As they had done countless times before over the course of the last years, once again, his feet led him to the cemetery. Every time he felt like that, like he was about to choke on oxygen, like the walls of his room were closing up on him, like he was about to lose his mind, he sneaked out and walked until his feet hurt and his breathing became something natural again, instead of something he actively had to think about, step by step.

Weird as it may sound, Adrien liked the peaceful atmosphere that reigned in the cemetery. He rarely encountered other living beings, and the eerie silence was more often than not enough to calm his jittery nerves. He paced down the aisles, his hands buried in his pockets, once again painfully aware of his bare ring finger.

The disappearance of his ring was the greatest loss he had ever suffered. Losing his mother had been terrible, but at least he had the little comfort of knowing she wasn't suffering anymore. His father's death had been brought upon himself by his foolish actions. But his ring had been taken away from him. His Lady had been taken away from him. He missed Plagg every single day, missed the freedom of running across rooftops in the dead of the night. If he was to be honest with himself, he even missed fighting akumas with his beloved.

But Chat Noir was dead.

Well, that's what everyone thought, at least.

One year prior, when Hawkmoth had been defeated, Chat Noir had never gotten out of the collapsed Agreste manor. Rescue teams had been going through the rubble for a week, but the only thing they ever found was the Agreste son, lying unconscious under a shattered wall.

So, according to all of Paris, Chat Noir had found his ultimate demise in the final fight against his mortal enemy, bringing him with him into death.

Ladybug had spent the entire week following his dramatic exit helping the volunteers dig through the ruins of the former Agreste mansion, refusing to give up. Alya had to physically force the heroine on more than one occasion to drink some water, eat a bit, rest for a few minutes. When it became clear that her partner was nowhere to be found, at least alive, Ladybug had fled the premises, to never be seen again.

Meanwhile, Adrien was doing his best to be forgotten. It had taken him almost two weeks to regain consciousness, hooked on multiple hospital machines and feeling groggy and disoriented. His first reality check had been harsh: Nino was the only one staying by his side. With Gabriel dead, Marinette had lost her internship and had accepted a position in another company. In China. Alya wasn't coping well with her best friend's sudden departure, and it took her a few weeks before she would be able to hang out with Adrien and Nino, all three of them carefully avoiding the blatant hole in their broken foursome.

For Adrien, Marinette's broken dream was one life too many Gabriel Agreste had ruined. He sold his father's legacy, bought himself a nice apartment and disappeared from the face of the earth as far as media were concerned. A few chosen people were still aware of his whereabouts, notably Nino and Alya, but according to most Parisians, Adrien Agreste had fled the country as soon as he was discharged from the hospital to avoid dealing with the scandal of his father's death.

Sighing as he tried to shake his grim memories away, Adrien quickened his pace between the memorials. If he was to turn left at the end of the aisle, he would find his mother's grave—a grave as empty as his was, contrary to Gabriel Agreste's. He never turned left. Couldn't bring himself to face the lie that represented his mother's sepulture, couldn't bring himself to acknowledge that his very own cataclysm had put his father six-feet-under.

He always turned right. At the far end of that path was standing tall Chat Noir's monument, erected by Paris's citizen as a last homage to the allegedly fallen hero. The first few weeks, it had been a really crowded place, with so many flowers you could barely see the statue standing over the empty casket. But the dust had settled, and nowadays, it was as deserted as the remaining of the cemetery, as peaceful.

Lost in thoughts, he followed his usual path, the knot in his throat becoming less and less painful with every step he took. Bittersweet memories began to fill his mind, images of breathtaking races on the rooftops, of laughs and playful banter at the top of the Eiffel Tower, of brilliant blue eyes looking at him with love and tenderness.

He didn't realize he had company before it was already too late.

For, sitting on the ground before Chat Noir's grave, hugging her knees to her chest, was a young lady, her shoulders unmistakably shaking with violent sobs. From where he was standing, he didn't recognize the black hair cut in a short pixie cut, nor the black trench coat that was hugging her waist snuggly. She was curled up into a tight ball, on the ground, her entire being shaking wildly with her obvious sorrow.

But when she whimpered pitifully, half-choking on another sob, Adrien instantly recognized her voice.

A voice that had been haunting him for the past year.

A voice he thought to be lost forever, to have been ripped away from him.

"Why did you have to leave me?" she whined breathlessly, still sobbing uncontrollably. "I can't go on without you, Kitty. I need you. I just… I miss you so, so much. And it hurts, it hurts so much. I've failed you, I've failed to protect you, and now you're gone forever."

Adrien knew he was intruding on a rather private moment, knew perfectly well that the words dropping freely from her lips were never meant for his prying ears. But he was already too close to her to leave without risking her discovering his presence.

So he froze in place, his breath hitching in his throat as she went on. "Every single day without you is a torture, I thought that going away from Paris would ease the pain, but it only made it worse." She choked on yet another sob. "I love you, my kitty…"

Her last sentence was barely above a whisper, but to Adrien it felt worse than a punch to the solar plexus.

At that precise second, he knew that he had made a horrible mistake a year prior.

That he shouldn't have ever given up on trying to find her, that by cowardly hiding instead of turning the universe upside down to get reunited with his partner, he had broken her too.

This was more than he could take.

His knees gave up under him and he dropped to the ground beside her, startling her out of her grieving. The anonymous woman gasped as he pulled her into a tight embrace, burying his nose into the crown of her head.

"I found you," he whispered into her hair, "I finally found you."

A broken sob tore from her throat, and she whimpered within his arms, "A … Adrien?"

He broke away from her upon hearing her words, the obvious recognition in her voice sparking something within him. She hadn't called him M. Agreste, nor Adrien Agreste.

She had called him Adrien.

Like an old friend.

Nothing could've prepared him for the rollercoasters his heart decided to take into his chest when his eyes found hers. Big, beautiful blue lakes of kindness staring at him with conflicting emotions. Familiar rosy lips that had haunted his dreams far more often than he'd like to admit, black hair with a blueish hue that was no longer held back in pigtails, but now cut into a cute pixie cut that made her seem older, more womanly.

Ladybug's face, whose every line and contour he had engraved in his heart.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng's face, the missing piece of his friends foursome, the dearest friend that his father had managed to drive away from the grave.

Without realizing it, he lifted a hand to gently caress Marinette's cheek as he stared into her bluebell eyes, marvelling at the incredible strike of luck he had for her to be the lost partner he had longed for so much, of having found her in a Parisian cemetery on such a random day.

She was staring at him too, tears spilling anew on her cheeks as she cupped his cheek in turn. "It's … it's really you? My kitty? Mon Chaton?"

"I'm so sorry. Please forgive me, my lady."

He tightened his grip on her, clinging onto her like a lifeline. His eyes fell on her earrings, familiar spots of black on her lobes. He had never seen Marinette without them back in their school days, and had often wondered without daring to ask what a bubbly and colourful girl like her was doing with such bland jewelry. He had always thought they held some sort of personal significance, and had left it at that.

Now he knew better.

Of course Ladybug would never remove her Miraculous. And, of course, said jewel would look ordinary and uninteresting when not activated.

His ring was a dull and uninteresting silver shade whenever he wasn't Chat Noir, after all.

Thinking about his ring, Adrien's eyes travelled down his long lost lady's face and fell on the hollow of her throat. There, gently nestled just above her breasts, laid a ring he was all too familiar with.

The silver band was hooked on a thin chain around her neck, and if Adrien had any lingering doubts about Marinette being Ladybug in that second, they were instantly swept away.

Because there was no way anyone other than Ladybug could've realized how much this jewel was important, what it meant, no way anyone else would've hung to it for an entire year, wearing it daily, carrying it with her wherever she went.

His heart swelling with love for her, he reached tentatively, brushing the cold metal with the pad of his thumb. "You…" Adrien whispered, "You've had it all of this time?"

Marinette looked at him, reaching behind her neck to unclasp the chain. "I … when… When Chat—I mean you, attacked Hawkmoth… He took off your ring… The next thing I knew, the mansion was collapsing, my partner was M.I.A. and I was clutching on your Miraculous for dear life… I—"

She was shaking violently into his arms, hot tears streaming down her face. But he knew better than everyone that she needed to get those words off her chest, that she needed to tell them after a year of staying silent, of keeping all of those powerful emotions bottled up. Resting her forehead on his, she choked up pitifully, "I tried, you know. I searched for you under that rubble day and night until I knew for sure that my partner wasn't… I … I-I didn't know, Adrien, and—"

Powerful emotions washed over Adrien in that precise moment. Nostalgia over their past friendship, the tight-knitted bond they had with Alya and Nino. Longing over the fact of having the woman he had been head over heels for ever since being fifteen cradled in his arms. Pain and sorrow when the last images he had of her came to mind, images of her beautiful face stained with blood, of her horror-stricken expression when his cataclysm-charged hand had collapsed against the mansion's supportive column.

Unable to cope with all of those thoughts clashing into his grieving mind, Adrien pulled her close and pressed his lips on hers, hard. There was no tenderness in their kiss, it was born out of desperation, out of months of mourning. It was hungry, heated, and Marinette met his enthusiasm on par. She clung onto him, her nail raking on his nape, pressing her chest against him as if her entire life depended on him.

"I missed you, I missed you so much," he whispered against her lips, drunk on her taste, drunk on her touch.

She gave a weak smile, and she reached for him again, pulling him into another salty kiss.