Chapter Text
When the Guardian said defeating Hawkmoth would hurt, Adrien could not have imagined that this was what she meant. Rena Rouge’s announcement that she had narrowed down Hawkmoth’s location, followed rapidly by an exhausting battle and the reveal (My father is Hawmoth. My father is Hawkmoth! The thought echoes in his mind, pounding on his resolve), is what led to Adrien, still wearing the guise of Chat Noir, running across the Parisian rooftops. Running to escape, running to avoid the problem, running for the sake of running.
He is not sure how much time has passed. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours, but when he finally stops to take a breath, he finds himself perched in the Eiffel Tower, in the same spot where he met the Guardian for the first time. She saw the ending, he thinks bitterly. She told me she saw the ending and that it would hurt me, but she didn’t prepare me for it.
“I thought she cared about me, but how could she, if she wouldn’t even tell me the truth?”
“You think I don’t care about you, Adrien Agreste?”
He turns to see her, once more wrapped in her robe of starlight, lazily sprawled across one of the beams of the tower, the same place where he first met her. He scowls at her.
“You knew.”
She sits up and frowns. “I’m sorry, Adrien. I know that you are hurting right now, but I can assure you, I did not know. Looking forward, seeing the way I saw, is not always like looking at you as I do now. Sometimes I can see things so clearly, it is like looking through an open doorway, and sometimes, like when we last spoke, I see only the vaguest impressions, shapes in smoke.” He turns away from her, only to find that she is behind him. “Adrien, look me in the eyes and tell me honestly, if I could have told you that Hawkmoth was your father, would you have wanted to know?”
He stares into her deep eyes, falls upwards into the sky, and sighs as he looks away. “No. I wouldn’t have, you’re right.”
She sits and pats the spot next to her, prompting him to sit as well. When he joins her, he leans his head on her shoulder.
“You can cry, chaton,” she says gently. “You are allowed to grieve. Finally, thanks to you, our city can feel once more.” She begins to knit (he did not see her pull knitting needles from inside her cloak, but he is no longer surprised to find things in her hands that were not there a second before), though she doesn’t seem to need yarn. The scarf that spills from her needles as they click is woven of gusts of wind and the twinkling lights of the tower around them.
As he sits there, leaning against her, sobbing, she produces water from her cloak when the tears stop flowing, and a croissant when he stops shaking. She doesn’t say anything when he sets his head in her lap, merely hums quietly to herself while he closes his eyes to rest.
He regains consciousness slowly, feeling fully rested for the first time since Stoneheart appeared, what felt like an eternity ago. He is still laying with his in the Guardian’s lap, as she watches the sunrise over Paris. “Good morning, minou. How do you feel?”
He stretches out, looking remarkably like a cat at that moment, and grins up at her. “Purr-fectly rested, milady.”
She laughs and rolls her eyes. “I walked right into that one, I suppose.” She hums to herself quietly, looking back out across the city as the fingers of sunlight slowly begin to break through the clouds and descend to the streets below. “Your friends are worried about you, Adrien. I told them you were safe and cared for, but you know Nino. He won’t be convinced until he’s seen you with his own eyes.”
He sits up in shock. “Do you know Nino?”
Her lips twitch upward in a wry grin. “You could say that, yes. After all, when I took up the title of Guardian, I had to make sure I knew who would make the perfect team for my black cat. It was easy to do, seeing as my chaton ended up being far closer than I had ever expected.”
Adrien blinks and he looks closer at her eyes (still the only feature of her cowled face he can focus on and remember). “Do- do I know you?” The possibility that they know each other, that he knows her outside of the magic and the subterfuge, makes his head spin. Does he recognize her eyes? So deep, so blue. Surely, he would have recognized them in a civilian.
“We’ve become rather close in both our lives recently, Adrien. I told you once, several weeks ago, that when Paris was safe, I would consider telling you who I am. If you ask, I will pull my hood down right now, and there will be no more secrets between us.”
His mouth goes dry. As he stares at her, a beacon of magic and serenity, he can only think of one person he wants to be under the hood. “And- and what if you aren’t who I think you are?”
There is a twinkle in her eyes. “Is there someone, in particular, you are hoping for?”
He swallows and nods. She grabs his hand and places it on the edge of her hood, smiling and nodding as she does. He removes her hood and there she is, with a crown of stars on her brow and magic woven thick through the air around her. He can’t help but think that this feels natural; she wears her authority like a gown, and he is certain that this is her true self.
“Marinette,” he breathes out.
“Hello, chaton.”
Her smile is like the sun, and he can’t help but bask in it. And when she leans in to give him a kiss, he knows that while it may have been hard, in the end, it was worth it.