Discover Top Posts Tagged with #bthate

Between the Heavens and the Embers - Chapter 1

Paris was going up in flames.

The City of Light was brighter than ever before. Fires everywhere were burning houses and stores down to the ground. Hundreds of people were running in the streets, seeking refuge or trying to help the unfortunate ones. Sirens could be heard from everywhere over the sound of the screams, tears, and prayers.

Only a week ago, Hawkmoth had promised chaos. “Ladybug and Chat Noir,” he had said, “if you don’t give up immediately, I will bring Hell here and the only thing left will be the ashes of those you failed to protect.”

They all took it as an empty threat. The words of a desperate man. After all, Hawkmoth was well known for his dramatics.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t been exaggerating this time.

This akuma was the strongest one he’d ever sent. It called itself The Angel of Darkness. Standing at almost nine feet tall, he was clad in all black, from his boot to his cape and feather wings. The only color came from the flaming halo over his head.

In mere minutes, Paris had been turned into Pandemonium. The smoke in the air was so dense that breathing was near impossible and even though it was the middle of January, the fires made it feel like a hot night of July. But worse than all, the red sky that seemed to be bleeding alongside the victims who were dying left and right in the streets.

The whole team had been called to help. They had put up a good battle, but it hasn’t been enough. After almost four hours, the only ones still standing were Ladybug, Chat Noir, Carapace, and Rena Rouge. The others were either hurt or their kwamis were too exhausted to fight.

They meticulously moved the combat into a street that had been completely evacuated. They could see that The Angel of Darkness was growing tired, or at least bored with the confrontation. But instead of getting weaker, he was more aggressive. He wanted it all to be over and didn’t even care about the miraculous anymore. In a fit of rage, he threw a ball of fire directly at Chat Noir.

“Chat Noir!” Ladybug screamed when he disappeared behind some debris.

She was pretty certain that her heart had stopped beating.

No, no, no, no…

“I’m fine!” he yelled back a second later and she breathed again. “It didn’t touch me!”

She glanced at him, making sure that he was indeed fine, then at Rena and Carapace. Her best friends. She was worried. Their attacks were getting progressively weaker and their reactions, slower. They wouldn’t be able to fight like this for much longer. She already had to run away and detransformed four times to feed Tikki and none of her lucky charms had worked. Same with Chat. No matter what he cataclysm, nothing happened. They were running in circles.

She couldn’t help but worry about what was gonna happen. Viperion, Ryuuko, and Vespina were already in terrible shape. She couldn’t risk another one of them getting hurt…

Once again, she looked at her partner. Even covered in ashes, he was breathtaking. She thought about the previous night and the kiss they had shared. They were at their spot, on a rooftop with a perfect view of the Eiffel Tower. He was laughing about something she had said and seemed so happy, his skin glowing with the last rays of sunset. She realized at that moment that she couldn’t fight her feelings any longer and kissed him, somewhat surprised by her own move, even though she had wanted to do this for a while now. After all, their relationship had changed so much over the past few weeks…

Chat’s initial reaction was to freeze, certainly even more shocked than she was. But only a few seconds later, he was moving against her lips with the same urge, the same passion, his hand cupping her face oh so delicately. It had felt so … natural. Like they were meant for each other.

And they were.

No, she couldn’t risk him. She couldn’t risk any of them. They had to end this. Now.

“Ladybug, please tell me you have another plan!” Carapace said after coming back from recharging.

“I’m thinking!”

They fought for a couple more minutes before she noted something they hadn’t seen before. Thanks to Chat’s last attack, the armor protecting The Angel of Darkness had slightly cracked, exposing a small part of his chest and the top of a tattoo. It was barely noticeable, but Ladybug was certain it was a little candle. It explained why her first lucky charm had been a candle snuffer!

“His tattoo!” Ladybug exclaimed. “Right near his heart!”

“LB, that’s his skin, I can’t use my cataclysm directly on him…”

She froze. He was right, of course. She was about to backtrack, to try and figure out yet another plan, when Rena, breathless, turned around and screamed out of exhaustion at Chat Noir: “Oh because you have a better idea?”

“Maybe we could—Attention!”

Mere seconds before it touched the girls, Chat Noir and Carapace jumped in front of them and pushed them out of the way of a new fireball. Ladybug’s eyes met Chat’s and understanding passed between them as they held one of their silent conversations.

“OK, we’re doing this,” he finally said, his eyes unconvinced and his trembling arms still holding her close. “Your lucky charm will repair everything anyway, right?”

Ladybug immediately noticed how desperate he looked. The way his eyes were searching hers, begging for reassurance. Please, he seemed to say, don’t make me a murderer.

“Of course,” she answered.

She persuaded herself that it was the truth, although she still wanted to backtrack and find another plan. Anything else, really. Because even though she knew her lucky charm would bring everything back to normal, Chat would always remember that no matter what, he had killed the men. And she knew without a doubt that it would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Seemingly sensing Ladybug's hesitation, Rena Rouge affirmed, “We really don’t have a choice, guys. We have to do this.”

Chat Noir simply nodded, his arms leaving Ladybug. Without his touch, she suddenly felt panic wash over her as if she knew something horrible was about to happen. But instead of focusing on what was probably the beginning of an anxiety attack, she shook her head and squared her shoulders. She couldn’t think of this now. She would have all the time in the world to regret her decisions. Right now, she had a fight to win and people to save. Paris was counting on her.

Ladybug looked around, trying to find a way to approach the akuma without getting fried. Moving to be close to him truly was a pain in the ass. And even worse, they were running out of time. Their kwamis were exhausted and they had less and less time between each transformation. Even her earrings had started beeping again, although she hadn’t called her lucky charm yet.

Carapace, Rena, and Ladybug ended up on rooftops, with the couple on one side of the street and their leader on the other. They were running and screaming at him, distracting the villain while Chat, previously hiding, jumped from behind him, his cataclysm ready. But just before Chat’s hand touched him, The Angel of Darkness’ face lit up with the purple butterfly mask and he used his attack one last time.

Everything then happened simultaneously.

“Lucky…”, Ladybug started saying, but she couldn’t finish the sentence.

The burning house next to Ladybug collapsed on top of her at the same time that the akuma flew away, leaving on the ground a dead man. The three other superheroes froze for a second, their eyes open in similar terror.

“Chat Noir, no!” Carapace yelled, watching as Chat ran inside the ruins while struggling to hold back his own girlfriend.

“Marinette!” Rena Rouge wailed, secret identities forgotten in the midst of the chaos. “Please, no!”

With all the debris and the smoke, they couldn’t see well when Chat Noir came back outside with a detransformed Ladybug in his arms. But they couldn’t miss the sound of the house exploding, or Chat Noir’s scream. A cry that would haunt them for years, so loud and so full of agony that it drowned out the sound of the sirens in the near distance.

***

Ladybug’s funerals were the biggest event of the last ten years. It lasted for three days and almost the whole world watched, either in person or on the news. Even Hawkmoth stayed silent, never once sending an akuma, although there were a lot of opportunities. Superheroes from all over the globe came to pay their respect to the girl whose identity had not been revealed, thanks to the paramedics that had arrived first on the scene.

“We’re just gonna say that this girl is another one of the casualties. What’s her name, so we can tell her family?”

Although they probably would have preferred to speak to Chat Noir, Ladybug’s real partner, they talked to Carapace, as he was the only one still able to pretend to be strong. He had to, for the other two who were crying in each other’s arms in the middle of the street.

“Marinette. Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” he’d answered, still shocked by the revelation.

“From the patisserie?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. We will have to confirm that Ladybug is dead, but we won’t declare that it’s her. You have our word that her identity will be preserved.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank us. It’s the least we can do, trust me.”

And right before leaving with Marinette’s body in the back of their ambulance, which had its lights off, one of them had said: “We’re awfully sorry for your loss.”

So no one knew who Ladybug was, even though people were speculating on the internet, comparing her to the list of deaths. Marinette’s name was mentioned quite often, as she was one of the 175 girls between the age of fourteen to twenty-six that had died, but nothing was ever confirmed.

The whole world watched as Ladybug’s team came forward to say goodbye to their leader, Rena Rouge, and Carapace never leaving Chat Noir’s side. He never talked, simply looked into the distance, his eyes blurry and unfocused, gripping his friends’ hands as if it was the only thing holding him to reality. For weeks, people talked about how miserable he looked and sobbed as the Ladynoir kiss was leaked to the public after an anonymous source released a picture taken from a nearby apartment.

He disappeared the same day.

Marinette’s funerals were a bit more private, even though a lot of people, famous and not, came. It took almost six weeks before they could hold a closed basket reception since almost everyone in Paris had someone to mourn and the salons were all full. That day, no one really paid attention to the three nineteen-years-old in the back who were silently crying.

Weeks passed before things started to be normal again. Life moved on, and Paris was being constructed back up. Of course, some things couldn’t be repaired, but it was a start. After about four months of silence, Chat Noir came back when Hawkmoth sent his first attack in months. He wasn’t the same, and would probably never be again, but still. He laughed a lot less, didn’t interact much with the civilians, and couldn’t restore the everlasting damages that the akumas created, but he was back and that was all that mattered to the people of Paris. They loved Rena Rouge and Carapace, who had taken the responsibility of protecting Paris during Chat’s retreat, but still. It wasn’t the same.

“Alya,” Adrien suddenly blurted one evening as they were lying on a rooftop, untransformed, their eyes glued to the sky.

Adrien didn’t remember the exact moment when his identity had been compromised. Sometime after Marinette’s death. It could have been minutes, hours or days, he didn’t know nor did he care. He simply recalled waking up at some point in Nino’s bed, Alya, Nino, Plagg, Trixx, and Wayzz asleep next to him. Alya had said that they had all dropped their transformation while crying in each other’s arms, but he couldn’t remember that. Nor could he remember going to Nino’s place. But lately, there were a lot of missing moments in Adrien’s memory. He often found himself someplace, not knowing how he got there. His therapist claimed it was part of his grief. After all, losing a friend so young was painful. But they didn’t understand, couldn’t understand. Would never understand.

He hadn’t lost his friend. He had lost his best friend, soulmate, and partner. The love of his life. Every time he closed his eyes, he had the image of her, broken and covered in blood. And as if it wasn’t enough, he had to live with the fact that he had killed someone.

But as they were lying on the rooftop, Adrien’s brain seemed to finally awaken. The mist cleared as the revelation he had just had made his heart beat faster in his chest.

“Yeah?” Alya replied, not looking at him and therefore not seeing the panic setting on Adrien’s face.

“They left with her.”

“Adrien…”

“They left with her and we were too busy crying to—”

“Stop it, we already talked about it, it’s not your—”

“No, no, no, hear me out,” he pleaded, sitting, forcing her to look him in the eyes. “Alya, they left with her. They took her body from my arms and I was so … so shocked, so in pain, that I didn’t realize that she still had her earrings still on.”

The girl sat up straight. “Oh, my god.”

“Yeah.”

“So, she was either buried with her earrings, or…”

“Or we lost the ladybug miraculous.”

SEVEN YEARS LATER

“Shh, shh, you’re alright, love,” he whispered, holding her close to his chest, rocking her in a soothing movement. “It’s just a nightmare. You’re okay, nothing can hurt you. Do you wanna talk about it?”

“No,” she answered, crying and burying her face into his chest. “I don’t even remember.”

She took a deep breath, trying to calm down. Her whole body was trembling and she couldn’t stop the tears from falling down her cheeks. Even though she should’ve been used to it by now, it just never got any easier. Thank god she had him by her side. He never complained about her waking up in the middle of the night. Never said anything about losing precious minutes of sleep. Never forced her to tell more than what she was willing to share.

Not that there was anything to share, anyway.

“Do you wanna go back to sleep, then?”

She glanced at the window, at the lights that shone no matter the time of the day. It eased her, made her feel a little bit more at peace knowing that, no matter what, Los Angeles never really slept.

“Vee?” Dylan pressed her when she didn’t reply.

She nodded before laying down on the bed, pressing her cheek against his chest. With her boyfriend’s hand stroking her hair, Victoria closed her eyes and went back to sleep, praying that the nightmares wouldn’t come back.

If only she knew what they meant.

Click here to chapter 2.

#bthate

Trending Tags

Recently Viewed Tags

#bthate