Post-Reveal: Volpina

Epilogue

With the disappearance of the box came the disappearance of negativity and evil; not just in Paris, but worldwide. It was an all-time record for happiness, prosperity, and general positivity, and a new low in crime and crises. No one really seemed to understand it, except for a certain four people, and one reporter went as far as to say it was "miraculous."

Paris mourned the loss of its favorite teen superheroes, but since there were no more villains to defeat, there was no point for them to exist anymore. In fact, general sadness and anger that Le Papillon might have tried to target in the past seemed to have dissipated, making Ladybug, Chat Noir, and Volpina seem even more unnecessary.

The butterfly in question had given up being a supervillain immediately upon getting his wife back. According to numerous inside sources, he had apparently "not been this happy in years."

Adrien was equally as elated to get his mom back, and wouldn't shut up about her to Marinette. Actually, he had Marinette meet her, and his mother wouldn't stop acting as though the couple were married (she shipped it). Marinette couldn't remember the last time Adrien had smiled this much, and seeing him so happy made her happy, too.

The timing of the disappearing of the Miraculouses was, fortunately, coincidental with the departure of Lila's family from Paris. She bid a fond goodbye to everyone at Francois-Dupont, feeling exceptionally warm and fuzzy inside at having made so many genuine friends.

Marinette herself was disappointed at not being able to transform into Ladybug anymore, but her grades were doing much better than before, as was her timeliness. Suprisingly, no one raised an eyebrow as to why she had suddenly begun to show up more once Ladybug had been terminated, but Marinette certainly wasn't complaining. She kept finding ladybug patterns making their way into her designs, which was awfully coincidental, but she didn't challenge it. She could still imagine Tikki's voice providing advice to her when she needed it, which was immensely comforting.

She was leaning on the railing of her roof next to Adrien on a warm spring day. She was soaking in the beauty of Paris from above and trying to burn it into her memory, when he whispered in her ear, "It's still not as pretty as you, Buginette."

She giggled. "You're ridiculous." She was reminded of a similar exchange, between two different Miraculous hosts.

"I might crack jokes often, but that wasn't one of them." He swiftly kissed her cheek. "You're stunning, My Lady."

"So are you, mon chaton." Marinette wrapped her arms around Adrien. A sweet and tender kiss was shared between them.

As Marinette stared into Adrien's forest-green eyes, a strange question popped into her head.

"Do you wish you were still Chat Noir?" she murmured.

"Do you wish you were still Ladybug?"

"No," Marinette admitted. "I mean, I loved being Ladybug. But this is much better, don't you think?"

"Yeah," Adrien agreed. "I'd rather have my mom than be Chat Noir."

"You care about her a lot, huh?"

"She was the closest thing I had to a friend when I was little," Adrien confessed. "It was hard when she disappeared."

"I can imagine." Marinette hesitated. "Well, no, I can't. But I can imagine that I can imagine."

"Thanks."

A comfortable, warm silence that said much more than any words could hung between them.

"I love you, Adrien."

"I love you too, Marinette."

Author's Note: Man, what a journey this has been! Again, thank you guys so so much for reading this! I've said this before, but the whole project got so much more attention and love than I ever anticipated, and I can't thank you all enough for your support. A month ago, when I started it, I was assuming maybe 50 people would read this if I was lucky. The notion that 1,000 views were made on this (plus part one) is mind-boggling to me. I'm going to be completely honest, considering that I basically BS'd my way through writing this (I literally started it in order to get Marinette and Adrien together, and that was going to be it; not so many predictions and crazy dreams, not to even MENTION the whole thing with Adrien's mom), it got to be much larger than I ever intended. (Have a fun fact: I never actually had an ending in mind. I just wrote whatever I felt like and built off the events that happened in the last chapter. Occasionally I got a stroke of OH MY GOD, IMAGINE IF THIS WERE IN THE SHOW. In fact, I had utterly no idea how Volpina would defeat Papillon when I wrote it in Chapter Seven, and I was going to leave it to the reader's imagination. Thankfully, that didn't happen, and you now have a REAL ending and there won't be anything else after this.) Anyway, long parenthetical side notes aside, I'm really glad you all enjoyed it and the month of work I put into this was appreciated. It means a lot to me that people take time out of their day to read what I have written, and I know I'm getting all sappy over nothing and you probably haven't read this far, but I really do love you guys for reading this. I can't think of any other ways to rephrase "thank you for reading," so I'm going to end it here, but remember that I love you!

P.S. If you really have read this far, then congratulations! You get an interesting (not really) tidbit of information. The reason why Mama Agreste was brought back with the reuniting of the Miraculous to the box is because first of all, she was part of the mistake Fu made a long time ago. And second of all, it's partially because of the Miraculous that she disappeared in the first place. But that's a story for another time...