Chapter Text
“And then Plagg suggested that I should call you, since you’re technically my guardian now and all,” Adrien finished, lacing his fingers together in his lap so he didn’t reach up and rub at the back of his neck. He had been wanting to squirm in his seat the whole time, and only barely resisted the urge. He wouldn’t crack now that he was finally done.
Adrien was always told it was a terrible habit of his, the constant need to move and have something to do to ease the nerves he got just from all of the stresses of his life. It was the kind of habit that made photographers go crazy, and always got his father so very disappointed. It had become a rule- anytime he had the urge to tap his fingers or bounce his leg or let his posture lean to one side or another, Adrien was supposed to stand as stiff and motionless as he possibly could until the need to move went away. It really only made things worse, but rules were rules.
Maybe he didn’t need to have that rule anymore though, seeing as it had been a rule of his father’s. There was no way to know which of those rules had actually been about his safety, and which were just more ways to manipulate him. Adrien would think about it later, for now he had to focus on what was going on.
Grigori had sat silently through the entire ordeal, listening as Adrien unloaded two weeks of stress and grief. At first, Adrien had been able to parse out a few minute shifts in his expression and modeled his words based off of how much Grigori reacted, but the second the bodyguard figured out what his charge was doing, he doubled down on giving Adrien the blank neutral stare he usually had. Adrien didn't have anything to moderate his story to, he had no way of knowing if what he was saying was over the line, whatever that line might be.
Halfway through carefully picking and choosing his words, Adrien had gotten so sick of not knowing how to do this right that he just decided to talk, reactions be damned. He put every ugly part of it out on the table. His unpredictable and at times frightening moods, the sick fear that had been holding him hostage since the moment he had seen his father underneath that mask, the empty numb waves that washed over him without any way to stop them.
It had been liberating and terrifying in equal measures. Adrien hadn’t worried about being perfect, about being right, he had just done what made him feel better. By the time he was done he felt like a two ton boulder had been lifted off of his shoulders, but the weightlessness that came with that was something wholly new.
But now that Adrien was finished, that weight was starting to return, held in the unchanging stare that his bodyguard was giving him. Adrien wasn’t exactly sure what he had been expecting, it wasn’t like Grigori had ever been a man of many words, but his usual silence was oppressive now.
“Well?” Adrien pressed, needing him to say something.
His bodyguard sighed, running one hand down his face and clearing his throat.
“Do you still want to kill yourself?” Adrien needed him to say something different than that.
He knew that they were going to talk about it, but he hadn’t been expecting it now. Plagg seemed shocked too, but he reacted quicker, giving a short sharp hiss before floating off of the table and onto Adrien’s shoulder. Adrien’s bodyguard turned his attention to the tiny creature.
“It is the important question.” The older man justified, leveling an unimpressed look when Plagg continued to bare his fangs. Grigori switched his attention back over to Adrien, his voice softening by just a shade, “If you are still a danger to yourself, I must know that.”
To anyone who didn’t know Grigori, there would be no change, but Adrien caught it immediately. The barely there shift was barely reassuring, but it was enough to take some of the stress out of the teen’s shoulders and spine. Adrien chewed on the inside of his cheek as he thought carefully about the question.
Did he still want to die? He knew he didn’t at this moment, but what about when Grigori left? What about when he woke up from another nightmare, or had another bad encounter? Was Adrien only fooling himself into thinking he was okay?
“I know that I don’t want to hurt the people who love me, and doing… that would hurt them,” Adrien finally decided, looking down at the table as he said it. He still couldn’t say the words, every time he tried his voice just shriveled up and died. Plagg had reassured him he had nothing to feel guilty for, but there was still something dark and shameful that grew inside of Adrien. A thing that reminded him of what he had almost done, and why he had done it. “I don’t want to be like my parents,”
Grigori grunted, folding his arms over his chest and leaning back in his seat. He didn’t seem particularly relieved by the answer he had been given, and judging by the furrow in his brow and the turn of his mouth, there was something else on his mind that he hadn’t yet told Adrien.
“You said your mother knew of your father’s plans,” Grigory stated, the upturn of his voice at the end of the sentence making it into a slight question. Adrien nodded in response.
“Maman used the Peacock, and that’s why she got so sick,” Adrien explained. His bodyguard had been there the whole time his mother had declined. If anyone deserved to know the truth, it was him, “Nathalie’s sick the same way as her now. I- I don’t think there’s a cure.”
“You know that she knew this ‘miraculous’ was broken?” Grigory asked, the furrow cutting deeper lines in his face, “You know that she knew what your father was planning to sacrifice in order to bring her back?”
Adrien opened his mouth to respond automatically, but he stopped himself before he could give the answer that had sprung forth. He didn’t know that for a fact. He didn’t know anything for a fact. Everything he had ever thought he had known about his parents had been thrown out the window the second his father had been unmasked. There was a pit growing in his stomach where the shame usually lived, and with every question it only got darker.
“Does it matter?” He shot back instead of answering, “She still used it, she still was a part of all of this,”
“Do you know she knew what your father was planning?” Grigori insisted, matching Adrien’s growing irritation with a wall of stone that only made the teenager even more frustrated.
“No but-” Adrien cut himself off with a small growl, his face twisting up into a snarl. He shoved the shame down into the dark place inside and threw whatever he could find over it to try and hide it. He pressed his fingers tighter against each other, shoulders curling in as he hunched over. “It doesn’t matter! What matters is that she used the miraculous and that makes her as bad as my father!”
“You use a miraculous. Does that make you like your father?” Adrien gave a strangled gasp and reared back, instinctively needing more space from the accusation. Plagg hissed again, this one mixing with a near growl, a pulse of dangerous energy mixing in the air. Grigori took it all in stride, holding up a hand and waiting for the other two to uneasily settle back into place.
“Do not misunderstand me. Your father is a cruel man. An evil man. What he has done to the world- to you- may be irredeemable,” Grigori said, speaking slowly so each word came to its full effect, “However, it will hurt more to poison all of your memories of mother alongside him,”
“But none of them are real.” Adrien shot back, unexpectedly choking up as he spoke. The truth was he had dozens of good memories of his mother. He even had a handful of good memories with his father, but all of them were ruined now. He at least thought he would have the comfort of his mother’s legacy, but the secrecy and lies polluted everything, and they always would. He couldn’t deal with that, he didn’t want to have to deal with that.
“None of it was real,” He repeated softly, more to himself than anything else. Having none of it really matter made things easier. Instead of having to try and parse out what had been truth and what had been fiction, he wanted to be able to just throw it all out. No need to examine what’s real and what’s not. If he gave in and admitted that something wasn’t manipulation, then there were too many questions that could never be answered, too many to even start thinking about.
“Adrien.” Grigori stated, forcing the boy to look up and make eye contact, “I watched you grow up. I saw. The love your mother had for you was real, and your love for her was real as well. That is all that matters”
But it wasn’t. It wasn’t the only thing that mattered, because if it was then she would still be here. She wasn’t, so something had to have mattered more than him. Adrien shook his head, wishing he could put his hands over his ears so he didn’t have to hear this. Plagg had curled up close to him and was giving quiet purr to try and soothe his boy’s nerves, but it wasn’t helping this time. Now Adrien was being forced to add yet another layer of complexity to the problem, and it was starting to all become too much again.
Memories slowly filtered up to the surface, each one was adding another spike to his heart. Adrien’s mind flashed across dozens of little spots of light that he had held close all his life. His mother and him playing the piano together, his father smiling at him before a modeling job, the easy lilt of their voices as they shared a story over his head as he slept. He had wanted to cast it all aside as just another fable, another part of their schemes. What had happened didn’t matter, all that mattered was that Adrien needed to let go of them.
How could he let go if he still loved them? If he still wanted them back?
“She had to know,” Adrien said, his voice sounding weak even to himself, “She knew, and he knew, and they still did what they did. My aunt told me my mom was selfish too, just like my dad.”
“Your aunt does not seem to be that good at judging characters,” The bodyguard grumbled, clearly not enthused to be talking about Amelie. The man sighed and shook his head, placing his hands on the table and standing up.
“It does not matter what she did. Your mother is gone, and you cannot change her past mistakes. What matters now is how you move forward.” Grigori declared, as if it was as easy as the words made it sound. As if Adrien hadn’t almost just given up to try and avoid confronting that exact problem.
“How am I supposed to do that?” Adrien groaned, tipping his head back towards the ceiling and rapidly blinking his eyes to try and get back to a somewhat calm state. He kept his eyes directed away as Grigori walked around the table, unable to look at the man and keep what little composure he might have had left.
“By not letting go of who you are, Luchik ,” His bodyguard said in an uncharacteristically gentle tone, “Your father wins if his actions destroy your beliefs,”
His bodyguard didn’t give him any chance to respond to that particularly confusing sentence. The man put one large hand on Adrien’s shoulder, patting in a rough but well-meaning fashion that shook Adrien’s entire body.
“I will be back soon. You will watch him?” Grigori asked, turning to Plagg who puffed out his chest and flew in front of Adrien to directly face the man.
“I always do,” Plagg swore, and that seemed to be enough for the bodyguard.
He nodded shortly once and left the room, leaving kwami and boy alone in the empty mansion once more. Adrien took the moment to swipe at his eyes, taking a shaking breath in and stretching out the stiffness that was holding onto his joints.
“Well that could have gone worse,” Plagg observed, twirling lazily in the air around Adrien’s head and drifting towards the fridge.
“Could have gone better too,” Adrien replied, watching Plagg disappear through the door of the refrigerator and returning with a triangle of camembert. He watched his kwami munch on the snack for a while, letting the entire conversation slowly roll through his mind. It was true, his aunt never had his best interests in mind, but couldn’t she be trusted to know her own twin? If his maman hadn’t known about father’s plans, then there was no way to know if she even knew that the miraculous could hurt her. Nathalie had definitely known, but would his maman have taken that risk? Knowing what it would have done to Gabriel and Adrien?
“What do you think?” Adrien finally asked, Plagg halting himself mid-bite and turning to face his boy with a confused look.
“About my mom?” Adrien clarified, “Do you think she knew?”
Plagg flew over and lowered his cheese onto the kitchen table, drifting back up till he and Adrien were at eye level with each other. Plagg was clearly taking his time to think about his answer, and Adrien appreciated that, but the longer the kwami’s silence lingered, the more the anxiety pressed on his chest.
“I don’t know,” Plagg finally landed on, sighing as he spoke, “I didn’t know your mom, kid, but from what you’ve told me, none of it makes a lot of sense,”
Adrien opened his mouth, not really sure what he was about to say but knowing his mind was too full to keep quiet. But before he could speak, Plagg held up a paw and continued his explanation.
“Look, it's complicated. My miraculous has never been broken before, but I know it’s possible. I don’t know what that does to a person or a kwami. The only time I even remember a miraculous being broken was with Pollen, and that was centuries ago. When it happened, we noticed because she was acting strange. She didn’t have a holder at the time, so there’s no way to really say how it might affect a person. The only ones who would know are Nooroo and Duusu,”
“Duusu?” Adrien knew Nooroo was the kwami in the butterfly miraculous, the one that his father had used to terrorize Paris. The other name wasn’t familiar to him
“The kwami of emotion, Duusu’s the kwami in the peacock miraculous.” Plagg said, “If anyone would know, it’s Duusu. He would know whatever your mother knew at the time,”
Adrien chewed on the new information Plagg had given him, working it into the already complicated web of his mind. He held out his hand, and Plagg flew over, settling in his palm and pressing down on Adrien’s fingers with his paws in a rhythmic motion.
The teen left the kitchen, walking into the foyer and out the back exit. The sun was still shining brightly, and the stone of the outside staircase was warm under his bare feet. Adrien took a deep breath of the fresh air, letting the simple pleasure of being outside push away the mess of emotions caused by the conversation from inside. Plagg seemed content to wait for Adrien to talk again.
Duusu would have what Adrien needed, some definitive answer for him to try and wade through the murky waters of his family, but there was just one problem with that solution.
“I would have to talk to Ladybug again,” Adrien murmured aloud, leaning his elbows against the stone wall protecting the balcony. Plagg took to the air once more and Adrien curled his fingers around his elbows, gripping them tight enough that the skin turned pale white underneath.
“You’ll have to talk with her no matter what,” Plagg shot back, “It’s way past time for you to know who she is and for her to know who you are,”
“Who I am,” Adrien said with a half laugh, a pitiful noise that lingered in his chest. He let his head flop down, hanging low over his arms as he did, “Grigori said that I had to stay who I was, but I don’t know who that is anymore, Plagg,”
“You’re Adrien,” Plagg replied, and the boy shot him a look. The kwami didn’t back down, hovering away and enticing Adrien to walk down the stairs to follow him as he spoke.
“You play the piano, you like rock climbing and playing video games. You model for your dad because you’re loyal, even though you don’t like it at all. You care about all the people around you, enough that you try not to hurt them when you can. You love your friends, even the ones who don’t deserve it. You like school for some unknown reason, and you work really hard to keep perfect grades. You’re expected to be at the top of your class, but you would study no matter what just because you like to do your best.”
His kwami finished his tiny speech just as Adrien got to the bottom of the steps. Plagg flew over and settled himself in Adrien’s hair, reaching down to bat at the boy’s nose with one paw.
“I think that’s probably enough to start with, don’t you?”
Adrien turned his eyes towards his mother’s statue. There she was, Mona Lisa smile and soft cheeks. The last time he had sat in front of her, he had been adrift without any idea of where to go. Adrien was still lost, but the path was becoming clearer as he went.
“Thank you Plagg” Adrien whispered, and the soft purr that came from above him was enough to get Adrien to smile for the first time since Ladybug left that morning. The boy sighed and lowered himself down so he was sitting in front of his mom’s statue.
“You also love to go out in the middle of the night and run around as a superhero and stop bad guys with me,” Plagg added out of the blue, lengthening each word and stretching himself so he was half hanging out of Adrien’s hair and right in front of his face, “That’s your favorite thing to do in the whole world so you should get back to doing that as soon as possible”
“You just want to be back out causing trouble,” Adrien teased, waving a hand around his head to get Plagg back in the air. The kwami took off and looped around his boy a few times, pushing against Adrien’s cheek with an incessant tapping of the paw.
“I’m turning into stone being cooped up here all day, Kitten,” Plagg whined, letting his tiny arms flop pathetically back and forth as he wiggled around in the air in front of Adrien, “Look at this, can’t even move my arm anymore. There isn’t enough camembert in the world to fix this!”
Adrien giggled at his kwami’s antics, rolling his eyes and leaning back on his hands to drink in the warmth of the sun filtering through the treetops.
“We’ll go out tonight, I promise” Plagg gave a shout of joy at Adrien’s words and began to fly all around the courtyard in glee, “Ladybug will probably turn up anyway if she sees Chat Noir running around,”
“Just tell her the truth before you two start making out and being gross,” Plagg said with a grimace, waggling his tongue and making kissy faces. Adrien blushed and turned his attention away from Plagg and back to his mother’s statue.
Talking with Ladybug wouldn’t be easy, but Adrien almost felt ready for it. He wanted things to start getting better, and he needed a change from what was happening now. He didn’t know the truth yet, but it was hurtling at him at the speed of light. The only thing he could do was accept it, whatever it ended up being.
“Maybe we could just sit here for a while first?” Adrien whispered. Plagg, noticing the shift in the air, came down from where he was hovering and settled back in Adrien’s hair.
“Whatever you need,” Adrien didn’t know exactly what he needed just yet, but this would be good enough for now.
Little did Adrien know that as he sat at the edge of the garden and waited for the courage to go tell his lady everything, said lady was already climbing on trash cans to throw herself over the edge of the wall that surrounded his mansion.