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madibug · 2 years

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the finale

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

(Originally based on @sabertoothwalrus comic here ♥)

Also on Ao3!

A heartbeat.

Then Adrien comes alive.

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

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

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

The song of time.

He quiets himself, and listens.

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

“Adrien?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adrien says, “What happened?”

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

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

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

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

Bunnyx’s voice passes through his mind:

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

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

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

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

“Now?” Viperion asks, eyebrows furrowing.

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

“Piece of cake,” Carapace croaks hoarsely.

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

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

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

“Sounds like a solid plan,” says Eagle.

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

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

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

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

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

The ground begins to rumble beneath them.

Adrien turns to Viperion, “Go, now.”

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

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

His chest is heaving, and his eyes are wide.

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

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

No.

Adrien’s eyes fall closed

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

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

But impossibility doesn’t frighten Adrien right now.

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

He opens his eyes.

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

Keep moving forward.

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

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

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

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

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

It happens like this.

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

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

The last gamble they have to play.

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

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

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

Her silhouette grows closer.

And closer.

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

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

Adrien doesn’t dare even breathe.

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

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

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

An eldritch creature left to the forest to be forgotten.

All Adrien can see is Marinette.

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

Adrien says, “Hello.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Trrraaade?”

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

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

That is how Gaiabug sounds now.

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

She hisses, “Caaan’t havvve earrrrring.”

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

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

“Wwhhyy?”

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

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

“Do we have a deal?”

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

They are an arm span away from each other now.

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

Everything happens at once.

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

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

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

“Sunrise!”

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

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

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

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

“IMMOBILIZE!”

Gaiabug freezes instantly.

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

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

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

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

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

Another step.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Tikki, spots on.”

It’s like being struck by lightning.

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

Something is deeply wrong with Tikki.

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

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

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

His touch ignites an explosion of sunlight.

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

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

And walking along its edge are Adrien and Marinette.

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

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

Then, that spark of pink light again.

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

Or rather, who.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Memory.

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

And she chose him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How could he have been so, so blind.

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

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

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

But not easy enough.

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

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

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

And so Adrien treads very, very carefully.

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

Create, calls Tikki’s voice in his mind.

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

Fast.

And awakes into chaos.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Everything will soon make sense,” Adrien says.

“That isn’t an explanation, Adrien!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He tells Rena, “I promise.”

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

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

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

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

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

Wayzz has finished his food now.

Nino shouts, “Wayzz, shell on!”

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

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

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

Finally.

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

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

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

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

“Mmph,” she grumbles.

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

Then her eyes snap open.

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

“Adrien!” She squawks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Orikko, sunrise!”

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

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

They had done it.

They had saved the world.

They had saved Marinette.

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

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

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

“Marinette.”

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

“I’m sorry!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, Adrien,” she gasps, “I -”

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

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

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

♥️ F I N ♥️

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

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

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