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On one of the very first days that Ladybug had begun visiting Adrien, even before Valentine’s Day and the sticky notes, she arrives at their usual time to find him practically buried under old photographs.
Far away, she couldn’t tell what the pictures were of, but he sorts through them, smiling and laughing as he pulls more from the cardboard box. She didn’t want to interrupt whatever he was doing, so she helps herself into his bedroom and sits down on his white couch quietly.
Adrien looks up, a soft smile stretching over his features before his attention focuses back down to the pictures.
“What are you looking at?” Ladybug questions, leaning over the back part of the couch to get a better glance.
“Nothing much,” Adrien admits. “Sometimes I just like to go through the old things I find tucked away in the attic. Usually, it’s pictures of us all together before she went missing.”
At first, Ladybug isn't sure how to handle the topic of Adrien's mother. She wants to be there for him, but she doesn't know what it's like. She waits, only to see if he finds it hard to talk about her disappearance.
Adrien holds up a picture. “Like, this one. Just makes me happy to remember that part of my life wasn’t like, a dream, you know?”
Ladybug's eyes coast the picture as she picks out a wide-eyed and gap-toothed Adrien standing next to his parents. They both are laughing, and she can see their love in their eyes.
His father’s wrinkles have seemingly disappeared, and his mother’s still as gorgeous as ever. She wonders how old he was in the photo.
Ladybug's suddenly thankful that he wants to show her. She's overjoyed that it's not the somber moments he dwells on, but the happy ones. She shifts towards the pile, moving away from the couch and seeing another box placed behind him that hasn’t even been touched yet.
“There’s a lot of pictures to go through, though, so if you want me to stop--”
Ladybug gasps, cutting Adrien off. “What do you mean stop?” She’s almost shocked at the thought. “I’d love to see. You can share anything with me.” She brushes her hand along his arm as she speaks in a comforting (yet flirty) gesture, but he freezes under her touch. Ladybug jerks away, reminding herself that they aren't like that, so instead she picks up a picture of his mother to distract him from the awkward incident.
“She was beautiful, you know,” Ladybug smiles, trying not to bend the picture more than it already is. It’s not like the old, painted portraits that hang around the house. It's candid, straight on, and she’s holding her young son to her chest as they laugh together. Ladybug figures that maybe even his father was taking it. “You guys look so much alike...”
Adrien grins. “I hear that a lot, but you smile like her. I know I’ve said that before but... It reminds me of her."
Adrien wants to tell her that it was calming and put his worries at ease and it was happy like his mother's. But he knows that he can’t run the risk of telling her his feelings just yet.
He’s proven correct when Ladybug smiles back at him. It’s warm and sugary and it reminds him so much of his mother, it almost hurts.
(But it just shows there’s something else in his life that will keep him sane. Something, or rather, someone else that really cared for him and he knew that it was almost as if his mother was sending him a message, telling him he was going to be okay, wherever she was.)
As time goes on, Ladybug can see Adrien’s mother in him.
She hasn’t even met the woman before, but she can see how his facial structure is soft like hers. She can accurately figure out who the vibrant green eyes belonged to first. She can see that they both have golden-blonde hair that radiates in the sunlight.
They spend more time going through pictures, and Adrien tells stories about his childhood. He tells about the sword fights, the bubble baths, the hide-and-seek games in the gardens. She worries that he’ll break down and wish for his mother back but he never does. He’s happy that someone wants to listen and learn about what makes him him.
Adrien swears that she reminds him of the kind person his mother is. But as he’s wildly gesturing and beaming about her, Ladybug knows that the key feature he inherited from her was his smile.