Chapter Text
Marinette didn’t have time to react. It was either stay right here or risk him turning his gun on the politician in the office across the street that was still ducking for cover.
So she stayed.
When he pulled the trigger, she heard the gunshot and then all sound seemed to cease as everything slowed down around her. There was a blur of movement as he fought to reload and, in a moment of clarity, she snapped her yo-yo at him. With a sickening crack that seemed to echo in her ears, she was certain that she had snapped his wrist with the force. The gun clattered to the rooftop and she swung her yo-yo towards it, sending it flying off the roof just as a pain—oh God what have I done?!—tore through her shoulder.
The bullet. She’d just been shot.
I’ll have to go to the hospital for this, but I can’t because then my identity will be revealed and I can’t let anyone know that Ladybug is just shy, clumsy Marinette, but oh my God why didn’t anyone ever tell me how much it hurts to get shot—
“Ladybug!” the shriek was Alya’s, and Marinette winced beneath her mask as the sights and sounds started to rush back to her. She could hear the wind blowing in her hair, hear the man on the roof cursing, hear the gasps and shouts of a crowd in the distance as police moved in to secure a perimeter around the area.
Her hand reached up to her shoulder and, too late, she realized that her yo-yo had fallen from stricken fingers. She couldn’t catch herself.
She was falling from the roof of a seven story building.
Alya could have screamed.
No, that wasn’t right. Alya did scream, because Ladybug had just taken a bullet and she was falling from a rooftop. She scarcely realized that the sound was tearing from her throat until she had to take a breath, but she immediately threw herself forward, breaking past Nino, who tried to hold her, as she screamed her hero’s name and rushed forward. Nino’s footsteps beat the pavement behind her, following her, and Alya made a beeline towards the falling hero.
The sharp clack alerted her, and in her crazed dash she still recognized the sound. She wasn’t the Ladyblogger for nothing, after all.
Another clack, and a metal pole appeared about ten feet in front of her. She skidded to a halt as Chat Noir vaulted over them, the tortured scream of “Ladybug!” ripping as violently from his throat as it had from hers.
“Alya, Alya, Chat Noir can handle this!” Nino was breathless, taking her arm gently. “We need to get out of here, Alya! This isn’t one of those normal supervillains this time. They’re real people with real guns, not magic. It’s not something that Ladybug will be able to fix at the end if you get hit by one of them!”
“Ladybug,” she breathed, her throat clenching even as the leather-clad cat snatched his falling partner from the air. “She’s been shot, Nino, she needs the hospital—“
“I know,” he tugged her into the shadow of a nearby building, pulling her softly into his arms. She could feel his heart beating a frantic rhythm in his chest and she felt bad for pulling him into this situation with her. Part of her had known, instinctively, that her friend would follow her into the midst of everything if she had gone.
Maybe that’s what had given her the courage to run into the den of wolves in the first place, but now that they were alone, her knees started shaking and her legs didn’t want to support her anymore.
“I just wanted to help her…” she murmured, her head buried in his jacket. The chill of wind pierced through her lighter clothes and she lamented not wearing something thicker.
“I know you did, Alya,” Nino pulled her closer to the wall, “I know you still do, but we have to watch out. We have to get away from here. We’ll only distract them now, and you know that it’ll be harder for them to get through now that Ladybug’s injured. Just…don’t worry about the scoop this time, Alya.”
“You’re right,” she tried not to cry—really, she was trying her best. But the thought that Ladybug was wounded, maybe dying, really got to her.
“We need to get back to the café and try to find Adrien and Marinette, remember?” Nino prodded her gently with his words. “We left when Marinette was in the bathroom, and Adrien followed us out but we lost him on the way here. We need to make sure that our friends are okay, too.”
Alya nodded, taking a deep breath and standing straight.
“Let’s go find them,” she answered, her voice shaking slightly but with a determined, concerned expression on her face.
Chat Noir sat her gingerly on her feet, green eyes clouded with worry as he reached up to prod as gently as possible at her injury.
“It went through, right?” she managed to ask, putting a hand against a nearby brick wall to steady herself. “I was really close to him, so it should have gone through…”
“There’s an exit wound, My Lady,” Chat’s voice was clipped, sharp, and it held none of his usual quirks. He produced a black kerchief from somewhere and pressed it against her wound then, attempting to staunch the blood flow. His hands were shaking and his jaw was clenched and she had to try to comfort him even if it wasn’t going to work.
“Then it’ll be fine, kitty,” she reached up to touch his cheek gently, and he inhaled in surprise, his eyes flicking to hers. She flinched at the splotch of red that her fingers left on his cheek and she dropped her hand quickly, glancing away. Marinette reached up to cover his hand, pressing both her partner’s hand and his kerchief tighter against the wound and trying not to show the discomfort in her face. “I just need to stop the bleeding and…”
“You need the hospital, Ladybug,” his tone was serious, and she flinched away. “I don’t care if it went all the way through. It could still be infected, and at least a hospital would help stop the blood and help it heal faster.”
She sighed, and in a small voice said, “I was supposed to be in the bathroom when it all started. My friends will go back and look for me—how do I explain being somewhere else and getting shot, Chat?”
“You said they’d come back for you, so they’re the types that went to see what was up, am I right, My Lady?”
He pulled his hand away from her wound slowly, the black cloth soaked in her blood transferring to her possession as she kept pressure on the injury. She saw the faint red glint of wet blood on his gloves in the light, but she held her tongue as she nodded to answer his question.
“Then you went out to look for them when you left the bathroom because you were worried, and somehow ended up getting wounded in the crossfire. I’ll take you just outside the police perimeter and drop you off in an alley where you can remove the transformation and call your friends for help. Is that satisfactory, My Lady?”
She thought about it for a moment, thought about Alya’s desperate scream when she started to fall from the roof, and closed her eyes to hide whatever emotions they were showing.
Marinette took a deep breath and told him, “Yes. It’s better than anything I can think of.”
“Then let’s go. I’ll help the police if I can, since this isn’t a case with akumas, and then I’ll get back to my friends in the area. I’ll get in touch with you tonight, Ladybug.”
“One more thing, Chat,” she said as he scooped her into his arms with little protest. “The man on the roof was aiming for some politicians in the building across the street. One of them wasn’t hiding yet…”
“…that’s why you took the bullet, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“My Lady is so selfless!” he declared dramatically as he prepared to take a running leap to the next roof. “I’d appreciate it if, next time, she’d try not to get so close to the crazy man with a gun, though.”
She laughed drily as he slowed, starting to descend to the streets. “I’ll try not to, kitty.”
He dropped her off in a small corner, behind a dumpster. Then he proceeded to head back down the alley on foot, occasionally pausing to touch some of the brick walls with his bloody hands in a pre-approved plan from Marinette to make her story more believable.
“Take care, My Lady,” he called from the end of the alley, tossing a roguish wink at her. He didn’t do it with his usual gusto, but it still brought a smile to her lips as she waved her hand in farewell.
“Tikki…is there any way that you can make a bullet hole in my normal clothes when I turn back?” Marinette asked softly. That would be a definite issue if she had the wound but no holes in the clothes she’d been wearing.
“I can,” the small voice replied softly.
“That’s great,” Marinette sighed in relief, and then she waited several long moments before releasing her transformation with a deep breath. Tikki, ever the tone of worry and responsibility, reached up and gently touched her face. Marinette offered her a small smile, but suddenly her wound was so much more painful than it had been moments before and tears rose to her eyes.
“I’ll be fine, Tikki,” she grimaced as she continued to put pressure on her wound with the handkerchief that Chat had given her. “You heard Chat’s plan. It’s got to be enough this time.”
“I just wish you hadn’t been hurt in the first place,” the little kwami said softly, pressing her tiny cheek to Marinette’s own in worry.
The girl opened her mouth to respond, but then her phone started ringing from the purse that had appeared with her de-transformation. She reached for it with her weak hand, the one that would barely move, and almost cried when she saw that it was Alya’s caller ID. Marinette clicked Answer and put it on speaker immediately.
“Marinette! Where are you?” Alya’s voice was shaking, and she sounded concerned. Marinette hated what she was about to do to her best friend, but absolute honesty was the one thing she couldn’t give.
“Alya…” she breathed, “Thank goodness you’re alright!”
Her voice hitched, and while it was unintentional it did suit her purposes, because Alya’s voice asked again, with even more worry, “I’m fine! You don’t sound so good, Marinette. Where are you? We can walk home together and have some hot chocolate and you can tell me what’s bothering you, okay?”
“I-I went out looking for you after the bathroom,” Marinette began the quick lie that Chat Noir had spun for her. “When I couldn’t find you, I guess I went a little too far. I don’t really know what happened, but then I heard a gunshot and screaming…”
“Oh, God, Marinette, where are you?!”
“I-I’m in an alley just off…” she searched for a street and then managed to breathe a name into the phone. “I…my shoulder’s bleeding, Alya. I think…I think I got shot…”
“Oh, God. Hang on, Mari, we’ll be there soon! Stay on the phone with me, okay? And Nino—Nino, hurry and call an ambulance, quick!”
She heard the boy do a double take, ask a few questions which Alya answered in short words and phrases, and then she heard the sounds of the two breaking into a run as they searched for the street that Marinette had given them. She stayed on speaker with her best friend, giving the girl reassurance as they found their way to her, and struggling with the horrible feeling of making Alya so distraught twice over the same thing.
“Mari!” Alya’s voice exploded from the phone on her leg but also from her right, and Marinette glanced over to see the girl rushing towards her, immediately clicking off her phone and shoving it unceremoniously in the bag at her side. Nino glanced down the street, where Marinette could hear sirens, and waved vigorously.
“Alya!” Marinette tried to lean forward but found that she couldn’t really do so. She hissed in pain and pressed Chat’s handkerchief closer to her wound even though she could tell it was soaked through. “I’m so glad you didn’t get hurt!”
“Shut up!” the redhead responded, almost shrilly, as she dropped down to her knees in front of the dark-haired girl. “Have you seen yourself? Mari, there’s so much blood…!”
“I’ll…be fine,” Marinette offered a small smile. “I…I think it went through, because the back of my shirt feels really wet…” and it was sticking to her skin, but she wasn’t about to go into detail on that front. Just the sight of her blood had made Alya’s face pale considerably, her brows pinching in worry. Instead, the part-time superhero gasped and asked quickly, “Alya, have you called Mom and Dad?”
“No, I was on the phone with you!” she shot back, pulling out her phone. “I’ll give them a call right now, on speaker. And you can’t tell me no because they’ll find out anyway!”
With a groan that made Alya glare at her, Marinette agreed.
“Oh my gosh!” Alya cried in class the next morning from her seat, and Marinette looked at her, shifting awkwardly in her sling. Before Marinette could ask, the girl leaned down to Nino and asked, “Did you ever tell Adrien about Marinette after he called you and said that his father was making him leave that part of town without meeting up with us?!”
Nino’s eyes widened.
“I completely forgot!”
“I-it’s really nothing!” Marinette interrupted, waving her free hand. “It’s on the mend, and we wouldn’t want to worry him about it! He’ll be here soon, anyway, and you can e-explain it to him then if you r-really want to!”
“He’s your friend, Marinette! He would want to know that you were hurt!” Nino groaned, putting his face in his hands. “I’m so, so sorry I forgot to tell him! I was just so worried, and I know he ended up being really busy with homework and stuff, it just…”
The door slid open and Alya quickly called, “Adrien!”
Her voice was more urgent than her usual good morning tone, and he glanced up immediately, worry in his eyes, as he made his way to his seat.
“What is it, Alya?”
“We forgot to get in touch with you last night about Marinette!” Alya exclaimed, gesturing wildly at the dark-haired girl beside her. Marinette groaned and dropped her head to the desk.
“Alya, it’s fine, i-it’ll get b-better soon, okay?”
“Wait, what happened?”
Marinette peeked up at him through her bangs as he looked over her in concern. Her sling was hidden behind her desk, she realized, and she’d best show him now because Alya and Nino would be blurting out the story in just a few minutes anyway. And so, flushing to the tips of her ears at his worried scrutiny, Marinette sat up and peered, almost shyly, at him. At first glance, she thought it might just look like she’d sprained her wrist or fractured her arm or something of that nature. Letting him think that for just a few seconds would be fine.
“That,” Nino groaned. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, man, we were just so worked up and you had to leave and it just slipped my mind.”
“What happened?!” Adrien asked again, leaning forward and putting a gentle hand on Marinette’s opposite shoulder. “Did you get attacked, or did you fall, or—“
“She got shot!” Alya hissed, glancing around the still mostly empty classroom. Somehow they’d managed to all make it here early, which was a relief to Marinette. She didn’t want the entire school knowing that she’d been shot the same night as Ladybug, after all. “She couldn’t just stay in the café or something—she came looking for us! In the middle of that!”
Adrien’s fingers tightened momentarily on her good shoulder as his green eyes widened. His eyes switched from Alya to Marinette quickly, and she flushed, averting her gaze. She should have known that Alya would give the honest truth and be up front about it, especially where Adrien was concerned.
Maybe it was one of her schemes to get him to show even more interest? It seemed to be working, anyway.
“Marinette, is it true? You got shot?”
He, at least, was able to keep his voice down. The worry in his voice made her heart flutter, but she also felt bad about having to hide the circumstances from all of them. The little fib that Chat had given her had worked miraculously on everyone she’d had to tell, but it still made her uncomfortable that she had to lie about it.
“Y-yeah, I guess,” she murmured softly.
“You guess?” Nino scoffed. “Mari, we had to have the ambulance come pick you up from an alley that was covered in your blood!”
“Don’t say it like that!” Marinette covered her face with her one good hand. “It wasn’t that much blood in the alley. Just o-on my clothes…a-and the wall I was leaning against…”
“And that handkerchief!” Alya shot back. “It was completely soaked, Marinette! And your hands, and my hands…God, if you ever, ever do something like that again, Mari, I’m going to lock you up in a cage where you can’t get out!”
“Agreed!” Adrien finally spoke again, and she flushed at the look he cast in her direction. It was one of worry, but there was also something else in his eyes that she couldn’t quite place.