AN: I love horror and romance. There's going to be deaths and gore everywhere, along with smut, so please prepare for that (it's a zombie story, of course there will be). Thank you so so much to powerdragonmoon for encouraging me to finish this, I really appreciate this. This story includes themes that I don't reguarly see in zombie-related media, so it's been a joy to write and incorporate them. Also, my two friends who helped me out with the plot have no idea about this series, so Marinette was "Main", Adrien was "Brother", and Chloé was referred to as "Pee Girl" for the whole time, ahah.

Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Chat Noir © Thomas Astruc

The coffee-shop was in ruins. The door at the front had been smashed open previously, then pathetically covered with cardboard that was ripped and stained, barely hanging on from where it was taped messily. The windows were in tact, thankfully, though the same couldn't be said for the inside; tables were knocked over, chairs had their legs broken off, the machines behind the counter were smashed due to what she suspected was from fits of rage, and three decaying corpses littered the floor, releasing a pungent odour that had been ingrained into her senses for far too long.

She stepped over them after confirming their heads were sufficiently damaged.

It had been two weeks since she'd gotten her hands on soap. Whether it was from a dirtied dispenser within a public bathroom, that had surely had a variety of disgusting encounters in the past year, or in the form of a tiny block, she couldn't care less. If the quality was awful and caused her skin to become irritated and create reddened bumps, at least she'd have a reminder that the pungent stench that had stuck to her for weeks had lessened.

After checking the corners, making sure no bodies were lurking in a shadowed position where they could gaze upon her freely, Marinette eased open the first bathroom door with one hand curled tightly around the handle of her knife.

The light from the windows was distorted due to mud-covered glass, but it supplied enough for her to see her surroundings. The mirrors were smashed, glass scattered across the floor without a care, the two sinks seemed to be in average condition, while the two cubicles were still standing despite the blood smears along the side.

One of the doors was closed.

Stiffening, she approached the one on the right with the propped open door first. Pushing the bucket aside with her boot-clad foot, she readied her knife, pushing it the rest of the way open with a kick.

The creak of the hinges echoed in the empty bathroom. The sight of a dirty toilet and a wafting horrid stench that greeted her made her breathe through her mouth, pulling her scarf up higher in an attempt to combat the unpleasant scents.

With a deep breath, she experimentally pushed against the last toilet's door, unsure of her expectations. The last time she'd carelessly entered a bathroom and forgot to check the stalls, a rotting corpse had grasped onto her hood and tugged her backwards in desperation. It wasn't an experience she wanted to repeat any time soon.

The sight that greeted her was unlike any other, though.

A female with matted blonde hair was sat upon the toilet, face contorted in sheer terror as she scrambled to cloth herself, nails digging into the material of her jeans frantically. From the wide eyes, dirt and scarlet smeared across her skin and outfit, and the shaking hands that were fiddling with clothes, Marinette quickly realised that she wasn't a threat—and that's what concerned her the most.

There wasn't a weapon pointed at her.

As the tell-tale sound of liquid trickling sounded, she flushed in shame, shutting the door as she retreated to the other side of the room, trying to distance herself from the naïve being she'd stumbled upon.

It had been two months since she'd interacted with another human willingly. The figures with scowls and large make-shift weapons that barked demands at any newcomer they met didn't count, and she tried to avoid them to the best of her ability (either from darting into a bush and hiding until they passed, or slouching in an alleyway and hoping they wouldn't notice her). Groups weren't her speciality, sadly; the last group she'd slotted herself into had consisted of five people—including her—and it had ended with blood and screams.

Perhaps it was the horrified look on the stranger's face, or the lack of threat when she'd pushed the door open, but Marinette leaned against the wall and waited for them to emerge.

The rustling of clothing filled the silence, along with a sharp gasp. Marinette assumed they were trying to gather their wits for the upcoming confrontation.

Clearing her throat led to her grimacing. "I'm not going to attack you."

The last thing she expected was a voice slightly higher-pitched than hers retorting, "As if I'd believe that!"

Her mouth was tugged into a small smile. "I'm not discarding my weapons so you can kill me."

"Fuck," came a muffled curse, and it sounded as though she'd tripped and hit the side of the stall. "Can you just not rob me right now? I don't have anything, really."

The words weren't reassuring, though. A flicker of uncertainty travelled through her as she considered them—what sort of idiot allowed themselves to be vulnerable in a bathroom without securing a door? Time had passed and caused supplies to dwindle drastically, meaning most places were trashed and vandalised, either by the living or the rotting corpses that staggered down the street, catching wafts for their next victims.

Her voice was hoarse from lack of use. "Why didn't you barricade the door?"

"What?" the blonde-haired female asked suspiciously.

"The first door," Marinette tried again, adjusting her grip on the knife. Whether the stranger was acting clueless on purpose to catch her off guard was yet to be decided, and she was determined not to be taken advantage of again. "Anyone could've gotten inside—even a corpse."

Another curse was audible.

"If you don't attack me, I won't hurt you," she tried to bargain, free hand running through her grime-filled hair nervously. In the past, she'd worked as a cashier and managed to greet and create conversations with a good majority of the customers, yet her socials kills had diminished from her time alone. "I just—are you alone?"

A hysterical laugh echoed in the bathroom. "Why the fuck would I tell you? If you don't leave me alone right now, I will stab you." The threat was supposed to be strong, to make it back off, yet she could hear the female's voice cracking towards the end.

"You don't have a weapon," she gambled, adjusting the weight of her feet. "Otherwise it would've been pointed at me the moment I opened the door."

A pause. "I'll gut you."

"Look, I—" Marinette cut herself off awkwardly, eyes flicking away from the unlocked door—that she was sure was being pushed shut to keep her out—to the sinks, spotting the two cracked dispensers on the wall. "I'm only here to get some soap, okay? I'll be gone in a few minutes."

She could see two scratched and muddy boots poking out beneath the stall door. "Good for you," the blonde snapped, voice higher than before. "Please fuck off already."

Right. She would've reacted much the same way if the situation had been reserved—well, only if the spare knife within her boot had disappeared along with her main one, stuck with only her words as weapons.

Marinette fumbled with her backpack, searching for a the spare container she'd scavenged a few weeks back. The bar of soap she'd stored within it previously had lasted long, helping to get some of the dirt and gore from out of the limited clothing she owned. Back in the beginning the thought of wearing two articles of clothing made out of denim made her cringe, yet the times she lived in called for her attention to be elsewhere than the limited fashion trends. Winter had caused her to bundle on the denim jacket upon the rest of her clothing, trying to preserve the fleeting warmth as her teeth chattered, and when she'd found out first hard that the material had stopped teeth biting through to connect with her skin, the relief had been endless.

At least her jeans were black, she supposed. She wasn't a target walking around in a fully blue outfit; her weathered boots had once been black, now the scuffs and mud had distorted their colour, and she didn't care about the shirts she wore underneath her two jackets as long as they weren't baggy enough to catch onto a stray branch and pull her back—that was an experience she didn't want to repeat, not with a gaggle of groaning bodies staggering behind her.

"Are you still fucking there?" While the words were aggressive, the voice was almost soft.

She'd managed to collect a few squirts of soap, as someone hadn't waited patiently to see whether there was any remaining the last time it had been looted. After closing it securely and placing her arms through the straps of her bag, Marinette picked up the knife she'd left on the sink.

The blonde-haired stranger could've tried to stealthily exit the stall, snag the knife and attempt to threaten her with it, yet she didn't. With a confirming glance, she noticed that the bathroom door was still pushed shut, boots sticking out as they shuffled nervously.

With a hand on the handle to the exit, Marinette glanced over her shoulder to take in the wreckage of the bathroom; the bloodstains smeared on the wall, the pungent stench that wasn't from decomposing flesh, and shivered.

"Word of advice, kid," she murmured, voice loud compared to the silence suffocating them. "Either make sure you're the only one able to get in and out, or do your business anywhere other than a bathroom."

Without waiting for a reply—either another cursing or a soft-spoken insult—Marinette trudged through the ravaged coffee-shop, checking behind the counter and ducking into the storage room to look for supplies in case she'd turned a blind eye to them previously. Coffee beans were crushed on the floor, shattered glass and china glittering dangerously as she stepped over them, knowing that the soles of her shoes were thick enough to withstand the potential damage.

She snatched up a dented plastic bottle filled with flavoured syrup that was hidden in the corner, tucking it safely into her bag.

It wasn't the most successful raid; she'd managed to get a handful of liquid soap and a sugary syrup, but it was better than nothing. The sugar would be a drastic contrast to the usual dinner of canned foods she'd found in pantries across the countless empty streets, and perhaps it would help her body gain the fat that she'd lost over time.

The trousers she'd packed in the beginning—from her wardrobe, the ones that were less practical and more for appearance—had been discarded quickly. They would've been shoved aside even if her waist hadn't grown thinner, nor if the material didn't wrinkle across her thighs from her shrinking figure. Her brassieres had experienced much the same; as nice as it was to wear material and lace with wire to keep her breasts in place, they were a menace to fight in. She'd swapped them out for the ones designed for running, glad that the underwear-stores hadn't fully been looted.

Her previous favourite had been damaged when she'd had a close call, resulting in the wire underneath poking out and bruising her skin from her movements.

She never thought she'd stab a rotting body through the eye with the wire of her brassiere as a make-shift weapon.

Then again, she hadn't foresaw that she'd run into a terrified female in the middle of urinating, too.

Sticking to alleyways and avoiding the road in case a car rumbled past, Marinette pulled her scarf up to obscure her face as she stalked in as much darkness the middle of the day in April had to offer.

At least, she thought it was April.

Time was hard to keep a track of. The clocks in the shops had either been smashed or stopped working, watches looted and cell phones had died off after electricity had become scarce. The main power lines had shut down after a week of the outbreak. There was no internet, no mail service to manually send letters to loved ones; meaning, if someone wanted to check on their family to see whether they'd succumbed to the sickening virus that had spread across the country—the world—they had to get there on foot.

Marinette had witnessed more than enough strangers killed for their vehicles, be it beside her or from a distance. Knowing that the bloodstains on the interior weren't from the dead that trudged around made her stomach churn uncomfortably.

Her body tensed when footsteps became more apparent. Making sure to keep at a steady pace, Marinette's fingers twitched nervously as she listened out, trying to determine whether they were a threat. From the sound and the lack of dragging their soles along the floor, it was safe to assume that the pursuer was alive.

That was what scared her most, actually.

Scenarios flashed through her mind, hand tightening around the hilt of the knife she'd become accustomed with. They underestimated her a lot—she would be fine, she assured herself, trying to quell the influx of panic that caused her heart to beat rapidly. She was quick, body small enough to fit in hiding places to pass the time, and she knew that her fighting skills had improved over time. She didn't want to go back to being the hopelessly lost girl that needed someone to teach her how to hold a knife.

Marinette flattened her body against the wall after she'd turned a corner, arm raised and ready to strike as she breathed slowly, eyes focused where she could hear the growing footsteps.

It happened in a matter of seconds as their resistance was abysmal. Marinette had roughly grabbed onto their shoulder, slamming their back against the brick wall as the cold steel of her knife pressed into the pale skin of their neck. A cry of surprise sounded, a shuddered gasp as they realised the situation they were in.

The weak reaction didn't deter her. "What do you want?"

It was the one she'd met before—the female with the dirty blonde-coloured hair. Now that she was doused in sunshine rather than the distorted light from the bathroom window, and not to mention fully clothed, she was able to make out that her eyes were a similar shade of blue to her own. "Fuck—I'm not a fucking kid!"

She adjusted the knife, applying pressure into the vulnerable flesh on display. "Did you follow me just to run your mouth?"

The blonde had only a thin long-sleeved shirt left open acting as a jacket, meaning too much of her was showing due to the cut of her t-shirt. Either she'd already been robbed for her belongings—Marinette couldn't spy a bag of any kind of her, let alone a weapon—or she'd been hopelessly sheltered from the reality of their situation.

"I-I—"

The stuttering or the paling skin didn't cause her to drop the threatening stance.

Taking in a shaky breath, the blonde's eyes were wide and rimmed with red as she gasped out, "You don't seem too bad, okay? I—I don't have anyone."

It could've been a ploy. A sinister group could've used her innocent face, large eyes and lack of weapons to lure stragglers into their midst. Marinette narrowed her eyes in consideration, keeping her eyes on the non-struggling figure that was at her mercy before her. If she belonged to a group, surely they would've appeared and apprehended her before the knife was drawn? Losing the life of one of their own just to loot her didn't seem like a fair trade.

"Prove it," she demanded quietly, aware that the hard set of her eyebrows combined with the blood dried on her cheek didn't make her an appealing person. "Why shouldn't I kill you right now?"

The blonde's expression was nothing less than terrified. "You were right," she whispered, voice breathless.

She stared flatly at her. "Explain."

"I have no weapons," she blurted quickly, arms stiffly pressed against her sides. "I-I'm alone, completely."

Guilt had no right to fester within her. Seeing the lost and terrified female in front of her made her wonder whether she'd appeared as helpless in the beginning, if her trembling lips had caused others to take pity and feel the need to take care of her. They—if they hadn't helped her at the start, back when she'd been a wide-eyed girl with red-colour ties in her hair and designer clothes, she wouldn't have made it as far as she had.

Her gaze flickered down, taking in the worn boots and thick trousers the blonde was wearing. She had a half appropriate outfit; her concerns were with the lack of an appropriate jacket and the dirtied hair that was hanging over her breasts.

"I'm going to back away now," Marinette proclaimed, eyes staring into hers coldly. "If you attack me, I won't hesitate to hurt you."

The other female went to nod before she grimaced, eyebrows furrowing together as she released a hiss from the sudden pain in her neck. Marinette pulled the knife back without much of a reaction—it wasn't her that caused the wound, after all. It was shallow, one budding bead of scarlet staining the pale expanse of flesh that wasn't covered my her outfit.

Tentatively touching her new cut, the blonde murmured, "There's no need to be such a bitch."

-x-

Chloé, her new companion, was a quick learner. After washing in a stream when they'd scavenged enough soap to not bicker about wasting it, it became abundantly clear that she wasn't a kid. With golden-coloured hair, curves and dips of her body that had been appreciated back when she was a model—Marinette had laughed herself silly when they'd spoken about their previous lives—and a sharp tongue that sometimes wasted too much time by retorting and instigating useless arguments, she was the companion Marinette never knew she wanted.

The blonde was a few months older than her, actually. Sometimes at the end of sentences, her lips would curl into a smirk and she'd coo, "Kid."

The group she'd been with before their awkward meeting in the bathroom was a sensitive subject. Moisture welled in Chloé's eyes whenever it was brought up, and the usually strong voice that she'd become accustomed to came out as quiet and riddled with stutters as she thought about the past.

So, being the awkward bundle of emotions she was, Marinette had lightly patted her on the shoulder in an attempt to comfort her. It had worked with the backfire being Chloé felt it was her right to return the teasing gesture if they had a bad day, when they were huddled up in a small place with a single candle or the dying light from the ashes in front of them.

Chloé's first kill when they were separated had been with knitting needles. They'd been rooting through a desecrated cottage, attempting to look in different rooms for cans of food or even frumpy clothing for Marinette to clumsily edit, when the blonde-haired female had shrieked an unattractive noise. The sounds that followed were confusing; heavy breathing, squelches and then muffled sobbing that had her jumping to her feet with her knife poised and ready to defend her new friend.

A needle was violently stabbed through an old woman's eye. Congealed blood was pooling around the impaling object, steadily dripping down the gross flesh and staining the dead body's clothing further. Where there used to be flesh on the cheeks had fallen away, either from decay or the events of her death, and the grotesque condition of her body infected the entire trashed living room with the smell of rot.

Chloé was sat on the floor with a distraught expression, facial features twisted up in grief and disbelief. Blackened blood was splattered across her shirts from the impact, some dots coating her cheek and spreading into a watered down coat as she hastily rubbed at her face with dirty hands while whispering words of denial.

It was a breakdown of emotions. The blonde hiccuped and sobbed, words coming out slurred through the hysterical laughter that escaped her at one point. It wasn't pretty to watch, so Marinette hovered awkwardly, eyes flickering between the crying female on the floor and the entrances to see whether they'd missed more sinister presences.

Chloé's brother had been the one to protect her, she found out.

Marinette didn't pry for more information, only accepting the bits and pieces that were offered to her over time. In return, she thrust a new clothing at her, explaining that although the weather was warming, keeping her skin covered was a priority.

After watching Marinette panting from exertion from damaging the brains of three corpses, seeing her coated in blood and grime and nicked by her own knife in comparison to her own relatively clean state, that was when Chloé insisted that she needed to learn to take care of herself. Her previous group had babied her, only supplying her with a baseball bat to defend herself if she was to be left alone for an extended amount of time. Hearing about her sheltered time had Marinette's stomach churning uncomfortably at the thought of anyone else but her finding her in that bathroom.

If they were to be separated, she didn't want to think of the horror Chloé could find.

So she tried to teach her. As the months passed by with their thinning bodies and the weather grew unbearably hot, warranting the kind of clothing that would allow their skin to be scratched in seconds, the blonde's hair became permanently tucked into braids for safety reasons (the suggestion of cutting it off hadn't gone over well). When they weren't starved for food and feeling the effects of exhaustion, they noticed that Chloé was steadily able to lift heavier objects, able to strike a foe with quick precision that only faltered when blood splattered onto her face.

It was a steady improvement that made her feel proud. Chloé wasn't a burden to have around; she was nice company, able to tell jokes even when they were convinced they were going to die in a few minutes as rotting bodies pressed their weight against the door, and had a knack for knowing when Marinette needed silence more than anything else.

Sometimes she liked to pry, though.

"You're actually really pretty," Chloé remarked one evening as a single candle lit the living room they were camping out in for the night.

They'd dragged the decaying bodies into the nearest closet and then selected the cleanest room to make do with—which found them huddled up on the floor, sharing a blanket as their backs were pressed against the bottom of a couch that was coated in unidentifiable stains that didn't look, or smell, quite right. Without a destination in mind, they were travelling through the streets at a steady pace, choosing on a whim where to go as they didn't to each other the fears about their family being gone or the fact that they had nothing to hold onto except each other.

She blinked. "I know we're close, but I don't think I can have sex with you, Chloé."

"Don't be such an idiot." Rolling her eyes, Chloé rested her shoulder against hers and leaned in for comfort. "I wouldn't fuck you even if you were my spitting image."

Her hair was inky black and tangled, the dark strands falling around her collarbones when she didn't braid them away. With the contrast between the hair and her pale skin, she'd been teased as a child, even more so for the shape of her eyelids that she'd inherited for her mother, whereas she'd received her cerulean-coloured irides from her father. She was short, she knew that, and then she'd acquired a permanent remainder in the form of a blonde with long legs travelling alongside her. She couldn't say she was confident in her looks when her hair was clumped together from grease, and she was sure she smelled almost as bad as one of the bodies in the closet.

Laughing softly at the arrogance, Marinette replied, "Well, thanks anyway, I guess. I would've been over the moon if a model complimented me years ago."

When she'd found out Chloé had been a model in the beginning, she'd assumed it was a part-time job that she was just starting out with. Learning that the blonde-haired female had graced the front of magazine covers and worn outfits for famous designers had thrown her off for a bit, especially when she tried to connect the shiny and clean image of Chloé she tried to imagine in her head with the figure beside her that had ratty hair, dirt under her nails, and, more often than not, smears of grime on her exposed skin.

"Thanks for not killing me," Chloé murmured, head lolling against hers, "kid."

She huffed.

The strangest thing they did together was attempt to eat a rabbit. They'd stumbled across it while passing through a forest, noting that the creature had caught their leg in trap and couldn't move away far enough. After a small debate, Marinette had stopped their suffering, then suggested that they could be used for their dinner.

They'd been dumbfounded at first, unsure which parts to cut out and decline to eat. The noise of the bones moving, or cutting off the fur to separate the edible parts, had the two of them furrowing their eyebrows in confusion. It wasn't disgusting as she would've thought in the past—at least the innards weren't partly decayed, sweaty from decomposition or exposed due to a vicious bite that had festered the skin surrounding it.

They hadn't found another rabbit since.

Even with the summer sun high in the sky, Marinette refused to wear no jacket. Her reluctance must've showed something more in her expression since her friend stopped prying for more information, instead insisting that if Marinette was going that she would, too.

"Any particular direction you want to go?" the dark-haired female asked, tucking the stray strands that had escaped her braid behind her ear.

Chloé adjusted the hat on her head, free hand wrapped around a long and sturdy piece of metal she'd become acquainted with the previous week. "I don't really care, honestly. As long as we don't see any assholes along the way."

"I completely agree."

They'd been lucky enough to find two hats when the sun started blaring down at them a few months ago, but a close call with the dead in a small office they'd searched through resulted in the loss of one and Marinette nursing inflamed scratches across her forehead and temple. The cuts had healed up eventually without the aid of cream or medicines, though thin pink-coloured lines remained until they'd eventually fade into a white scar.

The terror of the encounter had kept them locked in a nearby building for a few days, Chloé hovering over her with a conflicted expression and a knife shakily held in her hand. While the blonde could look at the dead and stab without tears in her eyes any more, the thought of killing her friend had caused her to sob more than the previous months combined.

But she didn't turn. The idea behind the dead bodies that roamed around without some of their senses was that once someone was bitten by one, it would create a chain reaction with the virus that was already in their bodies—for that was what all presumed it to be—and when their body would shutdown after it had attacked their system, the corpses would reanimate with a non-beating heart from the brain, attracted to sounds and smells, gorging on any flesh available.

Although every living creature, human and animal alike, was attacked, only the humans reanimated and joined the horde, regardless if it was a natural death or from a bite; even those that had their body parts severed from their violent death, whether or not they were missing important organs that were needed to function properly, it didn't matter as long as the brain was untouched.

Marinette had heard horror stories over the past year, about those that had hacked off their bitten limb in an effort to fight off the infection, only for it to fail and cause their last moments to be filled with excruciating pain. The infection terrified everyone, causing them to be paralysed in fear when a companion was revealed to be bitten—she'd seen those that called each other friends emotionally smash their friend's skull in while grossly sobbing.

They decided that scratches didn't trigger the virus, regardless of how deep they deep or shallow they were. It had to be a full-fledged bite, a hunk of skin missing and insides exposed from the disgusting teeth, or an injury that was serious enough to be classed as life-threatening. She doubted that scratches would prove to be harmful unless a corpse managed to literally claw their way through her stomach, or the wound became horribly infected from the dirt and grime of the decaying body.

"I—" Chloé tensed beside her, arm reaching out to stop Marinette from walking forward. "Do you hear that?"

Pausing, she strained her hearing to listen to their surroundings. Sometimes it would be eerily quiet before a groan or a shuffle became apparent, but at that moment that wasn't what was calling their attention. There was a faint noise that was familiar and terrifying at the same time.

Jerking her head to the side to silently indicate they should move, they ducked into an alleyway, bodies shielded from view by the large bins that wafted out a pungent smell—either there was a body stored in there, or the trash had decomposed into a gross sludge.

The tell-tale sound of a car driving past was unnerving. They kept to the side, trying to avoid being seen until they deemed it a safe time to cross the street due to paranoia.

Marinette had told her tales of meeting the worst type of people on the road; the horrors of those with transportation taking advantage of those who didn't, and even the times she'd witnessed an unnecessary slaughter because those within the vehicle had spotted a traveller on foot and had taken a disliking to them.

However sheltered she had been, Chloé readily believed her. She took the warnings to heart, often the first to hear suspicious noises and reacting to them swiftly, proving her worth more than enough times.

Pushing the damp hair from her face, Marinette murmured, "We can trail back for somewhere to stay for the night, but we're running out of food." They'd eaten their last stale granola bars that morning due to naïve optimism that they might find something more than their remaining two cans of food.

Leaning back against the brick wall, she silently weighed their options. They could survive for a few days on their rations—they had enough water, thankfully—but they'd scoured the neighbourhood for the past week and had come back empty-handed more often than not. As they didn't have a clear destination in mind, they didn't have a problem with hanging around if there was no danger. The dead tended to trudge together due to their attraction to noise, which meant the broken vocal chords and grunts that echoed throughout the streets as they jerkily marched along attracted more of their own kind.

"Let's go," Chloé decided, hand tightening around her weapon. Her blue eyes flickered up to the pink marks on Marinette's forehead briefly. "I don't want to stay here longer than we have to."

She had no reason to argue. "Okay."

Luck wasn't on their side.

They'd decided to enter one of the houses that had a high fence that was mostly intact on the outside, in the hopes that the inside wouldn't have been completely trashed. The front door's lock was broken, no longer staying shut when weight was applied, though the hallway and kitchen seemed to be bare and covered in mud, but not blood. They'd looked at each other hopefully with the thought of a night not surrounded by rank smells, then shifted their stances to be ready to attack as they worked their way though the halls, checking the doors.

After barricading the front door by moving heavy furniture in front of it, covering the windows around where they'd be sitting so light wouldn't attract unwelcome visitors, Marinette sat down on the couch with a shared sigh. They'd agreed to sleep in the same room with one on watch back in the early days as a precaution, and even though they were secured within a room with limited entrances, it didn't stop their nagging concerns.

"I'll keep watch first, okay?" Chloé reassured her, purposely sitting in a position that would hurt her back if she fell asleep.

It was long past the days where she watched the blonde warily from the corner of her eyes, so Marinette offered a small smile of thanks before curling up on the sofa, using her jacket as a make-shift blanket.

Chloé might've burned her favourite blanket a few months ago by accident, back when she was learning to make fires and horribly nervous, which resulted in her hands shaking clumsily when trying to complete tasks underneath Marinette's steady gaze.

An unknown amount of time later, she'd jerked awake from the noises coming from upstairs. The candle had melted almost completely, wick barely visible from the pool of wax that was leaking across the dirty wooden floor.

Marinette quickly rubbed at her bleary eyes, murmuring hoarsely, "Chloé?"

There was no reply, though. Stiffening in muted panic, she shoved on her jacket, reaching down on the floor to where she'd placed her favoured knife.

It wasn't there, just like her companion was absent. Their backpacks were on the floor untouched along with Chloé's hat, belongings tight and compact, which meant Chloé had abandoned her post as a watcher, feeling threatened enough to take two weapons.

She ran a hand through her hair with a grimace, imagining the worst scenarios. The light was limited, but enough to see that there was something shining on the floor. She picked up the piece of metal that had dried blood upon it, eyes widening as she took in the implications. The knife was missing, while Chloé's preferred weapon was not. She—she wasn't fond of knives, preferring to stick to bats or weapons that she could swing, as the presence of it, and it brushing against her leg as a reminder when they walked, helped her feel safe.

She wetted her lips.

The spare knife in her boot was still there, thankfully. It was small, not practical unless used for catching a threat unaware of the unexpected move.

With a shaky breath, she kept her footsteps silent as she approached the stairs, eyes darting around the room to see whether anything was out of place. She wasn't difficult to wake up unless she was exhausted—sometimes her companion could wake her up by sneezing. The windows that were uncovered allowed moonlight to come in and dimly illuminate the hallways, allowing her to see where she was going without too much hassle.

The metal was gripped in her hand as she cautiously ascended the stairs. The noises were increasing in volume; distressed whimpers and groans that could've come from the dead or her friend. Marinette edged closer with her stomach clenching uncomfortably, footsteps barely audible over the hushed noises behind the second door in the hallway.

She didn't think she could deal with seeing her friend bitten, let alone in any serious state of injury. The broken sobs that she heard made her hesitation worse, and it was when she'd gripped the doorknob with the intention of opening the door that she heard an unknown voice murmur, "Be quiet, sweetheart. We don't want to wake up your little girlfriend, do we?"

Coldness rushed through her body, pooling in her chest and making her rapidly increasing heartbeat feel heavy and tortured. She—how did she let this happen? They'd checked the rooms, barricaded the front door after seeing that the back had locks that were still functional. No one should've been able to make it inside, let alone grab Chloé while she was keeping watch.

Chloé's voice was pained and hoarse as she stuttered, "P-please—"

A strangled yelp was followed by a choked sob. The noise caused raw anger to pump through her, a familiar veil of stubborn aggression that had gotten out of sticky situations before—but it wasn't her that was in trouble. Barging in without a plan would only cause pain and more suffering, and hot-headedness could cause the death of her friend who was sobbing helplessly on the other side of the door.

There was no other way in, though. The door in front of her was it, other than the window that was too high to climb up onto. So, it was with a deep breath that she pushed on the wood, not flinching as the high-pitched noises sounded from the hinges.

The sight was worse than she thought it would be. Chloé was on the far side of the room, on the floor beside the tattered bed that had been vandalised with trash and other rubbish upon it, within the firm hold of another with a prominent scowl as they held a knife—Marinette's knife—against the blonde's vulnerable neck.

Chloé wasn't struggling for a good reason; blood was coating one side of her face from a wound on her temple, scarlet-coloured liquid dripping over her eye and trailing down until it coated the knife that was pressed against her, making it unclear whether she'd been slashed. Rather than trying to fight back or disarm the newcomer, she was cradling her hands in her lap awkwardly, facial features contorting to express her pain.

A choked noise came out as Chloé's blue eyes caught sight of her.

"What the fuck do you want?" Marinette snarled, hand tightening around the metal.

The newcomer had an androgynous body, short dark-coloured hair, and had a malicious smile, dull cerulean-coloured eyes and wrinkles clear on their skin. The knife was pressed tighter against Chloé's neck, opening a new wound with a breathy laugh as they kept their eyes trained on Marinette, completely disregarding the pained responses the blonde was making.

"I'll slit her throat." Their voice was hoarse, either naturally or from lack of use, and had a hysterical edge to it as they huffed out a quiet laugh as they took in Marinette's appearance. "You'll lose your sweet girlfriend, leaving you to fend for yourself. Tell me, wouldn't that—it would be perfect, don't you think?"

She felt cold. "How did you get in?"

"Sweetheart, one of the windows downstairs was left open," the stranger cooed, lips curling up into a wide smile. "Imagine my surprise when I found the two of you inside, all wrapped up and harmless. How could I resist some fun?"

Staying rooted to the spot so she wouldn't harm the blonde further, Marinette took in the crazed expression, the genuine curve of their lips as they shifted Chloé's wounded body and relished in the noises that escaped her cracked lips. If she'd seen them unaware and her first instinct wasn't to take their supplies and leave, resisting the violent urge to finish them off with a quick blow, then it was clear that the form of entertainment they were after was more than killing off strangers in their sleep.

It was confirmed when the dark-haired individual reached down with their free hand, purposely slamming their fist into Chloé's hands that were huddled together in her lap. The knife stayed against her neck, the blade pressing deeper into the skin when Chloé reacted with a breathless sob, closing her eyes from the pain.

The blonde's hands were coated in blood, the one that had been intentionally placed upon the other falling aside from the assault, revealing the mangled condition of one of her hands. A mixture of pale skin, opened wounds and each finger sticking out at awkward and painful angles—they were all broken violently, even the thumb, appearing red and angry as Chloé slowly clutched her injured hand closer to her body to protect it.

How—how had she slept through that? Her friend had been snatched from her side, viciously tortured as her whole hand became deformed and damaged while she'd been completely unaware.

"Aren't her reactions precious?" they asked rhetorically, fingers sinking into the blonde's braids, pulling painfully so Chloé's back was pressed against them. "The dead don't react like this, no matter what you do. It's—she's a thrilling thing, isn't she?"

Her stomach churned violently, mouth growing dry as she saw the sadistic gleam in her eyes. "Why don't you play with undamaged goods?" Marinette offered, voice low as she threw the weapon onto the other side of the room loudly. "Take me instead and I'll make it worth your while."

"Oh?" Laughing, they pulled onto Chloé's hair to move her as though she was a marionette on strings, making it so her blank expression could be seen.

The sight of it made her heart stutter.

Removing the knife, but keeping it held in their hands, the stranger carelessly shoved the blonde onto the floor with so much as a glance, eyes trained onto Marinette as they stood up. "What a pity she had to pass out," they said, smile appearing across their lips and looking as though they was filling her in on an important secret. "Not everyone can handle that much pain, no? I wonder if you'll react the same. She did have a nice scream, even when it was muffled."

"Let her leave," Marinette demanded, trying to appear as harmless as possible as she took a step closer. Judging by the way the knife wasn't raised up at her, it was safe to assume that she wasn't doing a terrible job at it. "You can do anything you want with me as long as we go somewhere else."

A humourless laugh escaped them. "As adorable as your loyalty to your friend is, do you really think she'll wake up any time soon? Even if I take my time with you, I can circle back and start again."

Her gaze lingered on the slumped form of her friend. "Take me elsewhere."

"Stubborn little thing, aren't you?"

The metal was on the other side of the room, out of reach unless she bolted for it, and the only visible weapon on the intruder was Marinette's bloodied knife clutched within their hand. Not hiding her flinch, Marinette watched as they delivered a kick to the blonde's fallen form, awaiting to see if there was a reaction.

There wasn't—she was unconscious, and probably in shock due to the injuries.

"Come here, sweetheart," they demanded, curling a mocking finger in an attempt to reel her in. "We'll stay until sunrise. Don't worry about your girlfriend; if she wakes up, I won't hurt her as long as you do what I say."

She narrowed her eyes, but complied nonetheless. With stiff movements she lowered the distance between the two of them, watching the smile expand on the dark-haired stranger's face as they adjusted the grip on the stolen knife.

A breathless laugh was audible, then a low demand of, "Sit down."

She did.

There was the noise of ripping fabric as part of the duvet was slashed and then pulled, the dirtied material held in one of their hands as she approached. The knife shined in the limited light of the room, mocking her now that the preferred weapon was the one used to harm her friend. It was clear that the aim was to restrain her hands, and from the lax expression on the aged stranger's face, it became strikingly apparent that she really wasn't perceived as a threat.

When they circled around behind her with the intent of tying her arms back, Marinette moved her body, colliding suddenly and causing the intruder to lose balance in a violent way. They fell to the floor beside her, hand with the fabric clutched catching their fall as a noise of frustration left.

She didn't wait for them to recover, though. Marinette had pushed herself up despite the ache in her shoulder, hand reaching down to pluck the small knife from her boot. By the time they'd regained their balance and stood up to their full height with the intent of raising the knife to do harm, Marinette had thrust her own forward, penetrating the folds of fabric and burrowing the steel into their abdomen.

As they staggered, choking, caught unprepared for the attack, Marinette applied pressure, twisting the blade as a wounded noise escaped them—rather than deterring her, the noise prompted her to shove the woman back, making it so they fell clumsily to the floor with the knife still in their hands.

She stomped down on the hand, rewarded with the pained shriek and breathless gasps as she ground her boot, tempted to recreate the damage that she'd briefly witnessed on Chloé. For someone that had been so enamoured with injuring another, the woman had let her guard down easily, perceiving Marinette as useless due to the open show of weakness that had been discarding her weapon. It was one of the easiest tricks to do, one that had been taught to her back in the first months of the outbreak.

"What's wrong?" Marinette asked, voice sounding soft despite the painful beating of her heart. She took in the knife that was still embedded in their stomach, the sticky blood that had flowed out and began to coat the surrounding area, the winded breathing that came out as wheezes as they coughed, scarlet appearing to coat their lips from the effects of the embedded knife. "Is the pain too much for you?"

One hand was hovering over their wounded abdomen, conflicted between removing the blade for the purpose of defending themselves or leaving it. As she caught sight of her slumped over friend—with her profusely bleeding head and mangled hands—the rage within her boiled, coiling uncomfortably as she raised her bloodied boot to connect with the sadistic stranger's face harshly.

Her breaths were coming fast as she expressed her festering hate, the gargled noises as they choked on their breath and struggled with the wounds inflicted on their face only spurring her on. There was a burn on her legs as she pushed herself to continue, dark eyebrows set in a crazed expression as the sound of bone and cartilage being crushed reached her ears.

Their nose was broken, blood painting the previously pale skin around it as the wounds were fresh and new, liquid catching the limited light whenever her boot was raised to attack. She didn't give herself a chance to think, not to catch her pained breaths as her chest constricted in warning, thoughts focused on the fact that if she'd been there—if she hadn't been so exhausted that she hadn't woken up in time—her friend wouldn't have been passed out due to being tortured as someone told them to stay quiet, not to wake her.

A choked sob escaped her lips, eyes wet with tears that were streaming down her cheeks—the blood shouldn't have splattered up there, but she wasn't sure—as she became aware that the noises that she'd blocked out had stopped.

There was no gross sobbing, unstable breaths due to the onslaught of pain, and when she glanced down to see the damage of her anger, the grotesque sight of an unrecognisable face greeted her. Where there had once been a severe frown or a maniacal smile had been obliterated; skin was bloodied and cut open, revealing the knocked out teeth and damaged gums, jawbone out of place. Their nose had caved in violently, which was probably the cause of their lack of struggling or even unconsciousness.

They looked worse than some of the rotting corpses that roamed around aimlessly.

Removing her attention away from the corpse, as she was sure the brain had been sufficiently damaged, Marinette shakily picked up the fallen knife as her thoughts screamed at her to be prepared to attack. The need to prove that she was still capable of protecting those she cared about was festering, preying upon her self-doubt and hate, taunting her quietly in the back of her mind that she hadn't been able to do so in the past, so why would it have changed?

She staggered across the room, wet sobs escaping as she placed the blade beside her, within immediate reach due to paranoia, and desperately pulled Chloé's body upright, holding her in her arms as her inconsistent breathing turned into choked out hiccups. It—none of it should have happened. Chloé was supposed to be filled with smirks and quick humour, not eerily silent against her chest as the blood upon her forehead began to congeal.

There was a pulse, though. Marinette had hastily pressed her hand to the blonde's throat, wiping aside the blood and to identify where she'd been cut before pressing her fingertips to the undamaged flesh.

"C-Chloé," she whispered shakily, a cold hand brushing the matted blonde hair out of her face. "I—"

It was her fault. The guilty thoughts were becoming louder, shouting as they played into her insecurities and pointed out each of the wounds, the painful angles that her fingers were bent with broken and swollen skin.

The tears didn't stop, nor the gasping breaths she tried to take in to calm herself down from an eventual panic attack. Her face felt on fire, eyes itching terribly as she blinked, despite the coldness of the rest of her body.

She embraced her loosely, trying not to aggravate her wounds in the process. Even with the deceased body on the other side of the room, it didn't bring her the peace of mind of knowing they were safe—because it could've been avoided. If she'd insisted in sleeping last, if she'd hushed the blonde's explanation that she'd been the one to watch for more hours the past few days—

It hurt.

She didn't want to be in that position again, to see the one she cared about helpless to someone else's whims, no matter their intentions. It had harshly reminded her of the times that Chloé had been lost and uncertain back when they'd first met. The image of the distraught Chloé after she'd stabbed a knitting needle through a corpse's eye flashed, reminding her of how far she'd come in their months together.

Chloé had withstood the pain, stubbornly refusing to wake her and had tried to keep her noises to a minimum. The loyalty burnt like a brand where they were touching, the weak breaths the blonde was taking in making it worse.

A voice cut through her breakdown, a firm tone demanding, "Get the fuck away from her."

How could she be so stupid? Marinette flinched, shoulders tensed as she tried to discreetly reach for the knife beside her, only for her fingertips to grope the emptiness of the dirty carpet.

"Do I have to repeat myself?"

Fuck—how had she let this happen again? She knew that a window had been left open, it was too much to ask for for it to have been closed after the first intrusion. And, oh, no—what if they were with the one she'd savagely killed in her fit of self-righteous anger?

The knife was gone, completely out of reach and sight from her position, and the back-up blade she kept was still embedded into the abdomen of her latest kill. The metal was nowhere near her, too, rendering her defenceless other than her hands.

She was the one caught off guard, left with no plan of surprise. Her cold hands placed Chloé onto the floor, back against the wall to prop her up, and she held her hands up in a clear sign of surrender as she shakily went to stand up and face the newcomer.

They didn't give her the chance. A painful blow was applied to her head, balance teetering as she tried to stay upright before the demanding throb from the sudden injury caused her to fall forward, hands only just moving in front of her to take the brunt of the fall, avoiding her head connecting with the floor. Marinette grunted in pain, vision hazy and obscured by the tears that were prickling in her eyes.

A hand snaked into her dark-coloured hair, pulling at the roots painfully and causing her head to move backwards, barring the vulnerable flesh of her neck.

"I'm going to kill you," they whispered, kneeling down behind her so their breath warmed her ear, taking advantage of her momentarily dazed state due to the blow. "You're going to spend your last breaths begging for forgiveness."

What?

There wasn't time to ponder the words. Harshly, they dragged her back by her hair, distancing her from Chloé's unconscious body to the middle of the dirty bedroom, before shoving her out of their grip where she clumsily tried to steady herself on the floor, only for a hand to become coated in the fresh blood that had oozed into the carpet.

Hands were on her neck, fingers pressing into her nape as the thumbs dug into the front violently, the hold tightening without warning as her airways began to be crushed. Her eyes grew wide in panic, breaths quick and strained as she wheezed, aware that her face was growing warmer as the pain increased. She tried to pry at the hands, nails digging into the flesh in an attempt to save her life, yet all her efforts were in vain.

Despite her hazy vision, she could make out that it was a man that was killing her. She couldn't make out his facial features or even the expression he wore before there were black spots growing across her field of view. Her struggles were losing strength as her lungs protested painfully, the pressure upon her throat trying to drown out the rest of the unpleasant sensations that her body was feeling.

Sounds were muffled, distorted by the endless pain, but she could make out when he spat, "You shouldn't have touched her."

Her mouth was open, trying to breathe in desperately as tears trailed down her reddened cheeks, eyes wide as she stared at the distorted figure that was constricting her airways, doing the same thing she'd done to someone that had dared touch someone she cared about—it was fucking karma. Chloé didn't deserve to wake up to see the state of her corpse, nor did she deserve to die. The male was determined for revenge, and wouldn't listen to the pleas that the blonde would utter, trying to explain that she wasn't the one to finish their life.

The grip suddenly loosened, and she fell to the floor, gasping and sobbing, trying to relieve her body from the burning sensation that had spread throughout it. Pressing a hand against her chest, feeling the frantic beating of her heart and the rise of her lungs as they demanded for air, Marinette scooted away, trying to distance herself from the newcomer to buy herself time.

The pained gasp that sounded was loud.

Marinette's head snapped up to take in her surroundings, blue eyes wide with panic as she realised that it wasn't that someone new had entered and turned the tables of the fight, no.

Chloé had saved her life.

She was standing there with a pale but determined face, Marinette's knife clutched in her one good hand while the other was cradled against her chest, with the edge of the blade sliced through the the material of the man's clothes at his back. There wasn't much force behind it, she could tell by the fact that barely the tip had pierced through and connected with his skin, but it had caused him to react in surprise and lose his grip on her neck.

Pulling the knife back, Chloé's body swayed dangerously, showing the weak state she was in. It was a surprise that she was conscious at all, even with the adrenaline kicking in as she witnessed the life-threatening situation in front of her.

"Turn around and face me," Chloé demanded, voice cold and furious all at once, despite the softness that showed she was exhausted.

Although her breathing was still pained, her vision had recovered spectacularly. She could see the determination in her friend's expression, the shock in the male's—he was tall, easily a head above Chloé who was already at an impressive height, with dirty blond-coloured hair that fell to his earlobes. When she looked at his expression as he had his back to Chloé, not responding to her command yet, she noticed that rather than the fear that anyone would've felt, he seemed—he was pleased.

"Look at me, you fucking bastard," she snapped, sounding as though she was swaying dangerously on her feet with only one functional hand.

When he started to comply, holding his hands up in a form of surrender that he'd utterly ignored when Marinette had tried to do so, Chloé's eyes briefly met hers before they frantically darted to the side of the room, then she was staring unwaveringly at the man's moving body, as though it hadn't happened.

She understood, though. Marinette shuffled as discreetly as she could, fingers curling around the metal of Chloé's weapon that she'd thrown across the room in the beginning. Struggling onto her feet, the dark-haired female took in a shaky breath, torn between relief and anger.

All it took to make the situation worse was a breathless call of, "Chlo."

Marinette watched in bewilderment as the knife fell from her friend's hand, her expression changing into one of horror as she stared at the blond-haired male before them in a new light. Chloé staggered back, flinching as he took a step towards her, hand reaching out silently.

"A-Adrien?" her voice was quiet, eyes wide and utterly vulnerable as she hugged her injured hand into her chest. "I—is that you?"

Marinette uncertainly held the weapon, knowing that it wasn't right to intrude on the private moment that she didn't know. She thought she and Chloé had grown close over the months, but it was a harmful punch that reminded her that they didn't have to share everything together. There was only so much that they could reveal, the trust building as time passed the by. Marinette hadn't shared her entire life with her, so it wasn't unrealistic to know that Chloé had kept some things kept close to her heart.

She could see the patch of growing scarlet starting to stain the male's shirt from the small wound, not severe enough to be classed as life-threatening unless dirt and infection entered the cut. There was no anger in his stance any more; shoulders were relaxed, the hands that had been violently squeezing at her neck were outstretched harmlessly towards Chloé, as if he was silently asking permission to hold her close.

Shifting the weight upon her feet, Marinette weighed the situation. From Chloé's dumbstruck expression—the wide eyes, mouth open without words coming out as she stared—and the lack of violence, she didn't know how to react. If the male was exacting revenge for her kill, there was going to be a tense moment when he turned around to attempt to finish the job, regardless of Chloé's protests.

Rather than stepping into the offered embrace, Chloé pushed his arms away then walked around him, swaying dangerously as she staggered towards Marinette. The male stayed where he stood, with his bleeding back to them, as he stared down at his arms wordlessly, not attempting to restart the short exchange they'd shared. Chloé ignored his presence, moving forward to clumsily use her one arm to pull her into a weak hug, carefully trying to avoid squishing her hand between their chests.

"You're okay," Chloé murmured, a hushed mantra that she repeated underneath her breath, holding her closer with a pained expression. "You're okay."

Those words brought forth dry sobs, hiccups of breath as she clutched her friend tighter, not caring that the damp blood from the blonde's face was smearing against her, drying into her hair as they held onto each other.

Her voice cracked when she whispered, "I-I'm so sorry. I—"

"No," her friend replied, trying to sound strong despite the exhaustion and blood loss. "You fucking saved me, kid."

The slurred words and the nickname at the end had a hysterical laugh escaping, the sound evolving into sobs at the end as she buried her face into the blonde-haired female's neck. Her own throat felt like it was on fire, her vocal cords protesting use at all so she sounded like she needed to cough endlessly whenever she spoke, yet her mangled friend on the edge of exhaustion was using her energy to reassure her that she was fine, that it wasn't her fault, because she knew of her consuming self-doubt and the weaknesses that scared her when they were huddled together in the evenings.

Chloé breathed, "Mari."

She tightened her hold to indicate she was listening.

"I-I—fuck—that's my brother, Mari."

-x-

His name was Adrien.

Their introduction was rocky. Marinette sported grossly-coloured bruises on her neck as evidence for weeks, much more visible than the scab on his back that had been hastily patched up after he'd interrupted their emotional embrace. While he didn't try to kill her again, that didn't mean that their attitudes weren't frosty towards each other.

His hair was a shade darker than Chloé's, irides coloured a vivid emerald, and when Marinette stood next to him, her chin came up to the height of his shoulder. When they stood next to each other it was hard to see the resemblance; the curves of their noses were different, head shapes not alike at all, and it was after one off-hand comment that she learned that they were step-siblings, not related by blood, but that didn't matter when they'd been together since they were five.

Chloé had fallen unconscious quickly during their first meeting, meaning Marinette was left standing awkwardly in the living room with her knife in her hands—the tip stained with his blood—while he stood on the other side, a baseball bat gripped with a blank expression as they stared at each other.

The blonde-haired female had been nice enough to ask him not to attack her before she'd passed out.

It was a terrible misunderstanding that had almost resulted in Marinette's death. Adrien had climbed through the window, separated from his group due to the undead, and had planned to stay there until the sun was in the sky, only to hear muffled noises from upstairs. He'd been able to identify Chloé, reacting on instinct when he'd seen her battered state in the arms of a stranger—it didn't matter that she was crying and whispering apologies, apparently, as he'd been too fuelled by rage to take notice of them.

Their awkward showdown of refusing to let the other take watch, not trusting one another to run off with Chloé, lasted until morning. Marinette's hands were twitching and her muscles were stiff, while the male was tense with a permanent frown etched upon his lips.

It only increased when Chloé's first instinct was to hug Marinette rather than him.

He was insistent that Chloé needed to return with him, to go back to the group that she'd been with four months ago, before the summer skin burned their exposed skin, for her to be safe. The stressed or blank expressions he sported—the ones she'd stared at for hours while her muscles cramped from staying still—only smoothed out when he was touching his sister, the contact serving as a reminder that she was alive, breathing, and beside him.

"I'm not returning without Marinette," Chloé snapped, grumpily hissing in pain as her brother tried to straighten out her broken fingers in make-shift bandages for the time being. There wasn't much that could be done with their limited supplies, let alone the fact that the two capable people in their newly formed group profusely distrusted each other. "If you think I'm walking out of here without her, you can kindly go fuck yourself, Adrien."

At least the pain hadn't cured her cursing, Marinette mused to herself in relief, a fond smile tugging upon her lips. They were sat together on the couch, ready to leave when the medical treatment was done since their belongings had been untouched. Bumping her shoulder gently against her friend's in an affectionate move, Marinette tried to express her silent gratitude for her unwavering loyalty.

With that expressed, Marinette figured it was only right to give them time alone now that the tall female was awake, so she stood up and gently announced, "I'm going to get my knife." Her voice was hoarse, making her wince in pain from the use.

She took her time retrieving the small blade from the cold stomach, wiping the congealed blood onto the corpse's clothing before running a hand through her hair, blank eyes staring ahead as she took in the changes. When she returned, Chloé had her hat on and had tried to make herself appear more presentable.

Adrien kept staring at her out of the corner of his eyes, trying to place himself between her and his sister as a safety barrier. When the distrust became too obvious, Chloé had hit him on the chest with her good hand, crudely threatening to stab him again unless he backed off with his overprotective routine.

Marinette didn't know how to feel. The stories that she'd heard about her friend's brother had always made her feel uncomfortable; he had cared about her—he still did, even after thinking she was dead for months—and tried to coddle her despite the situation of the world. She could recall the mess that Chloé had been back when they first met, when she could barely hold a knife, let alone stab another with it, even if their innards had fallen out and their rotting muscles were on display. She hadn't had a weapon on her when they'd become separated, an emotional event that Chloé still hadn't told her the full details about.

So, there they were, starting to walk through the alleyways when Marinette stopped, eyes widening from her obliviousness.

"The car," she croaked, hand reaching out to tug onto Chloé's sleeve so she wouldn't have to talk too loudly.

The blonde understood, though. "Oh!" Chloé exclaimed, turning around on the spot, fingers slipping between Marinette's as she pulled them back the way they came.

Adrien cursed, his language almost as colourful as his sister's as he jogged to catch up to them.

Chloé's reaction to the corpse was to whistle before grinning as she dropped to her knees, uninjured hand searching through the pockets of their jeans. She struggled to open a few of the buttons upon the many pockets before she made a noise of triumph, withdrawing keys that caught the sunlight.

The car—the one they'd been wary of the day before—had enough petrol left to get back to his camp. Adrien insisted on driving rather than giving directions, then demanded for Marinette to sit in the front seat.

She assumed it was so he wasn't paranoid that she'd slit his neck from behind, honestly.

There was a brief explanation about how he'd found himself apart from the two he was travelling with, commanding them to return to their home, but Marinette was struggling to keep her half-lidded eyes open, the voices becoming distorted as time dragged on. The conversation was light and friendly from what she could tell (due to Adrien adamantly ignoring her), and she kept her eyes on the scenery outside of the rumbling car, taking in the fallen trees, smashed and vandalised homes, along with the dead that wafted a putrid stench when they passed a gaggle of them.

Chloé was the one to wake her up.

The petrol had ran out a twenty minute walk away. Marinette had cleared her throat and grimaced, which prompted Chloé to offer the last of their water for her to drink.

Adrien's stare as she drank was unnerving.

He gave limited information as they walked, which left them absolutely lost in where they were going. The area was new, further away from the cities, with large trees surrounding the area, which prompted Marinette to clutch the handle of her knife in anxiety as they started to follow a trail into the woods. Chloé was softly chatting to her brother, expression slipping from the easy-going look she'd adopted when her blue eyes flickered down to see the bloodstain on his shirt. She didn't apologise for it, though, and he in turn didn't mention the details of their meeting.

There was no preparation for them to meet anyone new—whether it was because Chloé would've already known everyone, or he was promptly ignoring her, she wasn't sure. Marinette trudged behind them, keeping a small distance as her eyes flickered around the bushes along the trail, her gait tense as she moved.

Their destination was a row of cottages along dirt path, sitting beside a small lake where the wood of the pier had rotted and fallen off, jagged edges of the planks sticking out dangerously. They walked towards the second cottage, one with all the windows bordered up, looking wholly uninviting from the blood splatters that coated the front door. It was charming, really, compared to some of the sights that she was used to. The only thing that she found odd was that there were no corpses on the outside, not even the ones of the families that must've lived there in the beginning. Though, she supposed the dead could've been walking through the trees, unknowingly using the landscape to their advantage.

"I'm going to take your weapon now," Adrien spoke up, addressing her for the first time in hours. Unknowingly, she must've pulled a displeased face, because he continued on to grit out, "My sister may trust you, but I'm not putting the lives of my friends in your bloody hands."

He didn't mean figuratively—there really was dried blood all over her hands, clothes, and she was sure her face was splattered, too. Standing next to the bloodstained Chloé with her make-shift bandages, that included a piece of fabric tied around her head to cover her temple wound, they must've made quite the pair in comparison to the relatively unharmed male in front of them.

Chloé reached for her hand again, giving it a reassuring squeeze. She didn't tell her brother about the knife Marinette kept in her boot.

They had a specific knock to enter the door. It seemed so juvenile that her lips had twitched as she tried not to laugh aloud, expression smoothing out into cool disinterest instead of portraying the rapid beating of her heart.

She wanted to trust these people, really. Chloé trusted them, and that was the only reason that she was standing there, accepting the thought of being considered the outsider for an undetermined amount of time. There was no chance that they'd welcome her into the fold without suspicions; almost everyone had done something deplorable and utterly wrong since the world had changed, yet there was still the pretence of judgement when it came to groups.

Her last group had demanded to know how many of the living she'd killed.

Adrien's group—she was right in assuming he was the go-to leader, she would find out later—was large compared to the ones she was used to, but not enough to act as a force to be reckoned with if arguments grew violent with other humans. Not including her and Chloé, there was seven of them. When they first arrived it was to a cold home with ripped wallpaper in the hallways, suspicious stains at the entrance and on the stairs, dust coating the shelves and other furniture. The coverings over the windows had gaps in them, allowing small beams of light to shine through and illuminate the rooms slightly, making it easier to manoeuvre throughout the home.

Four people were present, the two missing being the ones that had been with Adrien. Three males; Ivan was tall with black hair and wide shoulders, Nathaniel pale-faced with red hair that was pulled into a ponytail, and Nino, the one that had opened the door and promptly wrapped his arms around Adrien in a tight hug, had tanned skin and dark curls that he tried to hide underneath a hat.

It made her miss the one she'd lost.

The one other female, Juleka, was tall, a head above Chloé and thinner, with lank black-coloured hair and pale skin. She was the one to notice the two of them trailing after Adrien—Nino had been too involved explaining the the other two weren't back yet, hands animated as he spoke.

Marinette had stood off awkwardly to the side while her friend received tight embraces and warm welcomes, some tears and whispered comments that had an embarrassed smile coming onto the blonde's face.

Adrien stood beside her, arms crossed against his dirty t-shirt. She could see where Chloé had gotten her ideas from in the beginning; he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt as a jacket, the thin material covering his skin from view. Although her denim was hot, it could withstand a bite and award her the much needed time to recover without worrying about infection. It was covered in blood and smelled absolutely awful, yes, but she could deal with that until she had the chance to clean it in the lake outside.

"And who are you?" Nino had questioned, arm wrapped around Chloé's shoulder as he tried to usher her to the couch to attempt to fix her wounds.

Her gaze flickered to the others staring at her uncertainly.

"Marinette," Chloé called, capturing their attention as she sat down. "Get your ass over here so someone can check your fucking injuries."

Silently, she complied with the demand. There was no point fighting the blonde when she wanted something, and sitting down beside her felt more comfortable than standing off to the side, awkwardly trying to avoid the inquisitive glances that were send her way.

They didn't ask her questions. Ivan—who's tall frame meant that his trousers showed his ankles due to their small height—was revealed to be the designated medic, and it became clear that he worked in silence with a furrowed brow as he worked on Chloé's wounds first. There was only so much they could do with the scavenged first-aid kits that were stuffed at the bottom of each backpack.

Chloé had taken it upon herself to talk to Marinette, ignoring the curious glances at their interactions, and explained that back in the beginning, they'd packed all the medical supplies into one bag, only for it to be lost when they were caught unaware by a small horde. The blonde told her how Ivan had been studying to be a doctor, therefore the most suited for the job despite the muscles adorning his long arms, and only stopped her nervous chatter—for it couldn't be anything else, and she knew that Chloé rambled on when she was unsure of the situation—when garbled curses escaped her lips as her fingers were wrapped properly.

"Is she—" Nino cut himself off with a cough, eyes flickering between the two when Ivan had gone to look for a different kit. "Are you staying here, Marinette?"

Her throat fucking hurt, even swallowing was a chore, so Chloé replying for her was a crass blessing. "Kick her out and I'll end your miserable life myself, asshole."

Raising his eyebrows, Nino raised his hands as a reply, indicating that he didn't want any trouble.

The group seemed close. They laughed and joked with each other, sharing personal space with hugs and affectionate gestures that didn't look forced at all. Adrien's back was covered with fabric, no questions asked about the wound, then Marinette was treated last and flinched when prodding fingers touched the tender part of her head, then inspected the bruises upon her neck. There were no questions about her past, why she was there at all and absolutely filthy beside Chloé, and the blonde-haired female had taken it upon herself to stay beside her, rather than ditching her for her previous friends.

It wasn't school—she wasn't going to be jealous that her friend was talking to other people. Marinette was trying not to talk too much as it was, so she was sure her company was terrible, but that didn't deter her. Chloé tugged her along by the hand, creating conversation and predicting Marinette's replies by her expression. There were still curious stares towards them, glances pausing on Marinette's dirty form and the way they were huddled together in one corner of the room, thick jackets on despite the heat of the summer.

The first night was awkward. The remains of their food was secured in Chloé's backpack, enough to last for a few days, yet Adrien had approached when the light was thinning, placing a protein bar in his sister's hand with a fond smile.

Half was practically forced down Marinette's throat.

Adrien reassured his sister that the locks on the front and back door were good quality, that the windows were secure and the wood would need to be pried away in the first place for someone to break the glass to crawl in, and there definitely wasn't a basement with an alternate entrance that someone could come through to slit their throats as they slept, all in the hopes that she and Marinette would sleep at the same time.

They wouldn't, though. Chloé stubbornly kept watch first, body close to hers to act as a comforting presence in the room of strangers, while the others in the group retreated into what she presumed to be usable beds upstairs.

When she woke up to Chloé's gentle patting of her shoulder, they diligently swapped positions and made it so the blonde had most of the blankets, and only a small portion was covering Marinette's legs for extra warmth. There was a candle burning in the middle of the room, serving as a small light to illuminate Adrien's tired face from where he sat on the sofa, running his hands through the dirty strands of his hair as he suppressed a yawn.

He didn't look so threatening on the verge of sleep.

Nino came down to swap with him an hour or so after she'd woken up, the shared tired glances making the two smile before the blonde-haired male went up the stairs, the wood creaking with every step. The words of assurance that the house was safe aside, she assumed that they planned to keep one person awake to listen out for the door, for the specific series of knocks that would indicate that the two that were missing had returned.

"My girlfriend's out there," he interrupted their silence to say.

Adjusting her shoulders awkwardly, feeling a tinge of pain from one, she kept her arms wrapped around her waist for warmth. She supposed that a lack of answer was better than offering her sympathies.

"She's good," Nino continued, soft voice carrying across due to the cold silence. "She's strong. I—if Chloé can survive, then she can, too."

The words struck her like a punch, anger contorting her expression as her gaze flickered to the steady breathing of her friend. She didn't need someone that she'd just met judging Chloé, not when they didn't know anything about their situation, and even though it had been spoken to give hope for his late girlfriend, it was offensive.

Taking in a deep breath, feeling the burn within her throat, Marinette gruffly choked out, "You don't know shit."

It was a comment that would've been more appropriate coming from Chloé's lips.

Nino must've thought that, too, as his head snapped up to look at her in horrified surprise. "I—I didn't mean it like that! I meant, well, you had Adrien to save you and—"

"Save me?" she croaked, furious eyes trained on the figure in the dim light of the upcoming sunrise that pooled through the cracks in the windows. The assumption, the dismissal of her survival skills, all of it mixed into the bundle of anger she'd kept within when she thought about how they'd coddled Chloé in what was considered to be a apocalypse, drove her upper lip to raise into a sneer. "That man has done nothing for me."

Taking the hat off to run a hand through his messy hair, in what she presumed to be a nervous movement, Nino averted his gaze, not trying to push the conversation any further.

Her throat throbbed.

When everyone was up, buzzing around the door quietly as they had muted conversations and exchanged water, some changing into different clothing and leaving a pile that needed to be washed on a counter. Juleka offered to stand guard if she and Chloé wanted to bathe in the lake, and change clothes afterwards, so they took her up on that offer in the end.

They both refused to throw their jackets away in favour of lighter fabrics to make up for the weather, so they placed them on tree branches to dry in the sun while they sat outside in their soaked clothing. They hadn't found clothes to fit them for a few weeks, the last spare t-shirt in her backpack had been used to start a fire a few weeks back, so they'd slipped back into their wet clothing after scrubbing the dried grime from their bodies.

One of the undead wandered along the bushes, staggering dangerously, and it was taken out by a swift blow to the head by Juleka. The body was then dragged, leaving a bloody trail of gore and brain matter, to a further distance where corpses were piled around in a make-shift row, trying to line the property with a putrid ward that reeked of death and decay. It explained the missing bodies she'd noticed in the beginning and the lack of roaming corpses that were sniffing out their next meal.

The two that were missing returned when others had retreated for slumber, with Marinette taking watch first in her designated corner where her and Chloé's backpacks were pressing against each other.

The knocks had Nino visibly perking up, walking as quickly as he could without making too much noise, the he leaned forward to peer through the hole in the door to see was on the other side. The sight he saw made him release a small gasp that she could hear across the hallway.

Two females came into sight; one tanned, with dirty red-coloured hair and blood on one side of her stomach, her arm wrapped around a small figure as they stumbled through the threshold. The other was injured, releasing small pained moans as they were guided through steadily to the living room, their light brown hair matted with dirt, scarlet coating their side and steadily dripping, droplets creating a trail on the floor as they lurched forward.

The wounded one was Alix. She learned that from the hushed murmurs of her name, the way that the group awoke and hovered around her, trying to keep the dying girl awake and tend to her wounds, whispering words of recovering and assuring her she'd be fine—

Ivan had patched her up to the best of his abilities. Nathaniel and Juleka were shooed back upstairs to sleep, leaving Adrien to hover by the wounded girl, leaving her and the newly awoken Chloé to be sat in their corner with uncertain expressions as they didn't know how to react. Nino stayed beside the red-head's side, proving that it wasn't his girlfriend that was fatally injured. It took ten minutes for him to pry the crying female up and wipe her tears, clasping her hand gently to pull her up the stairs to privacy.

Alix had passed out from the pain, her skin pale and sweaty. Some of the blood had been wiped off, bundles of cloth held against her profusely bleeding side, that wasn't decreasing the flow of the blood at all, with the stale pillows piled underneath her to try and make her comfortable.

"She was bit," Adrien murmured, mostly addressing his sister in a soft voice as he kept a knife beside him. It wasn't hers, though. She hadn't seen that since they'd first arrived, and Chloé's preferred piece of metal had been left behind, forgotten, where they'd found him. "Yesterday. It's why they took so long to get back."

She didn't have long to live, then. By the wheezing breaths she was taking in, the way sweat was pooling at her temples and coating her skin to make it shimmer in the limited light of the candle, there wasn't much time before her heart would stop. Her organs would cease to work, pain would travel through her body as it shut down, until her chest would cease to beat for as little as a few minutes up to hours for the reanimation to start.

From the way he was sat there, staring with a grim look, his lips pulled into a frown, he wasn't ready to end his friend's life until it was necessary. Marinette had been that way, back in the first year of the outbreak. When she flinched from the wounds on her companions, felt sympathy for the screams that could be heard in the night, and huddled into her knees with her hands over her ears to try and muffle the hauntings groans and the noise of bones scraping against the floor.

She swallowed. "What are you waiting for?"

Chloé stretched her limbs, standing up and crossing the room to sit beside her brother. "Why are you prolonging this, Adrien?" the blonde asked, mirroring her point of view in her own way.

The scowl was directed at Marinette despite that. "I'm—it's barely been a day, okay? The fever's only just set in and she's not delirious; just unconscious right now. If she wants someone to end it when she's awake, we'll grant her wish. Is that fine with you?" His tone had dropped lower with anger towards the end, narrowed eyes staring at Marinette in an accusatory manner.

The conditions of death were never the same, though. It was unpredictable how long it took someone to succumb to their wounds, or for their brain to restart and make their bodies rely on sound and hearing only. As much as she wanted to say those points aloud, to try and make him realise that they were only prolonging the inevitable from feelings of affection, she didn't think that she'd be able to end Chloé's life easily if she was in that position.

"It has nothing to do with me," she replied hoarsely.

That didn't stop him from looking at her negatively. Then again, she supposed her previously dirty face had been nothing but angry expressions the day they met, and now that she was clean there still wasn't anything positive about her. When she looked at him she remembered the hands wrapped around her neck, the throbbing pains whenever she swallowed obnoxiously reminding her of the fact that the happy occasion of Chloé finding her family again had been tarnished by the violent meeting. But it was fine, really, she tried to tell herself. If her friend was happy, she was glad to skirt around the smiles they all shared, keeping her fragile feelings locked down.

The words came out honestly before she could stop them. "I don't like you."

He looked at her incredulously.

"If you weren't my brother, I'd fucking hate you, too, Adrien," Chloé chimed in, sounding amused with their interaction. When he didn't turn his head to respond to her, instead keeping his gaze sternly on Marinette, she continued on to say, "You jumped to conclusions and almost killed my best friend. I stabbed you for her."

He stiffened, hands brushing over his thighs for a moment. The knife had only been mentioned as a joke within their first few hours, not brought up properly since. "Fine, I get it. I was a jerk, okay? It wasn't my best moment—I panicked."

Marinette stubbornly raised her head. "That's not an apology."

"Are you for real?" he grit out, frustration leaking into his tone. As he raised a hand to touch the skin at the nape of his neck, he corrected himself with, "I'm sorry for trying to—trying to kill you. I'm grateful you kept Chloé safe but right now I don't fucking trust you at all, and just looking at you makes me mad."

Well, she could work with that. Her feelings were similar in that regard; looking at him and remembering the tales that she'd heard abut Chloé's brother made her feel uncomfortable. With a simple nod, Marinette tried to detach herself from the conversation, but all that response did was cause his eyebrows to furrow in mild confusion.

She averted her eyes.

When she looked up after a few minutes of silence, he was still looking at her with that befuddled expression, as though he couldn't understand what thoughts were going through her head. She returned the stare with a frown of her own, trying to convey that all the suspicious attention that she'd received the past two days was wearing her down.

"Adrien!" the sharp call of his name coming from Chloé's lips caught their attention.

Marinette watched as the blonde shoved Adrien harshly aside, causing him to stumble onto the floor, hands down against the grimy carpet to soften the fall. Chloé had grasped the knife that had been set aside, jumping to her feet as her knee connected with the reanimated body that had sluggishly started to move, pale bloodstained hands grasping out to try and catch the air where he had been previously.

Applying weight onto the chest, pinning the body down as the hands thrashed and clawed at her clothing, nails not penetrating the thick denim or reaching the exposed skin of her neck, Chloé raised the knife without hesitation and sliced the blade through the right eye. The sound was sickening, blood spurted out from the wound, and the raw flesh and muscles were clearly on display as half of the knife had been impaled through violently. The reaching hands dropped as the brain was damaged, falling down lifelessly as the murky eyes that had once been a bright cerulean stared unseeingly ahead.

As she was unable to dislodge the weapon without the use of her second hand, Chloé pulled her hand back, wiping the blood that had splattered onto her hand over Alix's shoulder. When she was satisfied with that, she turned to Adrien—who was still sat on the floor, back facing Marinette so she couldn't see his reaction—and scowled at him, disapproval clear in her stance.

"If you weren't so busy staring your ass off at Marinette, you could've handled that," she snapped, storming irritably past him. "You were fucking asking for a disaster by leaving her there."

In the morning, when those that had retreated upstairs to sleep had descended the stairs together with quiet and worried voices, the collective reaction was for them to give their sympathies to Adrien.

He cleared his throat awkwardly, gesturing to where his sister was sat beside Marinette. "It wasn't me," Adrien admitted. He paused for a moment until he noticed that the stares for being sent towards the newcomer instead of the one he intended, then announced, "It was Chloé."

All of them were surprised, everyone single one, and that frustrated her endlessly. Chloé, on the other hand, looked smug as she tucked the loose blonde hair behind her ear.

Nino's girlfriend was the one to approach her in the afternoon after Alix's corpse had been taken outside, added to the undead pile around the area. She'd changed into a t-shirt that wasn't stained in blood, loose jeans that were held up by a tattered belt, and looked different in the offered light from the cracks when she wasn't in the middle of sobbing.

"You're Marinette, aren't you?" the red-head started, shoes stopping a few centimetres from where she was sat with her knees tucked into her chest.

Surprised at the contact, her blue eyes flickered up to meet hers. "Yes?" Marinette replied, throat still tender and protesting use.

"No, I mean—" Running a hand through her hair in what seemed to be embarrassment from the colour that appeared on their thin cheeks, Marinette watched in confusion as she stumbled over her words. "You're Marinette."

Well, yes. "That is my name," she said slowly, dark eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

Their conversation was attracting the attention of the others. Chloé, who had been talking to her brother outside privately, had been let back in after he'd used their specific knock and sauntered towards her, briefly giving the red-head a frown before she sat down.

Nino, with his damn hat that shielded him from the sun, took that as his sign to join, too, and came up beside his girlfriend and wrapped an arm loosely around her waist. "What's up, babe?" he questioned lightly, jerking his chin towards Marinette. "Grilling the new girl already?"

His girlfriend shook her head, eyes fixated on hers. "I'm Alya."

Blinking, she answered cautiously, "Okay?"

"Alya," she stressed, hand wildly gesturing between the two of them as her voice got louder. "I—come on! I know I used to wear dorky glasses and we haven't seen each other in, well, five years? It might be six, I'm not too good at remembering, but we were friends, Cheng."

Cheng.

The sound of her surname played like a broken record in her head, eyes widening in unrestrained shock as she took in the female before her. Alya—Alya. She could imagine the added weight to her cheeks, the large spectacles that adorned her face and often fogged up when they sipped warm drinks in the morning before classes, the sound of her laugh—

Smoothly removing her boyfriend's arm, Alya dropped to her knees, placing a hand cautiously on one of Marinette's with a gentle smile, her brown eyes filled with warmth and flickering memories of the two of them as awkward teenagers with too long limbs that they hadn't grown into yet.

"Alya," Marinette croaked.

The pain in her voice, the grimace that clearly showed in her expression, caused the red-head's eyes to dart down to where she presumed the dark colours around her neck to be. "What happened to you?" Alya questioned, horrified.

As much as she wanted to let her eyes flicker to where she knew Chloé's brother stood, she didn't. There were countless confused glances sent their way, questions that Alya happily supplied when she announced they used to be close friends at school, and it made the suspicion towards her lessen a bit now that there were two people that knew her.

If Chloé was purposely staying by her side whenever Alya appeared, she wasn't going to complain about it.

-x-

Her transition into the group wasn't painful. There were moments when she wanted nothing more than to be huddled up in a blanket with only one person by her side, rather than the various heads that slowly smiled at her sincerely as time passed, and there were times when she didn't know how to react when two or more of them ventured outside to scavenge for food. In the beginning, Adrien had assigned her and Chloé to go off together because they were accustomed to each other, but only if they had another by their side.

Marinette was given her knife back after two weeks—that was when she and Chloé were sent out with Nino tagging along, awkwardly trying to interject in their quiet conversations and insist that his plans were a lot better than theirs. They took a car that was past the edge of the property—the interior was stained with Alix's blood, a stale scent engulfing the vehicle—and drove to the outskirts of a nearby town. Although Chloé's fingers were crooked, throbbed when it was cold at night, and Ivan insisted she kept them wrapped up still, she proved her stubborn determination by efficiently slaughtering a corpse that had grabbed onto Nino's ankle with the heel of a designer shoe.

It was messy. The heel had pierced the rotten flesh easily, striking through the cloudy eyes and penetrating the brain, causing the putrid corpse to fall lifelessly to the floor by Nino's feet, a pool of blackened blood appearing as a grotesque halo around the matted hair that had chunks missing.

Ignoring Nino's baffled expression, Marinette mused quietly, "Still doesn't beat the knitting needle."

Chloé laughed, an honest and high-pitched sound. "Just you wait."

When they returned with food, a tube of toothpaste and the remains of a first-aid kit that hadn't been fully raided, Nino was insistent that they were fine to go out alone once the blonde's fingers had healed fully. He went as far to say that he thought he was a burden at some points because he didn't understand what the two of them meant when they didn't talk, then apologised to Marinette quietly when they were alone from his previous assumptions. The fact that Chloé hadn't flinched or curled into a hysterical ball from her violent actions had helped to prove that she was capable of surviving—half of them had doubted that she had been the one to kill Alix for the longest time.

Alya was just how she remembered; full of bright smiles, quick humour and prone to body contact with those she liked. She dragged Marinette awkwardly into conversations, helping her get to know the others in her own way.

She learned quickly that Nino had a similar personality to his girlfriend. He was quick to laughter, liked to make jokes to shift the tension in the heavy moments, and was capable of heavy lifting, if needed. He was considered the go-to if there was an ambling corpse visible outside, a quick thinker, though his plans often weren't thought out towards the end.

Juleka was shy and reserved, offering small smiles in the peaceful moments and quiet input to some topics. She'd been a florist before the outbreak, and prided herself on knowing which plants and berries were edible due to her interest in camping. Marinette found herself slowly talking to the taller female, telling softly-spoken jokes to see her brown-coloured eyes light up with humour for brief moments.

Her girlfriend had been killed the day Marinette found Chloé.

Adrien found Ivan in a bar. The broad-shouldered male had been looting bottles of alcohol that he knew to be effective for medical purposes, a bag hanging off each shoulder as he muttered underneath his breath. While he looked surly, she found out that he grew embarrassed easily, cheeks turning pink within moments as he averted his gaze. Much like Juleka, he chose to keep his social interactions limited, but that didn't mean he didn't embrace those that came back from scouting with wide arms.

One in particular had her wary. Nathaniel, with his turquoise-coloured eyes that stared out the small cracks in the window during the day, the one that she spied watching the undead from a distance with an unreadable expression, was confusing. He was quiet, the least sociable member of the group, and after she'd come back from her first run, she noticed quickly that if he witnessed a kill, he recorded it down in a weathered notebook that he kept in his backpack.

When he'd retreated upstairs to sleep, Marinette realised that he'd never been the one to be put on watch. All of the others had, one person sat in the living room so they could hear noises from both sides of the house, and it had been after four quiet debates between Chloé and her brother for her to convince him that there should be at least two up considering the size of their group.

So, when she and Chloé were selected to be the ones awake, she took it as her chance to quietly ask about the odd behaviour she'd seen from the red-haired male.

Chloé had scoffed, dislike painting her features as she explained that he'd been with them since the beginning, a stray that had wandered up to her brother for the chance of safety despite the fact that he had nothing to offer. She had thought that it was harsh to say that, but when the blonde continued on to say that he was adamantly a pacifist that refused to kill, she understood the bitter tone her friend used.

"Why?" Marinette found herself asking, eyebrows knitting together in confusion. Why would anyone willingly limit themselves when the world was full of blood and violence?

Fiddling with the fabric wrapped around her fingers, Chloé muttered, "He's disillusioned, okay? Before everything happened, he was a scientist that did weird research and shit, I don't fucking know. I used to block out the technical rubbish he spouted."

"What do you mean?" she enquired.

"He's fucked up, Marinette." Chloé's eyes snapped up to look into her beseechingly. "Just—if you find yourself in trouble out there, don't expect him to help you, okay? I can tell you from experience that he'd watch you die for the name of science."

Her stomach churned uncomfortably at the thought. The way Chloé was saying it paired with the grim line of her lips, the fact that there could be some truth in the words had her terrified.

Nathaniel didn't fight. He thought that the dead could be cured, that the virus that was contaminating each of their bodies was a mutation that hadn't been handled properly, thus kick-starting the corpses that lurched around, gorging on flesh. The notebook consisted of his findings; the distances they could hear, how fast they could move in comparison to their decaying flesh and putrid smells, whether they could smell blood and hone in on the target from far away. He itched to get his fingers on samples of their blood to test, compare them to living humans to see the differences, and he muttered underneath his breath at all the wasted chances when he caught sight of unmoving bodies.

She tried to stay away from him after that revelation.

Adrien didn't willingly approach her until the bruises had faded. His voice was tentative, body language uncertain as he tried to enquire about her day awkwardly, fingers fiddling with his hair as he shifted on the spot, struggling for conversation as he looked at her blank face.

He was trying, though, and she couldn't fault him for that. After a few awkward encounters where he'd tried to talk when his sister wasn't present, Alya had dragged him by the elbow and tried to ease them into an easy-going talk, complete with awkward jokes and flushed cheeks from embarrassment. Alya continued to do that when they weren't busy, sometimes bringing Nino along for the ride. Chloé was there with a displeased expression, snapping retorts at the red-head that evolved into a heated debate that had the both of them smiling at the end.

She grew comfortable with him, too. Although they didn't spend endless time together, mostly talking when others were in their presence, she started to volunteer herself for the runs outside, just so she could feel the breeze and not be cooped up in the stale, but safe, cottage that they'd been secluded to for the past two months. The weather was cooling down, meaning more layers were worn despite the unmatching material that would've made her sob in a previous life, and the blankets they'd been using for the summer were deemed too thin for the nights.

They'd ventured out as four—her and Adrien splitting off from their vehicle, Alya and Juleka going a different direction and planning to meet back by the abandoned building they'd parked at. They'd hidden the keys underneath a fallen bin, that had spilled rotten and wet rubbish across the floor, in case the unthinkable happened to one group. It was something they always did, she'd found out quickly; keys were left nearby, hidden, due to the separations and desperate situations that required a getaway. Back when they'd met, Adrien hadn't thought of taking the keys, hadn't mentioned them once and intended for them to walk hours back to his camp until Marinette had remarked about the car, and had left them there for his separated companions instead of being selfish.

She could see why he was relied upon, really. When he returned with bloodstained clothing and darkness underneath his green eyes from exhaustion, the first question he asked was always about whether they'd been safe at the cottage, whether strangers had been seen lurking nearby or if a horde had been spotted. He was resourceful, quick on his feet and had fighting instincts that helped due to the state of the world, and somehow hadn't closed off his emotions.

"I'm sorry for," Adrien voice echoed in the silent room that they'd cleared, "you know." He gestured to his neck with a guilty look.

Pushing the eliminated corpse away with her boot, Marinette furrowed her eyebrows. "It's fine."

"No, it's not." It was quiet, but she could still hear him as he averted his gaze and started to check between the tattered aisles of the store. "I—I have a lot to thank you for. I know I was out of line—"

Cutting him off, Marinette busied herself by walking alongside him, eyes scanning the shelves as she said, "I mean it, really. If I was in your position, I would've done the same thing. Well, no, I would've used the knife."

Softly, he enquired as they turned a corner, "Can I ask you something?"

"Yes."

"Why—why did you help her? Chloé skims over your time together, but I haven't seen her that happy since—since before. I know you were alone, so why did you help someone that couldn't offer you anything?" Adrien was stuttering, stumbling over his words with his voice growing quieter towards the end, barely audible.

She could see that he looked frustrated from the corner of her eyes. "I didn't want to originally," Marinette admitted tentatively, taking in the downward angle of his eyebrows. "I, well, stumbled across her by accident. When I left, she kind of followed me, so I attacked her."

"Oh," was his response.

"Yeah," she agreed, self-consciously fiddling with the end of one of her braids. "She was—she was so horribly innocent a year and a half into the outbreak, and I-I was furious, if I'm being honest. I was so mad at the group she was separated from for various things that I decided I'd teach her."

The breath he released was audible. "I—I just didn't want to damage her, okay? Chloé's always been quick to turn emotional, and I didn't want to think about how she could turn out."

"She's strong," the dark-haired female interjected stubbornly, looking at him sharply as she reached out to grasp lightly onto his wrist, causing him to still in the middle of the aisle. "She's a quick learner, too. A lot better than others I've travelled with, smarter than the ones I've seen die, okay? Babying her is—it was bad. She had a breakdown after her first kill and all I could think was that it was your fault."

Averting his eyes, Adrien admitted quietly, "She looked... cold when she killed Alix."

"It wasn't Alix, you know this," she accused weakly.

His voice was hollow as he replied, "I know."

While he was trying to get acquainted with the new version of his sister, Marinette was endlessly proud of the progression she'd seen the blonde-haired female make over their months together. From seeing the shocked expressions on her previous group, the tentative questions that were directed her way as they questioned if she was okay with going scavenging, the improvement had made Chloé return as almost a different person entirely.

"I'm proud of her," Marinette confessed, releasing the hold she had on him. "I'm happy that I can trust her with my life as she knows I've got hers, too."

They rationed supplies well. Alya had found a usable duvet left in a house and carried it along with Juleka acting as her guide. The food they'd found in the surrounding towns was divided equally, not kept in one bag in case it was lost, and they siphoned petrol from abandoned vehicles often. There was one car that they kept five minutes away from the cottage for transport, but in the event of an emergency, it would hold five of them at best, not all eight.

Nathaniel expressed his desire to study some of the corpses to see their states of decomposition, to determine whether they would wither away when their flesh decayed further and fell off their bodies like slime. It was a waiting game that would take years for the last corpses to naturally decompose, if that were the case, but none of them were too eager to let him near an undead body that didn't have a damaged brain.

"You've got to be one of the weirdest scientists, dude," Nino remarked one evening as they were sitting down in the living room, small portions of food passed out between. "I guess it's cool that you're not freaked out and shit, but do you really think you'll be able to make a cure when there's no fucking electricity left? Make your notes and all, shoot for the fucking stars, but maybe pick up some of the work, man."

Nathaniel's reply was in the form of a prominent frown.

Sensing the sudden animosity that was stirring between them, Alya chose to interrupt, "I think I can top that, maybe." As eyes flickered to her in curiosity, she gestured with one hand towards Marinette as she swallowed. "Your uncle was some sort of scientist, right?"

Surprised, Marinette's voice came out slightly breathless. "You remember that?" It was something that she'd been blocking out, choosing to store up the memories of her family tightly so she wouldn't mourn and cry when she found herself alone.

"Yeah, of course." The red-head blinked. "It's honestly amazing to see how active you are now, you know?"

Well, they had to be. Although the undead staggered along with their broken and decaying limbs, they were still able to drag themselves on and catch up to those that weren't paying attention, or moving as a driven group that clawed frantically at windows and walls, trying to find a way in to where they heard noise. For most of her life her family had struggled financially due to her father passing away before she was born, meaning her clothes were riddled with holes, meals weren't extravagant, and her school supplies had often been second-hand.

Help had came in the form of her mother's brother. He was a broad-shouldered male with the signature black hair that ran in their family, mono-lidded eyes, and a thick accent when he spoke. Due to the amount of red blood cells she possessed, he'd proposed a trade back when she wasn't at a double-digit age; in exchange for vials of her blood to aid his experiments, he'd pay a fixed amount of money per donation. It meant that she felt sluggish a lot, a permanent state that continued for years until she'd moved away after finishing her secondary education, leaving Alya behind as she moved to another part of the country.

"Yeah," she replied quietly, staring down at the back of her hands. The skin was pale there, covered in smudges of dirt rather than bruises from needles, and there was no dark colouring adorning the crook of her elbow either. The memories of the tender flesh were still there, though. "I can't say I miss those days. The bruises weren't pretty."

When the red-head explained about the agreement that had resulted in Marinette failing her activity-related classes, there was a collective agreement by most that Nathaniel was considered worse.

He didn't show if he was offended by the accusation.

-x-

They'd moved on from the cottage by the lake.

A large herd of the undead had stumbled through the bushes, aimlessly walking around in a crowd of groans and putrid smells. The awful scent of decay wafted through the windows that had lost glass in the beginning, stinking up the floor and travelling upstairs by the second day. They stayed locked inside, staying as quiet as possible while waiting for the corpses to move on. The make-shift ward of defeated bodies hadn't deterred them; they'd stumbled over, some falling onto the floor and using their mangled hands to grip into the long grass to pull themselves along.

When they'd decided it was time to leave, to pack their things and find a safer place to hole up in for the winter, they'd left too early.

Ivan had tripped when one caught his ankle, releasing a strangled yelp as his body teetered along the edge of the destroyed pier. His eyes were wide, face pale as bloodied nails clawed at his trousers, and then he fell, a sickening sound audible as his body fell slumped upon a sharp piece of wood.

It had pierced him through the chest. Blood poured from the wound that was sticking out of one of his pectorals, ripping through his shirt as he breathed a last strangled breath before the undead that had caused his accident was prowling forward, fingers reaching into the exposed wound and trying to rip the flesh apart, revealing the muscle and organs that were no longer working.

They managed to squeeze the seven of them in the car by piling on top of each other in the back. It was uncomfortable, especially from the bumps in the road and the swerving that occurred when the dead aimlessly walked towards the road, attracted by the sound, but they didn't stop driving until the sun was beginning to set.

She learned over time that Adrien had an odd sense of humour. He tried to change the mood from sombre with an awkward joke that had others shifting uncomfortably at times, played with words when they were supposed to be quiet on a run so the morale would be lifted once they'd cleared out the undead that they could see.

When he made an outrageous joke about their group's recent death, she wasn't surprised.

"Ivan-ted him to live," he quipped, leaning his head back to rest against his sister's knees.

Marinette couldn't restrain her laughter. The smile he'd given her had reached his eyes, showing indents of dimples on his cheeks from the happiness while the rest of the group groaned from the dark humour. After that, he made sure to direct his jokes while looking at her, to see whether they'd receive the same treatment since the others had dealt with his particular taste in bad jokes for so long, and she was still considered the new one that was adjusting to their daily life.

They found another house to hole up in. It had windows in tact—a blessing, really—with blinds that were easily fixable to cover the glass, so strangers wouldn't be able to see their forms when they were unaware. The two bedrooms had damp and filthy mattresses, no duvet or sheets remaining, and the dining table had been smashed for the legs to be removed. They did find a few cans of food in the garage, though, along with tools that had been left behind. Chloé was fond of the crowbar she was given since she could fully move her fingers without pain, happily trading in the old days of her past self relying weakly on a baseball bat.

They left in groups of three or four on average, piling into their vehicle and repeating the hidden key trick. Marinette had been taught the secret knock by Nino, the one who'd created it in the first place, and had been rewarded for her time and loyalty by being appointed as a driver after the third month together.

The winter was harsh. It was the third one of the outbreak, marking it a month or two shy of the two year mark since the dead had started to reanimate, and it came with running red-stained noses, shivers that ran through their bodies violently at night, and hoarse coughs as they passed illnesses between each other. Marinette had been one of the first to fall ill, sneezing at the worst times and drawing attention when she was outside attempting to loot, so she'd been confined within their home for the time being with countless blankets shoved upon her when the other's were awake.

Adrien was the second to catch it. He'd grumbled and moaned about being uselessly, promptly shut up when Chloé covered his face with her ratty blanket with a withering look.

"You're not going to recover if you glare into nothing all day," Marinette pointed out nasally.

He huffed. "Maybe if I concentrate enough, my body will react the way I want it to."

"Good luck with that." She laughed, leaning back against the mattress they were directed to stay on for the time being; meaning, they were quarantined for the time being to recover to lessen the chance of anyone else falling sick. It was wishful thinking, though; they were bound to get infected when she or Adrien walked through the house to relieve themselves, or when they had their rations delivered to them. "You could stop being grumpy and take a nap instead."

It was meant as a joke. When he shuffled closer so their shoulders were pressed against each other, adjusting their blankets so both were covering each other, draped over their legs and tucked in behind their backs, she looked at him in surprise.

He grinned. "You're already infected. I got this from you, after all."

"And who did I get it from, then?" she asked, narrow her blue eyes. "The dead? We haven't seen anyone outside of our group for months."

"Our group, is it?" Adrien queried, raising his eyebrows. They were visible underneath the dull blond hair since they'd found blunt scissors the previous week, then Chloé had insisted on giving him a haircut. He didn't complain once.

Bringing her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them so she could rest her head on top, she replied quietly, "Is that a problem?"

"No." He shook his head, body shuffling underneath the blanket and almost dislodging the material that was bundled behind her back. "I can't tell you how terrified I was that I'd wake up one morning to see you and Chloé gone."

"Oh," was her coherent reply, eyes averting to stare at the dirty material of the blanket instead of him. "When did that stop?"

He made a exaggerated humming noise, indicating he was thinking hard about his answer. It brought a small smile to her lips from the playfulness. "After you came back with Nino from a run that first time," the blond-haired male confessed, voice soft and quiet so it wouldn't be carried out into the hallway. "You could've lost him and went off either by yourself or with Chloé, but you didn't. Nino's plan was to be as useless as possible to see whether you'd willingly help him—kind of went to shit when he actually did get grabbed."

"Chloé has a fast reaction time," she stated matter-of-factly.

She could hear the smile in his voice as he said, "Thanks for sticking around, kid."

When she pushed him down and stole both blankets, heatedly pointing out she was only a few months younger than Chloé, and therefore him, too, his laughter was abrupt and breathy.

-x-

Juleka didn't make it. Her body was too weak to fight the illness, the fever built up and she was exhausted, then she passed away in her sleep on the third day. There was no Ivan to hover around them, trying to offer the awkward medical advice that wouldn't work in their conditions, so it was Nathaniel that had pressed his fingers against her throat to try and find a pulse.

Half of the group was still sick when their supplies started to dwindle. Marinette had recovered alongside Adrien, passing on their tattered rags that they had to use as tissues onto the next unlucky ones, and she volunteered to venture out alone to look for food and water.

After appointing Nino, the one who wasn't sneezing any more and simply had a rough cough, as in charge of protection while they were gone, Adrien insisted he was to be the one driving. Their backpacks were empty, ready to be filled with supplies and any useful they could find in the town. Marinette had brought along her two knives—the one in her boot had been revealed when she'd stabbed a corpse after loosing her grip on the large one, surprising those around her—and Chloé had given her brother her favoured crowbar to keep him safe.

They parked the car in a secluded area, using the fallen branches and environment to try and hide it from view, and placed the keys underneath a destroyed section of the fence that was weighed down. They gripped their weapons as they walked, sticking to the alleyways and waiting for the undead to stagger by, unaware of their presence. It didn't need to be argued that they didn't need to waste their money by killing unless it was necessary; slaughtering all they saw would make them weak, and the sounds would attract more unsavoury company if they weren't inside.

With a jerk of his head, Adrien indicated that they should try and loot a doctor's clinic. The chairs were turned over, rotting corpses made it so the establishment reeked of death and decay, and the receptionist was slumped over in their chair, a sharpened stuck sticking out of their skull. It was morbid to walk through.

Marinette made sure to stare uncertainly at each body, trying to decide whether they were breathing or not, or if their injuries were sufficient enough to render them eliminated. She stepped over the bodies that were piled in front of a door, having to hold onto the frames so she wouldn't have to touch the sweaty-looking flesh that was festering away.

A few supplies were left; needles needed for injections, a few vials filled with liquids with technical that she couldn't identify, a bundle of bandages that had been hidden underneath crushed glass, and comically-decorated plasters that were intended for children.

"Chloé will love these," Adrien proclaimed, tucking them away into his backpack. Whether the clinic had been a hit or not, they needed to find nutrients if they didn't want anyone else to wind up like Juleka.

She laughed. "I'm sure."

"No, really," he continued quickly, bright smile making the corner of his eyes crinkle as his dimples showed. "She used to refuse to wear plasters when she was little unless they were pretty, I swear I'm not lying. I bought her ones that had skeletons and bats on them once and she threw them at my face."

When he told small tales of his past life, he smiled. While others mourned the lives they lost and wallowed in self-pity, Adrien tried to cheer up his friends with the off-hand comments, and his favourite past-time was reminding others of what a brat his sister had been when they were growing up. To see her as she was then, a brave-faced adult who was capable of savage acts without shedding a tear, was surreal.

"Really?" Marinette questioned, amusement clear in her voice as they walked through the hallway, a hand fiddling with a strap of her bag. "She went to the principal because someone called her a typical blonde?"

He grinned. "Oh, yes. She tried for two days straight to get the guy suspended. Then, when it failed, she decided to exact revenge by hitting him in the face with a basketball."

Shaking her head from amusement, she realised her cheeks were beginning to hurt from smiling too much. If it was possible to forget about the constant violence around them, and the fact that they were hunted down, then she would've been able to fully enjoy their time together. Adrien's sense of humour had grown on her—well, he had grown on her—and she hadn't found herself thinking of him negatively for a few weeks. He may have fucked up in the beginning with bad decisions, but he was fixing them now.

There was a sharp pain in her leg.

Marinette reacted quickly, kicking her foot out on instinct to try and get the offender off of her. Her boot connected with the rotten face of one of the corpses that was crawling on the floor, hand outstretched to try and grasp onto her jeans, the decayed skin giving in easily as she plunged her knife into an exposed eye socket. The squelching sound was sickening, her heart was beating fast, and the hands fell lifelessly to the floor once the brain was damaged. Her blade was coated in thick blood, and she stubbornly chose to focus on wiping that on the remains of the undead's clothing rather than face the throbbing of her ankle.

"M-Marinette," the male beside her called.

She continued wiping the knife, hands shaking with every clumsy jerk of her hands. It—it was fine. She'd been too captivated with her happiness, wrapped up in the warm feeling of laughter and stories, to properly pay attention to their surroundings. She should've checked the lobby fully, she should've made sure each body wasn't moving with non-beating hearts. She—

A choked sob escaped as she gripped the handle tighter, eyes focused on the tattered clothing rather than acknowledging the presence behind her.

Her voice stuttered as she said quietly, "You should leave."

"I—"

"Leave," Marinette repeated, eyes burning as the tears welled up and threatened to spill down her cold cheeks. She sank to the floor, breaths coming uneasily and painfully, worse than when her chest had felt tight and uncomfortable from the cold, the budding feeling of hysteria holding tightly onto her heart.

He wasn't listening, though. "Marinette," Adrien tried again. His voice was closer—he must've kneeled down behind her.

"Please," she rasped through her gasped breaths. "Y-you need to go."

The wound on her ankle stung, the pain was demanding, begging for her to look to see the blood that was seeping through her jeans. They were new ones, less rips than her last, but too short as it exposed her skin above the boots. The socks hadn't been thick enough, of course. They weren't meant to withstand teeth, and definitely not the violent bite from dirty teeth and putrid breath. It was stupid that assume that she'd be okay other than feeling the bitter chill of the outside weather, to predict that there would be no consequences for her idiocy.

A hand gently touched her shoulder and she stiffened.

When he spoke, his voice was quiet, tone hesitant, "Marinette, we—we should go, okay?"

"Go?" she choked out, knife dropping the the floor as she ran her fingers harshly through her braided hair. "To—to do what? For Nathaniel to document my change?"

"No, I—" Adrien cut himself off when his voice cracked. The hand on her squeezed in what was supposed to be a comforting way, yet all it did was cause her breaths to come out as pants as she squeezed her eyes shut in denial. "I'm not leaving you here."

She sniffed. "I-it was bound to happen to one of us. I—I just want you to leave me here, okay? If you're not able to kill me right now, you're going."

There was an odd sense of acceptance to her own words—the onslaught of sudden pain would be over as quick as it came, stopping her transition into a monstrosity. She knew that Adrien had trouble killing his friends; he'd stared at Juleka's body when her heart had stopped beating with a blank expression, not finding it within himself to put her out of her dead misery. That was why the group had been so surprised when they'd spied Alix's body, thinking that he'd overcome his feelings. There was a miniscule chance that the kind-hearted friend she'd come to know would be able to physically harm her.

"We both know you can't," she whispered, breathless with acceptance. "You can't stay around for this, Adrien. I will not be dragged back so the others can witness my death, I'm not putting them through that."

There was the noise of shuffling as he moved to kneel down in front of her instead, both hands gently placed onto her shoulders once more. "What am I supposed to do?" he asked desperately. When she looked up, dropping her shaking hands from her head, he was looking at her with his wide green eyes, pale-faced and panicked. "I-I can't leave you," Adrien repeated, anguish bleeding into his expression as his eyebrows knitted together.

He—for a moment, she wanted to be selfish, and seeing the desperate look he was giving her caused her heart to squeeze painfully. It wasn't supposed to come to this, yet there was no mistaking what the pain had been and the only outcome in the foreseeable future.

"Hey, Adrien," she called, smile reaching her watery eyes as they looked at each other. "Can I do something selfish?"

The hands on her shoulders tightened. "Anything."

She moved forward so their noses brushed against each other, then tentatively pressed her lips against his. It wasn't passionate, filled with lust and love—it was sad and desperate. Marinette reached out with her shaking hands to grasp onto his coat to ground herself, the contact acting as a reminder that the material against her rough fingers wasn't a delirious part of her imagination.

He'd stiffened at first, caught by surprise, until he relaxed and allowed one of his hands to drop and hold onto her waist, while the other gently cupped her jaw in a tender way that she hadn't been expecting. The kiss was gentle despite their chapped lips, and as their breaths mingled together with every languid caress, Marinette found her eyes watering for a different reason. The pain in her chest was consistent and twisting, and knowing that it was her first, and final, chance of knowing the the gentleness that the world had to offer still made the pain worse.

As pleasing as it felt, Marinette had to pull away and hastily wipe at her cheeks to get rid of the tears, a sob bubbling up and threatening to escape, so she kept her lips pursed shut, eyes closed as she tried to take in steady breaths. He wasn't leaving, though. Adrien was kneeling in front of her, his thumb creating light circles into her cold skin, trying to comfort her despite the situation.

"Marinette, I—" Adrien started to say, only to cut himself off to clear his throat. "You're not just doing this on a whim, are you?" There a self-conscious lilt to his voice, a tiny crack at the end that portrayed his worries.

A choked laugh escaped her as she pressed the palm of her hand into one eye, rubbing harshly to try and rid herself of the tears. "No," she whispered hoarsely, adjusting the weight on her legs and wincing. "I like you, Adrien."

There was a pause of silence where the only sound was her loud breaths and the thundering pulse within her head.

"Y-you're just—I like your stupid jokes, the way you treat everyone's opinions as equal, and how much you care for others. Your selflessness frustrates me, and so does your stubborn protectiveness over Chloé, but those faults j-just make me like you more, okay?" Marinette babbled, the hand clutching onto Adrien's jacket clenching tightly. "I—I never planned to pursue you. I just—"

She just wanted to live.

When he suddenly wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace, Marinette stiffened before she rested her head against his shoulder, cheeks making the material damp as he tightened his hold.

"You're infuriating sometimes, did you know that?" Adrien murmured, voice low in her ear.

She smiled despite herself. "So I've been told."

"I like you even though you drive me mad," the blond-haired male confessed softly, fingers fiddling with the ends of her braids. "I—I just didn't think you'd return my feelings, I guess."

With a small laugh, Marinette asked, "You're not just saying that because I'm dying, right? It's horribly rude to lead a girl on in her final moments."

"No!" he replied quickly, louder than before. "I wouldn't share my blanket with just anyone, I assure you."

She snorted. "You're a dork even when we're surrounded by dead bodies. Is there anything that'll stop your ridiculous personality?"

"Hey, you like me for this personality," Adrien joked, the sound of his laughter turning hollow towards the end. "I... I'm not leaving you, Marinette. I don't think I can now."

There was enough food and water back at their home to last between them. Adrien kept on insisting that he wouldn't leave, that they'd be okay with the two of them missing for at least a day, and that only made her squeeze her eyes shut tighter, trying not to imagine the reactions of him returning alone. So, they came to a compromise; he insisted he was going to stubbornly stay by her side until it was deemed too dangerous, and she wasn't going to try and slip away in the night.

The first thing he did was confirm the bite. She looked at his conflicted expression and the horror that appeared there for a moment, and that was all she needed for the confirmation. He didn't mention how deep it was, but he did use two of the brightly-coloured plasters they'd found so her socks wouldn't be stained any further (it was a useless effort, but sweet nonetheless).

He found two cans of soup that were still in date in a neighbouring house. The spare water bottle they kept in the car came in handy, and when night fell, she was settled into the back-seat of the car with Adrien by her side, thighs pressed against each other for warmth. Their hands were clasped, the steady beating of her heart reminding her that the wound was close to festering, that the fever would set it soon. The only reason she knew that something was wrong with her was because there was a twang of pain whenever she shifted her shifted her legs.

"The doors are locked," Adrien started, head turned so he could stare at the darkening sky through the window. "I'm going to take my shoes off and you can't stop me."

She winkled her nose at the thought. "It's fucking cold, though."

"You sound too much like my sister." He jokingly shuddered, shifting his body so they were looking at each other as he squeezed her hand, not following through with his comment about his shoes.

The crowbar was the other side of him, shining and reminding her of her impending doom.

"As soon as the fever sets in, you're leaving," Marinette demanded, staring at him imploringly. "Please, listen to me."

He shook his head, dirty blond-coloured strands moving from the movement despite the matted quality to his hair. "No. I'll leave when your breathing becomes strained."

"I—that's cutting it too close," she tried to insist, frustration leaking into her tone from his reluctance. It wasn't a secret that he was incapable of finishing the kill if it was someone he knew beforehand—everyone in their group knew it, and no one ridiculed him for it. It wasn't a flaw that would be life or death unless he was alone, left to fend for himself against his once known friend. The situation they were in at that moment, specifically. "I-I don't want to hurt you, no matter what. Even if it's not really me any more, I still want to have control over that one detail."

Brushing his fingers across her forehead, he rested the back of his palm there. "There's no fever, okay?"

"What if I take a sudden turn while you're asleep, then?" Marinette retorted weakly. "It'll be just as bad."

"You're not showing any symptoms yet!" Adrien pointed out, removing the hand from her head to gesture wildly down to where her legs were. "It's not swollen, you're not delirious or struggling to breathe. Some take days to turn, and I'm not leaving you alone for that."

Resisting the urge to tug at her hair from frustration, Marinette instead breathed out audibly through her nose. "You don't have to stay and watch me die because you have feelings for me, Adrien. That's even more reason for you to go."

Their weak argument was tossed aside when he uncertainly shifted his body closer and pressed his lips against hers. Marinette unclasped his hand to wrap her arms around his neck despite the limited space, fiddling with the hairs at the nape of his neck as his movements were tentative and slow, infuriatingly soft as her heart hammered in her chest. She pushed for a more passionate kiss, one that matched her pulse, and was rewarded as his tongue languidly wiped her lower lip.

Marinette returned each brush of his mouth with her own, face growing comfortably warm as the kiss deepened into one that she hadn't felt in almost two years. The want of the forgotten pleasure was there, and she was sure that he reciprocated it, too, so it was with only slight hesitation that she let her fingers trail down the rough material of his coat, finding the shirt within and delving beneath it to connect with his bare skin. He didn't stiffen or show any sign of telling her to stop; instead, the tender hand that had caressed her law for their last kiss returned, even though it was harsh, their movements desperate and surely causing their lips to be slightly swollen.

She brushed against the jutting bones around his waist before fiddling with his belt, feeling the warmth of his breath splash across her face as she did so.

It was after she'd undone the zip that he made a noise at the back of his throat, one that sounded pleased and approving all at once. She was breathless as he pulled back from their kiss, lips reddened in the dimming light all because of her, the cracks in his skin not as prominent from the attention they'd received.

The chaste kiss that was pressed against her lips was soft.

The smile he gave her reached his eyes, made his dimples clear as he looked at her, and the endearingly sweet expression that was shown made her heart stutter from knowing it would be her last time seeing it for the foreseeable future. Yet he was there, stubbornly refusing to leave her side despite the unchanging outcome that would only lead to sadness for him, no matter the result.

Shifting the material of his trousers, Marinette palmed his arousal, rewarded with a muffled moan as he rested his head against her shoulder, allowing her to do as she pleased without complaints. The pain in her leg as she shuffled closer reminded her of the self-designated time limit, so she slipped her hand beneath his underwear, grasping onto the warm length of his member. It felt soft against her hand, a nice change in temperature, and she grinned, knowing he could see it out of the corner of his eyes.

She moved, each jerk of her hand rewarding her with audible breaths and muffled moans that were lost in her scarf. When he unwrapped the material, setting it aside on the seat as she tightened her hold, just to see whether he'd enjoy the change of pressure, she didn't complain. It allowed him to press kisses into the exposed flesh of her neck, teeth grazing the surface, but not biting down.

"I think I might have to take my shoes off first," she muttered, listening to the changes in his breathing. "I—if that's okay with you?"

Bewildered, he leaned back to stare at her in confusion. "Am I missing something here?"

Her answer was in the form of her her eyes flickering from his face—with the red-stained cheeks—to where her hand was still moving, purposely brushing her thumb over the tip.

"Oh," he breathed.

As she busied herself with slipping her boots off, staring for a moment at the blade that had been her longest companion, Adrien was oddly silent. Whether he was having second thoughts and was unsure of how to reject her politely, or if he was feeling self-conscious, he kept it to himself. She hissed in pain as she manoeuvred her jeans off, wincing as they slid over the bright plasters that were trying their best to cover the wound.

She adamantly averted her eyes from it, trying to ignore the smears of blood on her skin from where he'd tried to clean her up.

When her fingertips brushed against her underwear, Adrien spoke up to ask quietly, "Are you sure about this? We don't have protection."

As responsible as that would've sounded at any other time—and she would've been overjoyed that he was smart—she chose to stare at him dubiously. "I literally have a brand of death on my leg and you're worried about impregnating me?"

She could see when he realised his blunder. Although there was still colour to his cheeks, it didn't compliment the glum expression that became apparent. His green eyes looked away from her, a hand running through the tangles of his blond hair, as he whispered a soft, "Fuck."

"Hey, it's fine," Marinette tried to half-heartedly reassure him, a small smile on her lips as she fiddled with her waistband. "People always say go out with a bang, right?"

"I don't think they mean sex," he replied wryly, short bursts of laughter escaping. "Not that I'm complaining. It's great that you're not curled up in a corner crying or trying to take your own life."

She blinked. "Thank you?"

Well, it wasn't like she hadn't thought of it. There was a chance that the stab that she'd deliver to herself wouldn't be deep enough or hit a vital organ that would trigger an early death. So, she'd silently decided to turn, rather than attempt to slit her wrists and live with the agony. There was no recollection or flicker of intelligence in the stumbling dead, after all; she wouldn't be aware of what horrors her body committed, as her personality and humanity would be essentially deleted when her heart stopped beating.

"I'm really fucking bad at this," the blond groaned, running a hand through his messy hair, gripping the roots lightly for a moment before he let it fall onto his lap. "Are you sure want to do this, really?"

Shrugging her shoulders, starting to feel the cold creep up her bare legs, through the material of her socks and underwear. "It's up to you, Adrien. I'd rather spend my remaining time with someone I care about, but don't let that sway your decision. You don't have to sleep with me because I'm the only single woman in our group that isn't your sister."

"That's not why I'm doing this," he replied, narrowing his eyes. "I already said I like you, Marinette. I just wish we had some more time—"

She winced. "Don't."

Stiffening, he caught himself, averting his gaze as he fiddled with his trousers. The zip was still open, pushed aside with parts of his underwear showing while his member in view, half-aroused. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

"It's fine," Marinette tried to reply strongly, but her voice was too soft to deliver the desired effect. "Now will you please have sex with me, Adrien? Believe me, as much as I'd enjoy an awkward romance where we give each other squished and out-of-date candy and anything else we can scavenge, I'd rather take my underwear off since we're alone right now."

She watched him gulp.

From the lack of rejection, Marinette slowly took off her underwear, shivering as her flesh connected with the cold material of the seat. His expression was unsure as she tried to flash him a genuine smile, but instead his eyes flickered down to her leg.

Oh.

"You can check it first, if you want," she offered quietly.

He did.

Then he checked to see whether she had a fever before leaning forward to place a kiss to her lips, one which she responded to fully. Marinette wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer for the offered comfort and warmth that she was missing and unable to provide for herself, closing her eyes with a happy sigh as their mouths clumsily moved. A few times her teeth accidentally scraped against his from their haste, and she was sure she'd nicked his lips a few times, but neither of them complained. It was more desperate than earlier, filled with longing and tasted bitter as their tongues touched.

Marinette ran her fingers through the hairs on the nape on his neck, fiddling with the strands and pulling tightly as a pleasant noise escaped her. His hand was gliding lightly across the skin of her stomach, tickling her abdomen as he made his way downwards. Budding warmth coiled within her, pulse travelling downwards to become apparent between her legs as it throbbed, encouraging the contact and demanding friction.

It was as his fingertips brushed above her protrusion that she snaked a hand down to wrap around his wrist, pulling him away as she caught her breath.

"No?" Adrien questioned, perplexed as his eyebrows knitted together.

She shook her head. "I... I'd rather skip past that, if that's okay with you?"

He blinked. "Okay?"

Then he started to raise himself up from the seat, tugging down his clothing as he went. Marinette stopped him in a flash, shaking her head once more. "Keep them on for warmth," she advised, eyes flickering to the dark scenery outside of the windows. "It's not worth it if we're both cold, is it?"

"I'm pretty sure we'd warm each other up, but okay," he consented, sounding confusing but agreeable. He was letting her call the shots, she realised; it had been her that confessed her selfish feelings, initiated the kiss and then further contact, after all. He was allowing her to do as she wished without rejection, and whether that was due to her fate or his nature in general, she didn't know.

So, she half-heartedly shrugged and then gestured to the seat, putting weight on her injured leg as she stood up, hunched over to make room for him. It was an almost comical sight; Adrien was stretched out across the seats, legs bent at the knee to fit himself in the cramped space, with his trousers tugged open, displaying the intent of the position. She took in the flush to his cheeks, the ones that had thinned out before they'd met, the dirty blond-coloured hair that hung by his ears, a few wispy bits across his forehead, and then the reddened lips that were curved into a fond smile as he looked at her—one that met his emerald eyes, with the indents clear on his cheeks.

He was beautiful, and in another life, he would've been so much more.

"What was your career before?" Marinette questioned as she straddled him, unable to sit up straight unless she wanted her head to brush against the roof. She was hunched over him, hands grasping onto his jacket for support as she hovered by his face.

"Job?" he questioned, warm breath caressing her face. "I was a model. Chloé got into it because of that."

She hummed. "I can see why."

The chuckle that escaped him was genuine. "There's no reason to charm me now, Marinette."

"My bad," she apologised with a laugh.

Reaching to grasp his arousal within one of her hands, the dark-haired female breathed in a deep breath, trying to stop the stuttering of her heart and cool the dampness that had appeared. There was no denying that he was attractive, and that certainly added to the situation, but she had never been one to skip through the foreplay to the final act without preparation—she had to acknowledge that it wasn't from lack of want that made the decision, but rather time.

"Still sure?" Marinette enquired quietly, moving her hand clumsily to pleasure him.

His voice was a tad breathless as he replied, "Yes."

With legs on either side of his clothed hips, knees digging into the seat as she let the injured portion of her leg hang over the edge, she shuffled closer for a comfortable position. Adrien had his hands—warm, bare and calloused—on her waist, sneaking underneath her clothing to trail his fingertips and nails over her skin teasingly.

She raised her hips, using her hands to guide his tip across her protrusion, sparks of satisfaction travelling through her as her cleft received attention, then pushed down gently to allow the intrusion.

It was tight, naturally. A sigh escaped as the hand upon his jacket tightened, eyes pressed shut as she adjusted to the change. Although her skin had been slick—but unprepared—his wasn't, meaning there was pain due to her impatience. Marinette stayed still, leaning over him, hearing the stutter in his breaths as his hands continued to glide over her skin, until she allowed her eyes to open.

The darkness meant his golden-tinged eyelashes were casting shadows over his face, the brightness of his eyes and pale skin standing out from the moonlight. They had no torches, no candles that they'd usually use in their make-shift homes, but she couldn't waste time by wallowing in her emotions and feelings by wishing for anything more. The fact that he was there, by her side, his warmth and fond smiles offered to her without hesitation, was enough.

She lifted her hips easily, a pleased sound escaping as he withdrew almost fully before she sank back down, all while fisting her hands into his clothed shoulders for support. Her breaths grew strained as she repeated the action, it growing easier from the wetness and the help of his hands that steadied her, adjusting the position quietly without demand. There was something sweet about the way he was moaning underneath his breath, hands never leaving her as he returned the movements to the best of his ability with the cramped space.

The warmth within her abdomen spiralled, seeping lower and lower to connect with the thundering pulse below. The sounds of their hash breathing, the spilled moans that weren't intelligible, and the intoxicating sound of slick skin filled the vehicle, the cold that had crept upon her earlier soothed by his hands, his hips—

There was something fantastic about the way his pelvis brushed against her protrusion with every shift, granting her attention without removing the support. There was irritation against her skin from his trousers, the lack of bare skin obvious with every brush of her body, it wasn't too off-putting. She would have some marks on her thighs from it, though. Marinette rocked against him, eyes squeezed shut in pleasure with reddened cheeks as she started to become undone, enticed by the pleased sounds that escaped him.

He rutted against her desperately, nails digging into her skin, but she didn't mind. The twinge of pain reminded her that it was happening, that in the dark in the back-seat of the car, he was willing to share himself with her. The thought made her heart lurch, and she gasped, muscles tightening as her pleasure reached her peak, and her legs tightened around him.

Adrien continued to seek his own, lifting his hips to meet hers as she recovered her breathing, breathless noises escaping before he released a choked moan, convulsing against her. There was a loud sound and a hiss of pain as he hit his head against the side, and she momentarily forgot about the restrictions and she threw her head back and laughed, resulting in the same predicament for her.

Clutching her head with a wince, she mumbled, "We're both idiots."

"I can't argue with that," he answered, voice hoarse. "You're not, well, feeling like you want a bite to eat, are you?"

"Your jokes are terrible!" Marinette retorted, shifting her hips slightly as she tried to think of the best way to clean up. The underwear she owned was limited, then again it wasn't as though she was going back to their make-shift home to retrieve the ratty other pair that she owned.

He winced as she lifted herself up slowly, the slick feeling between her legs becoming apparent. Marinette tugged off her bloody sock, resisting the urge to curse at it for the visible area where she'd been bitten, and set about cleaning herself, trying not to strain his clothing further.

From the corner of her eyes, she could tell that he was looking at her with a bemused expression, seemingly entertained with her solution. They'd shared a ripped t-shirt together when they had red noses and chesty coughs, so she thought it was creative, rather than losing one of her layers.

"What are you laughing at?" the dark-haired female grumbled, tossing the dirty sock at him as she collected her short jeans. "I'm not sacrificing my other sock for you, so you better be grateful."

He did laugh aloud at that. "I've never been given such a personal gift before."

Her leg throbbed painfully as she pulled her clothing on over it, though she supposed any wound would do that. She purposely avoided looking at it, ignoring the brightly-coloured plasters that were slapped on it for the meantime. It was the best she was going to get, she supposed. There was still a lot of time where the sun wouldn't shine, which would result in her huddling into herself for warmth, and then she would be on her own, outside the safety of the vehicle, close to staggering around without caring about her temperature.

Suddenly the numbness at the end of her fingers was welcome.

"Come here," Adrien murmured once he was sat up properly. His legs were not up on the seat, so she could sit down, and his trousers were done up, her sock bundled up and discarded on the floor after he'd cleaned himself. He extended one of his arms with the intent to wrap it around her shoulders. "You're down one sock, the least I can do is cuddle you."

She let him.

When she woke up in the morning, it was to her head tucked into his lap. It wasn't as uncomfortable as she'd thought, but that wasn't what she was upset about. His fingers were playing with the dirty strands of her hair, idly twiddling around his digits as he looked out of the frost-stained windows to observe their foggy surroundings. He'd taken it upon himself to stay awake the whole time—judging by the bruises beneath his eyes and the yawns that escaped him—and had let his guard down, eyes trained elsewhere other than her.

"You're not looking at me," she accused, clearing her throat afterwards.

As he looked down at her with a soft smile, it showed his dimples and could only be described as affectionate. "Morning, princess," he greeted.

If that didn't make her heart beat rapidly in her chest, then the gentle hold he had when he moved a hand to cup her chin as she looked up at him did.

Her cheeks warmed. "Hello."

"Did you sleep well?" Adrien questioned, running his fingertips tentatively across her lip before one brushed against her bottom lip.

She nipped his finger lightly. "Well enough until I realised you're being selfless again."

The smile on his lips became strained. "You know I had no other choice."

That was true, too. Marinette reached out up cup his face, offering a weary grin of her own as her eyes began to water. There was a dull throb in her leg, the pain unmistakable as she stretched her limbs out to cure the uncomfortable posture she'd slept with.

"Thanks for everything, Adrien," she whispered, blinking rapidly to try and keep the tears at bay.

His hand moved to cover hers, and he turned his head to place a kiss on her palm, eyes never leaving hers as he did so. "Come with me," he whispered, quiet and pleading. "I—I can't leave you here. Please, don't make me."

She couldn't say no with him looking at her like that.

-x-

"What the fuck?" Alya cried out in disbelief, inserting herself into the already ongoing panic that was spread out across the room. "Are you fucking serious right now? You're not pulling my leg, right? That would be such a shitty thing to do, and I swear I'll fucking punch you in the dick for leading me on, Nathaniel."

Marinette curled up, forehead rested on her tucked in knees as she ran her fingers through her hair, taking comfort in the tight hold she had on the lank strands. It reminded her that she wasn't dreaming, because she was sure that the saying went that there wasn't pain when it wasn't real. There was pain from her hair, the subtle throb of her leg, and her ears from the loudness of the heated arguments that were happening around her.

It wasn't supposed to be like this, not at all. Marinette had anticipated the unwelcome return with tight breaths, heart clenching with every heave of her chest, and then she was met with the shocked and anguished faces of her friends.

At least one person stayed nearby, hovering in the same room with a weapon of some sorts at a close distance. Only two had been selected for the duty, as Adrien was instantly ticked off due to his inability, Chloé had absolutely refused and had instead wrapped her arms around Marinette's neck in a tight embrace, and Nathaniel was generally not trusted with a turning friend, as he was more likely to study the newly reanimated corpse and it would result in him being in danger, rather than anything else.

Alya and Nino had stayed by her side for four days. In that time Adrien had dragged his sister out for supplies—as other than the soup, the medicine was all that they'd retrieved—but not before promptly kissing Marinette in front of everyone, a desperate one that was tinged with want and regret, and when he wandered out of the front door, she wondered whether it would be the last time she'd see the two of them. The blonde-haired female was strangely subdued, instead curling her fingers within hers to hold her hand to convey her affection, pushing the hair out of Marinette's hair for her when she was falling asleep. It with after a tight embrace that Chloé disappeared, too.

It wasn't the last time they'd see each other. The siblings returned two days later.

Chloé ran through the entrance after the knock was answered, her heavy footsteps filling up the otherwise empty silence. Her tall brother was right behind her, clutching both of their backpacks with a mildly disgruntled expression from being saddled with them.

His eyes widened when they met hers.

Since Ivan was deceased, Nathaniel had been upgraded to their assigned medical personnel. He had more experience than the rest of them, a knack for remembering information, and he'd paid attention to when Ivan had been treating them. It was the red-headed male that explained her her condition to the four of them, voice quiet and shy in a way that matched his pacifist nature.

"Look at her yourself if you don't believe me," he quietly insisted, a pale hand waving in her general direction. "There's no point in making this up. The longest I've seen turn is three days."

The words made her stomach clench uncomfortably. It had been decided that she shouldn't stay near the others in case the worst happened, so Marinette had kept to herself a lot, only having small conversations with Alya and Nino when they kept guard. She adamantly refused the offers of food, so her stomach was aching from hunger and nerves, stubbornly only accepting a half-filled bottle of water that she was savouring. Nathaniel had came to check her temperature daily, fiddling with her trousers to see the wound before placing the flimsy plasters back on top.

There was no fever, though. The wound throbbed awfully, but so would any other bite, and her organs and other body parts were working well. It was the lack of food that was the main problem at that moment, not her impending doom that was delayed for an unknown reason. The flesh around the bite was coloured and bruised, hurting awfully, and it was slightly swollen and inflamed, but it wasn't infected. There was no pus, no awful feeling spreading through her that would change her breathing to be strained; no, instead she was watching as each day passed that it began to scab over, her body attempting to repair itself.

Nino was the one to approach her once it had gone quiet. He looked at her with narrowed eyes—she'd found out it was due to his lost spectacles, not from aggression—and kneeled in front of her, one hand awkwardly gesturing to her leg as he asked, "May I?"

At least they were asking, she guessed.

Marinette nodded her head cautiously.

It was a strange event. Once he'd revealed the wound, tearing off the plasters and tossing them aside, he peered closer to stare at the scabbing flesh, poking the purple-coloured bruises with a contemplative expression. Then he used the hand that wasn't holding her leg to reach towards her face, placing the back of his hand onto her forehead.

His eyebrows were knitted together as he took note of the temperature.

Alya did all of that, too. Chloé and Adrien peered at her leg, not touching her face and instead pulling her into hugs that didn't help the confused state she was in, and it was only when she saw the thoughtful expression on Nathaniel's face that she realised what situation she was in.

Something was wrong with her—she wasn't turning.

That was proved when a week had passed, leg healing further and the bruises fading to a lighter colour, and she hadn't shown any symptoms of the turn. They were all baffled, asking questions about how it happened and whether it was because of that that it was different. Marinette had to adamantly deny it, pointing out that she'd been guard off-guard and the teeth had most definitely pierced her flesh, hence the bite marks that were healing over (just because it hadn't been able to tear her skin off didn't mean it didn't count as a bite).

It was two weeks until they stopped holding weapons around her. The dark-haired female was equally as baffled as they were, though she was deemed healthy enough for food back when the revelation had started, so she wasn't starving any more. She used actual bandages they'd scavenged to cover it up, trying to ignore it despite the way Nathaniel's eyes always flickered to it when they were in the same room. Although she should've been relieved at the turn of events, it felt nothing but foreboding.

Why her?

There had been plenty of people—scientists, those in the government, ones trained for war—that could've helped more than she if they were immune. Why would it turn out that she, a short female with mixed ancestry, was the one that was fated not to turn into a member of the undead?

It didn't make sense. Marinette worried and fretted when she was alone, tugging harshly at the roots of her hair as her breathing came fast, panicked tears budding in her blue eyes as she stared, dazed and confused. She—she had no special talents, no redeeming qualities that could save others. There was nothing that she could offer to help her dying friends, nor could she slay the undead in a way no one else could.

Then, Nathaniel approached her.

"You've said it yourself before," he murmured, voice quiet so it wouldn't carry upstairs to the sleeping members of their group.

She look at him with furrowed eyebrows, confused by the approach. It was her turn to keep watch—he was supposed to be upstairs, asleep, not standing before her with one of their bags dangling from his clenched hand. "Nathaniel?"

"You mentioned your blood cells, in the beginning," the red-haired male continued, placing the bag on the floor and quietly opening it. "It's different than most, is it not?"

He was reaching in, searching through it for a specific item. "It produces too many red blood cells, that's all." That, and it could thicken her blood overtime, or cause it to clot. It was something her uncle had explained to her in the past, when she had been uninterested in knowing why it seemed of value to him. "It's a disorder."

He persisted, asking her quietly, "What type?"

"O."

"I want to take some of it," he announced, withdrawing one of the syringes that she'd found with Adrien. A needle covered in packaging was opened as she stayed silent, wide eyes watching as he busied himself with readying the equipment without asking her for an answer. "You'll let me, won't you?"

She wetted her lips nervously.

Marinette stuttered, "I-I don't think that's a good idea."

"It's okay." His voice wasn't soothing, and the way the light from the candle caught the needle didn't make her feel safe. Her life with needles was in the past; she didn't want to wake up with bruises on the crook of her elbow, nor the back of her hand so it hurt in her everyday life. "It'll be quick. I only need a vial."

She scooted back. "Why?"

There was no reason to ask, though. It was common knowledge that Nathaniel believed in a cure—it was his main argument for not fighting, and now that he had someone in front of him that he believed to be living proof that it was possible, there was nothing that could deter him. She'd heard stories about the curious type he'd once been, with innocent interest as he studied in the same university as Juleka's dead girlfriend, but the turn had changed something within him. That interest didn't possess an innocent gleam in his eyes; rather, there was a hunger for knowledge, one that caused for him to study the wandering corpses to document their weakness and strengths.

For example, she knew that their average speed was below a jog, slower than a fast-paced walk. He'd paid attention to those types of things, even throwing rocks to catch their attention in the beginning, trying to decide their hearing range. It was only after one of the dead ex-member of the group—one that she'd forgotten the name of—had aggressively told him off and threatened to punch him that he'd stopped.

"One vial," she agreed, knowing that he wouldn't stop pursuing her otherwise. "Please, that's all I'm willing to give. I'm weak enough as it is. I can't play as your experiment when you don't even have a lab."

The smile he gave her didn't reach his turquoise eyes. "I don't need a lab, but thank you for agreeing."

Sitting down beside her, angling her arm towards the fire for light, Marinette bit into her bottom lip in preparation. There was a sting as the needle entered the crook of her elbow, and she kept her gaze averted as he did it. The blood was pulled out slowly, and when the syringe was removed, she breathed a sigh of relief as she held a ripped piece of his shirt to the dot of red. He was as gentle as he could be, though it was clear that he was unfamiliar with the technique due to the time it took for him to find the vein.

"What are you planning to do?" Marinette asked softly, keeping pressure on her arm.

Nathaniel's response caused chills to run through her. "I'm going to do what the others are too idiotic to realise."

"Na—"

There wasn't time to finish pronouncing his name. Nathaniel had pushed up the sleeve of his left arm, revealing the pale skin that wasn't littered in bruises, and proceeded to find the vein at the curve of his arm, inserting the needle in smoothly with a hiss.

She wanted to reach out, to demand what he was doing, but all she could do was watch with a painfully thumping heart as he injected her blood into his veins. His eyes were clenched shut, chapped lips curled down into a frown, and it was a few silent moments before the syringe was empty.

It clattered to the floor, some droplets of blood staining the transparent container.

Reaching a hand towards him uncertainly, Marinette called, "Nathaniel?"

He slumped back against the sofa, on the sour-smelling cushions that they all avoided. The tension in his face faded, bleeding out as a lax expression took over, his tense limbs relaxing, too. It was as though he'd fallen asleep in seconds, but she knew that wasn't the case.

Goodness, she hoped she was wrong. She wanted to be wrong about him, about everything—

There was no pulse.

His heart had stopped, and it was all her fault. Marinette jumped to her feet, taking clumsy steps up the stairs as she rushed to the nearest occupied room. Adrien and Chloé were in there, curled up together on a dirty duvet and a frayed blanket wrapped around them. She kneeled down beside the blond-haired male first, frantically shaking his shoulder as her breaths came quick and pained, the frustration causing her eyes to grow damp again.

"Adrien," she hissed, hands slapping his shoulder desperately to catch his attention.

There was a moment of panic when he woke up before he realised that she was panicking. He sat up, blanket falling to his lap, and reached out an uncertain hand onto her shoulder.

Cupping her pale face with his other, he whispered, "What's wrong?"

It wasn't the time to be comforting her. She must've hiccuped out Nathaniel's name, as his eyes widened as he stood up, which in turn prompted his sister to react to the noise. When she took in Marinette's tears and the way he was trying to soothe her, she stood up, asking to be filled in on what was happening.

It was good Chloé was coming, though. If Nathaniel had turned then Adrien wouldn't have been able to follow through, and she certainly wasn't in the right mental state for such things. The fact that it was all her fault was running constantly through her mind, a threatening whisper at the back that had her throat clenching. They wisely took their weapons with them, while Marinette's had been left downstairs, discarded when they'd changed the subject to her blood.

Her blood—

Nathaniel was there, slumped lifelessly against the couch with his facial features relaxed, looking as though he was sleeping peacefully.

The two of them didn't ask her why. Adrien had a hand clasped around hers as she sobbed in denial, trying to sort out her feelings of guilt—even if she didn't like Nathaniel, that didn't mean that she wanted to be the cause of his death, let alone anyone else. Chloé was hovering, legs jittery as she paced around the room, the crowbar dangling dangerously from her hand as she moved.

If they noticed the syringe on the floor, they didn't mention it. The three of them were there, sitting in wait to see how long it would take for him to complete the change.

The only words directed towards her were from Adrien. "It's not your fault," he whispered, and that only made her breathing hitch guiltily.

Dawn had appeared when his body stirred. The fingers twitched, jerking without a rhythm before grasping out and then falling back down to his side. The eyes that had been closed were now open, murky and glazed over, not possessive the calculative gleam that they once had. There was nothing inviting about his expression any more; his eyes were unblinking, mouth fallen open to expose the wet tongue and teeth that wanted to be coated in blood, and it was as he lurched forward that Chloé reacted.

The crowbar was slammed into the back of the head, blood spurting from the wound as the skull was damaged from the blow, and the body fell off of the couch, twitching hands grasping at the floor without intelligence. Chloé pulled back with a deep breath, putting her weight behind another blow aimed at the same spot. It was violent, disgusting as exposed and damaged brain was visible, along with parts of the skull and scalp had been turn apart by the force of her swing. Two hits were enough, though.

She watched as Chloé stood over him breathing heavily, wide eyes staring at the corpse. Blood was pouring from the exposed wound, leaking into the carpet and creating a morbid puddle that was creeping closer to Marinette's shoe.

There was so many things to say, but all that came out of her lips, "This is my fault."

Denial wasn't something that could help, she found out. When Nino and Alya had came downstairs that morning to see the bloodstained room and their splattered clothing, Marinette didn't keep it to herself. The guilt had already started to fester violently within her, and it was only when her eyes had ran dry that she'd cleared her throat to catch their attention.

"He—" Marinette winced as her voice cracked, and ran a hand through the loose strands of her hair. "Nathaniel approached me for my blood."

It was with a point towards the fallen needle that had been forgotten that she stated the evidence. Their expressions were grim, and she didn't blame them. Marinette explained quietly about the discussion of her blood, that it was different than others because of a disorder, and it was with limited stuttering that she mentioned her suspicions of why she'd been spared.

"My uncle used to use my blood for experiments," she whispered, clutching at her clothed elbow where the growing bruise was. "I-I never asked about it when I was younger. He said it was because of my disorder, but it—it was just the money I cared about."

Chloé was the one to talk first. She was looking at the corpse of their fallen member, her voice quiet, but echoing in the quiet room, as she asked, "What are you trying to say?"

"I-I think they did this," Marinette choked out, heart beating frantically in her chest. Her wide eyes were staring at everything but their expressions, not prepared to see the disgust and distrust there. It was the same bundle of negative feelings she'd felt when she'd first been bitten, refusing to face them to see their disappointment. "Why—I can't be the cure, that's too naïve."

"That doesn't mean you jump to being the cause!" Adrien retorted hotly, sounding just as frustrated as she felt.

She gestured shakily to Nathaniel's corpse. "He died within minutes of injecting himself with my blood—he knew we were compatible before doing it."

They couldn't argue with that.

-x-

Rude remarks or aggressive behaviour wasn't what awaited her, however; where she'd expected them to reject her, the members of the group were as nice as before. Marinette being immune to being turned didn't mean they wanted her to put herself in danger while searching for supplies (as it didn't mean the smell of her didn't entice the dead), and they kept their routine the same, with two people going out, and the remaining three staying back at their shelter for the time being.

The winter was harsh, still. Frost coated the windows in the morning, water froze over, and snow covered the streets and made it dangerous for them to run in panic if they were caught unaware by the dead. They scouted for a new home after leaving Nathaniel behind, travelling to the next town and spending an evening locked up tightly in the car when they'd ran out of petrol halfway through. The food, water and medical supplies were split between each of their bags, and their preferred weapons were kept by their sides as they slept.

Marinette had lost her favoured knife a week ago, unable to retrieve the bloodstained blade when she'd thrust it into the rotten stomach of a body in panic. When the slimy partly-decomposed organs had spilled out, the putrid smell was so foul that she'd gagged as she swept her feet to knock it over before stomping her boot harshly on the safe, causing bones to impale that vulnerable brain and cause it to grow lifeless.

Adrien's excited smile when he'd returned from a run with Alya had made her raise her eyebrows. He'd revealed the knife with a flourish, exclaiming he'd found it along with small sacks powdered sugar and sugar in a kitchen.

It had a good weight, slightly smaller than the one she'd had before. The fact that he'd retrieved it with her in mind had caused her cheeks to warm as she placed an appreciative kiss on his lips.

Alya ruined the moment with aloud noise of approval, though.

They generally slept in the same room, trying to share the warmth since it was common to wake up in the morning with body parts numb from the cold. Marinette was notorious for her cold toes in a past life, but she'd slept with shoes on since the outbreak, afraid of waking up with the need to run, only to be hindered by her own mistakes.

Since the night she'd been bitten, her interactions with Adrien had ventured further than the kisses and the tight embraces, but not so often as time alone was limited. When it wasn't one of their duties to stay awake and guard, they touched each other's bodies in privacy, trying to keep the noise to a minimum so they wouldn't wake anyone up. She laughed as he tickled her side, bit into the cartilage of her ear, and whispered badly timed comments that caught her off-guard so her chortles were almost too loud.

Sometimes, Alya and Nino disappeared to another room with a blanket for a period of time, but they always returned for when they slept, just to make sure that everyone was there in the morning. It was understandable that she was afraid of losing them all—Marinette had cried the loss of her earliest companions back at the beginning, and the prickling in her eyes as she thought about those that she'd spent seven months with had her stomach clenching painfully. It was the longest that she'd stayed with anyone without the unthinkable happening to the rest of them, but one haunting thought kept playing in her mind.

While she couldn't turn, that didn't mean that they wouldn't. Eventually, their luck would run out and she'd be left alone to fend for herself, clutching their mementos with sweaty hands as she tried to navigate the wreckage. That combined with the lack of other humans that they'd seen—the last was the one that had attacked Chloé, back when the sun was sweltering and Marinette's biggest pain had been the way she stumbled when she was distracted—had a horrific thought running through her.

What if they were one of the last?

It had almost been two years—or had it? It could've past it; she had no way of knowing until the snow cleared and spring came. She'd be alone eventually, wandering underneath the trees that would grow their leaves again, where life would grow in things other than humans.

She was being too negative. There was a chance that she'd suffer a fatal injury, either by a fault of her own or due to the dead ripping her flesh apart, and then that would mean her life would end.

If it came down to it being just her, she didn't want to live, Marinette decided.

She didn't share the thoughts with the others.

They moved houses, treading through the snowy streets and collecting supplies as they passed through. The dead didn't show any signs of being damaged by the cold weather, but Marinette kept Nathaniel's notebook in her bag, untouched as a reminder of what could happen, and a go-to for facts of the undead that could come in handy in the future.

Nino's death hit them the hardest. His ankle had been caught while retreating into the car, a harsh bite applied through his trousers—not denim, they couldn't find any thicker material pairs in his size—and he'd managed to kick the head with his other shoe before shutting the door.

It took him two hours to turn. The fever burnt through his body, so he stripped off the extra layers, trying to say he was fine while sweating profusely. Then his breathing became laboured so the car was pulled aside on an empty road as the vehicle grew silent, the upcoming events causing everyone to pale and avert their eyes from the blood that was dripping onto the floor.

"You know I-I love you, right?" Nino whispered, voice hoarse and strained as he reached a sweaty palm out to cup his girlfriend's face. His dirty hat, the one that Marinette had been envious of in the beginning, was placed onto his girlfriend's frizzy hair with a sad smile before he coughed, body shaking from the pressure as blood splattered onto his palm.

Alya was the one to do it.

They stayed parked for an unknown amount of time, letting out their tears and venting their all-consuming feelings. When they started driving again as sunset approached, Alya was tucked in the passenger seat clutching the hat with Chloé sending her concerned looks as she drove.

She couldn't get over instantly, she assured them quietly one evening. The red-head told tales of the happy life they'd lived before, the quaint apartment they shared with a dog, and kept her tears at bay as they huddled around a pathetic fire Chloé had built from the small amount of dry wood they count find.

"I haven't seen a cat or a dog in years," Adrien remarked, sighing into his hand at the thought. "I really loved them, you know? Now I'm glad that they don't have to witness this."

She hadn't seen any, too. The last animal she'd spotted had been the dying rabbit she and Chloé had stumbled across in their time alone.

So she found herself confessing, "I always wanted a cat."

"Same!" the blond-haired male excitedly agreed, a genuine smile reaching his eyes. The flames danced across his face, illuminating the thin features that still appeared to be attractive, despite how gaunt he'd become due to their lack of food. "My father's—I mean, he was allergic to them, so he always said no. I never got round to getting one when I lived alone."

Chloé snorted from across them where she was diligently braiding her hair for safety. "That didn't stop you from bringing a stray home when we were little. You're lucky you only got grounded for a week."

He wrinkled his nose. "It's not much different to being home-schooled anyway."

"You two were home-schooled?" Marinette questioned, not feeling the usual welling sadness that appeared when childhoods were mentioned.

The female sibling nodded her head. "It sucked, honestly. We had to share tutors since we're the same age, which resulted in one of us trying to run off to escape most of the time. Father learned to start locking doors and giving the keys to the tutors."

There was a shared laugh at that.

"I'm going to sleep," Alya announced, stretching her arms before adjusting her hat. "Wake me up for watch in a few hours?"

Marinette smiled and promised to do so. Chloé followed her off to bed on the opposite side of the room, curling up into their bundle of blankets they'd collected, leaving her and Adrien to sit by the dimming fire that was reducing into ashes as the time passed. She shuffled along the floor so their thighs were pressed together, placing her head comfortably onto his shoulder as he wrapped arm around around her.

Their time together had strengthened her friendship, and even though she was aware of his weaknesses, and he hers, she felt the trust she gave him was warranted. Adrien had been nothing but reliable; a tall figure that hacked at corpses, told awful jokes that eased the tension, and was able to be the strong-minded one when the time called for it. Knowing that he wasn't locking up his emotions, too, helped to understand him—the blond hadn't tried to hide his tears when they'd left Nino's body slumped against a tree. It was the most respectful place they could find on short notice.

She found herself asking softly, "Did you have a girlfriend?"

There was a beat of silence, and she wondered whether he was going to reply at all. It had been roughly two years, after all, and it was natural for her curiosity to leak into their conversation.

"I didn't have anyone," Marinette confessed, closing her eyes as he leaned against him. "My last boyfriend turned out to be an utter twat. We broke up a year before everything changed."

His fingers went through her hair, caressing the dirty strands, then his fingertips brushed over the white scars on her forehead softly. They didn't speak of it often, choosing not to divulge the stories behind their wounds unless they were present to witness them inflicted. It was something most of their group had done, though there were only a few of them remaining.

"Sorry to hear that," he offered, hand slipping to fiddle with the end of her braid. "I wasn't dating anyone. I-I'm sorry that came out wrong. I wasn't in any type of relationship—no marriage, no girlfriend."

Nodding her head against him, she asked softly, "Can we really have a relationship in this kind of world?"

"Why, Marinette," the blond-haired male started, the smile clear in his voice, "it sounds like you're asking me out."

Wrapping her arms around him for warmth and for a more comfortable cuddling position, "We could just skip it and go to marriage. It's not like anyone can tell us no since I doubt there's anyone left that could claim it wasn't done properly."

"You really have a thing about skipping foreplay, don't you?" As he laughed, she could feel the vibrations in the chest, even through the multiple layers.

She squeezed him tightly. "Dating is not the foreplay of relationships."

"It kind of is," Adrien pointed out, running a hand through her secure hair to see the woven strands with affectionate fingers. "I'd be honoured to call you my wife, though. I'm sorry I don't have any rings."

"Hang on," Marinette started, laughing fondly as her cheeks started to hurt from smiling. "I haven't even said I love you yet, we should slow down."

A kiss was pressed against the crown of her head. "Well, I love you."

"Dork." She snorted, cheeks pleasantly warm as they were huddled in front of the dwindling fire. "I love you, too. I think I would've loved you in any other life; even one where you wouldn't have made such an awful first impression."

He didn't stiffen from the casual reminder like he'd done in their first few months. Adrien had fully embraced his mistakes, owned up to them and apologised for them, even though she'd assured him that it was fine. She'd worked past the original bad image that she'd had of him, instead shaping him to the true one where he was affectionate to a fault and strong—she accepted his failures, loving him for them, and not casting them aside.

Playing with the loose hairs at the nape of her neck, the blond murmured, "Those sound like some pretty good vows."

"They could be, if you want," she offered quietly.

Her head was pulled back as he embraced her fully, arms around her waist and squeezing tight to emphasise his excitement. "Hell yes."

She had to laugh at the the joy that was reflected in his voice—that had almost been too loud, but a peek to the corner of the room proved that the duo were still sleeping—and wrapped her arms around his neck, bringing him closer to press their lips together.

It was soft despite their chapped lips, demanding and enthusiastic all at once. Marinette responded in kind, slipping her tongue past the barrier of his lips, swiping it against his as their breaths became laboured, fingers clutching at each other's hair and clothing. Her cheeks warmed with every passing moment, savouring the tentative and caring brushes that she anticipated each day, her heart beating a tattoo in her chest whenever the bright and sincere smile was directed her way.

There was nothing better than someone caring for her wholly when the world had gone to ruins, knowing that he returned the desperate feelings of wanting to keep each other safe. Although the wound on her leg had healed over to appear as reddened skin, much like her forehead had been before, it would soon turn into white lines when the warmer weather arrived.

They parted with heavy breaths.

"I bet you we could find rings still in jewellery-stores. Who would loot all of those when food's so much more important?" Adrien mused, a fond smile on his lips as he looked at her. "I'm perfectly happy to count our time together as us being engaged, until we find rings you like."

She wanted to reach out and lightly flick his nose, but chose to instead crinkle her nose in displeasure. "You could just give me a sock back and we'll call it even."

The laugh he released was loud, and Marinette reached her hands out to cover his mouth, staring to see whether they'd woken up their companions by being too caught up with each other. Once it was clear that the only movements was the steady rise and fall of their chests underneath the ratty blanket, she looked back at him with narrowed eyes.

His expression was sheepish. "But I didn't even get to keep that sock, Marinette. It was kind of gross and covered in bodily fluids."

"Fine," she crumbled and agreed with a quiet sigh. "If we happen to walk past a jewellery-store that doesn't look too dangerous, we'll go inside, okay? My skin turns green if it's low-quality stuff."

"So, you're trying to say you would bankrupt me in another life," he said thoughtfully.

When she glared at him, his lips twitched from trying not to laugh aloud again. "No," Marinette denied, leaning against his shoulder for comfort as he wrapped an arm loosely around her. "I'm not that bad. The most expensive thing I used to own was my car—and it was a shitty second-hand thing, complete with scratches on the interior."

"Sounds like we definitely lived differently," the blond-haired male thought aloud, voice soft and contemplative. "You went to school and everything, right? I was able to attend college before I pursued modelling full-time, so that was the most normal thing I got to do—well, I did have someone driving me around due to my father's request."

Differently, indeed. Marinette idly traced her fingers over her cloth-clad crook of her elbow, not missing the days of the bruises and the weakness she'd feel from the missing blood. The trail of thought brought back the overwhelming feeling of guilt, though, and with it came her eyes burning as she blinked back tears, trying to convince herself that crying wasn't the best way to spend her time. She was supposed to be the only one awake, staying alert and listening to the sounds outside, trying to decide whether they were dangerous, not struggling with her mental state.

Adrien's voice pulled her out of her thoughts, calling her name softly. "Marinette?"

"Yes?" her voice cracked with the one syllable. "Sorry, I-I—"

She could feel his hand rubbing circles on her back. "You can talk to me, you know."

"I-I just didn't know any of this would happen—I mean, no one did! But I—it's partly my fault, isn't it? It can't be unrelated." Marinette wiped at her eyes with shaky hands, keeping them closed so she wouldn't have to see the dimly-illuminated concerned expression that he surely had on. "I just—we were so desperate for money, Adrien. I never asked questions as long as we had enough to buy food, and that's coming back to haunt me, isn't it?"

The hand on her back never stopped moving. "What will blaming yourself do, Marinette?" the blond-haired male enquired quietly, voice soft as though he was talking to someone fragile—and perhaps he was. "Whether the experiments your uncle did caused this to happen, or if others that share your disorder and equally immune to turning, we just don't know, okay? If you spend everyday blaming yourself so you're consumed by self-loathing, that's definitely not a healthy way to live."

"Neither is a world where the undead try and eat you," she muttered, adjusting her scarf.

A small laugh escaped him. "What can I say? I'm delicious."

"Your ego is out of control," Marinette grumbled fondly, wiping her face with the rough material of her clothing, making so it was as dry as possible. She was sure her eyes were coloured red on the outside, that they'd look painful when the sun appeared when combined with her lack of sleep. "We have a bit of time before I have to wake Alya up."

He hummed in agreement. "Too bad we can't go to another room to enjoy ourselves."

Even though they'd decided to spend nights in the same room together, not just because of the dwindling heat, the house they were squatting in and decomposed corpses in the bedrooms from where the family that had probably resided in the home had ended their lives. They had been selfish with the positioning—rotten skin that had become sweaty and loose as the putrid smell wafted throughout all of the bedrooms—so it meant the beds were ruined, and the upper-floor caused Marinette to gag and almost lose the precious contents of her stomach when she'd opened one of the doors. So, they adamantly stayed downstairs, with Alya and Chloé huddled on the floor as the sofa had had the cushions taken before they'd arrived.

"Think you can stay quiet?" the dark-haired female questioned, lips curling into a smirk as she placed a chaste kiss against his.

A strangled sound escaped as her fingers trailed down his clothed chest. "We are not fucking in front of my sleeping sister."

She muffled her laughter into his arm. "Not what I had in mind."

Despite his half-hearted protests, he didn't make any movement stop her. Marinette was freely able to run her fingers across his belt, undoing it with a coy smile and heated looks as she glanced up at him, pleased to see the colour that was appearing in his cheeks once he'd realised what her aim was. Marinette pulled the zip down slowly, shooting one last glance to the side to check that their sleeping companions were still snoozing, before she pulled the material aside, trying to make space without making him lose warmth by taking them off.

She was able to grasp his member, pulling the underwear down to reveal the flushed skin that was visible from the small amount of light that was still there from the dwindling fire. Kneeling between his parted legs, Marinette leaned over him, one hand on the floor beside his thigh to steady herself, while the other was wrapped around the warm flesh of his arousal. She pressed a kiss to the tip with her chapped lips, pulling back momentarily to wet them before she placed her mouth around a portion of his member, sucking with closed eyes as she listened to his breathing.

His fingers ghosted over her braided hair, not quite grasping or making demanding movements, as she bobbed her head, slowly taking in more of him as she licked the side, sometimes clumsily catching her teeth on the edge of his flesh. It didn't seem to matter, though, from the breathless moans that escaped him, and after she realised that they'd become somewhat muffled, a peek upwards proved that he'd covered his mouth with his hand, and when he'd caught her looking up at him, a choked sound escaped. She took advantage of his surprise to push him in deeper, relaxing her throat to the intrusion before pulling back, feeling the moisture on her lips as she messily moved, guessing from the way his hand had fallen to her shoulder and gripped her jacket tightly that he was close.

When he twitched in her mouth, she relaxed, not pulling away in surprise as warmth hit the back of her throat, patiently waiting for the pleasure to finish spilling from him as the shudders grew shorter, until he sucked in a gasping breath and she swallowed before swiping her tongue over the tip, clearing up the mess with a fond smile.

"I can't believe you just did that," Adrien muttered, the grin across his chapped lips a bright contrast from the grumbled words. Redness covered his cheeks as he was busy dressing himself, and she took in the blond at the ends of his eyelashes, the light white-coloured scars on the exposed skin of his hands, admiring the way they stood out.

She licked her lips. "You're not really complaining."

"I'm mad about our unconscious audience, that's all," he pointed out, jokingly narrowing his eyelids over his green irides. "You look far too smug."

Her grin widened at that. "Only because I love you."

"Well, it would be awkward if you didn't," he quipped, leaning forward to place a kiss on her lips. "You're my fiancée now, kid."

-x-

Jewellery-stores had been looted.

When Marinette had seen the smashed windows and noticed that the merchandise was missing, she had to wonder about the priorities of some people. Chloé and Alya had mixed reactions about their leap in relationship—with the blonde insisting that it was utterly dumb to suddenly claim they were married because no one could deny it, while Alya was overjoyed and had congratulated them with tight hugs—and although Chloé was disapproving, mostly because Marinette spent a lot of time with her brother, she was the one that returned from a run with Alya with two silver rings.

"It's not the type of shit that'll turn your skin a different colour," she insisted, placing them in Marinette's bewildered open palm.

She was flattered that she'd remembered that detail at all.

The winter weather grew colder, snow covered the streets and made it hard for them to walk quickly through the inches on the floor, but that weakness was shared with the undead; sometimes they slipped over the ice and sprawled out on the floor, hands reaching out violently and trying to drag themselves across it.

They had to duck into different houses, spending the nights in the car when they couldn't find proper shelter. Petrol was running low as barely any vehicles were spotted in the countryside—they'd ventured away from cities long ago, meeting in towns and neighbouring villages, and only as the human population decreased drastically did it become a problem. The cottages they broke into had already been looted most of the time, either destroyed with body parts decorating some of the rooms, or the furniture was pulled apart for make-shift weapons, leaving barely anything behind. Apartments were hard to break into—especially if the doors were locked—but they fumbled with bashing the doorknobs and trying to violently get in rather than destroying the door completely.

There was only so much barricades could do when the door wasn't attached. The mindless bodies that lazily hunted them down were heavy, even with the missing organs or body parts where the wounds had festered over, rotten flesh on display and showing the curve of their bones as they staggered forward.

When they ran out of petrol, the arguments started.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Alya grumbled, hands grasping at the hat on her head as her back was against a wall in an alleyway. "We checked this fucking area last week, there's nothing."

Chloé scoffed. "We can take shelter here for the night, then fucking look in the morning. Staying outside is a fucking death wish and I'm not dying because of it."

Both of the points were good. They'd been in the same village for just over a week, inspecting the wreckages of car crashes that had resulted in fires, burning most of the street where the stores were located. Marinette had tried to siphon petrol from the nearby vehicles, only to find them empty and abandoned, and the houses weren't much better.

All there was an abundance of was the undead. They walked through the streets, mingling in with each other and listening to the sounds of the roaring cold wind, mindlessly searching for their next victim.

From the lack of blood on the snow, she supposed it had been some time since their last meal. That didn't seem to matter, though—in fact, Nathaniel had theorised the same, stating that he didn't believe that they ate flesh for hunger; rather, they were only programmed to do so without the intelligence to explain their actions. There was a single-minded need that drove them to murder the living, no matter what species they were. The forests had once been filled with animals, and now it had been almost a year since she'd seen any.

After some debate, they ducked into the home with the least broken windows for the night. Marinette busied herself with Chloé, moving the furniture to barricade the doors and placing some empty tins in front of the other entrances, making it so the one awake would hear the noise if anyone tried to enter their shelter for the night.

Even when her stomach ached from hunger, she tried to give her blonde-haired friend a reassuring smile. "We'll find food tomorrow," she said, trying to sound hopeful despite the nagging pain in her abdomen.

Chloé grumpily curled into herself, not striking up further conversation.

It was a peaceful night at first. There was a small fire contained within the fireplace, thankfully not smoking out the whole room, and she had her head against Adrien's chest for warmth as they slept, trying to block out the negative temperature outside in the snowy streets.

She was awoken by Alya's frantic shaking, looking up with bleary eyes at the panicked expression on her friend's face.

"What?" Marinette croaked, clearing her throat.

Alya hastily repeated the action with the other two, placing her index finger over her mouth to keep them quiet. She gestured to their belongings, which prompted them to quickly place away the blankets and other supplies, becoming ready for travel in a matter of moments. Marinette was thankful that they were smart enough to sleep in their shoes for another moment.

It was only when Alya was tugging them towards the door that Chloé quietly asked, "What's going on?"

The red-head pushed the can away from the back door, one that they hadn't barricaded as it had a loose lock that they'd relied upon, and paused with her hand on the handle. "We need to leave right fucking now," Alya announced, tone serious. From the wide brown-coloured eyes and the frantic movements, she didn't doubt her. "There's a huge fucking group of the dead coming this way, and we need to hop over this fence and get the fuck out, okay?"

Marinette made a strangled noise as she agreed, wrapping the scarf tighter and tying the ends together.

Adrien elected himself to go last, as he was the tallest, and helped give each of them the boost they needed to get over the fence to the other side. Marinette scraped her hands across the coarse wood at the top, hissing in pain as she waited for him to appear. When his pale fingers gripped the top—no gloves, they were harder to find than they should've been—she breathed a sigh of relief, then quickly stepped aside to make room for him.

They didn't have a direction in mind.

Corpses tended to band together unconsciously, the scent of each other not enticing them into eating the undead flesh, somehow, and it was a few months into the outbreak that she'd heard stories of the large groups that were able to break through glass with their combined weight, the frantic tugging and staggering enough to splinter fences and pass through the restrictions that were in place. As dangerous as a single undead was, when they were countless and in a sickening formation despite their lack of intelligence, the thought of a large group of them catching the scent of her had her heart pumping painfully in fright.

She'd escaped them before, of course. There was a miniscule chance that any of the living that were still around after two years of the outbreak hadn't witnessed them, let alone been involved in the sickening events that happened when the undead spied a group of humans. But every time she'd come across the grotesque stampede, more than one had been injured.

There was only four of them left.

Following the back streets, hearing the echoed groans and sound of snow being stepped upon, they hastily turned a corner whenever the noises were too close, trying to evade the inevitable. Marinette's breaths were coming fast and painful, legs protesting from the constant running and frantic use of her body. Climbing the first fence had hurt her hands in the beginning due to the cold and lack of coverage, and now the snow was picking at her exposed skin, cheeks and fingertips becoming numb from the temperature. She could see their breaths, a mist that disappeared after a moment, a constant reminder that they were alive.

She wiped messily at her nose, almost tripping over as Chloé, their fastest runner, paused abruptly at the front.

The alleyway was not their destination—dead were lurching through the street. From the snow that had settled on their heads and shoulders, she assumed they'd been there a while, trying to find a sense of direction on where to go.

They'd been too loud, though. The corpses' heads had snapped up, murky and unseeing eyes directed their way as a strangled noise escaped, and that was all they needed to know that they needed to move.

Running in the opposite direction, footsteps echoing around them in the silence, Marinette's lungs burnt as she started to lag behind, feeling the sting in her legs from the prolonged use. They were along the streets before they caught sight of the horde on the other side of the road, and with a breathless noise, Marinette had indicated down to the steps to their right, indicating that they should try and slip away while they still had the chance.

They were by a frozen lake. It was larger than the one by the cottage where Ivan had died, thick ice covering the area with inches of snow on top, the wreckages of the boats turned over and covered in frost.

"Up ahead!" Alya hissed, almost tripping over the snow as she stopped, pointing out the undead that had gathered, attracted by the sounds of their feet and harsh breaths.

Marinette hastily flexed her frozen fingers, clutching her knife harder. There was only four of them, and the undead that were approaching seemed larger than their sizes times three. There was only so much they could do, so many that they could fight, and it was as she saw their unsteady feet coming forward that she pulled on Adrien's clothed elbow.

"The ice," she croaked, breath visible.

There were no grumbled complaints as their surroundings shortened, the undead groaning ominously as they approached as fast as their rotten bodies could move. Marinette took a step onto the snow-covered ice, noting that the snow made it easier for their shoes to find grip. That didn't mean that it was smooth, though. She slipped and almost lost her balance first before learning to put her weight into her steps, thrusting her boots deep into the snow to steady herself. With a panicked glance to the side, she realised the others were sharing her problems.

It was cold and unsteady. Her teeth chattered as she clutched onto her knife and the strap of her bag, attempting her best to stay upright and escape the horde that was catching up to them.

A feeling of dread ran through her as she realised that they weren't moving fast enough.

Brandishing her knife, Marinette put weight down on her feet to flatten the snow, blade raised as the nearest corpses came within arm's reach.

"Go!" she rasped at her friends, cold lips cracking as she swiped the blade into the frozen skin, plunging through the decayed eye and slicing into the brain in a matter of moments. As the body fell, she almost went with it, only pulling her hand back with the knife in time to stumble back.

Repeating the action twice more, slowly backing up as she went, blood began to stain the pristine snow, standing out against the white-covered scenery that decorated the area. When she kicked the leg of one so it stumbled over, the spilled organs wafted a gross smell, and she stomped one of her snowy boots into the face, bone crunching as it eliminated the corpse.

With a panicked glance behind her, Marinette quickly realised that her friends hadn't heeded her words. They were there with their own weapons, fighting the undead that had staggered forward, blood splattered across their clothing, matching their red-coloured noses.

Marinette's legs felt heavy as she made her way over, jumping out of the way of grasping hands just in time, grunting as her body collided with the frozen floor. She kicked wildly at the hands on her legs, feeling the damp seeping through her clothed back, and delivered a desperate slice through the ear. Blood stained her hand, dribbling down her wrist, but it was wrong; cold, dark-coloured and thick, not the warm flowing liquid that escaped her wounds.

She stood up on wobbly legs, grasping her knife with a soaked hand, eyes widening in horror as she saw a hand clasp into the back of Adrien's coat as he fought a body at the front, unprepared for the masses that were dribbling in.

With burning muscles, she sprinted forward, feet slipping and protesting the environment, and it was with the additional strength of her fall that she was able to collide with his side. The force of her push had caused him to take a few steps to the side, stumbling back disorientated as he tried to regain his balance, and she'd fallen down in his place. The hand that had been on his clothes had disentangled, and she was now eye-level with the rotten face of the body; the missing skin that was frozen over, the murky eyes and yellowed teeth on display, the stench overpowering as it grasped at her fallen legs.

She tried to kick it away, but there was another. Broken nails and bloodstained harshly dug into her legs, desperate and hungry, and it with after a failed kick that didn't quite connect with the head that teeth sunk into her hand, biting through the pale skin and causing blinding pain to erupt as the teeth connected with her flesh.

Adrien's panicked shout sounded through the fog of pain. "Marinette!"

Struggling in protest, she was able to pull herself away as the baseball bat was slammed against the head that was biting into her hand, and she was splattered with cold blood and putrid sin that she didn't want to think about. Her hand throbbed, but it wasn't the one with her knife—she was able to kick at the other body successfully, making it easier for Adrien to violently hit the head with his bat before grabbing her by her elbow, pulling her upright and trying to lead them away.

It fucking hurt, though. The bite was deeper than the one on her leg, and it was between the junction of flesh between her thumb and index finger, making it hard to move those digits without difficulty and blinding pain. When she started to run, she realised with a jolt that her leg had been damaged with the fall, ankle protesting and causing her to limp as she moved along.

She couldn't find it in herself to regret it, though. If she was to witness any of her friends fall victim beside her, the guilt and anger would've festered violently. Marinette was determined to put herself in danger rather than them, knowing that she'd survive the bites and scratches, her chances of survival greater than theirs unless the wound was too deep.

Chloé and Alya were fine, too. They were ahead by two metres, frantically making their way across the ice to the open expanse of forest on the other side.

With her chest heaving, Marinette pushed herself to move, pained noises escaping every time she put pressured on her injured foot, and it was with the help of Adrien trying to tug her along that she was able to move fast at all. He was a steady presence with a desperate expression, hair flying from the blistering wind. It was with a panicked glance behind that she realised that she was slowing them down, but he wouldn't leave her behind.

He was too kind for that.

"A-Adrien," she gasped, bleeding hand curled into itself.

He didn't answer, only tightening grip and pulling her forward with a determined set of his facial features, and that was what made her realise that he might know what she was trying to say.

There wasn't a chance for her to talk again.

As her foot smashed into the snow for stability, the ice of the lake beneath cracked, an ominous creaking sound being apparent over the noise of their breaths and the dead behind. Marinette stumbled forward as the ground beneath her fell out, hands trying to grasp onto the ground to pull herself up, but his grip was gone—

The sudden shock of cold spread through her body, and then there was water invading her nose, burning her eyes that she closed on reflex. She opened her mouth to scream, to shout from her hoarse throat about the harsh feelings that was overtaking her body, but all that was released were bubbles that floated uselessly in the water as she trashed. Her movements were slowed, body heavy and numb all at once, and there was a burn to her throat as she tried to breathe, to desperately collect the oxygen she needed.

Black spots danced across her vision, and the strain on her throat burned more than the bite on her hand. She clawed at the frozen water, trying to reach the surface, but it was to no avail. She swallowed water and choked, spluttering as her chest squeezed tightly, consciousness beginning to waver as her sluggish movements were dying out.

Noises were distorted, just the thundering sound of her heartbeat echoing throughout her head as she gasped, and the crippling sensations hit her as her body reacted in shock to the freezing temperature, the suffocating water that was invading her.

The last bubbles left her mouth.