#salt chat noir

“You haven’t lost me.”

Ladybug looked up from her tear-soaked palms, seeing Chat Noir standing nearby with his eyes focused on the illusion of Hawk Moth that had appeared in the sky. It was strange seeing him there, popping in at what seemed like the perfect time - perhaps too perfect, actually - and while he was technically correct in his statement, something that had once been dormant in Ladybug’s chest stirred. Maybe it was due to her heightened emotional state, or maybe it was because she realized why she hadn’t been thinking of Chat when lamenting the loss of everything else.

Either way, she was upset, not just at herself, not just at the situation, but at him.

“A-are you kidding me?”

Chat lurched forward, his serious expression turning to surprise as he faced her. “What?”

“Now you want to be supportive?” Ladybug threw a hand out to the illusion still in the sky. “You were still bitter about not knowing the other heroes! You’ve been arguing with me all day, during a battle! You even glared at Flairmidable when I brought him!”

After all, she wasn’t stupid. Disregarding her usual “Adrien blindness,” she was fully aware that Chat had been putting up an attitude with the new hero.

Chat bristled at the hero’s name, his fake ears pointing back as he argued, “And I was right to! Just look what happened!”

Ladybug stood, glaring him down even with the burning tears still in her eyes. “Oh, so you’re going to tell me that you knew? And it wasn’t just because you were jealous - again - over me bringing in someone new, after you told me that you’d try to get your act together?”

Chat faltered, teeth gritted, and Ladybug could swear that she heard a hiss. “I didn’t complain. I’m your loyal partner, Bugaboo, and that’s why I’m here.”

“Don’t you dare—” Ladybug pointed a finger accusing at him. “—insult heroes that I picked that you know nothingabout.”

“Because you didn’t tell me about any of them!”

“And that gives you a right to think less of them, because you’ve been here from the beginning when Master Fu picked you, and they weren’t?” She placed a hand to her chest. “They’re my friends, Chat Noir, and you’re the only one able to be here because you have a miraculous that’s not in the box. If it weren’t for Master Fu’s rules - for you being so scared of being replacedandexcluded - then we’d have permanent heroes by now and Shadow Moth wouldn’t have gotten all of the miraculouses!”

Chat huffed, crossing his arms over his chest. “That seemed to work out really well for Alya, didn’t it?”

“Alya—!” Ladybug paused, memories of a zoo and museum playing through her mind. Though it was a bitter moment for her, she acknowledged, “Alya was a mistake, but you can’t judge all the heroes based only on her.”

Maybe Alya had always been a mistake, she admitted to herself. Alya knowing in the first place was a decision she’d made while on the verge of a breakdown, so it wasn’t exactly something she’d done of sound mind. Had she been thinking clearer, or at least been given any room to think at all, she would’ve realized how untrustworthy Alya could be with secrets.

And yet, she’d always seen Alya as “above” her - that Alya knew what was best for her - but the things she’d learned from Alya and what Alya had forced her into often caused little more than trouble for her. Perhaps it was her own fault on some level, letting another person influence her to such a degree, and Alya’s status as her “first and best friend” certainly shaped her mindset in some form, but—

“…Wait,” Ladybug uttered, looking up from her thoughts as she realized something. “How did you know that Rena was Alya?”

Chat looked confused briefly, as if it was a widely accepted fact that he knew, but paled as it became apparent that it wasn’t.

“You—youknew.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Since when? You wanted to know other hero identities when you already knew some that I didn’t even know you knew?!”

“It doesn’t matter!” he insisted, waving the conversation off.

“Yes it does!” She pinched the bridge of her nose, sighing heavily. “The more you know, the more likely it is that you’ll figure out my identity! I’m the guardian, and I’m supposed to know everything that’s going on!”

“Well maybe I would talk to you if you talked to me first! I knew identities and nothing bad happened, so why won’t you tell me yours?!”

“Because it’s not the same!” Ladybug threw her hands out, then turned and walked across the rooftop to try and burn off the energy that was building up inside her. “We’re permanent heroes, Chat! How do you not understand that?”

Chat approached, and she could sense the reach for her shoulder. “I—!”

She turned back to him, silencing him with a look. Her fists shook with emotion as she tried to explain, “I didn’t want to tell you, because I knew it wouldn’t matter. You’re always sacrificing yourself when you don’t have to, and acting on your feelings alone. You even treat akumatization like it’s something you’re immune to, when that’s not true. You’re not perfect like you might think, and everyone is susceptible to being akumatized.”

He blinked, confusion replacing some of the anger. “What are you…?”

“Everyone—” She raised her arms up to gesture at all of Paris. “Everyone was dead, Chat Noir, even me. Bunnyx sent me to fix a timeline where you were akumatized and Paris was underwater. You kept calling me by my real name, telling me that our love—” She spat the words out like they were poison on her tongue. “—caused all that destruction.”

Chat could only gape at her, needing a few seconds to retort, “N…no. You're—you’re lying, and that doesn’t mean—”

“All I wanted to do, all this time, was keep everyone as safe and happy as possible. I didn’t want to burden anyone, because whenever I did, something would go wrong. We agreed that I was the responsible one and you were the sense of humor, but you were never happy no matter what I did. I…” She paused for a long moment, realization finally striking of what everything was leading up to. “…I’m done.”

“What?”

She turned away, walking to the opposite side of the rooftop and away from everything. “I know how to take a hint. This is beyond me, and I’m giving up.”

“No!” Chat chased after her, snatching her wrist. It was hard to tell whether the look in his eyes was desperation or anger; maybe both. “You can’t just quit!”

“You quit,” she reminded him.

He ignored the comment entirely. “We’ll get the miraculouses back, one-by-one if we have to!”

“How?” Ladybug challenged, then again when Chat didn’t respond, “How?”

He looked clueless for a response, as she’d expected. His words were empty, and he hadn’t shaped up at all since the whole “Couple of the Year” situation. If anything, he’d gotten worse, and Paris only thought they were a couple in the first place because of his goading and all of the misunderstandings. How many “first kisses” had she lost because of an akuma that she could never get back? How much of her life - of her - had drained away because of becoming Ladybug in the first place? How wrong had she been to think that she’d become better thanks to the ladybug miraculous?

Grabbing Chat’s wrist with her other hand, she pulled it away from her wrist so she was free. “I’m returning the Miracle Box and ladybug miraculous.”

Even as she turned away, he persisted, “You promised me! You promised you wouldn’t abandon me!”

“I promised Su-Han first that I’d let him take over if something like this happened. I’d never put you over the well-being of Paris,” she argued. Rubbing at her forehead with the heel of her hand, she then lamented, “And all this because I wanted to help the boy I was in love with…”

“…Huh?” Chat paused. “Wait, the—”

“I thought I was doing the right thing! He told me how upset he was about having to leave Paris and I didn’t see a mark when I saw him leave on the train! How was I supposed to know he was Felix?”

Tears sprung to her eyes again at the thought. Just like with the ladybug miraculous, her life had only seemed to spiral downwards ever since she met Adrien. She couldn’t think around him, and had come to learn that her overflow of emotions had only ever led her to trouble.

No, if she wanted a relationship, it should’ve been with someone who made her feel all the more herself without so many issues acting as obstacles. Part of it was admittedly her own fault, yet there was only a deep sense of regret knowing that pursuing Adrien had led to no actual progress between them. Had she not been crushing him, or perhaps if she just hadn’t known him at all, none of this would’ve happened. Listening to him and doing things for him would only end in misery.

If this was “true love,” then she didn’t want it.

“Anyway, I…I’m leaving.” She leapt from the rooftop, making her usual distance between her and Chat Noir.

She recalled her confrontation with Su-Han, and how she was determined to try and keep her guardian status as well as the ladybug. Even that had only been because of Chat’s resistance on the matter, and she’d foolishly gone along with it like it was the proper thing to do. Fu had entrusted her with the job and she hadn’t wanted to disappoint him, but it felt as though she were doomed to mess up no matter what. Fu was gone, meaning there was no one to prove anything to, and a teenager simply was never supposed to hold a miraculous in the first place.

After dropping down into an alley and checking for anyone nearby, Ladybug closed her eyes to whisper her detransformation phrase. The light washed over her, turning her back into—

“Marinette!”

To her shock, Chat dropped down into the alley with her, blocking her path back onto the street. Before she could even utter his name, he uttered his own detransformation phrase and the light washed over him as well.

Standing before her, where once was Chat Noir, was now Paris’ golden boy, Adrien Agreste. She was seeing his identity for the first time, and despite all of the things that would indicate that he should feel otherwise, he looked ecstatic.

“This was all meant to be after all, m'lady!” he exclaimed, approaching her with outstretched arms. “So you could reveal to me, and now we can be together without anyone else in the way!”

Marinette could only stare at him, dazed from the startling realization. Chat had not only revealed himself to her without a care in the world, but seemed convinced that this somehow solved everything.

Yet, all she could think of was how it made everything worse. It’d meant that Chat had been the one leaving Paris and didn’t warn her - as Felix had either been an afterthought or not in his original plans at all - and past instances such as what happened during Glaciator’s first appearance were brought into a completely new light.

She didn’t even realize that she’d let out a chuckle at first, the sound only coming out as she exhaled. Then, like a dam that had burst, full-on laughter came out of her mouth, her hands clutching at her sides as the tears that had built up over their time arguing poured down her face.

It wasn’t two people she’d associated with the exponential rotting of her life, it was one. They were the same person, and had she never met them - had she just rejected the miraculous right away and never given Adrien a glance - then she could’ve lived normally without meaningless drama.

So she laughed. She laughed at the absurdity of it all, of Adrien’s thought process that everything had worked out. She laughed at the ridiculousness of the two-person love square that she’d gotten entangled in. She laughed in relief that cutting him out meant that everything would end all at once.

At the same time though, she was crying, the tears far from being due to her laughter. She cried at all the pain she’d been through, thanks to whatever force of fate thought that her suffering would make for a good joke. She cried for the time lost that she would never get back. She cried for everything she could’ve had if she’d just rejected all the things that’d sounded like the right thing to do.

By the time she’d calmed down, Adrien was looking at her as if she’d lost her mind. In her opinion, it was very much the opposite: it’d never been clearer.

“No.” That was all she could say. She could’ve had a slew of words for him at that point - mostly negative - but she was tired and determined to stick to what had been made obvious over their time together.

She wanted nothing to do with him.

Marinette went to pass him, swatting his hand away with more force than necessary when he tried to grab her again. She wasn’t going to be pulled back into the nonsense; not again, not ever.

“Hey!” Adrien protested. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Don’t talk to me,” she replied, looking over her shoulder at him. “Don’t touch me. Don’t approach me ever again. I’m going home, and I’m going to make absolutely sure that I won’t get involved in this ever again.”

Then, she stared down at the ground, feeling disoriented from the tornado of emotions but strong enough to forge on.

“Because if I can get lucky for once in my life, I won’t remember you - or any of this - at all…”

And that was that.

Anonymous asked:

I love when you have people who use “they’re 14-15 year olds” or “they’re 14-15, stop expecting them to act a certain a way”. Which in a way I get where they’re coming from but at the same time I’m that person who doesn’t give a crap what they’re 14-15. When it comes to certain characters, I won’t name which characters, but at that age they know right from wrong and regardless that they are fictional characters, they can be held accountable for what is canon and who they are as a character. Age means nothing to me when pointing out someone’s wrong doings.

Exactly.

This is a narrative. It’s not like characters can never get away with something they do (I feel like that might be at least a little boring; small offense constantly having to be called out/punished could get dull), but when it’s big stuff? It’d be one thing if the show called a character out and then was like, “oh you’re still young–” or something, because then it’d at least be acknowledging it, but instead they just don’t want to point it out at all.

I typically find the “they’re young” argument to be valid mostly when counting up the severity of the punishment. Like–yes, I expect an adult to be punished more severely than a teenager, and I’ve talked before on how Marinette’s punishments for certain minor actions are so harsh that I think it more than balances out whatever they decide “not to blame her for” in the eyes of others, but yeah.

Anonymous asked:

I would be more tolerant of that marinette salt blog if it wasn’t, y'know, the disgusting make-marinette-suffer fantasies of a delusional self-inserter. Just saying.

facts

Also, doesn’t it go to show that there is no actual argument if they make the blog as a sort of parody? If they wanted to do it properly, they’d be making an Adrien prompt blog where it’s other characters explaining/validating his decisions in detail, but instead it’s like we were all, “Here’s a detailed list of reasons why Chat is useless 90% of the time,” and they just went, “Your face is useless 90% of the time!”

Like–nothing of value was gained and no actual argument was retorted. Now, if the blog had been made on actual facts and statistics, then maybe we’d have a topic worth discussing.