Chapter Text
Adrien Agreste had many things. He had a loving girlfriend whom he loved very much. He had a steady occupation at the young age of 18, a job that gave him fame across all of France. He had the best of friends that were always there to support him. He had superpowers which he used to save Paris. He had a father who, though busy most of the time, did truly care for him.
The key word being, had.
So the question is, who was Adrien Agreste now?
Adrien Agreste was an unhappy man. His blonde hair long and disheveled, his stubble coming near to a scraggly beard, and his eyes with permanent dark circles under them. His lips were always chapped, his eyes were dry, and his hands were always longing for the petite hand he missed so dearly. He was miserable.
He sat in his room of his small apartment, secluded from the world, his eyes not being able to conjure up tears anymore as he stared down at the old photographs in the scrapbooks that Marinette had once made him. He ran his finger over the picture of what had been the evening he had asked her to be his girlfriend. The twinkling lights lining the cafe shining against the pitch black night, the luminous glow of the moon reflecting off of the glass tables and her blue-black hair. It was a profile photo of Marinette, as she looked off into the night, admiring the shooting star that happened to be shooting past that night. It was the perfect photo.
However, it wasn’t a perfect night.
Marinette had ordered something new for a change instead of her usual bisque, a new item on the menu. It was a seafood stew. Marinette figured it would be just another soup, but in this stew were mussels, shrimp, calamari, clams, and salmon. Of these delicacies, the calamari had been full, tiny octopus arms. As Adrien tried to gain the confidence to ask her his big question, she took a big bite of thick, opaque, tomato broth which covered the calamari. With one bite into it, she spit the tentacle onto the table in shock. Adrien, mouth agape, held in his laughter as her face turned beet red with shock.
Adrien smiled sadly as he stared at the picture, reminiscing about his past. As he put the scrapbook away, he noticed a box pushed far back on the top shelf of his closet. Grabbing a chair to get more height, he pulled it out, curious.
Sitting back on the edge of his unmade bed, he looked at this unfamiliar shoebox. For the first time in the six years that he had been living in this hovel of an apartment, he hadn’t seen this box. He recognized the top, but was unaware of what he would be opening up. The memories he didn’t want.
The first thing that greeted him when he opened it up, there were numerous newspaper articles.
“Gabriel Agreste: Hawkmoth Scandal”
“Ladybug’s Identity Revealed?”
“Ladybug Deceased In Hawkmoth’s Final Battle”
Adrien took a sharp breath and read this article.
“Daughter of patisserie owners, Tom and Sabine Dupain-Cheng, Marinette Dupain-Cheng, unmasked as Paris’ heroine, Ladybug, is now confirmed deceased. In the fight against Hawkmoth, she had been fatally stabbed in the heart by Hawkmoth himself. Chat Noir finished the fight, uncovering the shadowy terrorist of Paris to be famous designer, Gabriel Agreste. Unable to transform back into Hawkmoth, Gabriel was taken by Paris police, along with his accomplice, Nathalie Sancoeur, to serve a life sentence. Without Ladybug’s restoring powers, Paris is left in shambles. Many beloved shops such as Tom and Sabine’s Boulangerie Patisserie, Wang Fu’s Massage Shop...”
Adrien crumbled up the paper in anger.
There was nothing he could do when Paris fell apart. He couldn’t use Ladybug’s Miraculous, he couldn’t save Master Fu or the other Miraculous, he couldn’t save Marinette’s parents, and couldn’t even save Nino from the akumatized destruction. Then, he was barely an adult with no parents, no friends, and just the money from his modeling gig that he had been saving. The real fortune still belonged to his incarcerated father. Now he’s an uneducated, ex-model, son of a terrorist, drunk.
“Fuck!” He threw the box across the room, not able to handle looking at it anymore. Suddenly, the shiny silver caught his eye. On the floor lay his and Marinette’s old Miraculous. Picking up the ring and earrings, he held the tiny yet powerful items in his hand. He sighed.
“I wish I could just redo everything and save her.”
The Miraculous began to glow and swirled around him, a tornado of light surrounding him. Then, suddenly, all went black.