A/N: I am crap and I really like pain. And I shall share it with you. Here ya go!

Rippling Dreams

When Adrien dreams, he dreams of a golden lit Paris at night, the luminous moon hanging eternally in the sky, him crouching casually on a rooftop and a girl standing next to him. The distant lights of the Eiffel Tower twinkle, as if fairy dust was sprinkled all over the magnificent structure, but he doesn't pay too much attention to the scenic view in front of him. Instead, he's marvelling at the girl and the city reflected in her sky-blue eyes.

She's a slender girl, wearing a full bodysuit of red and black spots and a similarly patterned mask over her face, but he finds that the red draws him in all the more. Her glossy midnight hair shines sapphire blue in the light, tied in two very endearing pigtails, which sway as she turns to him, smiling and offering a hand for him to stand up.

Adrien stares speechlessly, frozen as he is struck by the full force of her hypnotic eyes. He remembers that she's still waiting for him to take his hand, and suddenly he is scared. Terrified. He is aware that she's a very pretty girl who instantly makes him feel incredibly self-conscious, but the fear chills him too deeply in his chest to be something that simple.

But her smile gives him courage, the courage to reach out to her outstretched hand.

He doesn't manage to touch it. Because the girl starts to disappear in front of his eyes and Adrien springs up in alarm, stumbling on his legs to chase after her fading figure. He reaches out to her, trying again and again, to bring her back, to feel her warm beating body against his, but he doesn't know why. He doesn't know who she is but a name tumbles out of his mouth:

"Ladybu-"

And Adrien wakes up. He is in his room, alone, in his cold mansion and there is no red to be found.

Countless times, he has woken up in the same manner. He always forgets the name his dream self utters but he always remembers the girl in his dreams.

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Cameras flash uncomfortably in his eyes as he poses according to the photographer's directions. Another day of modelling without pleasure and another day of his father pretending that he doesn't exist. It's been like this for far too long now and Adrien grows numb.

His world is a dull black and white picture with nothing but moving stone statues and distant voices. His world has looked like that ever since a certain incident last year. He doesn't remember what happened but after he woke up in the hospital, he could no longer see colour. No greens, no reds, no blues, nothing but shades of grey.

He tells no one of his condition, not even Nino. He doesn't want to become a deficiency in his father's eyes, or at least, any more of a burden he already was. The tabloids would love it, "Adrien Agreste, colour-blind from trauma" and he could imagine his father's displeasure at him, disgracing the family name.

The only colours he could see now were the colours in his mind's eye, of the bright red of spandex costume and the burning blue blue of that girl's eyes.

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Sometimes, another girl appears in his dreams.

It's day-time and she's waving at him from across the street. Strangely, the Parisian streets are empty for such a seemingly active hour, but Adrien can't seem think logically. He is too focused on the pigtailed girl with the lopsided smile.

She's different from the girl in red but somehow she draws him in all the same. He returns her smile and starts to cross the street to greet her.

He barely makes two steps forward when a swarm of black butterflies swoops down in an ominous shroud around the girl and covers his view completely.

He tries to gently bat them away so he can pass but the butterflies lash back at him maliciously, glowing sinister purple. Adrien is a person who cared about animals normally, but his morals fly out the window when he knows that that girl is potentially in danger. Again, he doesn't know who she is but she sparks some kind of protectiveness in him and he wants to keep her safe, safe from the world and all its evils.

So he swipes and swats and tears into the nasty butterflies, ignoring them when they smother his face and nearly choke him. The girl, he needed to reach that girl.

His efforts hardly bear any fruit. No matter how many butterflies he clears, there are plenty more to replace them. He fights them for – god knows how long – and when they finally have enough and dissipate to the darkened sky, the street across from him is empty. The girl is gone.

Adrien screams and screams until he wakes up.

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Haunted by the same dreams (nightmares) every night, a sick and weary Adrien decides do research on the girl, lest he got sent to the asylum for being crazy obsessed with an imaginary person.

After several searches on the internet which included 'girl in red', 'masked maiden' and 'costumed girl in pigtails' he finally hits the mark with 'ladybug girl'. He is led to a blog called 'The Ladyblog', now deactivated by the moderator. It turns out that the girl wasn't so imaginary after all.

She was a real person, a superhero to be more specific, who was apparently a big deal in Paris up until she went missing a year ago. Adrien finds it rather odd that he doesn't remember anything about her or what she did at all. Regardless, everything about the girl on his computer screen matched with the girl in his dreams, every spot on her suit, the shape of her lips, the pigtails, it all matched. If he could see colours, he'd bet that her costume would be the same red and her eyes the same blue as well.

Adrien leans back in his chair, slightly relieved to be able to put a name to her face at last. But he had to wonder how he knew the superheroine, well enough to have such vivid dreams about her. Did he meet her once? If he did then why didn't he remember her? Did she perhaps have something to do with the accident?

Hoping to sate his curiosity, he continues to browse the blog for more information. In many of the videos, he also sees a boy in a similar black spandex suit with artificial cat ears, often seen standing next to Ladybug. Adrien watches the footage of the two of them battling the 'akuma' and he feels a strange sense of familiarity with the boy.

He was called Chat Noir.

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The next time he dreams, he is lucid enough to fire questions at the girl he now knows as Ladybug. He asks them as soon as he sees her: "Are you Ladybug?", "Why am I dreaming of you?", "Do I know you?", "Where are you now?", "Who is the girl across the street?", "What are the black butterflies?" and finally "Why are you being silent? Please talk to me!"

He thinks to himself, he's delirious, surely. Ladybug may be real, but the Ladybug here is merely a figment of his imagination. Part of his dream and created from his own brain for some bizarre reason. How could she possibly know any more than he does?

Ladybug smiles serenely at his questions and speaks for the first time in any of his dreams. "Oh, you're so silly, Chat Noir." she giggles fondly.

Adrien's eyes widen. Chat Noir. She called him Chat Noir. The boy on the Ladyblog.

Without warning, Ladybug starts to disappear before he could get any answers from her. Again, it's the same routine, his body moves without his knowledge, chasing in futility and crying out her name.

"Ladybug!"

Adrien wakes up. He sits up and clutches his head in dismay. He hoped to get answers but he only ended up with more questions to wring his head over.

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Once more, he dreams. This time, he does not find himself on a Parisian rooftop over looking the city. No, this time it's pitch darkness and Adrien cannot see anything around him, not a wall nor a floor, nothing.

He stumbles through the darkness like a baby, hoping to find something solid or supportive, until he hears a quiet voice behind him, cutting through the eerie silence.

"Hey, kitty."

It is the voice of that girl, Ladybug. Of course she was going to appear again. Adrien turns around.

Standing behind him is Ladybug, but not quite. She is also the girl from his other dreams, the one who was consumed by the black butterflies time and time again. The one he was unable to save.

She is a literal combination of both girls and startlingly so. Her entire body shifts and blurs between the red bodysuit of Ladybug and the casual clothes of the civilian girl before his eyes, like a virus or error. The mask on her face appears and disappears and Adrien realises belatedly that her blue eyes stay the exact same.

Initially, he is spooked by her appearance – what happened? - but not repulsed. So when she gingerly takes his hand in hers, stroking his knuckles slowly, soothingly, he doesn't pull away.

For once, she isn't smiling. In fact, her lip is trembling and her eyes are moist, tears dripping down her face like tiny star drops. She isn't looking at him, instead, she's fixed onto their joined hands as if she was set with the most important task in the world.

Seeing her crying face hurts Adrien as much as if he was the one who was suffering. He wants to wipe away her tears with his free hand and kiss her delicate eyelids as if doing that would rid her grief. He never felt like being so intimate with someone before, it was unreasonable, but somehow it fit perfectly with him.

Before he could act on these urges, the girl stops her movement. Her mouth opens and she takes a shaky breath. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." she almost whispers and takes the ring on his hand that he never realised he had.

It slides easily off his pliant fingers and Adrien feels a change in his body. No, rather, when did he change? He hadn't realised that his body was covered in black formfitting material until it started to wash off by mysterious magic. Chat Noir's outfit. He was wearing Chat Noir's outfit the entire time, the black originally blending in the darkness. And now he was back in his plain designer clothes.

She backs away from him, ring in hand, and she's smiling. Smiling sadly. She speaks more words than she ever did before with that smile. He has seen it before. He's seen this happen before.

It takes a moment for his lost memories to jolt back into place and it doesn't even take a second before he's racing after her, Ladybug – no – Marinette. Oh sweet, sweet, dear Marinette. His princess. His Marinette.

Behind her, the world explodes with light, blinding Adrien, but he continues relentlessly, despite the temporary loss of sight, tripping over his feet and probably bruising his knees and elbows. She's fading away, again, but Adrien refuses to let her go, determined not to lose her, not this time, not after so many failures.

He doesn't realise that he is screaming his voice hoarse. "Marinette! Marinette! MARINETTE!"

Desperate, he launches himself at her, hoping to pin her down and keep her here, with him, but it is too late. His fingers grab at nothing and Marinette's entire body is gone. Up until the very end, she was smiling at him.

She's gone. Adrien seizes up and he free falls into the blank whiteness. There isn't a floor to catch him but he awaits the impact anyway, wishing to end his agony because what was a world without her?

There is no impact. Instead, he wakes up.

Adrien sits up, slowly. The first thing he does is check his hand. It's bare. There's no ring. He looks around the room. There isn't an imp-faced kwami pestering him for more cheese. He's alone.

He guffaws, bitterly, broken. It was a dream. There was no second chance. But it was real. His inspiration, his greatest friend and the one love of his life, Ladybug – Marinette – is gone. Forever. That was the reality.

Hollow laughter eventually becomes guttural, painful sobs, echoing uselessly in the grey, grey, lonely room.