[A/n]: For the prompts "Spreading Grand Wings" and "Down to the Foundation." Fighting demons is a tricky business, it is.

Megara, 1,700 BCE Ancient Greece.

She'll never forget the look on his face when they piece together the damning truth.

All of his worst suspicions have been confirmed, and his face has become pale in the dim lamplight. Even the vibrant golden colors of the lion skin on his back seem to suddenly fade, the very vitality and energy sucked out of him. She supposes the bitterest end of the bargain lays with her partner; the duty of watching one's beloved sink into the depths of madness and depravity - and then vanquishing them - is hardly one to be taken lightly.

"Meg," he says quietly, "Don't believe this. We're not going to let it become a self-fulfilling prophecy."

She knows that he sees the doubt settling across her features because he clasps her hands in his, voice suddenly taking on a steely edge. "If you believe in the legends then they will come true," he tells her, urgency behind every word. "If you believe you will fall to the demons, then you will. I don't believe it, Meg, and I'll do anything to keep this from coming true. But I can't do this alone."

She nods fervently, but finds her words stolen. He doesn't know the invisible weight that adds to her shoulders each times she purifies a demon, the doubts that spiral through her mind at night, the dedication with which she has hidden these trials from him, the great and famed Hercules. The truth is that her duty does take a toll on her, whether she admits it or not.

"You know," he adds slyly, sensing an opportunity, "I would move meow-tains for you. I'm not kitten."

She narrowly stifles a giggle; only he could manage two terrible cat puns in the midst of this dire hour.

"All right," she says. "I agree, there's no use in accepting this as fact. I do worry, though - after all, I am purifying demons, not exactly low occupational hazard there..."

"What if I did it for you?" he interjects brightly. "We can even take turns!"

"I don't think it's possible," she begins, but then stops and thinks. What, exactly, is preventing him from purifying demons as well?

"I think it's a splendid idea," he says, eyes suddenly alight. "You can teach me how to purify demons, Meg! It'll be fun!"

Purifying demons and fun were not two phrases Meg ever expected to hear next to each other, but she already has begun to entertain the idea. Hercules' creative ideas never fail to be unusual, but sometimes they might even work. After all, this is the man who has defeated all sorts of monsters using largely improbable methods. If anyone can find a way out of this mess, it's probably him.

"I have never seen someone so excited at the prospect of purifying demons, of all things," she says, "but all right. Let me show you."

"Claw-some!" he exclaims as she casts an amused look at the ceiling.

She has spent so long carefully crafting an alter ego that would allow her to fight alongside her husband and secretly soaking up the grief and misery that permeate the land following these wars. At this point, to fall to her own demons seems a waste.

Whoever had come up with this dreadfully depressing cycle?

She pulls her deep red scarf tighter around herself, fingering the delicate black dots that adorn its edges. Its color has darkened a little, she muses, deepened a bit from the crisp cherry red she originally wore. Perhaps after all this demon purification she has asked of it, that could even be expected.

And what an incredibly thankless job fate seemed to have granted her, unless she rebels against it. She has been doomed to play the hero for only a little while, bear the burdens of everyone else's darkest emotions, until the demons she has worked so hard to tame finally wrestle her into submission.

But she knows her husband refuses to follow the path fate has set for them, and so will she. And together they hope to fly where others have fallen, to rise where their ancestors have failed.

Perhaps they can. Fate does not know her strength or wit or skill, nor can it know her determination to succeed; it has nothing but empty promises of destruction.

Interestingly enough, his intuition had been spot on. Soon, with her instruction, he manages to purify his first demon and force it away from its unlucky servant onto his own miraculous. He winks at her, bright hair shining flaxen in the sun.

"Well done," she says, but she can't hide the worry in her voice. "Do you feel any different? Does the lionskin feel any heavier?"

He shakes his head quickly. "I feel fine, Meg," he says, smiling a little too giddily as he twirls the club in his hand like it's a child's plaything. "Don't worry about me."

She lets out a breath and suddenly smiles back. It's a shot in the dark, it's a gamble against fate, but right now she's standing in the sunlight with the man she loves and somehow she's caught up in his infectious happiness.

He lifts her in the air and whirls her around. A weightless feeling swoops in her stomach, and she feels as if she is flying. She laughs as he gently sets her down, and realizes how long it's been since she heard the sound. That's how starved she is for hope, how desperately she wants to believe in miracles.

"We will win," he says, his eyes a searing, brilliant green. "I will burn cities to the ground before I let anyone hurt you." She believes him. Hers is a ironclad love, determined and loyal; but he has always matched her steadfast affection with the ferocity, the passion of a thousand burning suns.

"This might have been the greatest idea I've ever had," Hercules enthuses, having purified yet another demon. The sky stretches overhead, vast and inviting blue, as he smiles at her. "Except that one time I killed the Hydra with fire, that was pretty cool too."

But she can't let him purify all the demons, worried as she is for his safety.

And as she mulls it over she realizes that despite the fact that this cycle is relentlessly cruel, it is quite ingenious.

Evil is never vanquished; it merely changes form. When she watches her people fall to the demons lurking in their souls, she realizes how all-encompassing, how terribly consuming the demons can be. They tell you that you are better than all the rest, that others have selfishly overlooked your needs for their own desires, that you are the only one who ever was right in the end. Soon enough you are convinced that others need to pay for their crimes, and that you are the only one capable of delivering that justice.

She has seen all of it firsthand, and she is glad that she can accept their burdens. At first she hadn't noticed that her vibrant red scarf seemed to grow a darker and darker color as she wrapped it around cursed objects that bore these demons, and that it is gradually veering towards a dark, dark red reminiscent of blood. It had been a matter of years and years, of battles forging onward and, somehow, a future that only seemed to grow brighter.

Then, months ago, she had noticed the thoughts that flitted across her mind in waking hours, or right before she fell asleep. She recognized them all too well.

You're Ladybug. Why spend your time saving these people when they have never done anything for you? Why face demons when they can't face theirs? They don't deserve you. They never did, and you've always been their foolish servant. Drop the charade, and then you'll see.

With a growing horror she had realized that the demons had never left her. At first these dark inclinations had been sporadic, but now she faces them regularly. Their intensity merely grows, and she wonders how long it will be before she snaps.

You could take over if you wanted. You could do anything if you wanted. Don't you want to see what this city looks like in flames? Hear them screaming for the mercy they never have given you? The red of spilled blood and the black of endless night. Those are your colors, Ladybug. Raise your hand and watch it all burn.

The demons tell her that she is past the point of return now, that there is no saving her. She doesn't let herself believe them: she must be strong for herself, for her husband, for her people.

Hercules never fails to boost her morale with his witty quips and cheery cat puns, and that, if nothing else, is keeping the demons at bay.

Maybe, just maybe, two can bear what one could not.

She finds him at sunset, staring into the red sky.

"Hercules," she says, and knows from the set of his mouth that there is something he does not want to tell her. "Fighting evil is hard work," she says, choosing not to press it. "We've embarked on quite the life path, you know."

"I don't know how you do it," he says. "I don't know how."

Her heart sinks, slipping like the setting sun.

"For me," he says, his profile awash in crimson light and shadows, "it happened all at once. Seven demons, that's all it took."

"Herc-" she begins, reaching for him, but he cuts her off.

"No," he says, fighting for breath. "You have to let me speak, because if I don't say it now I don't think I can ever say it again. Because I won't be me anymore, Meg. I'm losing the battle before it's begun. Six demons and I felt on top of the world. I was on my way to saving you, we were going to win, everything. And then the seventh demon came, and only then did they begin eating away at me. I can't tell their voices from my own thoughts. Meg. Meg-"

And suddenly he's sobbing like a child in her arms, and Meg feels despair crystalizing in her chest as she realizes that both of their souls are forfeit.

We've corrupted you already. You've surrendered, can't you see that? You're like him. You can't tell the difference between our words and your thoughts. You've lost, you've lost. We control you completely, and there's nothing you can do about it.

She understands, now, why Chat Noir always has the power to destroy anything he touches. It is the only power capable of destroying demons. All she has ever done is force them to change form.

The only problem is that demons have a nasty habit of latching onto people's hearts. Kill me and you kill them, the demon laughs. Just try. Are you a hero then?

There is a solution. Let them accumulate through the years, let them dig their claws deep into her soul until she cannot take any more, and then destroy the single weak link. Destroy her. It makes terrible sense, actually. Once she has been corrupted beyond hope, there is no going back and every last trace of her - or rather, the demons that have taken her over - need to be eliminated. Her personal suffering means nothing next to the greater good.

Now, all she has managed to do is take him down with her. No, it wasn't enough that the demons gradually drag her into evil; they had to obliterate her last hope (the hope that he would be happy, that he would be safe). And once they had broken him, she could do nothing but surrender all at once.

No hope for this cycle; everything must be destroyed.

In exchange for battling the abyss, she had exchanged her life; he had given his soul.

And despite their despair, both shouldered the kinds of evils that would leave the world brighter after their departure.

Maybe, just maybe, their successors of the future might succeed where they had not; perhaps salvation need not go hand-in-hand with destruction, and could there be a way to balance their duties to their people and to their own souls?

This was their prayer, lit like a candle amidst darkness.