Chapter Text
The words on Marinette’s computer monitor swam in front of her eyes as she yawned. She’d had a long day already—meetings with other class representatives about upcoming school trips, costume brainstorming with Kitty Section, then dinner with Adrien’s aunt and cousin. Sitting across the table from Félix had been almost surreal after everything…he’d still had the same sardonic personality, but it was tempered a little in his mother’s presence.
Adrien had been subdued the entire meal. In fact, he’d been down ever since his release from the hospital after he passed out on the Eiffel Tower. He’d told her a little of what had happened, how Phobius’s strange burst of power trapping him inside his head in a nightmare twisted up by his worst memories and fears.
On top of all of that, she still had to finish her essay. Their class had been granted an extension after the emergency—Adrien wasn’t the only one of their friends who’d been affected, and Ivan and Sabrina had only woken up this morning—and she was really almost done. But Marinette was stuck on the last page of her essay, and her mind felt empty and exhausted.
Her phone buzzed, and she checked it to find an alert from the class group chat. She opened it, expecting someone to be asking about homework or sharing a meme or picture.
Adrien lay on the gurney, his face pale and bruised, blood staining the front of his shirt. The photographer had zoomed in close enough to see the details of the handprint around his throat.
Marinette’s hands were shaking as she processed the contents of the picture. How had…why was someone…they were supposed to be deleted….
Her fingers hovered over the phone, her mind blank. She had to do something. Say something. Tell the others…spam the chat with nonsense to get rid of the picture…tell Adrien…tell her parents….
The picture disappeared while she was still reeling.
Nino: wth??
Max: Apologies, I am securing the class chat now. The picture has been removed.
Nino: did we just get hacked???
Alya: The chats private, right?
Max: Markov is adding extra layers of encryption. My sincerest apologies, I don’t know how that got through our safeguards.
Nino: that wasnt cool
Max: Indeed.
Essay forgotten, Marinette raced downstairs to knock on Adrien’s door. It opened under her touch, and she poked her head in to find him sitting at his desk.
He stared at her, wide eyed and pale, phone still held in one hand. “Nino wants to know if he can come over,” he said quietly.
“I’ll ask Mom,” Marinette replied, turning toward the living room where her parents were watching the news.
Permission secured, she raced back to Adrien’s room to find him with his head buried in his arms, phone facedown on the desk beside him. She checked the class chat, heart aching when she realized someone had posted more pictures. Max had taken them down, but the damage had been done.
Max: I suggest we agree not to open the class chat messages until Markov can screen them for photos.
Alya: Someone’s still gonna send them
Adrien, still on the gurney, face turned to the side as a paramedic examined his neck.
The picture disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared. Marinette felt sick…she’d been there, she’d seen the worst of it, but this was awful. Some tabloid photographer had been staking out the Agreste manor that night, and got the scoop of the century when a battered Adrien was hauled away in an ambulance…and Gabriel in handcuffs.
She knew the original photographer had lost his job, but they never figured out who leaked the photos. Including…
Adrien against the stark white of the hospital, a ruler held to the bruise over his ribcage. His eyes were closed against the flash of the police officer’s camera, the bright light revealing the fingerprint bruises on his jaw that the ladybugs hadn’t quite wiped away.
The evidence photos. Marinette felt sick as she set her phone next to Adrien’s to wrap her arms around him. “It’s gonna be okay,” she whispered.
Her phone buzzed. It was another text in the group chat, so she ignored it. And another. And another.
“Why won’t it stop?” Adrien shifted to press his hands over his ears. “Who’s doing this?”
Marinette silenced the group chat on both phones, then opened the private chat two of them shared with Alya and Nino. “We’ll find out,” she promised.
Adrien in a wheelchair, his aunt and Marinette on either side of him as an orderly wheeled him out to his aunt’s car.
She nearly dropped the phone in her haste to delete the picture.
That one hadn’t been in the original leak.
She thought of the photographers Alya and Anarka had chased away, the day Phobius attacked. Had that been part of this?
Marinette opened the group chat, ignoring two more pictures of Adrien in the hospital (one evidence photo, one that could have been taken from a cell phone).
Marinette: I’ve got pictures in private chats too
Nino: yeah me too
Max: The school messaging system appears to be compromised. Marc and Zoe have informed me that their classes received pictures as well.
Adrien was leaning against her shoulder, staring bleakly at her phone. She tilted it so he could read along.
Adrien’s forearms, his left wrist still swollen. Bruises so dark they would take nearly two weeks to fade.
The picture disappeared almost as soon as it appeared, but the damage was done. Adrien’s muffled cry as he turned away made anger flare in Marinette’s soul.
Max: Markov and I are programming a secure chat application. It will take some time to make it secure against attacks like this. I suggest we ignore the school chat and communicate in another fashion.
Alya: private thread open on the ladyblog now, you’ve all got invites. we can talk there
Adrien, pale and exhausted as he sat in a wheelchair outside the hospital’s imaging lab, waiting to be taken in for x-rays.
Marinette closed the school chat and set it to ‘do not disturb’. She’d always liked using the school chat. They couldn’t use nicknames and the threads had to be open for any of the teachers to be able to access at any time, but that meant no bullying. Nothing could be secret. She had other ways to chat with her friends, of course, but the class chat had been nice for keeping in contact with everyone.
“Nino’s on his way,” Adrien said. He wouldn’t meet Marinette’s eyes, focused on his fingers as he picked at the cuff of his sweatshirt.
She nodded, pulling herself back together. “Good. We need to make a plan.”
He met her eyes, and her heart ached to see him like this. It seemed like every time he took a step forward, something came along to throw him three steps back. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know yet.” She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close, and he hung onto her and buried his face in her shoulder. Her poor kitty. He’d been through enough; he didn’t need this on top of it. “We’ll figure it out, Adrien. I promise.”
She already knew just who to call.
…
Nightlock, their liaison with the United Heroez, was already waiting on the designated rooftop when Ladybug arrived. What little Marinette knew about Nightlock made her seem like the perfect person to help them. Nightlock wasn’t a frontline hero like Majestia or Knightowl. Instead, she acted as support for the other heroes and helped them connect with other groups. The Paris Miraculous holders weren’t her only contacts in Europe, but Ladybug didn’t know who the others were.
“Ladybug,” Nightlock nodded in greeting. “You said you had some concerns to address?”
“More like some questions,” Ladybug admitted. She pulled out her phone and opened the group chat. “A teenage girl asked me for help. She said someone’s been leaking pictures of a friend of hers and…well…”
The hero leaned in as Ladybug opened the class chat. The mysterious sender was still uploading pictures of Adrien to the chat. Nightlock sucked in a breath.
“Adrien…Agreste?”
Ladybug nodded. It was no surprise that someone like Nightlock would know who Adrien was, which made the pictures even more terrible. “Nobody knows who keeps sending them. They’ve been going to his entire school.”
“May I?” Nightlock held her hand out, and Ladybug surrendered the phone. She’d already pulled everything important off it, just in case. “Have you had anyone try to trace it?”
“M—uh, Pegasus,” Ladybug said. “He couldn’t find anything.”
Nightlock had her own device out and transferred over an image from the chat. It was one of the ones from outside the house, when Adrien had been at his worst. He looked hurt and vulnerable, and Ladybug ached to reach into the picture and comfort him.
The hero was focusing on the screen, zooming in around the edges. Ladybug could hear the mechanisms in her goggles whirring as she studied the image, then she let out a grunt of satisfaction. “Top right corner.”
“What?”
Nightlock tapped the screen on her device, shifting the picture’s colors and focus. “Look closer. I'll check the other pictures, but I think we have something.” A grainy image began to appear in the upper right corner, distorted and pixelated. Ladybug first thought it might be a photographer’s watermark.
“A butterfly?” Her heart thudded painfully in her chest. Gabriel was behind bars now…was he still finding a way to hurt Adrien?
The older hero shook her head. “I’ll see what I can find. Think you can keep an eye on him in the meantime?”
“Of course.” Adrien was living in her home, after all. “Do you…can we stop the pictures?”
“I’ll try. Stay safe, Ladybug.”
With that, Nightlock dropped off the side of the roof, vanishing into the shadowy streets below. Ladybug held her phone close for a long moment, sudden exhaustion weighing down her limbs.
They weren’t any closer on finding out who leaked the photos, though she felt a little better knowing their United Heroez contact was helping.
In the meantime, she still had an essay to finish…and Adrien needed his friends more than ever.