Chapter Text
In time, I'll belong to you
That's how it's meant to be, and how it's always been
(Little Joy, “The Next Time Around”)
Marinette blinks sleepily, grateful at how comfortable her bed feels after yesterday’s late night. None of her alarms have gone off yet, but she can feel sunlight hit the back of her eyelids, so she gives herself ten more minutes to keep her eyes shut.
She turns on her side, reaching out for her second pillow—only for her hand to brush against something warm and solid.
She stills. Marinette opens her eyes, thoughts still hazy as her vision adjusts to the bright room. Directly in front of her, where there should be a wall with her pinboard full of miscellaneous photos of friends and family, is a very blond, very human, head of hair.
In a great show of self-restraint, she doesn’t scream. All her senses are immediately on high alert. Her eyes dart around the room, taking in everything and cataloguing the information in her mind. It’s definitely not her room, but it’s her sewing box that she sees on the desk. It’s her little black cat plushie that’s placed right next to it, and it’s her favourite posters that she recognises by the window.
Some kind of alternate dimension? A trick played by an akumatized villain, maybe? But she’s in her civilian clothes—Marinette’s hands immediately fly up to her earrings, letting out a low sigh of relief when she realises that they’re still there.
Very, very slowly, taking the greatest care to not disturb the still blond and still human head that was somehow sleeping next to her, Marinette slips out of the bed. Her muscles are tense, hands poised defensively by her sides, expecting a fight any second. She whips her head around, looking for an exit or at least somewhere to hide while she figures things out. She spots what looks like a door to a bathroom and hastily ducks inside.
“Tikki!” Marinette whispers, not sure where her kwami would even be hiding in this strange room. “Tikki, are you there? Where are you?”
Silence. Dread creeps up her neck, slow and freezing. “Tikki? I need you!”
“What’s with all the yelling?” comes the familiarly squeaky voice as Tikki phases in through the bathroom door. Marinette could kiss her. “Is something wrong?”
“Oh, thank god,” she breathes out. She opens up her palms for Tikki to sit on, glad that she can at least transform if she needs to. “Tikki, where am I? Do you remember what happened last night? I thought I got rid of the amok in time…”
Tikki stares at her. “Marinette, are you feeling okay?”
“I’m so confused, I have no memory of waking up here, the last thing I remember is falling asleep in my bedroom, and there was someone else in the bed with me? What is this place? Am I dreaming? Is this a hallucination created by the Pig Miraculous? What—”
“Marinette,” Tikki interrupts. “How old are you?”
“What?” Now it’s her turn to stare at Tikki. “You know how old I am.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Fourteen,” Marinette says slowly. “Well, fifteen soon, but…”
“Oh no,” Tikki’s eyes grow wide, almost as wide as her entire face. “Oh no, no, no. Marinette, this isn’t good.”
Well, clearly! Nothing is making any sense. “Tikki, you’re really confusing me. Please just tell me what’s going on.”
“Look behind you.”
“Tikki, I don’t understand what you’re trying—”
“Just turn around, Marinette.”
Her brain is still too frazzled to do anything but follow instructions, so she turns. She catches a glimpse of someone in front of her, jumping out of instinct before realizing that she’s simply looking at a mirror—and she doesn’t recognise what she sees.
The woman in the mirror has longer hair than Marinette does, flowing loosely below her shoulders and ruffled haphazardly from bedhead. Her jaw is more defined, her eyes set more deeply, her shoulders more muscled than Marinette’s have ever been. But even with all their differences, she can’t deny that the face staring back at her is undeniably her own.
Yet again, she doesn’t scream.
“Tikki,” Marinette breathes, words moving around her lips but barely making a sound. “What is this? W-who am I? When am I?
“You are still Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” Tikki says calmly. “You are still Ladybug, and you are still the Guardian of the Miraculous. You’ve just woken up ten years later.”
Marinette thinks she can feel her brain melting out of her ears. “I…”
Before she can ask any of the questions barreling around her mind, though, the bathroom door creaks open slowly. Operating on instinct, Marinette closes her fingers around Tikki and hides her hands behind her back.
“Marinette? Is everything okay? I heard you get out of bed.”
Her brain is most definitely turning to slush. All the blood drains out of her face when she realises she recognises that voice, when this seemingly unknown person pushes the door open and meets her eyes in the mirror. She would know those eyes anywhere.
Adrien Agreste stands behind her, expression dripping with concern. His hair is longer too—less clean-cut, more messy than she’s ever seen it—and he’s taller than she remembers. His face is softer, rounder, less hollow and more filled out with age. With age.
It’s at this point that Marinette’s brain shuts off completely. She sinks to her knees, pulse pounding at a hundred miles per hour as she tries to process everything. An older version of Adrien was in her bed. Or not her bed, but the older Marinette’s bed… or… her head hurts. She vaguely registers Tikki flying out of her hands and saying something to this man who is supposed to be Adrien, who looks nothing like her own Adrien and yet everything like him. Wait. Tikki?
Marinette almost gives herself whiplash with how fast she looks up at him again. “You know I’m L-Ladybug?”
Her voice breaks on the last word, still scared to say it out loud, but this older version of Adrien doesn’t seem fazed in the slightest. His frown only deepens. “Yes? Did you get concussed? Do you remember that I’m—”
“THIS IS YOUNG MARINETTE FROM THE PAST IN YOUR MARINETTE’S BODY,” Tikki interrupts, loud enough that Marinette winces at the sound. Adrien’s eyes widen in almost the same way that Tikki’s had just minutes prior.
Hearing her say it out loud, though, is all it takes for Marinette to go into full-blown panic mode. She squeezes her eyes shut, head falling forwards as she digs her nails into the side of her thighs to try and focus. Her breaths come out short and sporadic, her head is throbbing, and there’s a knot in her throat that makes her feel like she’s about to cry any second. How— how is she supposed to get herself out of this one?
A hand comes to rest on the top of Marinette’s head, and she sucks in a breath at the unexpected contact. Older Adrien—unrecognisable Adrien, stranger Adrien, gentle Adrien—crouches down next to her.
“Breathe with me,” he says, in the kind of tone that implies he’s been through this many times before. Great. Even in the future, Marinette can’t stay in control of her anxiety. “Just follow my breathing.”
So she does, trying to slow down her breaths enough that she can blink away her tears and think clearly. Older Adrien’s eyes don’t move away from hers for even a second. Marinette feels stuck, like a bug caught in amber, but she doesn’t look away either.
“Okay,” he says at last, when she’s no longer hyperventilating. He moves to sit properly next to her, cross-legged like they’re little kids. “Do you feel ready to talk now?”
Marinette nods shakily. She feels so stupid—only ten minutes into an unexpected situation and she’s already freaking out instead of trying to fix it. She tries to compose herself, gathering her thoughts together into something cohesive.
“Last night, I went to bed as Marinette in 2015. And now I’ve woken up in…”
“2025,” Adrien helpfully supplies. “Ten years later. Shit. Wow. Oh, uh. Sorry for saying shit.”
Despite herself, Marinette snorts. “I’m fourteen, not four.”
Older Adrien looks amused at that, and Marinette is vaguely embarrassed to be defending her age to someone so much older.
“So, what reckless activity got your fourteen-year-old self in this situation to begin with? Akuma attack? Patrol with Chat Noir?”
“It was a sen— Chat Noir !” Marinette gasps, cutting herself off. “Chat Noir! He’s bound to know something, right? What if he was switched too? We were fighting together yesterday, it’s possible that it’s my Chat Noir wandering around in this world instead of the 2025 Chat…”
Marinette doesn’t notice Adrien and Tikki exchange a look, too caught up in the theory web she’s spinning out. “If we were both affected by the same kind of superpower, then I need to reach out to him.” She turns to face Adrien. “Do you know who he is, too?”
“Um…” He avoids her eyes. “No, that’s just between you and him.”
“Oh.” Marinette is disappointed, though she doesn’t know why she would expect Adrien to know her partner’s secret identity as well. “Probably for the better, if Monarch’s still out there and all.”
“Monarch isn’t… a problem, anymore.”
Marinette’s eyes widen. “What? How did we—actually, nevermind, don’t tell me anything else. Time travel rules and all that. Wait, will I remember everything if—when I go back to my time? If this already happened in the past, then shouldn’t you remember how we solved it?”
The last part of her ramble was directed at Tikki this time, who looked almost as helpless as Marinette felt. She’d never seen her kwami at such a loss before. “I’m sorry, Marinette… I wish I could help you more. I’m just as confused as you are.”
“That’s fine, it’s not your fault,” says Marinette. “I just have to get in contact with Chat. I’m sure he knows something. Tikki, spots—”
“Wait!” Adrien and Tikki stop her in unison. Older Adrien looks especially flustered, and Marinette wonders if there’s some kind of tension between him and Chat in this future world. She hopes not.
“Let’s just spend some time getting the facts straight, first,” Adrien suggests, and Tikki nods in agreement. “We shouldn’t rush into things. How about we make a list of everything we know, and then see where to go from there?”
He’s right. Obviously he’s right, because that’s exactly the kind of advice that Marinette would have given herself if she wasn’t so out of it right then. God, she really needs to get a grip and focus.
“Yeah, of course,” Marinette says. “Sorry, I’m just not thinking straight.”
Adrien’s face softens. “You just woke up in the future, I don’t think anyone would be thinking straight. You don’t have to be so hard on yourself. Tikki and I are here to help you.”
She returns his smile, even if she can’t bring herself to believe his words. “Thanks.”
He gets up from the floor in one clean movement, putting out a hand for Marinette to get up with him. She takes it without thinking. It’s only after they’re back in the room and Adrien still hasn’t let go of her hand that the blood rushes to Marinette’s face. She hastily pulls her hand away.
Right. She’s been doing a great job ignoring the elephant in the room. Not only did she wake up in the future, she woke up in the future in the same bed as Adrien Agreste. Now that Marinette isn’t operating purely on survival instinct, she glances around at the rest of the room—the well-stocked shelf of video games, the movie posters of Émilie Agreste. In the same bed as Adrien Agreste, in a room that they clearly share. The same bed, the same room, and the same future.
Which is fine. Which could mean nothing. Which is very much not her problem right now, because she has much bigger problems to worry about, and if she spends any time thinking about this problem, her brain will go into overdrive and melt out of her ears all over again. She’s still shocked (and proud) at the fact that she can speak to older Adrien in complete sentences without making an utter fool of herself, and she doesn’t want to jinx that now.
She’s pulled away from her thoughts when Adrien wheels out a whiteboard, almost exactly like the one that Marinette has in her bedroom to use when she needs to theorize about Monarch. Or make plans to ask out Adrien. ( Her Adrien, not this one. Well. Not her Adrien, since he doesn’t belong to her—okay, focus, Marinette! )
There’s already something drawn on the board, some kind of interconnected web with confusing arrows and lines suggesting that there was more sleuthing going on here. Adrien moves to erase it before she can read anything, but Marinette is still curious.
“If Monarch isn’t a problem anymore, are there still supervillains in Paris? What kind of things is this Ladybug investigating?”
“Well, I definitely can’t tell you those things without messing up some kind of time travel rule,” Adrien says, laughing. “It’s not as high stakes as it was when we were fourteen, but Paris still needs u—” he breaks off with a cough. “Needs Ladybug and Chat Noir.”
Marinette sighs. “I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything else.”
Adrien looks like he’s about to say something, but changes his mind. He turns to the whiteboard instead.
“Right,” he begins, pulling out a whiteboard marker. “What we know: you were in a fight last night, and you woke up in the future. What do you remember about the akumatized villain?”
“It wasn’t an akuma,” Marinette says, trying to recall everything that had happened. Her memory usually wasn’t this hazy. “It was a sentimonster, a cloud that rained tears. Anyone who was hit by the tears was reminded of their deepest regrets.”
Adrien clicks his teeth, muttering a “yikes” as he gets to writing on the whiteboard.
Tikki looks back at Marinette. “You said you purified the amok, earlier. Do you remember where it was?”
“I…” Marinette frowns. “I don’t know, I can’t remember… Everything feels so blurry. ”
When she searches her memories, all she can remember is the satisfaction of winning another fight. She can see the cloud sentimonster dissipating into vapour in front of her eyes—but how did it get there?
“That’s okay,” Tikki reassures her. “This is probably a side effect of the time travel. If you were hit by some kind of superpower, then it might have messed with your memories, too.”
It sounds believable enough, but something tells Marinette that it’s not the full story. It had been an unnecessarily long fight; both her and Chat were tired beyond belief by the end. It would have been easy for Monarch to take advantage of their exhaustion.
“I used my Lucky Charm,” she recalls, trying to make sense of what little information she has. “I used the magical ladybugs to fix everything afterwards. Chat and I fist-bumped and I headed straight home.”
Adrien taps the marker against his chin. “Do you know if you were followed by someone, as Ladybug?”
Marinette shakes her head again. “I don’t think so… I can’t be one hundred percent certain, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t. If it was Monarch’s doing, he would’ve just taken my Miraculous.”
“That’s true.” Adrien’s still fiddling with the marker. It reminds Marinette of how she schemes with Alya, coming up with crazy theories and trying to track down Monarch. She’s glad that future Marinette has more than just one person she can talk to about her superhero duties. “Do you think it’s someone other than Monarch?”
“I don’t know,” she says again. Marinette is getting extremely tired of repeating those words. “I think it has something to do with the sentimonster.”
She moves closer to the whiteboard, pointing at where Adrien had drawn a sad cloud with tears streaming from its face. There’s two arrows next to it, saying “defeated” and “amok?”
“There’s only two ways a sentimonster can cease to exist, right?” Marinette taps the drawing. “One is if we break the object containing the amok and purify the feather. And the other is if the Peacock Miraculous owner releases it from existence.”
Tikki tilts her head. “Are you saying that Monarch is the one who got rid of the sentimonster? Why would he do that?”
“What if the sentimonster was just a distraction from his real plan?”
Adrien quickly writes that on the whiteboard.
“What if,” Marinette continues, growing increasingly more panicked again, “Monarch was setting up a trap using the sentimonster, and we never noticed the real villain? He did this before, with Risk… and I just fell for it all over again.”
How could she have been so stupid? The same tricks… the same patterns… she should have seen it coming.
“It’s not your fault, Marinette.” Adrien fixes her with a sad little look, like he can tell exactly what she’s thinking. It’s unsettling. Her Adrien is usually more oblivious to her feelings. “Monarch is manipulative and cunning. Your Chat Noir didn’t realise it was a trap, either.”
But I’m supposed to be the Ladybug, she thinks helplessly. I’m supposed to fix everything. I’m not supposed to fall for the same trick twice.
It’s fine. Marinette doesn’t have time for self-pity. She has a problem to solve.
“So if the sentimonster wasn’t the real target, then there must have been an akumatized villain hiding somewhere whom we somehow didn’t notice. But what kind of powers would even have caused…”
She trails off, zoning in on a word that Adrien had written on the whiteboard and underlined: regrets .
“The tears from the cloud made people think of their biggest regrets,” she realises. “That’s probably the emotion that led to its creation, and the emotion that let Monarch akumatize this person in the first place! If they were dealing with past regrets, then it completely makes sense for them to have time travel powers.”
Adrien lets out a low whistle. “Even at fourteen, you’re smarter than every single person I know.”
Marinette blushes furiously—there’s that sense of vague embarrassment again, except this time its from being complimented by an older version of Adrien. She sees Tikki smiling at her from the corner of her eye.
“Um, thanks,” she mumbles, trying valiantly not to get distracted. “But why would the akuma send me to the future ? To this time, to 2025 specifically?”
“Maybe it was an accident? It could just be a random time, out of the akumatized person’s control,” Adrien suggests.
“That doesn’t make any sense, Monarch doesn’t do accidents .”
“Monarch doesn’t, but his victims do,” he reminds her. “He can’t maintain as much control over them as he would like to. It’s entirely possible that their powers didn’t work as they wanted them to, or maybe they just made a mistake.”
“Maybe,” Marinette echoes. It doesn’t seem right to her that there could be such an easy explanation for it.
“The real thing we need to worry about right now is how we’re going to get you back into your time,” Adrien continues, tapping the writing on the whiteboard that says 14 year old Marinette??? “Don’t get me wrong, it’s very cute to see you acting like your teenage self again, but I would like my real girlfriend back.”
Marinette almost chokes on her own spit, coughing herself into a near fit as the blood rushes to her cheeks all over again. Adrien stifles a laugh.
“You have to be slow with her,” Tikki admonishes him, flying around his head like a bug. “You remember how easily flustered she was when you were teenagers!”
“I can also hear what you’re saying, Tikki! ” Marinette hisses. “Me, flustered? Never! I’ve never heard of such a thing! I’m chill, and calm, and cucumber as a cool.” She pauses. “Cool as a cucumber.”
“Oh, for sure,” Adrien nods seriously. “That’s why you’re reacting so normally. I’m sure you figured it out as soon as you woke up.”
Well, she had been giving herself the benefit of the doubt, but there was no doubting it now. She lets her burning cheeks answer for her.
Adrien side-eyes her. “Unless you thought that your older self and I were just platonic roommates?”
Marinette squeaks. Tikki glares at Adrien, crossing her tiny arms as if to say, Well?
“Okay, okay, I’ll stop teasing,” Adrien surrenders, but he’s still grinning. “Sorry, Marinette. It’s not every day that you get to meet your girlfriend’s teenage self all over again.”
He’s so different from the Adrien she knows—she can’t ever imagine her Adrien fooling around like this, trying to fluster her on purpose. It actually reminds her of someone else she knows, someone completely poles apart from Adrien.
“Glad we addressed that,” Marinette finally manages, fighting to keep her composure. She knows that this version of Adrien has already seen her at her worst, but she still can’t fight the nagging urge to try and impress him. “Very cool. And awesome.”
She gives him a thumbs-up. He returns it with equal finesse. Marinette most definitely will not spend the rest of her days reliving this very moment and drowning in the secondhand embarrassment.
“To answer your question,” she says, desperate to change the subject and cool her permanently flushed cheeks, “I don’t even know what we could do from this side of the timeline to fix things. All the problems happened in 2015.”
Adrien raises an eyebrow. “Do you think that what happened to you happened to my Marinette, too? She got switched with her younger self?”
“That… makes the most sense.” Marinette stares at her feet. She can’t imagine what it would be like for her 24 year old self to wake up in her childhood bedroom again. “I guess she would be on her way to figuring out the same things, then.”
“We could always call on Bunnyx for help,” Tikki chimes in.
Marinette’s head whips back up again. She’d gotten so used to operating without the other heroes by her side that she’d completely forgotten using different Miraculous was an option.
“Bunnyx is still around? And the other Miraculous, they’re—they’re still there?”
“Of course they are, Marinette,” Tikki says, smiling. “You’re the best Guardian in the world, after all.”
Relief crashes through her like a wave. She isn’t an utter failure in the future, at least. And now she knows that there’s a way out of whatever situation she’ll find herself in when she gets back to her own time.
“Let’s go, then,” says Marinette, strengthened with newfound resolve. “I can transform and give her a message, explain the situation… she’s helped me and my Chat Noir before, so she’ll be familiar with me, at least.”
Adrien shakes his head. “Not right now. You need food and rest. ”
“We need to resolve this as soon as possible—”
“It can still wait a few hours,” Adrien insists. “I’m sure that if my Marinette is on the other side, she’s already working overtime, and I’m not there to make sure that she takes a break in between everything. I’m at least going to make sure that you are well-rested.”
“But—”
“It’ll be fine, I promise. I’ll text Bunnyx myself and let her know we need her help. But you need to eat.”
Marinette feels properly chastised, like getting a scolding from an older kid in school. Half of her is annoyed that he’s stopping her from doing her job, but the other half is oddly grateful that someone is looking out for her like this.
She’s about to thank Adrien when she realises what he’d just said. She stares at him. “You know Bunnyx but not Chat Noir?”
He startles, caught off-guard. “Oh. Right, well, I’m only allowed to know a few identities, anyways… And you know, it’s dangerous for anyone to know both Ladybug and Chat Noir’s identities…”
Marinette narrows her eyes. “But that’s only because of Monarch. You said he wasn’t a problem anymore.”
“It’s not that serious, I promise! I already knew Alix, you both trust me, it makes sense that I know who she is in case of any emergencies.”
“Do you and Chat Noir… not get along?”
Adrien blinks at her. For a second, Marinette thinks he’s going to get mad at her, but he just starts laughing instead.
“Let’s save the crazy conspiracy theories for fighting villains, mi—Marinette,” he says between laughs. “There’s no problems between me and Chat Noir, I promise. Now let’s get you some breakfast.”
Marinette still doesn’t fully believe him, but she drops it for now and lets Adrien guide her to the kitchen. She pauses to admire the rest of the apartment on the way, catching glimpses of a life that isn’t hers—but could be, if she does everything right.
Adrien doesn’t ask her what she wants to eat; he moves around the kitchen like he already knows what she needs. It’s an easy kind of intimacy, the kind of domestic life she’s dreamed of for so long. Marinette can’t believe she’s feeling jealous of herself.
She sneaks a look at Adrien when she thinks he isn’t looking, giving herself the time to properly take it all in. It’s been an insanely stressful morning already—she’s had a panic attack, multiple freakouts, and she still doesn’t know how she’s getting out of this situation. She has no plan whatsoever.
And yet, there’s still a little part of her mind that’s running around in circles and yelling, that’s my boyfriend! Teehee! My boyfriend in the future in real life! Adrien Agreste is going to be my boyfriend!
Oh, well. There’s definitely worse future timelines to be body swapped into.