Chapter Text
“Are you sure you want to go in there, Adrien? We can do this another day.”
Adrien clings to Marinette’s hand as his childhood home stares down at him. Even now, months after his father was revealed as Hawkmoth, he has a hard time going back to the house that holds nothing but bad memories. “As long as I’m with you, milady, I’ll be fine.” He looks over at her and tries to play his pain off with a grin. “After all, you said we need to make sure the Peacock Miraculous isn’t here, right? We’d have to go through it eventually. I’ve put this off for long enough.”
Marinette’s lips thin, but she doesn’t say anything, opting instead to wave a hand at the door, which creaks open slowly.
“When are you going to teach me how to do that?”
Her frown breaks into a slight grin. “Adrien, that’s a parlor trick. Ask me about some real magic, sometime, yeah?”
They laugh, but laughter turns to subdued silence as the duo enters the Agreste Mansion. Adrien’s tennis shoes squeak on the marble floors, though Marinette, as she so often chooses to be, is shrouded in silence. In the months since Hawkmoth’s defeat, when Adrien’s father was revealed to be the man terrorizing Paris with magic butterflies (when had his life become so bizarre?), the house of Agreste had been left to gather dust. Adrien had gone to live with his best friend, Nino, while the specifics of his care were ironed out, and with no one living in the house and his father’s entire company left adrift, the regular cleaning had not occurred in some time. For the first time since the police had searched the house, footprints marred the dusty surface of the foyer.
“Is there anything you need from your room, Adrien?” Marinette’s voice startles him out of his quiet contemplation. He shakes his head.
“Anything I needed was packed up for me. We can start our search in the office, right?” He moves toward his father’s office.
She stands behind for a minute before suddenly she is in front of him. “Hey, are you okay?”
He smiles and nods, placing a kiss on her cheek. “I’m fine, let’s just look through my father’s things. You said that you thought he had the Peacock, too, right? He spent all his time in his office, so if it’s anywhere, it’ll be there.”
She frowns, and Adrien knows that he’ll never be able to lie to her, but she’s also very good about letting him get away with small untruths like the one he just passed off. “Fine. We’ll look quickly and then we’ll leave. This place gives me the creeps, anyway.” She turns and the door to his father’s office is open.
She stands in the center of the room with her eyes closed, breathing in deeply. Adrien watches curiously, Plagg resting quietly on his shoulder, munching on some cheese Marinette offered him before they came to be quiet while she worked whatever magic she needed to do.
They stand there for what could have been ten minutes or ten hours, Adrien isn’t sure. When he closes his eyes, he thinks he can almost feel her presence as it expands outward and searches for the missing Peacock Miraculous. His ring seems to shiver at one point, but the spell passes it by and finally, after the indeterminate amount of time, Marinette opens her eyes and frowns.
“It was here at one point, for sure. It was removed several months ago.” She turns her gaze toward the large portrait of Adrien’s mother, which swings out from the wall at her effortless command, revealing a safe. “Duusu spent time locked in this safe.” The safe opens as well, and Marinette steps up to it, removing a book and trailing a finger down a framed photograph. She picks that one up as well and turns to Adrien. “You look like her.”
He walks over to her and takes the photo from her hands, staring down at his mother. “Yeah,” he says, the words falling from his mouth, barely breaking the silence of the room. Tears follow though he does not realize he is crying. “I miss her, Marinette. I miss her so much.”
Marinette bites her lip, looking around the room. He feels a chill sweep over him, Marinette’s magic as it struggles to find anything to help. She freezes, and he feels something below him. He looks up from the photo of his mother, turning to his girlfriend. “What happened?”
“There’s something below us. A big chamber. Your father- er, Hawkmoth’s lair, I presume.” The portrait and safe snap shut, Marinette drops the book into her shadow, banished to wherever she keeps the things that she seems to pull from thin air, and turns her attention back to the painting, running her finger along it, eyes shut as her magic fills the room, smelling of pastries and citrus. Her fingers find what they are looking for, and several hard points sink into the canvas, before suddenly the two of them are on a descending platform.
Adrien grabs Marinette’s hand, and they stand in silence as they descend. The marble floor of Gabriel’s office gives way to concrete gives way to glass siding, revealing an enormous room filled with fluttering butterflies, gently swimming through the air in circles above an island in what might as well be a part of the sewers. Marinette does not look at Adrien, her eyes are focused on the gleaming glass tube situated in the middle of the island. He catches the night sky reflected in Marinette’s eyes and knows that there is powerful magic at work here, Guardian business. She does not wait for the platform to finish its descent before she is on the ground. Adrien realizes with a start that she has vanished and calls out to Plagg to transform him so he can follow. Shadows gather around Marinette, draping across her shoulders like a cloak. A crown of stars forms across her brow and the Guardian has joined Chat Noir in the basement of his home. The Guardian as he first met her.
She is standing in front of the glass structure when he reaches her, peering inside. “She used it, Chat. She used the Peacock Miraculous,” she whispers.
“Who?” he asks gently. She doesn’t answer. He looks down, peers through the reflection and suddenly is face to face with—
“Mother.” He is on the floor. How did he get on the floor? Plagg is next to him, Marinette wrapped around him (when did they drop their transformations?)
“Adrien, Adrien, talk to me, please. Are you okay?”
He blinks and looks up at Marinette, though his eyes don’t focus. “This is a dream, right? This is a bad dream, and I’ll wake up soon, and I’ll be at Nino’s and Marinette will be over before school starts so we can walk together.”
Marinette wraps herself tighter around him and magic wraps around the two of them like a cocoon. “You’re okay, chaton. I’m here, I’ll protect you. We will face this together.”
He buries himself deeper in her arms and magic, taking the time to collect himself, pull his thoughts back together after the sight of his mother shattered them. He takes a deep breath, is met with the comforting scent of Marinette, and finally focuses on her and nods. “Okay, I’m okay.”
She helps him to his feet, and they make their way to the tube—the coffin, Adrien thinks with dread—and look inside. Emilie Agreste is laying peacefully inside, looking almost as if she could be sleeping.
“She’s alive.”
Adrien nearly falls again, only to be caught by his girlfriend. “What?”
“She’s alive, she’s just in a coma.” Marinette tilts her head, listening to an unheard voice, before looking at Adrien. “She used the Peacock Miraculous, Adrien.”
He furrows his brow. “So… we’ve found it then?”
She shakes her head. “No, she used it before she ended up in a coma. She hasn’t worn it in many years, at this point.” She sighs. “I think it must have been taken from your father. It isn’t here. But!” She motions to his mother. “I might be able to help her. The Peacock is broken—I’ve learned that much today—and that is likely what has caused your mother’s condition. There are spells I can do that might be able to revive her.”
Adrien’s eyes light up. “You mean it?” Marinette nods, but her smile is strained. “But there’s a catch,” he guesses.
“Two things, really. The spells that are most likely to work require the Ladybug Miraculous—” Adrien feels Plagg perk up at that and he begins to float of Adrien’s shoulder in anticipation “—and if the Peacock isn’t here, that means that there is someone in Paris running around with a broken Miraculous.” The air in the room begins to thicken, and magic rolls of Marinette in waves. The shadows gather around her once again and she stands up straighter. “Adrien Agreste, a storm is brewing. Evil sits on the horizon, and an unknown threat bears down even now on your city. Will you once again take up the mantle of the Protector of Paris?”
Adrien stands straighter as well, and he feels magic swirling around him, wrapping him in a strong embrace. “I will.”
The Guardian smiles grimly. “Welcome back, Chat Noir.”