#wwygh
Text
Why Won't You Go Home
Disclaimer: I still don't go here.
...
It is exceptionally kind of Chat Noir to help with the search.
Maybe kind isn’t the right way for Marinette to think of it. Maybe it’s expected. Maybe it’s mundane. Maybe it’s rote, ordinary fanfare for a superhero of the city to lend his hand in a crisis. This search is just a normal superhero job for him. It isn’t personal to him like it is to her. She can feel it in the slow and stiff and disconnected way he picks through the rubble of the Agreste family mansion.
He looks up, and he catches her staring at him.
“M’lady?” he asks.
Marinette blinks. She’s short of breath. She shakes her head, and smooths her fingers over her black-dotted mask, and turns, and crouches to continue sifting through the scattered remains at her feet. “Nothing.”
“M’lady…”
She sweeps away a layer of ash—the pulverized remains of brick and stone and wood. Shards of dinner plates breathe in the open, blue-pattered rims chipped away. She lifts a piece, and it crumbles to ash in her numb and nicked hands, her fingers covered in bandaids from all the wanton cuts from glass she’d dug through so earnestly in the first three days after the collapse.
A hand falls heavy on her shoulders. She flinches. “M’lady…”
“It’s nothing, Chat.” She bats his hand off. “You take the eastern wing. I’ve got the kitchen.”
His presence remains beside her, heavy. “I went through the eastern wing this afternoon.” He crouches, attempting to force eye contact. “…And you’ve done the kitchen already.”
“I didn’t search hard enough.”
“You’ve searched enough.”
Marinette twists away from him. She dips her hands back into the rubble, silkenly demolished, grated down like fine beach sand so near the epicenter of the destruction.
Chat Noir’s hand grips hers, and he stills it.
“He’s not here,” Chat Noir says.
The jolt seizes Marinette by the throat. Tears she thought had long dried up well up unbidden. She blinks to clear her vision. She cannot speak through the knot in her throat, so she shakes her head, and pulls her hand away.
“His bedroom,” she answers, as the only words that can bubble out.
Chat shifts, until he is right in front of her, crouched to her level. “Carapace searched his bedroom already. Rena did. You did.” He grips her shoulder. “I did… He’s not there.”
“I’ll search again.”
“You need to go home.”
“There were 12 bedrooms in the mansion. Four floors. Dining and recreation rooms on every floor. A home theater. …Hawkmoth’s basement. We haven’t searched everything.”
“We have.”
“We haven’t.”
“You need to sleep.”
“I don’t.”
“Ladybug.” He takes her chin. “Look at me. Please just look at me.”
She has little choice. She’s staring into his green eyes, his tinged sclera. Chat’s brow is creased with worry, his eyes lined with exhaustion.
“I know you have a family, Ladybug. I know they have to be worried. Don’t do this to them. Don’t do this to yourself. You’ve done everything you can. There’s nothing more you can do.”
She pulls away from him.
“My family’s fine. I’m fine. What about you? Why don’t you just go back to your own family if you think they’re more important than Adrien?”
Chat’s tired eyes hold hers. His expression remains firm, blank, unwavering.
“Adrien’s gone, Ladybug.”
And it would have hurt less had he slapped her firmly across the face.
Marinette bounces to her feet, teetering unsteady, face flushed and eyes wet. She’s still blinking through tears, fists tight at her side, and it takes restraint to not try to deliver that pain back to Chat Noir. “Easy for you to say. You didn’t know him! You never met him! He was just some kid to you. You don’t care, do you? Maybe this was all some victory to you, huh? Hawkmoth is dead and his base is demolished and you just don’t care that Adrien was—”
“Clearly I do care. I’m still here. I’ve been here. I wouldn’t still be here if I didn’t care.”
“You DON’T care. You search like you’re barely even trying to find him. You’ve given up! Everyone else has given up except me! You don’t get it!” Ladybug slams a hand to her chest, palm open, feet spread, and the words erupt from her throat. “I LOVED him. And I never told him! Don’t tell me he’s dead, Chat! Don’t tell me I couldn’t save him in time. Don’t tell me I couldn’t tell him in time, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t…” Marinette’s resolve wavers. Her body is fizzling with static, light and numb. She tilts, and slowly lowers herself back to a crouch before her balance can fail her fully. “…You can’t tell me he’s gone. He can’t be gone…”
There’s an agony that rips across Chat Noir’s face, one which he holds, and then stifles, and then buries, to the point that Marinette may have only imagined it in the first place. His stance goes looser. His eyes dip, until he’s staring down into the sand-fine rubble of the Agreste manor whose ash has coated him nearly fully gray.
“…I’m sorry, Ladybug…” he says, and he means it. “I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
Silence lingers on the wind between them. Every which way it blows, it smells of demolition.
“No I’m… I’m sorry for yelling,” Marinette mutters, face buried in her drawn-up knees. “I shouldn’t be yelling at you. You’re helping. …You’re the only one still helping. I’m so tired, and I’m so scared, and there’s no one else left helping.”
“You shouldn't blame the others for leaving. The search was called off a full day ago.”
“I don’t blame them.” Marinette lifts her head. “…But I just can’t leave.”
Chat pushes himself up from the ground, rising to full height from his crouch. He extends a hand for Marinette to take. “If you’ll go home, Ladybug, I’ll stay. He won’t be left alone if I’m staying here.”
Marinette blinks as Chat’s hand swims in and out of focus. She processes his words. “…Then what about you? If I leave, and you stay, then you’ll be alone…”
“Worry not, M’lady.”
“…And what about your family then?” She extends a shaky hand. Chat clasps it, and carefully, gently, he lifts her up. She’s eye to eye with him again, her vision darting from his one pupil to the other. He is the only pillar across acres of leveled land, decimated to nothing. “You haven’t left yet either, have you? You’ve been here just as long as me. You haven’t left. They must be worried about you.”
“No one in my family is worried about me, it’s fine.” His grip on her hand tightens. “My friends… are worried. But that’s because they’re good friends. They’ll be fine.”
“Chat…”
“I’m right, aren’t I? You haven’t been able to go home because you can’t leave him alone here… I’ll stay then. I’ll keep searching, I promise, as long as you promise me you’ll go home to your family for tonight, and shower, and eat, and sleep.”
"And you?"
"Hmm?"
"Why haven’t you left yet…?”
Chat lets out a simple chuckle, and he offers her a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Just worried about you, M’lady. It’s that simple.”
Marinette blinks, and rubs her eyes through the mask. The sensation of grit digs into her knuckles. It’s coated her entirely. She blinks again, and her vision, her balance, is still hazy. She’s just now feeling the weight pulling so heavily on her chest, and protests die in her throat. “…Okay. Okay then, Chat. …Thank you. Thank you, I’ll—I’ll go home, okay Chat.” She looks up. “But I need you to promise me something too.”
“Anything.”
“When I get back, then you’ll go home and rest.”
Chat’s smile lingers, the dead and plastic one. His worn eyes hold hers, and Marinette realizes for the first time since the search began that there’s something uncomfortable nested deep in them, something staring at her like she’s the last thing holding him together.
“…Chat?” Marinette asks again.
“Hmm?”
“When I’m back, you’ll go home.”
He reaches a hand out, and he ruffles her hair. “You’re very tired. M’lady has been awake for far too long. The sun’s setting now. You should get going.”
“Chat.”
“I’ll only need a quick cat nap, M’lady, once you get back. I needn’t go anywhere.”
“That’s… no, Chat.” Marinette shakes her head. She pushes his hand away. “You also need to shower, and eat, and sleep, and see your family and friends, Chat. Promise me you’ll do that. Promise me that’ll happen once I’m back tomorrow.”
She’s staring deep into his eyes, watching that restrained and uncomfortable something bloom closer to the surface. She’s staring into glassy pools that are slipping harder to recognize, and Chat’s plastic smile remains on a face so absent. His eyes refuse to see her no matter how directly she stares into them.
“We’ll talk tomorrow, Bugaboo.”
“Chat.”
“Please.”
“Chat.”
“Tomorrow, I promise.”
“Chat—” She grabs his shoulder, and pulls him a fraction closer, in hopes that his glassy eyes might finally see her back.
“Yes, M’lady?”
“Why won’t you go home?”
He is covered in ash and soot. His face is uniformly streaked with dust, and it mangles into his hair, soaked four days deep. And his four days sleepless eyes stare through her. He hitches his plastic smile higher until the corners of his mouth waver. He opens his mouth to say something, to say something, to say something.
“Sure then. Tomorrow. As soon as you’re back. I’ll go home. I promise to give my pillows a good few extra fluffs for you.”
And his face is unrecognizable by the time the words leave his mouth.
Marinette tugs him closer, until he is pressed against her. She wraps her arms around him and squeezes. Hesitantly, he returns the hug, with a force that presses the air from Marinette’s lungs, until he clings to her like she were the last thread holding him up above a chasm.
Then all at once, he releases her.
“Go. Go, Ladybug. Go home.”
She breathes deep, and her ribcage stutters. She nods.
“Tomorrow. Early. I’ll be back. Then it’s your turn.”
“Naturally. In the meantime, I’ll check the bedroom again, alright? I promise to leave nothing unturned.”
She backs away, and turns, and lingers. And somehow, even with the way her body stutters and stalls, she’s still gone faster than Chat realizes. He’s left alone with the setting sun tinging all the leveled debris orange. He exhales, shudders, and wills himself to not breakdown on spot. Not until he’s sure Ladybug is far away.
He moves, as promised, to the bedroom, taking the phantom trace of demolished hallways and doors out of habit. He stands at the center, and shifts ash with his toe, and silence falls around him like a blanket.
He sets his hands to the air, clasped around a pocket of nothing. He bounces his palms closer, once, twice, fluffing the air, and fluffing it again, so as not to break his promise.
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With that ML fanfic you just dropped and with another post of you thinking out loud about how Miraculous holders identify each other when they switch Miraculouses, I thought the story would take a different turn with Luca as Chat Noir. AND LUCA WOULD HAVE TO CARRY THAT WEIGHT. This was once again a lovely read from you, especially since you don’t even go here.
(Why Won't You Go Home also the tags on this post)
Anons I am BEGGING YOU to write my fics for me.
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on the comedic side of things: chat spending most of the time post-processing and pre-ladybug-return trying to figure out what cover story to go with and having to settle on showing up as a very confused adrian who claims he was at a hotel sleeping for the last 48 hours
(Why Won't You Go Home)
dfkjdfkjfdkjfjkkkdfjkjdf
Adrien, 4 days missing: "I... took a nap somewhere and lost track of time."
Adrien: "I got lost on the way home from a photoshoot?"
Adrien: "Some dude got akumatized and I was in his evil dimension, it was a whole thing."
Adrien: "I don't actually think it's been four days. Maybe you're looking at a leap year calendar?"
Adrien: "I was actually here the whole time looking for you Ladybug. But whenever I was on one side of the rubble you happened to be on the other."
Adrien: "Felix invited me out for an extended boys weekend."
Adrien: "My phone died."
Adrien: "Hawkmoth had me in a bomb shelter it was just locked from the inside."
Adrien: "I did get crushed in the rubble but I'm better now."
Adrien: "I've got nothing. Honestly I'm as confused as you are."
#ask#wwygh#ive got various thoughts on why Adrien feels he's not at liberty to detransform from Chat Noir and reveal himself#but ive decided maybe it's more spicy being left unstated#leave it as an exercise to the reader#(REGARDLESS of the reason: the longer Ladybug spends searching for him#the worse Adrien feels about it)#he wasn't expecting to have anyone so devastated by his disappearance#least of all Ladybug
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" This search is just a normal superhero job for him. It isn’t personal to him like it is to her. She can feel it in the slow and stiff and disconnected way he picks through the rubble of the Agreste family mansion." the *WAY* that last bit of the last line HITS.
(Why Won't You Go Home)
THANK THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS GOING FOR.
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My take is that he *wants* Adrien Agreste, perfect model, perfect son, perfect oblivious fool, to be dead. He acted and acted and acted that role, all for a father who never deserved it. He always felt like he was *free* as Chat Noir, and now he can be free forever. (Remember, he's super isolated and lonely and was SHOCKED that Ladybug said she cared about Adrien personally. Adrien has friends, but how much does he register them as *his*?)
(Why Won't You Go Home)
Really great, really heart-breaking take, especially when you consider what must be going through Adrien's mind while his friends search for him.
Adrien has such a low opinion of himself that he thinks, if he vanishes, it won't really matter, he won't really be missed in the long run. It might make his friends sad for a bit but, they're all better friends with each other than with him, aren't they? He wasn't that important to anyone. Adrien Agreste was only ever good FOR people. Him being gone won't really matter.
And he watches as... it unfolds not like that at all. Carapace and Rena are both so desperate and determined in their search. His classmates. The other miraculous holders. And most surprisingly... Ladybug... who cares more than he could ever have imagined her caring.
The part of the fic where Ladybug cries about how she was in love with Adrien? (unless canon contradicts me) is the first time Adrien is hearing it too. And it absolutely devastates him.
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Okay, but imagine if Chat hadn't been able to hold it together in Why Won't You Go Home and Ladybug ended up asking if he knew Adrien
Chat: No... but I knew... well, thought I knew his father
Ladybug: how did you know his father-?
Chat: I was his son...
Idk I just feel like Chat is the kind of person to claim not to know Adrien, not as a cover story, but because he straight up doesn't feel like he knows who he is
(Why Won't You Go Home)
Ladybug: ....oh shit Adrien had a secret brother?
fdjhfdhj serious though - the "straight up doesn't feel like he knows who he is" cuts deep jesus christ nice.
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i blame you for my miraculous ladybug phase. ever since i saw your piece on chat not going home (i cannot remember titles for my life) i have read no fewer than 31 other ml fics, number retrieved courtesy of counting my ao3 history and being abruptly and unkindly awoken to how many fics i have consumed within the period of a few weeks. however, i do consider internet troll chat and ladybug and akumatized tony stark worth the black hole your fic was. thank you [sincerity]
That's Why Won’t You Go Home!!
Also hilarious that I dragged you into a fandom I'm not in. I think I'm running some kind of scam. Now to figure out what to do with this power.
Also I had to re-read "akumatized tony stark" like 3 times before my brain was willing to process what that sentence even meant.
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chrissy!!! i loved your Why Won't You Go Home fic. because Hawkmoth has been defeated (through death), so i thought "chat could fix this by showing his identity! he doesn't have to protect it anymore, this is the perfect fix" EXCEPT IT'S NOT because then sure, everyone will be happy he's safe but then he'll have to fully acknowledge what just happened, & the double whammy that his dad was even worse than he knew but also that his dad is dead?? so he can't tell Ladybug, not yet. mmmmm so good.
(Why Won’t You Go Home)
Ey yo I love this take! Being Chat is possibly like the last barrier of mental protection he's clinging to. And hell.... maybe Chat doesnt WANT Adrien to be safe. He doesn't want Adrien to be found alive and well because that would mean facing the reality of having been Hawkmoth's son, under the public scrutiny, victim to every single citizens opinion of him.
Maybe he's really really hoping Ladybug will give up, so he can stop being Adrien forever.
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Ngl, you're pretty on point for other fandom angst despite not going here. We love to explore the angst of Hawkmoth being Adrien's dad, and how the would just fuck him up lol
Danny's secret with his parents, but maybe even worse because Gabriel's objectively terrible though he's not about to unknowningly vivisect his son lmao
ngl it was "ways Adrien might learn Hawkmoth's identity" fandom angst that got me interested in the first place recently. I saw a couple comics cross my dash and I basically peddled backward and went running after it like the ice cream truck just passed me by.
Why Wont You Go Home has a very subtle taste of that, not at the forefront since the majority of the fic is from Marinette's perspective. But "Hawkmoth's basement" is a known part of the Agreste manor, and she's speaking to Adrien about it, so cat's (chat's) out of the bag, and Adrien is processing this in complete silence for the entire duration of this search and rescue mission for... himself.
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aw, man. Two really good bits of writing, so close together? The audacity.
Okay okay my thoughts on the miraculous ladybug one! Chat noir saying by that adrien is gone? Phew!! Either that’s him trying to make ladybug go in about the worst way possible OR he just… doesn’t want to be adrien anymore. This tragedy happened to adrien. Not chat. So he doesn’t have to feel it. He’s chat, not adrien, this didn’t happen to him. Anyway I’m totally picturing the sequel ending with like. “Why won’t you go home, chat?” “I’ve been home the whole time.”
And the Danny phantom one! I had to read it over a couple times, as I’m not great at picking up subtext, but wow! Dark!! I’m taking it that they caught and dissected phantom, who reverted to Danny and “escaped” only to die in the living room upstairs? dark! For my own personal happiness I am choosing to headcanon that he comes back as a full fledged ghost and hangs out with jazz and has a good time, because otherwise. ow. that last line, about the floor being immaculate, that really hits. Truly drives home how the fentons must have felt
funny enough both of these were basically the result of me sitting down like "I'm gonna write ABoT... but first let me warm up by writing something else entirely"
(Why Won't You Go Home)
I like that take!!! Learning your dad is Hawkmoth, only for him to be killed moments later, wiping out your home, your possessions, and the last of your family in one fell swoop is a PRETTY good reason to want to leave your own identity for dead as well.
And funny you say that! I ALMOST decided to end this fic with "Why won't you go home?"/"Because I never left." Would have absolutely been a solid option for an ending line. But I didn't want the Chat Noir/Adrien reveal to happen in this fic. I wanted to stick to the notion that Adrien has his reasons for not revealing himself, and both he and Ladybug need to suffer through the consequences of that.
(For Pennies)
:''))))))) ....Sure thing.... he's a full ghost living it up with all his best pals :''')))
And yeah this one is all just "how can I take a commonplace fic idea and make it spooky through subtext?" The detail about the floors is also symbolic. On the human side of things (first floor) they were able to rip out the evidence and pave over it pretty and new. They are just a family of three moving away to be closer to relatives.
But on the ghost side, the basement level, no amount of scrubbing could erase the evidence of what took place.
#ask#for pennies#wwygh#btw i DID manage to write more of ABoT so the effort kind of worked#this chapters just tough#turns out when you get 36 chapters deep in a fic theres a LOT of things and nuance to keep tabs on
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Clearly Chat Noir hasn't reverted yet because the magic is the only thing holding him together right now. Both in the sense that Plagg's emotional buffer is the only thing between him and fifteen or so repressed meltdowns, and also in the very literal sense that he was bleeding out when the suit went on and will resume bleeding out when the suit comes off again.
(Why Won't You Go Home)
From my tags earlier:
HEY ANON I LIKE THIS A LOT. (especially with the promised Angst Round 2 of what the hell would happen when the suit finally comes off)
Hey I'm Very Into The Idea of hearing other people's headcanons on this. Crowdsourced theories sound way more fun than me just declaring a Word of God here.
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When I drifted away from Tumblr, you were angsting up the phandom. Now I drift back to Tumblr with my new fandom, Miraculous Ladybug aaaand here you are angsting it up. The more things change the more they stay the same. Love it.
(Why Won't You Go Home)
Listen I have a brand. Also turns out I'm just a sucker for all the potential in shows filled with secret identity angst.
Throw any fandom in front of me. I'm perpetually just here to find new ways to ask the question "Hey wouldn't it be fucked up if--?"
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tickled silly by the thought that you saw this endearing, fluffy romcom cartoon where a good chunk of the fan content is fluff and you just went "how can i break chat noir's heart in vivid detail, for fun"
(Why Won't You Go Home)
Hey. Hey hey look you're RIGHT but also the fandom totally got there first! I've seen y'all's "Adrien learns Hawkmoth is his father in the worst possible way" comics. I've seen the "identity reveal but it's too late" comics. The "Adrien feels useless and relinquishes Plagg" comics. Yall have an AU where Gabriel cuts off Adrien's arm to get his miraculous (which is a very good AU, btw, @sabertoothwalrus )
There's a thriving angst convention here I'm just going stand-to-stand collecting the free pins.
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chrissy im seriously gonna lose it, back at it again with the gutwrenchingly good angst and you dont even GO here, you are my hero. one day youre going to write something for a fandom im not already in and ill just have to become a fan of that to enjoy the work
(Why Won't You Go Home)
jhjhjhjfdhjfdhjhjfddf!!! <3 actually that's a very fitting parallel since I don't follow Miraculous Ladybug at all. I'm just enjoying what the fandom's made.
Also writing for a show I don't watch is fun. It's like "how many hundreds of canon rules am I accidentally breaking? possibly all of them." that's true freedom.
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Considering your earlier ML post, I half expected that the dust from the rubble plus Chat’s disheveled hair would obscure his mask and Ladybug would recognize him.
(Why Won't You Go Home)
Hey anon you're hired to write the sequel.
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You never fail to amaze me with your ability to put words in an order that make me feel things XD
(Why Won't You Go Home)
I'm over here like "Can I create squiggles in the right pattern to compromise people emotionally?"
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