Chapter Text
The akuma alert sounds.
Adrien grabs his phone and checks out of habit. Some type of fire akuma out at Trocadero.
That's pretty far from here. He might not even see any of the attack.
Good.
Adrien puts his phone away and returns to his homework, ignoring the concerned look Plagg sends his way.
It's better this way.
It's not like she needs him there.
And if she does, well, it’s not like she doesn’t know how to find him.
After twenty minutes of dodging blasts of fire, Ladybug finds an alley to duck down in and hide from Pyromaniac while she catches her breath.
She pulls out her yoyo and calls Chat, but it goes straight to voicemail.
She sighs and tries Rena Furtive instead.
"Still no sign of him," Rena says instead of any kind of greeting.
Of course there isn't. He'd answer if he was transformed. He must not have been able to get away. She pushes aside the thought that she never inquired into what kept him away last time. She hopes there's nothing serious going on in his civilian life. She can't think about that right now, though, she needs to focus on the fight.
She needs reinforcements.
The battle takes an hour and she's forced to bring in both Vesperia and Ryuuko.
After she's retrieved their miraculouses, she calls Chat one last time, and leaves a message.
"Hey, um, you didn't show today. That's the second time this month. Is - is everything okay?"
When the school begins shaking in the middle of Mlle Bustier's lecture on French history, Adrien's instincts take over and he pulls Nino down under their desk for cover until the shaking stops.
He stands and starts to beeline for the door, already thinking ahead to where the best place to transform would be, before his mind catches up and he stops himself deliberately.
He doesn't suggest he and Nino hide together. Ladybug might need Carapace for this one and he doesn't want to make it harder for her to recruit him. (He doesn't want her to lie to him again.)
Instead he decides that under his desk is as safe a place as any, and crawls back under to wait out the attack.
It won't be long now until Ladybug saves the day.
Without him.
Again.
Marinette escapes the classroom easily in all the chaos. From there it's easy to find a private spot to transform and go confront the akuma.
She pushes down the wave of anxiety that rocks her when she arrives on the scene to see that Chat isn't there yet.
It's been less than 5 minutes since the akuma showed up and it's right at her school. Of course she would arrive first. It doesn't mean anything that he's not here yet.
He'll show.
But the minutes creep by and still no Chat Noir.
With every minute that passes, with every quake that shakes the ground, with every narrow escape, Ladybug's concern grows.
Chat's missed akuma attacks before, but never two in a row.
By the time she's throwing her lucky charm in the air and casting her cure, Ladybug is certain that something must be really wrong.
The third attack since Betrayal comes in the middle of the night.
Adrien sleeps through it.
Ladybug is the kind of tired that sinks right into her bones. The kind of tired that it shouldn't be possible to feel at her tender age. The kind of tired that comes from more than just one night of interrupted sleep.
As she looks out at the assembled heroes, she blinks against the tears that sting her eyes and threaten to spill over. She doesn't want to scare the team, even if she's honestly terrified.
One missed attack is rare, two is unheard of...three is unimaginable.
Yet there's been three akumas now with no sign of Chat Noir.
"Chat's missing," she announces without preamble. She swallows, trying to moisten her overdry throat so her voice won't crack. "Has anyone seen him since last Tuesday?"
She didn't expect a positive response, but the negative murmurs and head shakes still send her heart plummeting.
"Right," she says dully before shaking herself. Chat's in trouble. He's counting on her. She can't afford to fall apart right now. "We're going to find him. Carapace, you'll take the first arrondissement. Vesperia, you take the second. Viperion—"
"Actually, Ladybug, why don't I take the twenty-first arrondissement?" Viperion cuts in. At her look of surprise, he shrugs. "I have a hunch."
Ladybug had planned on searching the twenty-first herself, but she trusts him, and it's not like she's been very lucky in this. Maybe he'll have greater success.
She nods. "Fine. Polymouse, you take the third and fourth..."
When Viperion jumps in through his bedroom window that night, Adrien feels a sick satisfaction. As much as it hurts—and it really, really hurts—there's something about being proven right, knowing he wasn't overreacting.
Still, he's not going to make this easy.
Adrien blinks at Viperion with feigned surprise. "Viperion? What are you doing here? Is everything okay?"
If Viperion knows he's acting, his expression doesn't give anything away. But that's no surprise. Luka has always been hard for Adrien to read.
"There's no danger," Viperion says, watching Adrien carefully in a way that has him struggling not to shift uncomfortably in his desk chair, "but no, I don't think it is."
“And you think I can help?”
Viperion looks him over steadily for several long moments before seeming to come to some kind of decision. "Chat Noir is missing," he says. "Ladybug's really worried about him."
Adrien wishes he could believe that, but he knows the truth. If anything, she's probably just worried about the ring. He raises his eyebrows in a show of concern. "Do you...want me to help you look? I'm not really allowed out of the house."
Viperion frowns. "No, Ladybug's already got the whole team looking for him. And anyway—" he looks directly at Adrien "—I already know exactly where he is."
The confirmation kills that last little bit of hope he'd buried, that tiny part of him that had thought maybe, somehow, he'd misunderstood and Ladybug hadn't really betrayed him. Surely he meant enough to her, surely she cared enough that she would never do something like that.
But here's the evidence before him.
Adrien sighs. "What are you doing here, Luka?"
"I told you. Ladybug's worried about Chat Noir."
Adrien spins his chair back around to his desk, the kind of clear dismissal he learned from watching his father.
"I doubt it," he says. "You can tell her he's fine and the ring's secure though."
"Adrien. Chat Noir. What happened? I know - I know how much you care about Ladybug. Why are you doing this?"
He turns back so he can glare. "That's rich coming from you. It might not have been your plan, but you went along with it. That's why you even knew to come here. The two of you plotted to find out my identity without me even knowing it was compromised when I would've done whatever she wanted if she had just asked!" He finishes with a shout. He's shaking, he realizes. He didn't mean to let his upset show. He swallows, takes a deep breath. Calm. He can be calm. "Don't act like you care now," he adds as he turns back around, away from Luka's shocked expression.
He doesn't hear Viperion leave, but when next he turns around, he's gone.
Betrayal wasn't a particularly powerful akuma. A woman who had discovered that her husband was having an affair with her best friend, Betrayal was certainly experiencing strong negative emotions, and her power had the ability to cause great upset, but she wasn't particularly dangerous.
So they thought, anyway.
That was before Chat knew how, just like Betrayal, he'd been betrayed by the most important person in his world.
When Viperion intercepts her on her comb of the eighteenth arrondissement, Ladybug is nearly brought to her knees by the hope that he has news of Chat and the terror that it might be bad news.
"What..." she trails off, licking her lips nervously. "What did you find?"
Viperion flicks his miraculous. "Second chance."
Ladybug's eyebrows shoot up and her stomach drops. How bad is it that he thinks he needs to use his special power?
"I know who Chat Noir is."
She bites her lip against the overwhelming desire to beg Viperion to share Chat's identity with her. She's still not sure it's safe for her to know.
"Did you find him? Is he okay?"
"Physically, he's fine." Viperion exhales. "Emotionally...he's upset with both of us."
She scrunches up her forehead. "I don't understand. What did I do?" She shakes her head. "That doesn't even sound like Chat! He would tell me if he was upset. He - he wouldn't just disappear!"
"Do you remember when that - Master Zu-han?"
"Su-han," she corrects quietly.
"Right. Remember when Master Su-han told you you had to find out Chat Noir's identity and you came up with that plan for me to find out?"
She nods, frowning. "What's that have to do with anything? We didn't even go through with it because of time getting all mixed up." She gasps as a thought occurs to her. "Did we go through with it? Is that how you know his identity?"
"No. I—" he hesitates before pushing forward. "Wishmaker."
Betrayal lances through her. "I asked you and you said—"
"I know, I'm sorry, but we don't have much time." He holds up the arm with his miraculous as a reminder that they’re on a timer. "Regardless of whether we went through with it or not, Chat thinks we did and he's more upset than I've ever seen him."
Why would Chat be upset? Just because she came up with a plan for Luka to secretly learn his identity so Luka could tell the Celestial Guardian without... Chat... knowing...?
Except Chat knows.
"I - I have to fix this," Ladybug whispers with absolutely no idea how she's going to do that.
"I think you should talk to him,” Viperion says.
Ladybug nods, he’s right. Maybe...maybe Viperion can convince Chat to come out and meet her somewhere so they can talk? She doesn’t love the idea of continuing to use him as an intermediary in this, but it’s not like there’s a lot of options here and—
"Chat is Adrien. He’s at home," Viperion says, hand on his wrist. "Should I reset? We don't have much time."
She stares at him with wide eyes. Chat, Adrien? Impossible! The two are nothing alike. But...Luka wouldn't joke about something like that. Especially not at a time like this.
She's not supposed to know. It’s dangerous for them to know each other’s identities! The risk of Shadowmoth getting to both miraculouses through one of them is too great.
But...he’s Adrien.
How can she just...erase that knowledge?
"Ladybug? What do you want to do?"
Chat Noir and Ladybug appeared on the scene within seconds of one another. It didn't take them long to learn the akuma's power set or her story, since she couldn't stop talking about either in between blasts from the ring on her finger.
"Nothing hurts more than to be betrayed by someone you trusted," Betrayal cried. "There's nothing worse than to be lied to by the people you love!" She shot another blast from her ring. "It's better to know. See how you’ve been betrayed. The truth will set you free!"
Chat deflected the blast with his baton, dread creeping down his spine. As much as he knew how horrible it was to be lied to by someone you love—he unfortunately had too much experience with his father's means of ensuring control—he wasn't entirely sure that knowing would be better. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to know the full extent of his father’s lies.
And yet...there was a part of him that wanted to know. He knew his father hadn’t told him everything about how his mother went missing. He knew that she was gone. He knew she wouldn’t have left him if she had a choice. He was pretty sure she was dead... But he didn’t have any clear answers.
Chat wondered if Betrayal would give him those answers, and whether the relief of knowing would be enough to balance the pain at learning just how much his father kept from him.
And, of course, there was the very real, incredibly terrifying possibility that the facts of what he learned would hurt him. After all, surely there was a reason his father had chosen to keep the facts of Maman’s disappearance a secret...
He grunted as Ladybug tackled him around the middle and they fell to the ground together in a heap of limbs.
"Come on, Minou," she chided. "Get your head in the game. She almost got you."
"Sorry," he murmured.
Her eyes softened as she helped him to his feet. "You okay?"
"Fine." And then he leapt up and went on the offensive, swinging his baton in wild arcs, trying to smash the ring, where he was sure the akuma was hidden.
Somewhere behind him he could hear Ladybug taking advantage of the distraction he provided to call for her lucky charm.
He saw an opening and swung, his baton smashing into the large gem at the center of Betrayal’s ring perfectly.
Only he miscalculated.
The akuma wasn't in the ring after all, and the force of his strike triggered a wave of the akuma's power to explode outwards, crashing right into him.
The world went white.
"Kid..." Plagg's vivid green eyes are tilted in clear concern.
"I'm fine."
The look Plagg sends him at that says he believes that as much as Adrien does, which is to say not at all.
He had hoped that Ladybug had had a change of heart and had realized she couldn’t actually go through with the plan for Viperion to learn his identity, but the evidence is clear. And, well, since he knows that neither of them actually cares about his agreement to any of this...
“Think he’s going to tell Ladybug?” Adrien asks.
“Probably.”
Adrien knew that, but still, his gut twists.
“She’s going to be mad,” he murmurs. Furious, more like, but thinking about it only makes the anxiety worse.
He’s still angry too, but the idea of facing her anger... He just wants to curl up under his covers and never come out.
He expects Plagg just to shrug, but his kwami looks at him with sympathetic eyes. “Come on, kid,” he says. “You figured she would be, didn’t you?”
Adrien shrugs. He had, but he’d pushed the thought away every time it occurred to him.
Plagg sighs. “Why’d you do it then?”
“I just...couldn’t face her,” he admits, voice coming out small, the way Adrien feels. “I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Ladybug and pretending everything was okay.”
"Cheese, kid, I thought you had a plan."
"Well, I don't! I'm just stupid Chat Noir who can't be trusted to think ahead or come up with plans or to even be told about the plans because I'm just a useless sidekick, right?"
"Excuse you," Plagg snips. "My kittens are many things, but useless is never one of them. And you might be a dummy, but you're not stupid."
“Right.”
He supposes that’s the best he can hope for.
When Chat’s vision cleared, he was in the sewer, Ladybug and Viperion standing before him.
That was strange. When did she recruit Viperion? How did they all get down to the sewer?
Just how long had he been out?
Neither Ladybug nor Viperion seemed to notice him, however, and when he tried to get their attention, he found he couldn't speak. His lips moved, but no sound came out.
"This is the plan," Ladybug said, gesturing in that way she had. "You stay here, hidden. I ask Chat Noir his identity. He tells me."
"Since I'll hear everything," Viperion agreed, putting in an earpiece, "I'll also know his name."
What?
"That's when you'll use your power of second chance to go back in time. I'll forget everything but you won't."
Chat gasped. He remembered that day, when he'd missed an attack (and fourteen calls from Ladybug) and Ladybug had asked him to meet her at the top of the Eiffel Tower. He'd arrived, but before they could talk the world had started going crazy, and then she’d spoken to Viperion through her earpiece.
He'd wondered at the time why she’d needed to be in communication with Viperion for their meetup.
Now he had his answer.
(He wished he didn't.)
"Or I could just ask him myself if you want," Viperion suggested. "It would be less dangerous that way, wouldn't it?"
Ladybug shook her head, putting in her own earpiece. "Chat Noir will only tell if I'm the one asking."
Chat’s heart shattered. She knew. She knew how much he trusted her and she’d used that against him.
"All right. Then I'll tell the Celestial Guardian Chat Noir's identity."
"And he'll finally cut me some slack!" Ladybug groaned.
The world exploded into light once again.
"I - no," Ladybug says. "Don't use second chance. I - I can't fix this if I don't know."
Viperion's eyes soften. "I thought you might say that, but I wanted to give you the choice."
"Like you did after Wishmaker?" she asks, eyes narrowing. "You should have told me you knew. I asked you and you said you didn't."
"You have so much on your plate. I didn't want you to worry about something that was done and couldn't be changed."
"And did you only lie about not seeing who Chat is?" she presses. "Luka, you remember what I said about how dangerous it is for anyone to know both of our identities!"
"I understand, Ladybug," Viperion says neutrally. "But maybe you should deal with the situation with Chat Noir first."
Ladybug frowns. That's as good as a confirmation. He's right though: right now Chat takes priority.
"We're not done talking about this," she promises before sending her yoyo flying and taking off in the direction of the Agreste mansion.
When Chat's vision cleared again he was staring up into Ladybug's concerned eyes.
"There you are, Chaton," she said, but the pet name didn't fill him with the usual happiness. He just felt cold and numb.
He shrugged off her attempt to help him to his feet, glancing around. The woman who had been Betrayal was sitting on the ground, looking as lost as he felt.
Well, no surprise that Ladybug had defeated the akuma and saved the day without him. It had long since been clear that she didn't really need him.
He glanced back at his partner and then wished he could mentally smack himself. Partners? Yeah right. Whatever they were—and for the first time since she'd tangled him up in her yoyo that first day, he really didn't know—partners was definitely not the right word.
He gave her fist a perfunctory bump when she offered, the bile rising in his throat as he realized how meaningless the ritual he'd always treasured truly was.
He needed to get out of there.
He ran.