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mintaka14 · 2 years

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Okay, I don’t even know what this is, but it’s been fun to write. Goddesses and immortals and cat viligantes, oh my! All notes and acknowledgements are on the AO3 link. Chapter 1 is sfw, and can stand on its own if you don’t want the nsfw second chapter.

Have fun!

O Fortuna

A Miraculous Ladybug fanfiction

By Mintaka14

O Fortuna!

Velut luna

Statu variabilis

[Carmina Burana: Carl Orff]

They call her Lady Luck, and for those who worship at her altar, the Lady can be kind. She can be generous.

But Luck can also be a fickle mistress. Luck can turn savage and cruel, and every hundred years, She demands a sacrifice from her devoted followers.

So far, they’ve been pretty… well, lucky. So far, every hundred years, a man bearing the mark of Luck’s favour on his wrist has turned up at the temple, and been offered up to their cruel goddess, that fortune might favour them for another hundred years.

The annals have recorded every sacrifice in the centuries since the Order of the Turning Wheel began, and honoured the men who turned the Lady’s face and brought back good luck. The ones who read those accounts were puzzled to note that there was a certain similarity to these men – they were all of them musicians and troubadours, blue eyes, blue-dyed hair, and an odd sense of humour in the face of their impending martyrdom. The scholars among the Order had argued many theories over the years, but never had the nerve to question the Lady herself.

The whole concept of the hundred year sacrifice had become something of academic interest within the Order. They were something that had happened in the past. They were stories and old records. Talk of sacrifices, and the wickedly sharp and well-used ancient makhaira knife that sat in a locked cabinet in the high priest’s office, didn’t jibe with the Lady they knew and prayed to for good fortune, so when the young man turned up on their doorstep, with a guitar slung over his back and the Lady’s quartered wheel in a cloud of ladybugs tattooed on his wrist, they had all exchanged uneasy glances.

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing, Luka?” the high priest asked him, wringing his hands anxiously. The Lady had commanded her faithful followers to Paris to prepare for the ritual in her honour, and so here they were, with workmen in the background, clambering over the scaffolding to convert a dilapidated little apartment building in the heart of Paris into a temple to the goddess of fortune, complete with a very solid, very purposeful marble altar that was currently shrouded in a canvas dropcloth to protect it. “You should run while you still have the chance.”

Luka looked up from the guitar he was idly strumming, and glanced at the statue of the Lady watching over them.

“A copy of Tyche of Antioch,” he murmured. “Not bad work.” The quirked corner of his mouth grew into a brief smile when his gaze reached the river god under her foot. He glanced back at the high priest.

“I won’t run. I’ve accepted my fate,” he said solemnly, but there was a glimmer of laughter in his eyes that the high priest was hard pressed to explain, under the circumstances.

“Have you got a death wish, lad?,” he asked incredulously. “You know what that mark on your wrist means, don’t you? Why did you even come here in the first place?”

“What the Lady commands, who am I to refuse her?”

“We’re talking actual sacrificial rituals here,” the high priest persisted, trying to get him to understand the gravity of his situation. “Blood and fire on the altar, the whole thing. I’ve seen the knife – it’s older than the Order, and it’s no toy.”

Luka bent his head over his guitar, and the high priest thought he heard him mutter, “Lot of good memories, though,” but decided that he must have been mistaken.

All around them was the clatter and clang of the building site, and the raised shouts of the team of stonemasons manoeuvring a huge slab of stone into place. The temple was breathtaking, an elegant symphony of marble and stone shaped by master craftsmen in the heart of Paris. The ceilings of the formerly dilapidated building now soared over pillars and a stone floor that echoed underfoot, and it felt like walking into a memory, rich with Hellenistic history and Roman flourishes, with touches of gilt from a Versailles fairy tale. The Lady had taste.

No expense had been spared to create the stone mural that towered over the back wall of the temple, or the beautiful, faithful reproductions of Greek and Roman statues from the Lady’s temples in many far-flung corners. The Lady was fortunate in her investments, and could afford the best when she chose.

Somewhere near the doors of the temple, there was a crash and the sound of something breaking. The high priest’s head whipped round as one of the workmen started swearing, and a foreman shouted warningly, “Calm down! We don’t need any akumas today, not when we’re so far behind schedule.”

Everyone’s eyes lifted warily to the sky, but when nothing happened, they all returned to work.

“What was that all about?” Luka asked, his eyebrow raised, and the high priest shrugged. He’d heard rumours of a butterfly villain and a vigilante hero, and people being possessed by akumas in the form of black butterflies throughout the city, but fortunately, they’d seen no signs of them at the temple yet.

Two acolytes were currently unwrapping a huge bronze brazier that was one of the pieces the Lady had ordered brought out of storage. As they carefully pulled away the covering, the cornucopias and rudders and wheels that were the signs of the Lady were revealed. Collectors and archaeologists alike would have salivated over it. It was manhandled into position on top of the blocky and ominous marble altar that the Lady had insisted on.

No one could mistake the purpose of that altar, or the low stone table-like eschara laid in front of it, with the toothy crenellations running along the head and the foot.

The high priest’s gaze slid back to the Lady’s chosen victim, who was doomed to be laid out on that eschara soon.

“A nice boy like you should have your whole life ahead of you,” he said sombrely.

Luka laughed at that. “I’m much older than I look.”

“I won’t be a part of this. I’ll risk the Lady’s displeasure, and… and tell her we won’t perform the ritual.” He was wringing his hands harder now. It could go hard, if fortune turned on them. Luka put aside his guitar and came to his feet, his expression softening into something more sympathetic. He rested a reassuring hand on the high priest’s shoulder.

“George, you’re a good man,” he said. “It’ll all be fine. Trust the Lady.”

Theirs not to question the whims of Lady Luck… Fortuna… Tyche.

She had been called by many names over the years, and answered to them, but the few people who knew her best, the ones who loved her, knew her simply as Marinette.

~~~~~

Marinette manifested in the temple she’d lovingly created, her blood-red skirts billowing behind her in a most satisfying way as the flickering torchlight gleamed darkly in the jet beads that she’d spent hours sewing all over her bodice, and the first thing she noticed was the shouting.

The second thing she became aware of was the two men glaring at each other across the sacrificial altar.

She’d spent a lot of time getting that altar right. It was utilitarian in the middle of the austere elegance of the temple, but it would do the job, and it brought back a lot of memories. She was particularly happy with the inscription chiselled into the front face of it.

She was pleased to see that Luka… the offering, she corrected herself… was wearing the silk shirt and black jeans that she’d tailored for the occasion. The way he’d rolled up the shirt sleeves was a little more informal than she’d intended, but she had to admit that it was a good look on him, and bared his tattooed forearms, with the beautifully inked wheel of fortune dissolving into a cloud of ladybugs, just above the rough hemp rope wrapped around his wrists. Marinette blew out a faint breath, and resisted the urge to press her hands to her suddenly heated cheeks.

She had not, however, anticipated the blond guy in the weird black leather cat suit who was glaring back at him.

“Will you just hold still?!” the blond guy yelled in frustration, brandishing the staff he was holding. “Why are you so pissed off? I’m just trying to rescue you here!”

“Of course I’m pissed off. You’ve just barged in here, and beaten up a bunch of guys who were only trying to do their job,” Luka told him impatiently, gesturing with his bound hands at the robed figures who had retreated to the edges of the temple, away from whatever was going on at the altar. More than one of her acolytes seemed to be nursing injuries that, luckily, didn’t seem to be too serious. “And I told you, I don’t need your help.”

“Have you seen the akuma?” the blond guy was saying.

“The what now?”

This seemed to bring the blond cat guy up short for a moment. “The akuma. Have you seen her? Do you know what her akumatised object is?”

“What on earth are you talking about? I’m not from around here.” Luka glanced down at his bound wrists, and grimaced. “Look, I know this looks weird, but I’m fine, honestly.”

“You’re tied up and about to become a sacrifice to an akuma who thinks she’s the vengeful goddess of fortune,” the blond guy said with rising exasperation. “It’s lucky I got here when I did.”

“Please, just go away,” Luka growled. “She’s going to be here any moment, and I’m not going to have you ruin date night.”

The blond guy took a two-handed grip on his staff, and advanced purposefully. “You really don’t know what you’re getting yourself into here. I’ve fought these akumas before,” he reassured the other man. “You just think she’s a goddess because she has akumatised powers. I’m really sorry about this, but if you’re going to fight me I’ll have to knock you out until I’ve dealt with the akuma. You’ll have a few bruises when you come to, but at least you’ll be free of her.”

“I don’t want to be free of her! I don’t care what crusade you’re on, and I don’t care how many of these akumas you’ve fought – the Lady is not one of them!”

“It’s the akuma making you think that. You don’t realise it yet, but you’ll feel very different once I’ve defeated this luck goddess of yours…” He gestured in the direction of the stone mural that Marinette had spent months working on, and his voice trailed off in a gurgling whimper when he saw her.

Marinette smoothed down her gown a little self-consciously, and adjusted her grip on the businesslike iron makhaira she was holding in her other hand. Maybe the plunging neckline on the corsetry was a bit much. She felt as though she was spilling out of it, and resisted the urge to tug it a little higher. She bit her lip, her gaze shifting to Luka, but he seemed to have forgotten his argument, and was staring at her with a very flattering intensity.

“Wow,” he breathed. “Marinette, you’ve outdone yourself.”

“You like it?” she beamed, and then recalled what she was supposed to be doing. “I mean, cower brief mortals! Your Mistress walks among you.”

The handful of acolytes milling around remembered their cues at that, and stumbled over the first lines of their chant in honour of Fortuna, Lady of Luck. The song gained in confidence, exhorting her to look on them with favour for another hundred years, and accept the offering. She flicked a glance at the two men. The blond guy was staring at her with an open-mouthed look that left her blushing uncomfortably and feeling suddenly exposed in the tight corsetry and skirts caught up indecently high, almost to her hips, before they spilled in a profusion of red satin to the floor behind her.

She covered her discomfort by turning away to dismiss her followers, and they filed out slowly, robes hushing over the stone floor. One or two of them dared to shoot bewildered glances at her as they passed, but their eyes dropped quickly.

“Oh, Jeffrey!” she called as one passed, and the cowled hood turned towards her. “Your little girl – did the surgery go alright?”

There was a nervous smile under the hood, and a bobbed head.

“It did, O Great Mistress of the Turning Wheel. She’s recovering nicely, and you have my eternal gratitude for her good fortune.”

“And…” she went on a little diffidently, “the parcel I sent? Did she get it?”

The smile grew warmer. “She did, Lady. She loved the doll you made her, and now she doesn’t want to let go of it.”

Marinette blew out a relieved breath, and turned back as the last of them shuffled out of the temple. The blond guy in the cat suit was still there, still staring up at her as if he’d been frozen to the spot. He jolted as she glanced in his direction, striding towards her before she could react.

“Lady Luck, gracious lady.” He swept up her hand, pressing a kiss on it. “Put aside your righteous anger, and let this man go free. I know he must have upset you, but you can’t go stabbing people, no matter what Hawkmoth has promised you.”

“Stabbing?” Startled, Marinette looked down at the makhaira she was holding in her other hand. Forged from a solid piece of iron, it spoke clearly of immense and well-used age, but the curved single edge had been kept honed to a wicked sharpness. Along with the altar and the eschara, it struck a rough and functional note against the elegance around them. “Oh, this isn’t –“

“Let him go. Take me instead.”

“What?” Marinette squeaked, yanking her hand out of his grasp. “Wait, no!”

She threw a frantic glance at the blue-haired man collapsed over the altar, his shoulders shaking.

“Luka! A little help here?”

“I can’t say I blame him. You have that effect on me, too.”

“When I heard that there was a goddess here, I didn’t believe it, but now I see the rumours are true,” the blond guy said with a roguish smirk. “You could well be the goddess of fortune herself.”

“Well, actually –“ Marinette started to say, a little sheepishly, but he cut her off.

“The Songs of Fortune themselves could have been written in praise of your grace and beauty, but they would fail to do you justice.”

“I know,” Luka sighed. “Lyrics have never been my strong suit.”

Marinette pouted at him, distracted for a moment from the blond guy still trying to take her hand. “I love those songs.”

“Although they were never supposed to publish Song 17,” Luka admitted, flashing Marinette an apologetic half-smile, and she bit her lip, resisting the urge to press her thighs together at the tingling rush of heat that ran through her. Luka might not claim to be a lyricist, but his metaphors had been … inspired… in Song 17.

The blond guy flushed a deep brick red and coughed.

“Those poems are thousands of years old. Are you seriously telling me you wrote the Lucanian Songs of Fortune?” he said impatiently. Luka raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, and the blond guy’s attention shifted back to Marinette. “Just tell me where the akuma is, and I’ll free you from Hawkmoth’s clutches. A beautiful lady like you, you could have anyone, if you just let go of your rage. Whatever this guy’s done, you deserve so much better. I’m sure you have every right to be angry with him, but you can’t kill him.”

“Angry at him?” Marinette said in confusion. “What? No! It’s our anniversary!”

“Your anniversary?” He halted in his determined advance on her. “You two are married?”

From where he was leaning against the altar, Luka held up his still-bound hands, and gave a little wave of his fingers.

“Seriously? You two are married?” The blond guy scowled, looking put out for some reason. He turned on Luka, and gestured at the general décor. “Did you forget the anniversary or something? What did you do to upset her and get her akumatised?”

“Upset her?” Luka repeated blankly. “What are you talking about?”

The blond guy stabbed a finger at the knife still in Marinette’s hand.

“That looks pretty upset to me. She’s got a knife and she wants to kill you.”

The choke of laughter that Luka gave at that was quickly schooled. “I certainly hope she plans to finish me off.”

“That’s a real knife!” the blond guy’s voice was rising in disbelief. “What is wrong with you?! What have you dragged me into here? This has to be an akuma, because otherwise, you’re crazy. It must be in the knife.”

“I did say I didn’t need your help,” Luka pointed out.

“It has to be that,” the guy muttered under his breath, and Marinette didn’t like the way he was eyeing her now, his gaze running over her in a way that made her feel just how much of her was left revealed by her gown. His glance flicked to the knife in her hand, and back to her corseted cleavage. “There’s nowhere else you could be hiding anything.”

When she awkwardly folded her arms, makhaira and all, to cover her bust, he turned brick red again, and ripped his gaze away.

“Really, this is all a misunderstanding,” she tried to explain. “I know what this looks like, but it’s our anniversary. We just wanted to do something special to celebrate.”

The cat vigilante was starting to look a little wild-eyed. “This…” he gestured violently at the temple around them, taking in the general décor, and the flames licking above the brazier on the altar, and finally the sacrificial blade that she was still holding. “All of this… the temple, the minions, the whole…” he stabbed a finger in the direction of Luka and his bindings “… whatever… is a set-up for an anniversary celebration?? What the hell kind of kink is this??”

She shifted uneasily. “It’s not like we do this every day, only for special anniversaries. Seventeen… no, eighteen hundred years today.”

The blond guy blinked at them stupidly. “Eighteen… hundred? You think you’re eighteen hundred years old?”

“Careful there,” Luka said steadily. “It’s never wise to speculate on a lady’s age.”

Marinette giggled at that. “No, of course I’m not eighteen hundred. That’s when we got married.”

“Although I did marry young.” Luka grinned back at her.

“But…” the blond guy’s eyes shifted from Luka to Marinette and back again, “… how…?”

“Good genes and clean living,” Luka said. The blond guy scowled at him.

“Who are you?”

“Nothing more than a singer of songs and a son of the sea.” Luka flashed a glance at Marinette, those deep blue eyes of his darkening with a private smile. “And the luckiest bastard alive.”

The would-be rescuer was muttering that it had to be an akuma, there was no way this could be real, goddesses didn’t exist and she had to be an akuma, but she ignored him.

“Luka –“ Marinette said softly, her eyes on her husband and an answering smile trembling on her lips.

She was caught unawares by the vigilante’s sudden lunge. The knife was snatched out of her hand.

“Hah!” With a triumphant shout, he dashed it against the stone hard enough to crack the metal into ringing fragments of iron.

He watched the pieces expectantly, and for one, long, silent, shocked moment, Marinette could only stare.

Her makhaira.

The blond guy’s expression was shifting rapidly from smug anticipation to confusion to incredulity now. Whatever he’d expected to happen had not happened. It would have been almost comical, if Marinette hadn’t been distracted by the rising fury in her.

Her consecrated knife.

Her anniversary plans, ruined.

A rumble of thunder echoed softly around the chamber, and the flames burning in the brazier whipped in the sudden rush of wind. When she looked in his direction, the blond guy was staring at her.

“No akuma…” he breathed on a note of dawning realisation.

The wind rose, sucking the crackling air from the temple and flinging fire in writhing coils up to the ceiling where it left black streaks.

Marinette was not a large person. She was used to everyone towering over her, but as she stalked towards the interloper, she loomed. Her presence swelled to fill the temple with the immensity of her outraged goddesshood. Thunder growled ominously on the edge of hearing, and whatever the cat boy saw when he met her eyes left his face blanched cold.

He seemed to have finally realised that he was dealing with something greater than his petty mortal villains. Something ageless and unbound by temporal limits and very, very annoyed.

Blood-red satin swished fiercely around her, and her heels rang like doom against the stone flags as she stalked towards him, striking sparks that swirled around her and came to her hand as she raised it, spinning faster and faster with the force of her anger until she held a whirling scarlet wheel of fate and flame and dust that, for all its insubstantial matter, gave an aura of great and implacable weight.

He might not have recognised her Wheel for what it was, but there was something primal, deep down in him, that responded to it. He scrambled back out of reach with more haste than grace.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” he babbled, backing up further until one of the pillars got in his way.

“If you leave now,” she said coldly, “you may yet outrun your misfortune.”

The blond guy snatched up his staff and fled.

#lukanette #pro lukamari #o fortuna #ML AU #goddess Marinette #immortal Luka #things get weird #they're idiots your honor #i don't know anymore #it's not like my muses keep me informed of what's going on #I just write #researching sacrificial rituals gets you some interesting algorithms

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