Ever since Rocketear, when I see people talking about the Ladynoir conflict, I don’t see enough people pointing out that Rena Furtive’s existence would be basically impossible for Ladybug to explain to Chat Noir without it coming across as “I just don’t trust you”
The thing is, the Gang of Secrets reveal would already hurt him enough— especially knowing how he reacted to the fact Rena Rouge and Carapace know each other’s identities. We know it hurts him to realize that identities weren’t as important as everyone was making them out to be, and that he was really the only person really beholden to the rule. It sucks. It feels like he was lied to.
However, Ladybug can try to explain that! When Chat Noir discovers that someone knows her identity, she could, theoretically, explain clearly to Chat Noir that “I was having breakdowns every day, Chat. I wasn’t doing well. I was scared and I was losing all my civilian friends. I was crying and my best friend was there. I was crying and I broke down and it wasn’t planned. I blurted out my identity. She’s been helping me give excuses in my civilian life for why I’m so flaky with being Ladybug and the Guardian. It never came up and it was never relevant to what was going on, so I didn’t tell you because I was scared to, because I knew it’d hurt you. I’m really sorry.” And you know what? I think it’d still hurt him. Maybe a lot. But if Ladybug chooses her words carefully, I think Chat Noir can understand that Ladybug was scared and stressed, and he can understand that she needed someone specifically from her civilian life for that. And I think he would forgive her.
But…. guys. Guys. How on earth would she explain Rena Furtive to him in a way that sounds reasonable? That she not only gave a miraculous to someone else permanently, but that she didn’t tell him? That this person is secretly acting as their third partner for every battle and patrol, and that she actively hides it from him? That the reason for his poor performance in future battles might be because she is literally Hiding what the plan is from him so he doesn’t notice the illusions?
There’s no coming back from that. You can make the argument that who Ladybug tells her identity to isn’t necessarily Chat Noir’s business…. but you can’t make the argument that someone secretly watching them and joining them in battle and patrols isn’t his business, or that it’s not his business to know that there are illusions on the battlefield that he’s fighting in. That’s absolutely his business. And while Ladybug can say “It was a private matter, so that’s why I didn’t tell you that I told someone my identity”, she can’t say the same about Rena Furtive. Because that’s not a private matter. And it’s not something she just chose to omit— it’s something she chose to actively hide from him.
Now, we know the reason she’s doing this. She’s doing it because of Chat Blanc, because she’s literally traumatized by visions of herself and all the citizens of Paris turned to ash. She’s doing it because she’s afraid of a timeline that has long since passed, of an endgame that she never really learned the trigger to. All she knows about Chat Blanc was that Chat Noir found out more about her and then the world ended. We don’t know exactly her reasoning for keeping Rena Furtive from Chat Noir, but I think it’s because she knows it’ll hurt him, and she knows a hurt Chat Noir could become an akumatized Chat Noir.
…. However. “I kept this secret from you because I was afraid it’d upset you and akumatize you” doesn’t sound like a great excuse. It really doesn’t. It sounds like an excuse, and there’s an underlying admission of distrust there with “I don’t think you’d be able to resist akumatization”. And that… sucks. The best she could do to explain herself in a way he’d forgive her is to explain the whole Chat Blanc scenario in detail to him, but that would hurt him even more! Chat Noir already gave up his miraculous when he accidentally killed an android— how is he gonna feel if he finds out that, if he has a bad day, he could kill everyone on earth?
When people treat the Ladynoir conflict like “if Chat Noir just told Ladybug that he was upset, she’d explain everything and then it’d be okay!” I think they’re missing a substantial part of the conflict. Because Chat Noir can’t tell Ladybug that Rena Furtive upsets him when he doesn’t know about it. And if he DID find out and confront Ladybug about it, there’s nothing she could say to make him feel trusted as a partner.
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