,” Joan protested. “Please, I must relieve myself. Return my clothes to me.”

“You have your clothes there,” the guard repeated.

“Sirs, you know this is forbidden me; without fail, I will not accept it.”

“Without fail, we will not give you a woman's garb,” another guard said, in an exaggerated mockery of her tone of voice. “You have clothing there; men's or women's, it is what you ought to wear.”

“I will not. Now return my clothing to me at once.”

But the guards kept refusing, and Joan could only hold out for so long—she had to relieve herself, and there was nowhere to do so in her tiny cell, which meant that sooner or later she would have to dress and leave her cell. She eventually gave up around noon, and put on the men's clothing which she had been trying so hard to avoid wearing. When she returned from relieving herself, she tried again to convince the guards to return her dress, with the same results.

And then the inquisitors came to see her the next day.

“When did you put on men's clothing?”

“I have but recently resumed men's clothes and abandoned women's.”

“Why did you take it, and who induced you to do so?”

“I took them of my own free will,” she answered solemnly, “without being forced; and truthfully I prefer these clothes to women's.”

It was the only out-and-out lie Tikki would ever remember her uttering.

“You promised and swore you would never resume wearing men's clothing,” one of the inquisitors reminded her.

“I never understood myself to be taking such an oath.”

“Why have you resumed it?” she was asked again.

“As I am among men, it is more lawful and appropriate that I should wear men's clothes rather than women's. I have resumed it because your promise to me has not been kept; that is, that I should go to Mass and receive the body of Christ and that I should be released from my chains.”

“Did you not make an oath never to take men's clothes?”

“I would rather die than be in chains,” Joan said firmly. “But if you allow me to go to Mass, and release me from my chains and place me in an agreeable prison with a woman for my companion, I will be good and do as the Church wills.”

“Since last Thursday, have you heard your voices?”

Her answer was a blissful exhale. “Yes.”

“What did they tell you?”

“They said to me that God had sent me word of the great pity it is that I betrayed Him, when I abjured and recanted to save my life. I damned my soul to save my life. Before Thursday, my voices had told me what I should do, and I did it. When I was on the scaffold, my voices instructed me that I should answer the preacher boldly.” Her voice took on a sorrowful, bitter curl. “In truth he is a false preacher; he accused me of many things which I have never done. If I said that God had not sent me, I would damn myself, for truly I was sent by God. My voices have told me since Thursday that I have done a great evil in saying that what I had done was wrong. Whatever I said and recanted, I said for fear of the flames.”

Tikki's heart sank. She knew, at that moment, that there would no longer be any mercy for Joan.

The next day went by unbearably fast. Tikki spent most of it huddled up close to Joan's side, holding on with every ounce of strength she had. They didn't talk much. Both of them knew what was coming, and they would say their goodbyes when it came, but for the time being it was better to sit in silence and just be together.

After suppertime, footsteps approached down the hall. Joan's head snapped up to look at her cell door with dread. Tikki buried her face in Joan's clothes as murmurs floated in from the hallway. Then the cell door was opening, and Joan was standing, and Tikki hid herself under the bed in a rush.

“You needn't hide from me, Tikki.”

It was the great guardian's voice.

Slowly, Tikki popped back out from under the bed. She was greeted by the great guardian's kind smile. Joan looked back and forth between the two of them in obvious confusion.

“Joan d'Arc,” the great guardian said, inclining his head to her. “It is a pleasure to see you again after so long.”

Joan's mouth popped open in surprise. “You're…”

He nodded. “The elderly gentleman whom you aided in carrying wares across Domremy, yes.”

She turned to look at Tikki. “And…”

“He's the one who brought me to you,” Tikki answered. “This is the great guardian. He protects all of the Miraculous, and distributes them to those who are worthy during times of trouble.” She turned her attention to the great guardian. “If you're here, then…”

The great guardian nodded again, his expression turning sorrowful. “It is time for you and Jhennette to part ways. We cannot risk the Miraculous falling into the wrong hands.”

A sharp wave of pain stabbed through Tikki's heart. She'd known it was coming. She really had. But it had come much sooner than she had wanted. Joan bit her bottom lip to keep it from wobbling; it looked like she was as upset about the notion as Tikki was.

The great guardian bowed his head. “I will give you time to say goodbye.”

Tikki flew straight to Joan's cheek to hug her. Joan's hand came up to cradle the back of Tikki's head.

“Thank you for everything, Tikki,” she whispered. Tikki felt a tear drop onto the top of her head. “You have been such a gift in my mission.”

Tikki nuzzled her cheek against Joan's fingertips. “I only gave you added protection. Everything else was all your doing. You're the bravest girl I've ever known.” She tried to smile at Joan, but it was hard to smile when her eyes were filling with tears and she was on the cusp of sobbing. “You truly are.”

“I could have died at Orleans without your help,” Joan reminded her. Another tear fell on Tikki's head. “And then what would have become of their Maid? You have been a great gift, and my best aid.” She lifted one finger to tap the dot on Tikki's forehead, just as she had done so many times in the past three years. “I am sorry for ever having thought you were a daemon. It's clear to me now that God brought me to you, and you to me, so that we could accomplish this mission together and show the world His glory.”

Tikki choked down another sob. “If anyone ever deserved to go to heaven, it's you.”

Joan chuckled, and smiled through her tears. “Don't attempt to speak for God, Tikki.” She rubbed the spot on Tikki's forehead. “My counsel has promised me I will be delivered tomorrow, in a great victory for His kingdom. It will be a greater victory even than Orleans. My martyrdom.”

Tikki couldn't say anything to that. She was crying too much to say anything anymore.

Her charge squeezed her close one final time. “Be of good heart, Tikki. By the grace of God, I can go to Paradise tomorrow.”

Joan was to be burned the next morning in the old market square of Rouen. The great guardian thought that it might not be a good idea to go watch, but Tikki insisted until he gave in. She was going to be there for Joan even if only as one of those looking on.

Joan stood before her condemners on the platform that had been erected for her to hear her sentence, her white shift fluttering around her ankles. She looked tiny and insignificant on that great platform, with all the robed clergymen opposite her in their glittering baubles and miters, her beautiful black hair shaved to dark fuzz and her deceptively delicate body sheathed in the white of a death shroud. While one of the priests read some long-winded sermon about pruning dead branches off the vine and protecting the Church from heresy, she remained upright and calm. They concluded their sermon with a sentence of her excommunication from the Church, and she was abandoned to the secular authorities.

That was when Joan broke down crying.

As Massieu escorted her down from the platform and took her to where the executioner had already prepared for the fire, she called on the Trinity, on the Virgin Mary, on all the saints she could name and the rest of their communion besides, professing her faith throughout.

“Please,” she begged of the people she was taken past, and of the soldiers who waited at the bottom of the scaffold, “pray for me and for my soul. And forgive me—” she choked on her words, and had to restart her sentence. Tikki, hiding under the cover of the great guardian's hat, stifled her tears. “Forgive me and pardon me for any wrongs I have done any of you, for though I will be killed and my body destroyed by these judges today I pardon them as my Lord Jesus Christ has pardoned my sins. You, Cauchon, who have excommunicated me, and all you judges who have aided him, yes, I forgive you. Though I die through you, I forgive you.”

She kept praying and begging for pardon for a long time, and Tikki wasn't sure her heart could take much more of her lamentations, and even some of the priests who had just condemned her were beginning to cry by the time she was placed on the scaffold. Massieu stayed with her, his hand on her shoulder. She said something more softly, which Tikki couldn't hear from her position. An English soldier near her picked up a stick from the ground and broke it in two, and fashioned a little cross out of it with a piece of string. He offered it to Joan. She took it, smiling at him through her tears, and kissed the cross several times before pressing it to her breast. Again she said something to Massieu, and he spoke to a Dominican priest standing off to the side. The Dominican hurried off, and Joan resumed her prayers and weeping. He came back with the crucifix from the nearby church.

Joan flung her arms around the crucifix, holding it tightly to herself as if it were a lifeline.

One of the English soldiers by the scaffold cut through her prayers. “What, priest,” he said to Massieu, “are you going to keep us here till suppertime?” Massieu was shunted out of the way, off of the scaffold, and Joan tugged away from the crucifix to be tied to the stake.

They didn't even bother to read her death sentence from the secular authorities. The one who tied her to the stake only said to the executioner, “Do your duty.”

The Dominican priest still stood on the scaffold with the crucifix. “Wait,” Joan said to the executioner, and then, to the priest, she said, “Please, move down from the scaffold, and then raise the crucifix very high, and never let it leave my eyes.”

He did as he was told, and the executioner lit his fire beneath the scaffold.

Tikki couldn't see much of what happened after that. Her vision was far too blurred by tears. But the crucifix never wavered from its position in front of Joan's eyes, and over the crackling of the flames, Tikki heard Joan cry, “Jesus!” As the smoke began to rise, the cry came again. “Jesus!”

Be strong, Joan, Tikki pleaded silently. If ever anyone deserved to go to heaven, it's you. You've earned your reward. Your suffering is almost over.

Joan continued to cry out the name of Jesus for several minutes before, at long last, her eyes fluttered shut, and her head drooped down over the little stick cross still pressed to her breast.

It was finished.

#drabble #mbb2k17 #miraculous ladybug #miraculous fanfic #la pucelle et la coccinelle

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