Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

By the time Ladybug had repeated herself for what must have been the tenth time, Chat had dropped to one knee beside her, the hard rooftop pressing beneath him as he crouched at her side. His eyes swept over Paris, the scattered lights of the city below were challenging the darkness. It was obviously not a good night for an akuma attack. Ladybug had been in a foul mood lately, and Adrien—whose own life had lately been turned upside down—couldn’t blame her. He was hardly feeling cheerful himself.

But tonight, it was painfully obvious that Ladybug had woken on the wrong side of the bed. From the moment they had been woken up by the akuma alert and met near the Panthéon, Ladybug had done little but complain, sigh, and make it abundantly clear that she wanted to catch this akuma as quickly as possible and go home. Chat offered no verbal reply, merely humming in quiet agreement. He, too, would much rather have been in the warmth of his own bed, even if sleep had been a stranger to him lately.

Fighting an akuma with his thoughts this scattered was difficult enough without adding the fact that it was the middle of the night. Chrysalis really had to be determined to kill them.

“Damn it,” Ladybug muttered, peering around the chimney as she searched the city with her eyes. “Where the hell did that damn akuma go?”

“Everything is too quiet,” Chat replied, without looking at her. “Not a scream. Nothing. Do you know what akuma’s goal is? What their power does?”

Though they had appeared at almost the same time, Ladybug had been lucky enough to catch at least a glimpse of the akuma from a distance. They seemed to be avoiding them rather than chasing them. There was always something more frightening about akumas that didn’t run wild through the streets after them. Those were the ones that made the hair rise along the backs of their necks, the ones that seemed capable of appearing anywhere, at any moment, and catching them completely unprepared.

“They’re calling themselves Dollmaker,” Ladybug answered, a note of irritation creeping into her voice. “Whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.”

“So, what? They turn us into cute little dolls, or something more horrifying?” Chat asked. “You know, make us into puppets, or… I don’t know, something like those Conjuring movies?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ladybug said, dryly, “but I seriously doubt an akuma that crawls out at three in the morning is going to turn us into adorable little dolls.”

“You sure wouldn’t be a cute doll with that attitude,” Chat said, giving her a pointed, knowing look. Ladybug side-eyed him with a flat expression, but said nothing. She simply turned her gaze back toward the city, looking in the direction of the Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffel Tower was always like a magnet for akumas, drawing them toward itself with an almost unnatural consistency. Neither of them was entirely sure whether it was simply because the tower was accessible, popular, and iconic, or because there were always people gathered around it; so many eyes, so many unsuspecting lives, so many opportunities to make people afraid. Whatever the reason, somehow, the akumas always seemed to find their way there.

But this time, there was nothing to be seen. Even a city like Paris was largely asleep, trusting its heroes to keep it safe while its people slept peacefully in their beds.

“Maybe we should—”

Ladybug’s voice dissolved into a low, distant buzz somewhere at the edges of Chat’s mind. For one strange second, his focus slipped. Everything else fell away. His thoughts went quiet, leaving behind nothing but sensation. The cold night air grazing his skin. The hard rooftop beneath his knee. And then—

Something moved behind them. It barely made a sound, barely a shift in the darkness. But he felt it. His entire body went still before his mind could even catch up.

“Ladybug, watch out—”

Everything happened in slow motion. Chat could have sworn he had time to see every single strand of her pigtails as they swung through the air when Ladybug turned toward him. Time to notice how her blue eyes looked darker beneath the moonlight. Time to register the way every muscle in his body tightened as he threw himself forward, with every ounce of speed and strength he possessed, toward her.

The slope of the rooftop threw him off balance, but he had reached his target. The impact knocked a breathless grunt from Ladybug as he managed to shove her clear of the danger’s path. But the heel of his boot skidded against the rooftop beneath him, and whatever had struck him from behind sent the last of his balance reeling.

Chat felt his foot lose its last contact with the rooftop. For one disorienting moment, there was nothing beneath him. He seemed to hang there, suspended in the air, his mind lagging several agonizing seconds behind his body, unable to comprehend what had happened.

Then gravity seized him.

With his balance completely gone, Chat fell backward toward the city below, toward the streets he knew so well. His gaze slipped from Ladybug, reaching for him with a worried expression, up toward the moon shining silver through the clouds above them.

“Chat!”

With a single blink and a sharp, startled gasp, Adrien jolted upright where he was. His hand went to his chest, as though he could somehow calm the frantic heart pounding against his ribs, desperate enough to break free. His fingers closed not around black magical material, but around the soft cotton of the white T-shirt he was wearing.

As he struggled to steady his breathing, he looked around, taking in his surroundings in an effort to convince himself he was safe. The sun was high overhead, pouring through the enormous windows of his bedroom and bathing everything in a soft, warm glow. Outside, birdsong drifted through the open air, the unmistakable sound of early morning. Everything was quiet, peaceful. Bright, and safe.

Adrien closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. It had been one of those dreams, the kind where you dream you are falling, only to jolt awake just before you hit the ground.

Finally feeling himself calm down, Adrien reached for his phone lying beside his pillow. Ever since his father’s death, Nathalie no longer sent him his schedule every morning, especially now that he wasn’t modeling anymore. Even so, checking his phone first thing after waking had become a habit he couldn’t seem to break.

But the moment the screen lit up, a gasp escaped him. It was almost eleven. Adrien frowned and yanked the covers all the way off himself.

“Plagg! Did you turn off my alarm again—”

But the spot beside his pillow, where Plagg always liked to curl himself beneath the covers, was completely empty. Adrien reached out and felt around. There wasn’t even a trace of Plagg’s warmth. Whatever time Plagg had left, it had been long enough for the warmth to fade.

Plagg had disappeared without telling him before, but after Sandboy, he had promised Adrien he wouldn’t do that again, and he had kept his word so far. Plagg was many things. Annoying, sarcastic, a tiny menace with absolutely no respect for anyone. But Adrien knew his kwami cared about him. And Plagg knew there was no reason for him to keep secrets from Adrien. Disappearing like this made no sense.

Adrien was out of bed in an instant. Something must have happened. Maybe an akuma had somehow caused him to sleep this late, and Plagg had gone to help Ladybug on his own. But if Adrien was awake now, the akuma must already have been defeated. And Plagg was still nowhere to be found. A knot of unease tightening in his chest, Adrien hurried into the hallway and toward the top of the stairs.

“Nathalie!”

The echo of his own footsteps rang against the marble, swallowed almost instantly by the deathly silence of the house, but even that was not enough to make Adrien slow down. The house had always been grotesquely large for the number of people living inside it, its vast corridors and towering ceilings leaving far too much empty space between the few humans who inhabited it. A distance Adrien had always wanted to close, yet had never quite known how. And there had always been something cold about it. Even when his mother had been alive, when there had still been laughter behind some of its doors, when life within these walls had carried a little more joy and a little more hope, the house had never truly felt warm. Now, with so much of it empty, the silence seemed to have claimed every room for itself despite Nathalie’s best efforts.

“Nathalie!” Adrien called again. When there was still no answer, he headed toward Nathalie’s office. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was trying to accomplish. But before he went looking for Plagg, he wanted to see Nathalie at least, to make sure everything was all right. After all, the ring was still on his finger. And wherever Plagg was, somehow, the two of them were still connected.

But when he reached Nathalie’s office, he found that no matter how hard he turned the handle, the door refused to open. Adrien frowned, unease tightening across his face. Nathalie never locked her office. Not even when she wasn’t home.

Something was wrong. Wrong in a way he couldn’t explain.

Adrien turned toward the room beside it and tried that door instead. He was beginning to feel desperate now. If he didn’t find someone—anyone—in this enormous house soon, he thought he might lose his mind.

This door was locked, too. His heart began pounding hard against his ribs again. He hurried to the next room. Locked. Adrien could barely keep his panic under control now. His hands had begun to tremble as he reached for the next handle, forcing down a whimper as he tried it.

Locked.

“Nathalie!” This time, Adrien’s voice tore through the house, the name coming out far more frightened than he meant it to. It echoed down the empty corridors and seemed to vanish into the vastness of the mansion. “Nathalie?! Where are you?!”

In his panic, Adrien failed to notice that the next door he reached for was one he would normally never have dared to open; the room he had been forbidden from entering long ago, the room he still hadn’t been able to bring himself to step inside even after his father’s death.

This time, the door opened with a soft click.

The air inside was heavy, almost suffocating despite the open window and the gentle breeze drifting through it. Yet there was a familiar perfume lingering in the air, almost tingling against Adrien’s mind; a ghost’s hand reaching through the recesses of his memory, trying to force its way into his confused, panicked thoughts, trying to make him remember.

The moment Adrien stepped inside, he was seized by the feeling that he had made a mistake, a sudden weight settling heavily in his chest. Before he could even register where he had wandered into, the door clicked shut behind him. Adrien flinched and stood frozen for a moment, forcing himself to calm down as he looked around the room. Bathed in sunlight, it looked almost welcoming, almost tender, nothing like the ominous feeling gathering in his chest.

This was the room his mother had used to rest after she fell ill, particularly during the periods when his father was constantly away on ‘business’ trips. Adrien let out a slow breath and turned toward the door, intending to open it and escape this suffocating room, this place that had dredged up both the warmest and the most painful memories buried within him. But his hand froze on the handle. The door refused to open, but that wasn’t what stopped him, or occupied his mind at the moment. It was the voice behind him.

“Adrien?”

Adrien turned slowly toward the voice, his body moving with the stiff, unnatural jerk of a puppet whose strings were being pulled by an unseen hand. His muscles no longer seemed to belong to him; each movement was dragged out of him against his will, while his mind lay numb and helpless somewhere behind his eyes.

The bathroom door on the left side of the room stood open, and a woman was standing just outside it. Her long, golden hair had been gathered into a thick braid down her back, and she was dressed in the cream-colored, loose-sleeved blouse and dark brown trousers Adrien had grown so accustomed to seeing his mother wear. Adrien’s eyes met a pair of green eyes that mirrored his own. They were watching him with quiet concern.

“Are you all right?”

Adrien couldn't answer. He didn't even know what expression had settled across his own face. Whatever she saw there, however, was enough to make the concern in his mother's face deepen. She tossed the towel in her hand onto the bed beside her without taking her eyes off him and took a step toward him. Adrien recoiled instinctively, stumbling back until his shoulders struck the closed door behind him. Emilie Agreste frowned, concern tightening her features, but she didn't try to come any closer.

“Adrien, sweetheart, what's wrong? What's happened to you?”

Then, something in Emilie's expression changed. She gasped softly, as though she had only just noticed something terribly wrong with him, and whatever hesitation had held her back seemed to vanish. She set everything else aside and crossed the room with slow, deliberate steps until she came to stand directly in front of him.

Adrien didn't move. There was nowhere for him to go. More importantly, there was no reason to run from her. Not from his mother. So he simply stood there, frozen beneath her gaze, until her hand lifted and settled against his cheek.

The touch nearly broke him. Her skin was warm. Her hand was soft, exactly as he remembered it, and she smelled of the perfume he had spent years trying not to forget. The sob that had been trapped inside his chest from the moment he heard her voice finally escaped him, breaking from his lips like a frightened bird beating itself bloody against the bars of a cage.

She was real, she was soft, she was warm, and she smelled like his mother.

Everything about her was exactly as it should have been. And somehow, that was the most terrifying part.

“Oh, Adrien… Why are you crying?” his mother murmured, her brow knitting with concern as her thumb gently brushed away a tear he hadn't even realized had slipped down his cheek. “Did you have another nightmare?”

A nightmare. How could he explain it to her? How could he tell her that ever since she had disappeared from his life, everything had felt like a nightmare?

Perhaps even before that. Back when she had been sick. Not every nightmare left you trembling in terror. Some took you a long time to recognize for what they were. Sometimes, you could live inside a nightmare for years without realizing that was what it was.

Adrien hadn't realized it either. Not until he had found himself alone—completely, utterly alone—confused and lost among the cold walls of this house, wondering what his own existence was supposed to mean. Only then had he understood that perhaps his life had been a nightmare all along.

“Come here.”

And suddenly, the weight of everything Adrien had been holding inside himself for longer than he could remember—everything he had tried to ignore, swallow down, bury somewhere deep enough that he wouldn't have to face it, and be a burden to everyone, because that’s what he’s always been, a burden—came crashing down upon him with such crushing force that his body simply gave in. Like a puppet whose strings had been cut, Adrien collapsed into his mother's waiting arms, burying his face against her shoulder. He clung to her warmth through his tears, and as his arms instinctively wrapped around her, he realized that he was taller now. He was no longer hugging her around the waist the way he remembered. His arms reached around her shoulders instead.

His fingers tightened in the fabric of her blouse. Quiet, warm tears soaked into the cloth. His mother held him close, letting him cling to her for as long as he needed, before gently guiding him toward the bed and sitting down with him in her arms.

“I thought you were gone,” Adrien murmured against the warm, living skin of his mother’s neck. Emilie slowly, gently, carefully pulled back enough to look into his eyes. The worry on her face had softened into an understanding smile, though there was still something faintly sad in it.

“Gone? Where?” She lifted her left hand and caressed his cheek, just as she had always done when he was little. “I wouldn’t leave without telling my baby,” she said playfully. “And I sure wouldn’t leave him.”

“You wouldn’t?” Adrien asked, his voice trembling in a way he hadn’t allowed himself to tremble in a very long time, a weakness that only the warmth of his mother could draw out of him.

“Never,” Emilie said, her smile widening as though she could somehow make the word itself into a promise, something solid enough for him to believe in.

And, oh, how his mother had always known what to say to him. How she had always known exactly what Adrien needed to hear. Adrien had never thought of himself as a particularly complicated person. Unlike so many people, what he needed had always been painfully simple. Yet somehow, no one had ever been able to read him the way his mother could.

Everyone had decided for themselves what Adrien wanted, and not once had they thought to simply ask him. His father had decided he needed to be many things, and had convinced himself that Adrien either wanted those things too, or that he ought to want them. Ladybug had decided he was a flirt who simply couldn't help himself, that what he craved was attention, without ever stopping to consider that the attention he wanted had never been the kind she imagined. Marinette had never understood that all Adrien had ever wanted was to be with her. She had become so consumed by whatever she had decided Adrien needed, by whatever version of him she had built in her own mind, that she had never seemed to stop and wonder what he actually wanted for himself.

But his mother had always known. All Adrien had ever wanted was for someone to stay.

That was it.

That simple, aching need that had lodged itself beneath his ribs like a cat's claws, sinking deeper every time someone left, tearing at him from the inside with a pain so sharp it felt as though it might split his chest open just to get out.

He only needed someone to stay.

“But everybody always does,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to their hands between them. His mother had reached for his and enclosed it in both of hers, squeezing gently as though she could somehow press strength back into him through her touch.

“Why would you say that, sweetheart?” Emilie asked. Adrien’s eyes fell to the wedding ring on his mother’s finger. The simplest, most tangible proof of his parents’ love. Perhaps he was meant to be that proof, too. After all, wasn’t a child supposed to be the greatest evidence of the love two people had for one another? The living, breathing thing their love had created.

Because that was the strangest part of all: while other people seemed to be allowed to simply exist, Adrien had always felt the need to justify his own existence.

So if Adrien couldn't be anything else, he should at least have been this, shouldn't he? It was simple. He didn't even have to do anything for it. His existence alone should have been enough. There should have been comfort in that. He was their son. He had been, and would always be, their son. It was part of his identity in a way nothing else could ever be. He was the thing they had created together. The living proof that, once upon a time, they had loved each other enough to make a life between them.

But then his father had kept leaving them, disappearing on long trips. His mother had disappeared altogether. And perhaps his father couldn't even bear to look after Adrien because looking at him meant looking at her. He had sent him away to one class after another, filling his days with tutors and activities, keeping him out of sight and out of mind.

Sometimes Adrien had the strange feeling that even when his father spoke to him, he could barely bring himself to look at him. Adrien had tried to tell himself it was because everyone was always saying how much he looked like his mother. Because if that was the reason, then perhaps he could understand it. Perhaps his existence simply kept pressing against a wound that had never healed.

Once, he had been the reminder of a love. Now, somehow, he had become the thing that kept the wound open. What was his purpose again?

So Adrien learned to walk on eggshells in his own home, learning the precise shape of his father's silence and how to move around it without making a sound. He learned to make himself smaller, quieter, easier to overlook. To lower his voice, soften his footsteps, keep his presence tucked away in the corners of the house.

He learned that the best way to be there for his father was, somehow, to make sure his father barely had to notice he was there at all. He learned to disappear while still being present, and to remain ready to become whatever was asked of him the moment he was needed.

But somehow, it was never enough.

“You just had a bad dream.”

His mother’s voice reached through the dark sea of his thoughts and pulled Adrien back to the surface like a hand closing around his wrist. He blinked, somewhat dazed, trying to gather himself.

He felt strange. As though everything around him were just a little too bright. His mouth was painfully dry, dry enough to make his tongue feel foreign against his teeth, and yet there was nothing wrong with his body. He wasn’t feeling ill, he wasn’t hurt, or injured. If anything, he felt almost unnervingly intact.

His head, however, felt strangely light.

It reminded him of the vodka Kim had secretly brought the previous month, the bottle they had passed between them, laughing at the burn in their throats. Or of the expensive wine his father occasionally allowed him a sip of at dinner, insisting that he ought to know what it tasted like.

It was that same peculiar sensation, his body perfectly steady while something inside his head seemed to be floating several centimeters away from where it belonged.

Adrien blinked again.

“No, I…” he murmured, trying to focus on his mother’s face. “I…”

It turned out that when you spent so long suppressing your feelings—sometimes trying not to think about them at all—they became terribly difficult to put into words when you finally needed to.

Emilie waited patiently for him to find the words, her thumb moving gently over the back of Adrien’s hand. For a moment, her finger brushed against the ring on his finger.

It was barely a touch.

His friends had touched his hands before. They had brushed against the ring countless times, despite how fiercely protective Adrien was of his Miraculous. But this time, his body reacted before his mind even had the chance to understand what had happened.

Every muscle in him seized. His breath stopped dead in his throat, whatever words he had been trying to say strangled there with it. And then his hand was gone from his mother’s grasp. Adrien didn't remember pulling it away. One moment her fingers were around his; the next, he was clutching his hand against his chest, his other palm pressed hard over the ring as though his body had decided, without consulting him, that it had to protect it.

His heart hammered violently against his ribs.

Wrong.

Wrong.

Wrong.

The thought wasn't so much something he consciously formed as a warning screaming through every nerve in his body. His instincts had already sounded the alarm, leaving him slick with cold sweat before he could even understand what he was afraid of.

When Adrien finally managed to pull himself together enough to look at his mother, his stomach twisted with shame. Emilie was staring at the hand he had clutched protectively against his chest, shock written plainly across her face.

This was his mother. The woman who used to curl up with him on the enormous bed, trying to bring even a little warmth into that cold house. Who read him stories. Who would pull him against her chest and murmur my pretty little boy into his hair, the only one who had ever made those words sound like an expression of love, rather than another reminder that he was something beautiful to be looked at and admired, like a work of art displayed behind glass: carefully preserved, endlessly praised, but never truly touched or cherished. Only one in that house who gave him kisses and took genuine delight in making him laugh.

For most of his life, the only warmth Adrien had ever truly known was the warmth she had made him feel simply by being there. And now he had recoiled from her touch as though she were something he needed to protect himself from.

Adrien kept telling himself that it was only because he was worried about Plagg. That had to be the reason he had reacted like that. There couldn't be any other explanation.

“Adrien?”

He could hear the question beneath his mother's concerned voice. Blinking, he lowered his hand into his lap, though his other palm remained protectively curled over the ring as he tried to explain himself to her.

“No, you don’t understand. I… You were gone, and Father and Nathalie were always so busy, and I was… so alone here. I just wanted to have friends. I wanted to escape this place. And sure, maybe it’s an awful thing to think, because he’s my father and this is my home, but ever since you were gone, I always felt like an obstacle. Like a burden. So I wanted to meet new people. I thought maybe they would see someone worth getting to know. That they would look into my eyes and actually want to know me, not know about me. They wouldn’t just walk past me as though I wasn’t there, or look at me without ever really seeing me. And maybe…” His voice faltered. “But then all of them…” Adrien swallowed hard, his fingers tightening over the ring. “And I still feel like there’s this glass panel between me and everyone else. Like I can see them, and they can see me, but somehow… somehow I can never quite reach them. And even with Mari—”

“Who— Wait, Adrien… Shhh.” This time, Emilie reached for his shoulders rather than his hands. Adrien felt the comforting weight of her warm palms and tried to steady himself, drawing in slow, deep breaths as she gently soothed him. “I told you, baby. It was just a bad dream. Everything is fine here, just as it should be. Father and Nathalie are working right now, but they’ll be back for dinner, and we’ll all eat together. And then we can even have a game night, like you love so much!”

Emilie smiled at him, warm and reassuring, the kind of smile that should have been enough to calm him. But something in her words clicked into place inside Adrien’s mind. He didn't understand what it was yet, but his brow furrowed in confusion.

“What? But we never had game nights…”

“Of course we do!” Emilie laughed, as though Adrien had just said something utterly ridiculous. “Sweetheart, everything here is perfectly fine. We’re happy. So forget that bad dream, and get rid of that thing, too.”

Instead of focusing, as he should have, on what exactly his mother meant by that thing, Adrien’s mind chose to latch onto a single word instead. Perfect. He didn't know what his mother meant by repeating the word. Even before she had fallen ill, Adrien realized now, there had always been something wrong. He simply hadn't been old enough to understand it then.

He had seen it more clearly after spending time at Marinette's home. For the first time, even if only secondhand, he had experienced what an ordinary family was supposed to feel like. He had sat around their table, surrounded by the warmth of their home, and tried to fit himself into a place that seemed to make room for him so effortlessly.

It had touched something in him. And yet, beneath that warmth, there had always been a small, aching sadness. Because he had never known anything like it with his own family.

“But your illness—” he began, trying to protest. Emilie only scrunched up her face and laughed at him.

“What illness? I'm perfectly healthy! Your father is, too, Adrien. There's nothing to be afraid of.” Her eyes softened. “My good little boy.”

For some reason, the brightness in his mother’s voice brought back someone Adrien hadn't thought about in a very long time: Chloé. Not the girl he had been forced to get to know all over again when he started school, the girl who had made him choose between her and his new friends, a choice that still filled him with a burning shame whenever he thought about it.

No. What came back to him instead were the games they used to play. The two of them inventing little worlds of their own, whispering to each other while their families talked around them in a French full of big words their young minds couldn't quite follow, always careful to behave like a proper little lady and gentleman, just as they had been taught, determined never to embarrass their families.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Adrien had said once, while Chloé was telling him about an adventure she had made up herself. The two of them had been sitting at one end of the enormous salon. Audrey had shooed Chloé away with the back of her hand, telling her to go show Adrien her new toy and stop getting underfoot, and Chloé had promptly dragged Adrien off to show him the enormous dollhouse her father had bought her.

Adrien couldn't remember all the details of the story now. Something about a wild adventure Chloé had gone on with her family. What had confused him, though, was the way Chloé had portrayed her mother and father. Adrien glanced sideways at Audrey and André, then back at the two loving, attentive parents in Chloé's story. He couldn't find the slightest connection between them. Chloé realized she had let herself be vulnerable in front of Adrien. Color crept into her cheeks as she dropped the dolls in her hands, folded her arms across her chest, and looked away with a frown.

“It's a game, dummy. Haven't you ever played before? It's a made-up story. Whatever you want to happen in it happens.”

“Whatever I want?” Adrien had asked, his eyes widening with sudden interest. In the years that followed, thanks to Chloé, he would lie awake in bed and invent countless versions of a perfect life for himself; adventures with a mother who adored him, a father who loved him, a family who wanted nothing more than to have him beside them.

“Of course,” Chloé had said knowingly. Then she had lifted her chin, as though she were imparting some great secret. “In a dollhouse, you get to make everything happen however you want.”

The blue of Chloé's wide eyes blurred before Adrien's vision, dissolving into a deeper shade of ocean blue. When his sight cleared again, another pair of eyes was staring back at him; darker, framed by red, watching him with an almost annoyed expression.

“They’re calling themselves Dollmaker,” she said. “Whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.”

Ladybug.

Dollmaker.

Dollhouse.

Akuma.

The gears turning inside Adrien’s head finally seemed to catch, one tooth locking into another with a sharp, mechanical click. And suddenly, everything made far too much sense. His breath caught. He doubled over, one hand flying to his mouth as nausea surged violently through his stomach.

“Adrien!”

He forced himself upright, turning toward the voice. Beneath the strands of blond hair that had fallen across his face, he found his mother staring back at him with a deeply worried expression. This woman was not his mother. Adrien wasn't even sure she was a woman at all. She was something the akuma had made. Perhaps, a doll.

A beautiful, perfect imitation wearing his mother’s face, speaking with her voice, touching him with hands warm enough to make him forget that she had been gone for years. After all, in the Doll House, everything was perfect. Everything was exactly the way you had always wanted it to be. Your family was here. The people you loved stayed. The things you had spent your life wishing for were placed gently into your hands and made real. Chloé had taught him that much.

So Adrien already knew the rules.

All you had to do was become the perfect doll to fit inside this house. Adrien felt his stomach clench again. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice gave a quiet, almost sinister little chuckle.

What's wrong, Adrien? You never minded being the perfect doll for everyone else before. Why not be one for yourself this time?

My good little boy.

Oh, he had been good.

Even after his mother died, he had tried—always, always—to be her good little boy.

He learned to stay out of the way. To hold his head high when it was expected of him, then bow it and make himself smaller when that was what the moment demanded. He learned not to be a burden, not to ask for too much, not to take up more space than he was given. He let people pull at him and shape him as they pleased, like a mannequin in a shop window; dressed, posed, and arranged to be exactly what they wanted to see.

He tried to be easy. Never speak unless spoken to. Follow orders. Do your chores. Be good at everything you do. Smile when you are expected to smile. Don't complain. Don't make things difficult. And somewhere along the way, he stopped thinking of it as something he was doing and started believing it was simply who he was. It was easier this way. The performance became so constant, so deeply ingrained, that there came a point when Adrien wasn't even sure where the performance ended and he began.

So yes.

He had been good. He had been so good.

But no one had ever bothered to be good to him.

This woman was not his mother. Adrien knew that. But how was a desperate child, who had gone years without seeing his mother, supposed to swallow the questions that had been burning inside him for so long when he was sitting this close to someone who wore her face, carried her smile, spoke in her voice?

How was he supposed to turn away?

This was his only chance. Even if he knew the answers would not truly come from his mother, this was his last chance to ask them. And Adrien had always hidden a thousand doubts behind all that fearlessness of his.

“But… what if I can’t be your good little boy?” The words came out hoarse and muffled, scraping their way through a throat that felt as though it had been lined with sandpaper. “What if I want to be more than that, Mom?” Adrien lifted his head fully and looked at the mother who wasn't his mother. This time, he was aware of the warm tears spilling down his cheeks. But unlike before, she didn't reach out to wipe them away. She simply remained where she was, utterly still, almost statue-like. “Would you still love me?”

For a moment, Emilie Agreste simply stared at him. The green eyes that had once made him feel warm now held nothing he could read. They were utterly blank, stripped of every trace of tenderness, as though whatever had been looking at him before had finally disappeared behind them.

“You answer that, Adrien.” When she finally spoke, her voice was flat. There was no warmth in it, no softness. Nothing of his mother remained. “Do you think you would still be worth loving?”

Adrien flinched as though she had slapped him. No one had moved, and yet the imaginary blow of her words landed with such brutal force that his eyes widened, his breath catching painfully in his throat. The not-mother continued in that same merciless, emotionless voice.

“You stopped being my good little boy a long time ago.” She tilted her head ever so slightly. “So tell me, Adrien. How many people who love you are actually remain around you still?”

Adrien had no answer. If this had been only a few weeks ago, he might have stood there in front of this woman who was not his mother and told her about Marinette. About how a girl as wonderful as her had somehow managed to love him in all his different forms. How she had seen him at his best and his worst, and still chosen him.

Wasn't that proof? Proof that he was worth loving? Why—Why was Adrien always the only one who had to fight desperately to earn the right to be loved?

But standing there now, beneath the blank, unreadable gaze of the woman who wore his mother's face, he felt pathetic. Because Marinette had only ever wanted the doll, too, hadn't she?

The perfect boy. The version of him that had been so carefully made. And once she had gotten him, it had taken so little time for her to see what was underneath and grow tired of it. The thought alone filled Adrien with shame. She had left him. And she hadn't even given him a real reason.

So perhaps the question was right.

Who was left?

“But then…” he said, almost stumbling over the words as he forced himself to swallow. “How am I supposed to…?”

“Give me the ring.”

“What?” The word escaped Adrien before he could stop it. Emilie didn't reach for his hand. She didn't try to snatch the ring from his finger. Instead, she simply held out her palm toward him, waiting.

“Everything here is perfect, Adrien. Everything has been prepared especially for you.” Her voice remained eerily calm. “You have your part to play, too. And to do that, we need to get rid of that cursed thing that keeps ruining you.” Her eyes dropped to the ring. “You can't do it with that on.”

There was something so deeply disturbing about hearing the one thing that had finally given Adrien agency spoken of as though it were the source of his suffering, as though having a will of his own were the very thing making him unhappy.

He couldn't take it anymore. Adrien shot to his feet and stumbled several steps backward, never once taking his eyes off the woman in front of him. The woman who wasn't his mother made no move to follow him. She remained seated on the bed, watching him.

“No.”

The word came from Adrien with a sharp, protective edge. The woman on the bed let out a deep, weary sigh.

“Oh, Adrien…” she murmured, almost pityingly. “Why don’t you allow yourself to want something?” Her gaze softened with something that might have been compassion, if it hadn't felt so terribly wrong. “This place already exists. You don't have to earn anything.”

“But isn’t this why you wear my mother’s face?” Adrien finally hissed, the words sharpened by something dangerously close to anger. “To force me to obey, so I can earn this happiness by becoming the perfect doll? So I can give you whatever it is you want?”

His hand reached blindly behind him, his eyes never leaving that familiar pair of green eyes. He didn't know what he was expecting to find. He had tried the door before and it hadn't opened, but he hadn't understood then what it meant to try. Hadn't understood that there was weight in the attempt that reaching for the door was, in itself, an act of defiance.

“But not anymore. I am tired of being a puppet.” His fingers searched for the handle. “A plaything.”

Adrien’s hand closed hard around the doorknob. This time, the door opened with a soft click.

“Look what you are doing to me, Adrien.”

He didn't look back. He couldn't. Not when he could feel the image of his mother changing behind him, the perfect version of her he had been given beginning to melt away, revealing more and more of the mother he remembered from before; the pale, sick woman from his childhood, the one whose illness had haunted the house long before her disappearance.

Adrien forced himself not to see it, not to think about it. He threw himself through the open doorway instead. Behind him, the door clicked shut again. Adrien barely registered it. He was already moving, rushing toward the staircase, his feet carrying him faster than his thoughts could follow. He took the steps two at a time, desperate to put as much distance as possible between himself and that room.

Dollmaker. That was what Ladybug had called it. You'll be its perfect little doll.

No, thank you. Adrien had been a doll for long enough. He had spent his entire life being dressed, posed, instructed, molded into whatever shape someone else needed him to be. He had no intention of going back to that life.

“Ladybug! Help!” The scream ripped out of Adrien before he even realized he was shouting. He tore across the vast entrance hall and slammed into the front door, both hands flying to the handle. “Nathalie!”

He wrenched it down. Nothing.He pulled harder. The door didn't even shudder beneath his grip.

“No, no, no…”

His breath came too fast. He yanked at the handle again, then again, as though brute force might somehow make the impossible give way. His palms were beginning to hurt. He could feel his pulse hammering wildly beneath his skin, every beat loud enough to drown out his thoughts. The door remained perfectly still. Adrien stumbled backward and dragged both hands through his hair, fingers catching painfully in the strands. His chest felt too tight. He couldn't seem to draw enough air into his lungs.

He was trapped. The thought came with such sudden, nauseating certainty that his stomach lurched. No. He couldn't be trapped here. Not here, not in this house. His fingers curled instinctively around the ring.

Plagg.

The thought hit him like a lifeline.

Plagg was gone but the Miraculous was still here. Adrien could feel it. He didn't know how he knew, only that somewhere beneath the panic, beneath the cold sweat crawling down his spine, the magic was still there. He stumbled away from the door and sucked in a shaking breath.

“Plagg, transform me!” Nothing. Adrien froze. For one horrible second, he simply stared at the ring. “Plagg?” Silence. His throat tightened. “Plagg!” Still nothing. His voice broke on the next word. “Please…”

At last, Adrien's legs gave out beneath him. He crumpled to his knees like a puppet whose strings had been severed, folding forward until he could press his forehead against the cold floor. The chill seeped into his skin, sharp and grounding, and he clung to the faint hope that perhaps it might ease the pounding in his head. Instead, a sob tore through him.

“Please…” The word came out between broken, shuddering breaths. “Someone… please get me out of here.”

He couldn't stay here. He couldn't. There had to be a way out. There had to be some hidden door, some weakness in this nightmare, something he could find if he just kept looking. But Adrien couldn't even find the strength to lift his head. He was trapped. And for the first time, he was beginning to understand just how completely alone he was.

Adrien was still lost somewhere inside his own thoughts, struggling to quiet his sobs, when a faint creak rose through the house. It was the only sound besides his own ragged breathing. He swallowed his next sob and went still.

There it was again. A slow, deliberate groan of hinges. Adrien lifted his forehead from the cold floor and turned his head toward the sound. His stomach dropped.

He knew exactly what he was looking at. His father’s office. The door was opening. Not as though something had pushed it from the other side. It opened with a slow, almost languid creak, as if the house itself were drawing back the curtain and inviting him in.

Every other door had resisted him, every other door had been locked.But this one was opening for him, waiting for him. Adrien’s nausea tightened into a cold knot. The Doll House was learning him. It knew exactly which doors to open. Exactly which voices to use. Exactly which ghosts to put behind them. It was trying to make him want to stay.

Adrien knew he shouldn't go near it. He should be looking for a way out, not walking willingly toward another carefully prepared temptation. But that was the horror of it. They knew how to make a cage look like an invitation. And Adrien had nothing left to lose. He drew a long, shaking breath and pushed himself upright, using his hands against the floor when his trembling legs nearly gave out beneath him. Then he started toward the office, slowly and carefully.  The closer he came, the brighter the sunlight spilling from within became, until it washed across his face through the widening gap.

Adrien stopped at the threshold. His trembling hand rose, and pushed the next door open.

“Father?”