Archive of Our Own

adrien agreste had never quite had a say about anything regarding his life.

ever since he was a little kid, his schedule was tight, every possible blank filled with unnecessary activities that tired him out completely. his days were strictly organised, not leaving a single blank space. he’s never really known free time. it’s always felt like every second of his life had been planned out without him being able to even express his opinion on the matter.

at first, he didn’t mind, at least for the most of his childhood. he loved his parents dearly — even if they worked a lot and left him under the care of nannies and governesses. he didn’t mind the company of nathalie and his bodyguard either. they always sent him soft smiles and never dared to be anything other than gentle with him. adrien learned to think of them as a part of a family and he wasn’t mad about it. nathalie had interesting stories to tell and the gorilla would sometimes play with him.

it wasn’t a bad childhood to have. he had every toy he asked for. he was cared for. it should’ve been enough.

(deep down, he wished to spend time with kids his age that weren’t chloé or félix. he dreamed about preschool — and later on, middle school — as if it was his biggest desire. he liked learning new things, but being homeschooled wasn’t ideal. he’s always yearned for something more.)

maman explained that he had all he needed in the house, the care, the education, the people important to him. he never argued, even if he disagreed. he believed his parents were doing what was best for him.

“the outside world is dangerous, mon cheri” émilie would say when he was cradled in her arms, the picture book spread out on the bed. adrien stared at the colorful image displayed on the page; sheep eating the grass near the blue river and the crystal clear sky above them didn’t seem dangerous. he didn’t debate, letting maman speak instead. “it’s important nothing happens to you, adrien. i don’t know what i would do without you”

adrien nodded in agreement. he didn’t want to be without his mom ever. he hoped he’d never have to find out.

most days, he’d be too busy to daydream, stocked under his french homework, piano lessons and photoshoots. he did his best to cooperate with the photographers and the private teachers, not wanting to disappoint father and make mom sad. he knew his education was important to them, but sometimes he couldn’t help but wish that he was playing cards with felix (he’d do that cool magic trick adrien couldn’t learn no matter how hard he tried). on some days he’d catch himself wishing he was watching one of those fashion cartoons chloé loved to watch so much with her.

he’s always been an adventurous kid, which was a paradox, considering the fact that he’s been locked in his house since forever. at some point, board and video games, books and movies on dvd became boring. they were never quite satisfying enough, and they only left adrien with a lingering sense of dissatisfaction and the lack of a sense of belonging. 

the fatigue clung to his bones and he never seemed to be able to fully get rid of it, no matter how hard he’d try. no distractions were even successful enough, no schedule busy enough, no task tiring enough to make him forget about the persisting loneliness. his room was big, colorful and filled with cool things, but he was bored and frustrated by his incarceration anyway. he was fed up with being alone.

around the age of ten he developed a sickening need for company. he wanted to have friends, spend time with people his age and go on adventures the same way the characters in his books did. adrien was sickly in love with the idea of seeing the world, strongly invested in travelling and exploring for someone who barely stepped a foot outside of his doorstep. 

being an only child in a house as big as the agreste mansion was quite lonely. especially when his mom was getting more tired with every passing day and his dad would leave for long periods of time.

“adult work things”, he’d say, and for some reason, adrien felt uneasy about that excuse. it wasn’t a good enough reason to leave him and maman alone.

her coughing fits and trembling hands scared adrien. he never knew what to do; how to help her feel better. he’d suit quietly by her side, leaning against her shoulder. he’d read to her on some nights, mostly his favourite stories — in hopes that they’ll make her feel better, soothe her in a way they comforted him when he was feeling particularly lonely.

sometimes, on the days when he was feeling especially bored, he’d shyly ask his parents for a sibling — but when he’d solicit, maman would say adrien was more than enough and that they didn’t need another kid. he remembers a specific day when he begged papa for a little brother or a sister — he just wanted someone to play with, and felix didn’t visit as often as he used to anymore — and that was the first time gabriel has yelled at him. adrien vaguely remembers flinching away from his father, hesitantly stepping away, chill running down his back. papa reflected immediately, went back to his monotone voice, said they’d arrange a meeting with chloe bourgeois soon, and adrien swallowed down the protest, letting it leave a bitter taste of his tongue. he didn’t dare to meet his father’s eyes — too scared to see the anger, disappointment, maybe even hatred. he thanked him instead — because: “remember to always be grateful, adrien”, and he always did what his father wanted him to — and excused himself.

he left his father’s office with a sour taste of regret and père’s eyes burning a hole in the back of his head.

he was barely thirteen when he lost his mother.

he wasn’t even a teenager when he learned that sometimes it was better to not speak. he benefitted from staying silent and playing the role of an obedient, perfect son gabriel has always taught him to be. speaking up only got him in trouble; when thoughts left his mind and reshaped as words said out loud, things tended to get ugly. any mention of émilie agreste, the things she did or liked made him end up in his room, locked and alone, with an echo of his father’s command ringing in his ears.

he thinks that’s why he learned how to love the darkness and silence of the night. the time between the sunset and the sunrise was his only chance to do pretty much whatever he wanted — as long as it didn’t require leaving his room.

adrien loves the moon and the way it shines on the dark night sky, accompanied by hundreds and thousands of bright stars. during lonely, sleepless nights, adrien admired the moon, stared at it silently for hours on end, surrounded by sounds of paris and the quiet hum of the city life coming from the outside.

he likes silence. it is something comfortable, a lasting stillness. adrien likes the lack of the loud voices, barked orders, harsh demands and cold reprimands. it is nice to just sit in his thoughts, to focus on himself without the constant interruptions. 

silence doesn’t control him, doesn’t burden him with responsibilities nor restricts his freedom. silence doesn’t have an overwhelming sense of power over him.

on some nights, he gives up the blissful quiet, substituting it with whispered conversations he directs to the moon. it never really answers, so the talking takes a shape of a monologue, but he doesn’t mind. it is nice to be listened to instead of listening to someone else. during the night, unlike the rush of the day, he doesn’t have places to be and tasks to complete — it is just him, the moon and the soothing city noise. 

if he tried hard enough, he could almost pretend loneliness wasn’t eating him up from the inside, twisting his organs so tightly it was getting hard to breathe.

adrien takes a deep breath every time he's about to see his reflection — whether it's a black screen, the huge mirror in his bathroom or even a river. he braces himself whenever he goes out, fully aware he's gonna be seeing himself on advertisements and posters all over the city and when he goes on social media, edits and paparazzi photos of him posted online by hundreds of people. if he tries hard enough, he can almost pretend the person staring back at him in all those scenarios doesn't wear his dead mother’s face.

adrien hates lies. he hates being lied to as much as lying himself. it feels like tricking others into believing into something that isn’t and could never be true and adrien hates being unfair to others. he holds great resentment against lies. 

adrien hates secrets because of his father — and not to blame everything on gabriel, but in some twisted way, it feels like most of adrien’s issues are strictly tied to pére. 

“the world is a dangerous place”, and how many times they’ve fought about it, only for gabriel to win every single time. he’d repeated that so many times, a childhood lie would almost become true, and adrien would be sent to his room bony-limbed, red-faced and teary-eyed.  

he had to live his whole life as one big secret — because reporters were noisy, and he’d always end up on the first page of the paris’ magazines, and his name would flash in a red font on the news channels and as a trending hashtag on twitter. 

so he was homeschooled, he was unable to meet new people, make friends, be his true self outside of the image that had been created to meet his father’s expectations. 

then he eventually was allowed to go to school — after he lied to his father and nathalie — he met marinette and nino and others, and he was learning how to be a teenager and a person of his own, but also that people lied and that he had to lie sometimes, too. he also was given the black cat miraculous, and suddenly he was wearing the mask of cat noir; even though it feels like he finally is free to express his inner self, he became bound by his secret identity and ended up becoming a liar. 

adrien really hates lies, but he hates when things are kept from him even more. 

universe makes him face his hatred for secrets whenever he’s out patrolling and it amplifies every time ladybug either doesn’t show up, or when she does, she doesn’t speak much. he wonders what’s on her mind, somehow deep down knowing whatever it is, her saying it out loud would hurt them both. so he doesn’t ask and doesn't bring up the growing distance between the two of them. chat noir lets himself drown in memories of the times when it was just him and ladybug — when their biggest problem was learning how to work with each other. 

he doesn’t address the current issue — that it feels like they don’t know how to cooperate now. what used to be an intuitive, natural dance, now is a riddle of trials and errors. villains take longer to defeat, the new butterfly holder is stronger, and so are their akumas. chat’s tired and so is she, if her yawns and foggy eyes are anything to go by. he feels bad and wishes they weren’t forced to deal with something no person their age should have to face. he still trusts her, though, and so he goes along with her hurried out commands, follows her lead, does what he’s asked to, creates diversion when needed. 

he’s always been good at following orders.

so he does just that, feeling like he’s on the same level as the rest of the team, and no longer partners with ladybug. 

(“he’s a holder like any other”, she said. adrien can’t get rid of that taunting voice no matter how hard he tries to.)

he swallows down the bitter taste of replacement, because even being the last option is still better than being nothing at all. chat doesn’t doubt her, even when tiredness makes her slur her words and when even her mask isn’t able to hide the deep, dark circles under her blue eyes. he knows she’s exhausted, that she’s been working non-stop trying to protect the city they both love. he can’t imagine the amount of stress being a guardian of the miraculous brings her.

and so he doesn’t bring up the connection they’ve almost lost, he lets things happen, and once again, instead of speaking up, he chooses to die inside. he’s willing to fix things; but he fears he isn’t really able to do so.

it backfires multiple times.

the whole mess with fucking up time after time unravels rather quickly and punches him so hard he barely manages to get back up. he considers not doing so.

the long, stressful hours they spend fighting akumas (together, but somehow it feels more lonely than he could ever express) finally take a toll on their relationship. ladybug calls the other holders more and more, and with each mission that takes place and adrien isn’t a part of, it gets worse.

he wants to fix it, of course he does — he loves her, for fuck’s sake! — but it brings no positive results. if anything, ladybug distances herself from him even more. chat noir doesn’t quite understand: does she not see that he’s trying to help? it’s all he’s ever tried to do.

but then again, it isn’t the first time his help is not good enough to stop someone from drifting away from him.

he tries not to think about the fact that he’s losing another important woman in his life, watching her slowly slip away from him as the days go by, knowing damn well he can’t do anything to prevent it from happening.

adrien agreste has always been a good actor.

he likes to think he got that from his mom — even though he’d never be as good as her, of course. he never really got to see her in action besides a few times when he was younger — he has blurry memories of visiting filming sets with nathalie to see maman work. 

she was a natural, for sure. acting was something that came to her effortlessly, it’s like she was meant to take part in plays and big movies.

adrien remembers watching “solitude” for the first time — an experience so surreal he sometimes doubts it actually happened. he thinks about the strict order he received not long after his mom passed away (“do not dare to talk about it, adrien!”) and how he couldn’t make himself watch it.

he thinks about how badly he wanted to see his mom again, and how that movie was a chance to do so. he thinks about the rareness of it and how it’s not on the internet, for some reason. he recalls the existence of the only “solitude” dvd and how it was hidden somewhere inside of his house.

he thinks it was really fucked up to hide a movie just because his mother played the leading role.

to this day adrien still doesn’t get it, even though quite some time has passed — why forbid him from watching it just due to emilie’s role in it? he knows grief makes people act in weird ways, but his father had oddly specific behaviors when it came to his mom. adrien just doesn’t get it.

didn’t gabriel want to see her? admire her? watch her graceful steps? look into her green irises one more time?

adrien sure as hell knows he wants to watch émilie. he’s insanely grateful for that movie; for the possibility of watching his mom do one of the things she’s loved so much — act. there’s something so captivating about her that won’t let him tear his eyes away. the woman he was proud to call his mother was the most beautiful person adrien has ever laid eyes on. 

she was the exact opposite of his father — warm, delicate, caring. a true miracle in his cold, strict life. adrien had never once doubted that she loved him. 

adrien watches the subtitles on the screen of the tv, tears prickling his eyes. he wishes she wasn’t gone.

“you okay, kid?” plagg whispers, big, green eyes staring at adrien’s face. he can’t force himself to maintain eye contact. he closes his eyes and doesn’t answer. they both know he isn’t okay — nothing is. 

he trembles slightly, back against the cold windows through which moonlight mixes with the darkness, illuminating the room. he misses the warmth she provided.

“i’m sorry, adrien” the kwami whispers. adrien can’t come up with a response, voice trapped in his throat with an emotional lump in it.

the silence makes him sick to his stomach. his eyes land on the collection of old records that used to be his mom’s. he can almost hear the notes he knows by heart, every song on the vinyls mesmerized word by word. adrien’s eyes sting as an overwhelming desire fills his heart: he would give up everything to have her back.

he pushes his eyes open and uncontrollably glances at his ring, the silver shining in the light of the moon. it’s somehow cold and heavy on his finger, like a responsibility he can’t really give up. he clenches his hand into a tight fist. 

he has half of the solution on his finger. all it’d take to bring his mom back is a pair of earrings and a few whispered words. she’s a ghost now, forever haunting every aspect of adrien’s life, her absence spreading into his lungs like poison. 

tears run down his hollow cheeks at the thought, silently making their way down to his chin that trembles as a wrecked sob comes out.

he’d never actually make the wish, no matter how many times he has thought about it already. adrien agreste is many things, but he isn’t selfish. he would never sentence someone to a lifetime of pain and guilt and would never inflict death on someone; even indirectly. he just wouldn’t.

plagg snuggles into him, hiding in the crook of adrien’s neck. he purrs quietly in hopes of soothing adrien’s pain. the blond can’t stop tears from coming in heavy waves — he just presses his hand against his mouth firmly, determined to stay quiet. plagg keeps purring and it’s the only noise in the room. 

adrien finds no comfort in it, too focused on remaining silent.

he doesn’t allow himself to make a sound, too afraid of it echoing between the cold, empty walls of the agreste mansion haunted by émilie’s absence.

adrien feels trapped inside his life.

he’s overwhelmed. the paparazzi, reporters and journalists are everywhere, constantly trying to get to him. 

he isn’t a model anymore — but he is still a famous, public figure with tons of girls his age and people much older than him freaking out about him. he might no longer be the main attraction of his father’s brand, but he can’t wipe his face clean enough for others not to recognise him anymore. 

he’s underfed. he knows he is; in some twisted way, that satisfies him. he isn’t modeling for magazines, but he still needs to keep up his appearance; and being skinny was always something that mattered to the media as well as his father. 

his mom always was really thin; she had to be as an actress. the movie industry is as fucked up as any other. and èmilie had to meet their expectations. adrien didn’t know much about it back then as a kid; but he is realising now that he’s out of the industry but still in the spotlight. 

he remembers the photographers taking pictures of his mother for the GABRIEL brand, admiring her beauty like she was a goddess in the purest form. with his father’s last name and her own beauty and kindness she was on the road to a great success. she was known for her big movie, advertisements, collaborations and wearing gabriel’s designs. 

but then, suddenly she was dead, and his father couldn't use the photos anymore and before he knew it, an overwhelmed, twelve year old adrien was standing in front of the cameras, supposed to be as good as his now dead mother.  

he remembers how trapped he felt back then, when he stood in front of the cameras on an empty stomach, makeup on his face with that still carried childish features, wearing his father’s designs and trying to somehow replicate beauty of a woman who was now a cold corpse. 

he recalls the shallow breaths he’d take, the rumbling in his stomach, the dizziness and the buzzing beneath his skull. how he was a puppet controlled by his father’s strings, not able to grieve his mom, instead of trying to be someone he wasn’t all while his meals were shrinking and schedule was getting fuller and fuller. the atmosphere of the rooms he’d walk into would become heavy, almost unbearable. 

his father had noticed too; he started avoiding adrien the second his dead wife was buried underground. he never took eyes off of émilie’s casket and he not once dared to look at adrien. nathalie became the one to carry words that wouldn’t leave his father’s mouth if adrien was near him. 

ladybug had told adrien once that he had the eyes of his mother. it wasn’t the first time someone had compared him to his mother, and in her mouth, it felt like the highest compliment she could ever give him. but it also made him obnoxiously aware of how similar he looks to émilie and how it is impossible to avoid that recognition. 

clearly, père had noticed too, because he looked at his son with cold eyes that held so much anger and pain and resentment it made adrien sick to his stomach. he can’t imagine what it must be like to look at your son and see your dead wife you can never get back. 

to this day, adrien wonders if gabriel would take a deep breath whenever adrien’s weight left the room. at the same time, he wonders if him sharing the same features with his mother made gabriel want to hold him close. 

if adrien being locked in the agreste household was an outcome of gabriel not being able to hold émilie close anymore, and so he protected whatever he had left of her — her little copy, her son. 

adrien thinks that’s how he developed claustrophobia as a young kid. he doesn’t remember a time when he wasn’t absolutely terrified of small spaces, closed rooms and enclosures he couldn’t get out of.

as years went by, he realized his fear isn’t based on the small space, but on the inability to escape from it. being raised in an environment of strict, isolating control by his father heavily influenced his deep-seated phobia of being locked in. he has never quite wanted to acknowledge that fact: until london. 

london, where he is trapped inside a prison cell behind solid bars, completely unable to escape, for a long time. 

after getting out of there and finding out what happened while he was locked in a small, white room, his fear gets much worse — even though, technically, the only person who could trap him is now dead. 

but logic has no space in adrien’s mind when emotions are in charge. his loneliness seems to increase after his father’s death. it’s weird, really, because it’s not like gabriel ever kept him company or soothed his sadness caused by solitude. adrien doesn’t think about the inability to process his feelings in a healthy way and how it compromises his judgement — how his therapist said it makes sense for him to act so, considering his father’s behavior. 

adrien is claustrophobic due to his absent but overbearing father and that left him unable to safely vent his frustrations, talk about his feelings and ask for advice. he did not have someone to talk to — well, until now. 

now his therapist talks about parenting and how brave it was of gabriel agreste to sacrifice himself for ladybug and the entire city of paris. 

right. because there’s nothing that screams good parenting like making your child paranoid and terrified. oh, and also an orphan.

adrien calls her every weekend and visits her from time to time; he gets asked questions like “how do you feel?”. it shouldn’t be a complicated answer, not really. but it feels like to name what adrien is feeling would take a hundred thousand years and he does not have that kinda time. to “what are you experiencing?” he says “some kind of grieving” and never is quite honest, because he grieves something he’s never had and he doesn’t know how to explain that. 

how does one grieve a father that was distant and cold with you but is talked about by everyone in praises and compliments? how does one explain the disconnection between the version of the person they thought they knew and the one everyone else claims they knew?

“there is something weird about my father”, adrien told her, but didn’t go into detail — even though he knows that’s kinda the point — because he can never give his feelings a proper form and collect himself enough to create full sentences that don’t contradict each other. 

he wishes he could get to know his father and see him in that light that everyone else shines on his dead version. even if it meant absolutely destroying the way he sees his father. 

he wishes there was a way to the other side — so he could talk to his dad one last time. he’s willing to get to know him properly. 

adrien is more than ready to stay awake through the night, to argue about anything gabriel could wish to argue about — primarily the lie they both have told themselves, every time they pretended to be strangers even though they lived under the same room.  

adrien is willing to try with his dad one more time; he just simply isn’t able to. 

he wishes he could ask him for the reasons that he did it — if it was actual bravery, the heroic gesture to save nathalie and ladybug and defeat monarch — or maybe because gabriel always felt entitled to everything. 

adrien feels that the praise that gets heaped on gabriel agreste doesn’t accurately reflect all the pain he had caused him. the gabriel agreste adrien knew and the one that paris claims to know just couldn’t have been the same person. 

something isn’t right with ladybug’s story — adrien just can’t figure out what. he isn’t used to doubting her; he trusts her with his life and has had sacrificed it for her multiple times as chat noir. 

he hates when truth is restricted or kept from him. it’s the worst thing ever — he’s lived in half-truths and lies all his life, never knowing what was wrong with mom. he feels like he’s living like that now, too, because of the whole mystery of the final battle with monarch. 

ladybug has a tendency of leaving him out of the truth, whether it’s to protect him (or so she says), or her own identity. but adrien knows she always does it for a reason — and even if she hurts him in the process, it’s for in the name of a good cause. 

so when adrien found out about his dad, he did yell at her (for which he still hadn’t apologised and feels horrible about it), but he didn’t press; too overwhelmed by shock and grief and denial all at once. chat noir didn’t force her to go into details either, even when the first confusion and surprise came off. he met up with her after he got his miraculous back. she looked so miserable he thought he was seeing a ghost. he hadn’t dared to say anything. he heard her out, listened to what she said with a buzz in his head and fog over his head, and hadn't questioned a single word she said. 

“are you okay?” he whispered softly, looking at her sad violet eyes, scanning her body carefully as if her injuries would magically reappear. she told him she got badly injured. that the wish took care of the damage. 

he chose not to think of the state she must’ve been in and how vulnerable she was, all alone and unconscious. 

“don’t worry about me, kitty” the words slipped through her mouth as if she was practising them in the mirror before she called him so they could meet and talk. “i’ll be okay when we catch the person who stole the butterfly miraculous”

and chat noir wished, hoped, that one day, she could put her own well-being before her duties that she was drowning in. he gave her shoulder a delicate squeeze and invited her in for a hug. he remembers a deep sigh that escaped her lips when she hid her face in the crook of his neck and how it took her a few long minutes to fully relax in his embrace. he whispered words that he hoped were comforting in her ear, softly apologising for not being there for her when she needed him. 

“the important thing is that you're still here” ladybug murmured back, a heaviness in her quiet voice. she looked at him and the corners of her lips raised, but her small smile wasn’t enough to reach her sad eyes nor brighten up her exhausted face expression. “i was scared for you”

chat noir didn’t answer. he was scared for himself back then too, locked in the white-padded room his father created for him. but mostly, he was terrified for ladybug; the knowledge of her having to fight on her own was sickening. it made adrien freeze in fear, scared even more than he already was back then. 

“i’m never leaving you again, little bug” he said, eyes firmly set on her, making sure that she realized what his words were; a promise he intended to keep at all cost. 

ladybug nodded in acknowledgment and chat noir swore to himself he’d never let her get hurt in any way ever again. 

adrien never had as much freedom as he does now.

which is kind of ironic, really, considering he doesn’t feel free in the slightest. no, instead of free he feels trapped in this huge, cold mansion he calls home, binded by the ties to the past.

it’s sickening  —  due to his father planning every detail of his life, adrien is unsure of what to do about his future. he also doesn’t know what to do with himself overall. it’s like the lack of schedule made him unable to function properly.

adrien is free, but is he really? can he be free with the overbearing weight of guilt that seems to make him sink? adrien feels like he has been constantly bogged down emotionally throughout his entire life — by not only the guilt he feels about his inability to be there for his loved ones but also by the unanswered questions he has about his father. 

he also realized he misses the old scheme his school had. he isn’t entirely sure how he feels about school now. while he does enjoy being able to work on whatever he wants — which is a concept adrien is unfamiliar with — he partly misses the structure that francois dupont brought to his life.

maybe he has never necessarily enjoyed the homework or other activities that school came with, but it was something he’s dreamt of pretty much all his life. the strict schedule and obligatory classes weren’t ideal, but there was a familiarity to it — and it’s nothing like being homeschooled, which adrien hated. the new school created by the major is just weirdly overwhelming for adrien; which is ironic, considering it was supposed to help students learn easier and in a way that’s beneficial. the total freedom the way the new school brings to his life is barely bareable to adrien who has ever only known schedules, rules and dates set way too early. he isn’t used to this. 

going to school and having to decide what he’s gonna do that specific day, knowing it affects his future, is intense. on particularly negative days, he finds himself wishing he could return to the days when he didn’t have to make such weighted decisions and none of the choices were actually his. 

in some fucked up way, adrien misses the specific structure his life had under gabriel’s rule.

he thought he’d feel more free without his father’s strict orders and cold eyes — that being inside of his house would finally feel as comforting as being away from it. it doesn’t, really; instead it reminds him of the time when he wasn’t allowed to step through the doors unless his father strictly told him to. his house reminds him of his fear of locked rooms and cages, of the lack of freedom and inability to escape his own personal jail.

discontentment lingers on his skin like an annoying mosquito he can’t get rid of or an unreachable itch he can’t pinpoint.

the agreste mansion is something he associates with confinement, although he’d never admit it out loud. he wouldn’t be able to count the amount of times he called it “home”, when what he really meant was “prison”. because what else can you call a place you’re constantly locked in, forbidden from exploring the outside world?

he looks at the family pictures naively with a hope of feeling something else than sadness. instead, all he feels is resentment towards his father and a sickening envy towards his mom.

his eyes drift away from gabriel agreste’s harsh face expressions displayed on the huge piece of art hanging above the stairs; a weird and strange sense of castigation burning under his skin. he doesn’t dare to look in his dead father’s cold eyes, avoiding them the same way when he escaped eye contact with him back when gabriel was still alive.

adrien agreste has never been good with change. it is his sworn enemy — something he’s dreaded ever since he can remember. he hates lack of consistency, always following a schedule being the one unvarying thing in his life; until now.

the irony leaves a bitter taste in his mouth; change was his father’s characteristic virtue. change is the only constant in the fashion world. gabriel agreste pushed forward an always changing narrative when it came to his job. trends were always developing, new ideas coming to life, new rules, new habits, new movements. maybe it was different for gabriel because he was the one deciding when the change will happen. he established the fashion world and he had it right under his feet, ready to step down on it and crush it if needed. whenever change occurred, gabriel either has already been expecting it or he was the one to give it life.

adrien was always on the other end of things; change surprised him, like it’s been creeping behind him and decided to scare him just for the fun of it. he never quite learned to expect the unexpectable — even after becoming chat noir and gaining the reflex of looking behind his shoulder just in case.

he never has been the one to dictate new order of things — he’s always been on the receiving end of the command. always the follower, whether it was gabriel for the majority of adrien’s life, or ladybug, when chat does what he’s told and trusts her to take care of the rest. 

life has startled him with change unconscionable amount of times. the universe was constantly reshaping his life, altering it in various and unexpectable ways. he never can predict when change will occur — not even after receiving the black cat miraculous and gaining the habit of always double checking everything. he became more alert and aware of his surroundings, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be taken by surprise.

he can, and the universe does its best to remind him of that.

first, the news about london. how his father forced him to go even when that was the last thing in the world adrien wanted to do.

(he remembers hearing “that’s what your mother would’ve wanted” and realizing that, maybe, gabriel agreste never really knew his wife at all. or maybe it’s adrien who never got to know what his mom, her real intentions under the blanket of her illness and sadness. then again, he believes she loved him dearly. he recalls contradicting his father’s words, tearfully forcing out that his mom would’ve wanted him to be happy. he has to believe that. he remembers the way his fingers curled around the car door handle, how he tried with all his strength to open the door, to get away from his father, how badly he wanted to stay in paris. and how he didn’t manage to; how he gave up, wet and teary streaks running down his cheeks while father sat next to him, eyes as emotionless as ever, silent, as if he hadn’t just taken away adrien’s choice again.)

he couldn’t handle change, not when change meant being away from the girl he loves, the polka-dotted superheroine he’d die for and the friends who gave meaning to his life.

then, the confinement in the white room that made him lose faith, hope and sanity. then ladybug with his ring on her finger, tears in her eyes, and the worst news of his life. his father’s death was the most unpredictable change that has occurred in his fifteen years of living.

it’s not like he hasn’t thought about it — with his mom being gone he’d considered all possible things that could’ve happened instead, his father dying in her place included.

adrien is no stranger to grief. 

he knows how denial messes with your head, how it creates a mental dam protecting your mind from the truth. how your instinct doesn’t allow you to react at first and for a while after you find out someone important to you died. how your heart refuses to beat normally, but it slows down the same way time does. how your chest collapses in on itself and doesn’t allow you to take a breath, almost as if it imitated the noon-moving chest of your loved one.

adrien knows denial is a powerful thing, he’s well aware of its ability to alterate the perception of reality.

but gabriel dying made no sense.

well, it would — adrien just seems to have bad luck, because he lost both parents in a year and a half, but it doesn’t. 

not when ladybug and the entire world claims gabriel died as a hero. it’s not that adrien doesn’t trust ladybug — no, he trusts her with her life, both as chat noir and his civilian self. he knows she always acts in the name of greater good, that she cares about him and parisians. he has always saw her as a selfless and compassionate person. she deserves the ladybug miraculous just as much as the title of the guardian, her motives have always been crystal clear. she’s made mistakes, of course she has — but she’s his age and she is just as much of a human as he is. she’s allowed to be wrong sometimes and he never held a grudge against her for it, neither chat noir nor adrien.  

(until that one night, when he was locked in a white padded room, losing his mind, only to find out his father died and she didn’t prevent it. that he’s forever gone and adrien did nothing to stop it from happening, trapped in a place that one would classify as prison; his freedom once more stolen from him by his father. then again — can you lose something you’ve never really had?)

ladybug is noble, gentle and thoughtful. she always does what’s right and even when mistaken, she manages to bring things back on the correct track. she might mess up, but it’s never a long-lasting sentence; she always gets back up eventually, with or without chat noir’s help. ladybug is a protector of paris and a good person. she fixes everything at the end of the day, driven by genuine morality, as the honest and meritorious individual that she is. adrien never really doubted it.

until now.

because there is nothing noble about what she’s said about his father. it didn’t make him feel better or proud — it didn’t fill him with relief or made his father’s death logical and it didn’t validate it either.

it just made adrien feel like a piece of shit. it still does; it fills his insides with guilt, makes his skin itch in shame and his heart ache. it tightens his jaw enough for him to feel like all his teeth are gonna break and crush into dust. it makes his tongue stiffen, and suddenly he’s unable to use it, and he seems to be stuck in silence. words that she said, that were supposed to soothe him and ease his grief and distress, only had a negative effect on him.

he barely remembers the moment he found out — the revelation that she threw a him, words that made no sense, all blurry behind the wall of denial. he recalls the sound of his fast, pounding heartbeat echoing in his ears and the nausea that crept up to his mouth, leaving a bitter aftertaste on his tongue, his airways burning as if he was choking on acid. he remembers his chest his stomach tightening painfully, and he knows he would’ve vomited if he had eaten anything beforehand. he remembers the guilty look in her sad eyes and how it hurt him almost as much as her shaky words did.

a sacrifice to defeat monarch makes no sense. sure, his father was a grown man and adrien knows his physique was great — but how in the world a civilian would be able to defeat someone equipped in a miraculous? the magical jewels grant increased superhuman physical abilities. a miraculous holder is fortified with super strength, agility, and speed. even one weakened by the cataclysm (adrien still feels insanely guilty about that — he never meant to use the power of destruction on a living being, even an evil one) would still be more powerful than a mundane person. adrien thinks back to when ladybug explained to him — well, his alter ego — how unification of miraculouses work. when the user activates more than one jewel at a time, they gain access to the powers of all, as well as the ability to combine the superpowers to create new, stronger ones. and monarch had, what, fifteen? there is no way a civilian could be strong enough to take down a holder with the power of that many miraculouses, especially with ladybug being unconscious. 

plus what stopped monarch from ripping the earrings and the ring of the black cat away from bugnoire? the pure willpower and strength of gabriel agreste? adrien could laugh at how ridiculous that sounds.

so not only adrien doubts the possibility of his father being able to take monarch down, he’s also sceptic of the honesty of ladybug’s story. it just feels wrong, incomplete, like there’s at least a few missing puzzles. his partner’s story has many holes and creates even more question that adrien can not logically answer no matter how hard he tries.

it’s not like he doesn’t want to believe ladybug’s story — of course he does. it would be a statement perfect to support the image of gabriel being a good person. it would make adrien feel better about him, would make him believe that gabriel was, in fact, capable of compassion and affection. it would keep up the good pére portrayal that gabriel for some reason created for a few weeks before he died. 

(sometimes, adrien can’t help but wonder if his father knew that he was gonna die and if that was the reason he tried to be a decent father to adrien at the very end of his life. it sounds ridiculous, but adrien can’t come up with a better explanation for the sudden change in parenting.)

adrien wants to believe the perspective ladybug has thrown at him and the rest of the world. he finds himself unable to. he attempts to imagine the course of the battle and he realizes he can’t. not in a single version of the fight he makes up in his head his father looks like the winner. 

adrien thinks about ladybug’s words constantly. they’re a persisting echo in his mind, making him loopy and confused.

he was told that his father and ms. tsurugi were forced by monarch to create the alliance rings to turn all humanity against ladybug and cat noir under the threat of hurting him and kagami if they refused.

ladybug said that gabriel died as a hero by using the wish to save bug noire's and nathalie's lives in exchange of monarch's and his own. but how did his father know about the wish? how did he even get his hands on the miraculouses? and why would he give up his own life?

there’s a lingering feeling that he noticed shortly after gabriel’s death; a mix of disbelief and guilt. adrien not only has his doubts, he just simply doesn’t believe the story that was told. père couldn’t just become a hero like that, all of the sudden.

gabriel agreste dying a selfless, heroic death in the name of something bigger than himself? that is just straight up outrageous. it is a lie, because in no universe his father is able to sacrifice himself for someone else. back when adrien’s mother was alive — maybe. but not after that. émilie’s death was a turning point for gabriel and adrien is fully aware of that.

the day adrien lost his mother, he lost his father too — just in a different way. since the moment émilie was no longer in adrien’s life, neither was gabriel, always isolating himself in his office and drowning himself in fashion projects. adrien knew it was always an excuse to avoid having to look at his son — because adrien reminded gabriel of émilie. the resemblance was crystal clear and adrien knew his father couldn’t handle it.

the only thing gabriel agreste ever stood for was himself and he was never the type of a man to make the sacrifice play.

adrien doesn’t care if it makes him a bad son to not believe that he was a hero, because he wasn’t. he doesn’t care what ladybug or the news say.

gabriel agreste was no hero and adrien knows that better than anyone else.

interactions — or the lack of them, to be specific — with his father from the past haunt him every single day. he tries to move on, of course he does, it just feels… wrong to do so.

it’s hard to think of gabriel agreste as a hero when there was never anything heroic about him. it’s impossible to believe that he sacrificed himself for the entire city when he couldn’t even build a relationship with his own son. 

it would be a good cause of death, adrien thinks, a valid reason to leave him alone and as an orphan. the narrative of gabriel being a hero meant his death being worth something, and adrien likes to think he didn’t lose his dad for nothing. 

but then he thinks of gabriel and the final battle and its process lose their meaning. 

throughout his life adrien felt like he could never do the right thing in the eyes of his father. in every situation, there was no right solution. all he and his father would do together was stay up and fight, exchanging rough words at each other without caring what the other one thinks. sometimes, it felt like they were fighting just for the sake of fighting, without it going anywhere, because at the end of the day, gabriel was the one to call the shots. 

adrien never once had a chance of winning against gabriel agreste; clearly, chat noir didn’t either, and that’s why gabriel sacrificed himself for ladybug instead of the owner of the black cat miraculous. 

adrien stands in his bathroom, dim lights glowing faintly in the darkness of the night, barely allowing him to see himself in the mirror. 

he took a long, hot shower that made his head spin and his eyelids heavy. his knees almost gave out under the weight of his body, exhaustion creeping up his limbs, making him shiver. he’s wrapped in a thick towel and the bathroom is all fogged up from the water’s high temperature. he’s still shivering, as if there was a coldness stabbing him from the inside. his gaze lands on the foggy mirror and he forces himself to wipe his hand against the surface of the glass. he blinks at the now clear sight of himself. 

is so tired, and he looks so — the bags under his eyes dark and deep, cheekbones sharp, eyes swallowed and half-closed. he hasn’t been sleeping well. his hair is a mess, water drops falling down from the ends of his unkept locks. his hair has grown recently, and he ditched the hair gel and spray he used to use everyday. he’s all over the place and can’t be bothered to get a haircut nor follow the routine with multiple steps that his hair stylist provided him with years ago. 

father always hated stray locks. if only he could see him now, adrien guesses, he’d scoff in disappointment. there is far more astray about him now than merely a hair. 

grief as well as freedom have clearly made an impact on his physical appearance. adrien couldn’t decide whether it was a good thing or not; especially with how strangely different it made him look now. he keeps looking at himself, ignoring the way his chest tightened when he noticed all the changes. 

he’s still technically the face of the GABRIEL brand, even if the owner is now dead. why does he get to look like absolute shit when all his father ever wanted from him was to look presentable?

but then he thinks of how exhausting keeping up with the created perfect image of himself was, the strict diets, the skin treatments, the tablets and medications and workout plans. how hard he had to work every single day to hold up the perfection of the adrien agreste persona and remain the glistening trophy his father saw him as. 

has he become what his mother is? nothing more than a lifeless corpse held up only by expectations and driven by idealisation?

sometimes, adrien feels so empty it’s almost like there is no blood in his veins and no oxygen in his lungs, and no heartbeat in his chest. he wonders if that makes him more like his mom than he already is. 

he inhales sharply at the sudden sting in his heart at the thought of her. he’s learned to accept that she is dead; but sometimes, guilt takes over him and he can’t stop the wave of sadness. adrien wouldn’t necessarily say he blames himself for her death… but she did get sick not longer after he was born. 

she was perfectly fine before her pregnancy: he saw the spark in her eyes on the old pictures, the big smile and happiness gleaming on her face. that expression dimmed more and more with each picture taken after she’s given birth to him. 

as if adrien’s existence itself was sucking life out of her. as if him just being alive meant her getting closer to dying. as if with every breath adrien took, she struggled to function and breathe without falling into a coughing fit. so there was some correlation, even if it was just fate’s fucked up way of ruining adrien’s life in the most twisted way possible.

on bad days, he’d wonder if he was never born, whether his parents would still both be alive and happy together. and late at night, when sleep wouldn’t dare visit him, even though he almost couldn’t handle the heaviness of his eyelids, his head and his heart could barely manage to beat through the fog of doubt, there is a lingering thought passing through his mind. 

is he destroying everything else like he’d destroyed his mother?

adrien thinks he hates his père sometimes. 

he hates the behaviors gabriel presented; his avoidance style, his tendency to give him silent treatment and the way he constantly did everything not to see his son in person. 

he recalls a specific moment the dam inside of him broke and he let the emotions out. he was ten years old and he was ignored by his father once again, even though he was gone for three months, looking for medicine for maman with nathalie. he passed by adrien like he was an invisible ghost, like the little boy hadn’t called „père?” multiple times and begged him to acknowledge his presence. 

„you’re leaving again!” adrien screamed. „it’s all you know how to do!” but the doors are already closed shut. gabriel agreste had once again managed to separate himself from his son. 

that certain moment stayed in his head and haunts him to this day. he vividly remembers a sickening thought that occurred back on that day. adrien would never, ever, under any circumstances, admit to it out loud, but it was true. that day was one of those very rare ones where he wished his father would lay a hand on him, because that meant feeling a fatherly touch — even though it wasn’t affectionate. 

adrien thinks how fucked up of a thought that is to have, especially as a ten year old. was he really that desperate for father’s fondness — enough to hope he’d be violent towards him if it meant he’d be getting any parental touch?

adrien also remembers wishing that he was anyone but who he was — like, literally anyone else. being adrien agreste sucked sometimes — especially when it came to the always-too-busy-for-anything-father part. he remembers he was disappointed, but not surprised. no, never surprised, not when he knew exactly what kinda man his father was. a cold statue unable to show affection to anyone else but photos of his dead wife. 

adrien felt sick to his stomach. he wanted his father to love him. he wanted, for once, to be enough for him. to be seen more than just as a product of the GABRIEL brand and more than the boy who was wearing the face of his dead mother. 

he remembers that, once again, nathalie was the one to comfort him. not père, no — his assistant. 

“it’s a virtue to not let good love slip away, adrien” nathalie’s soft voice was healing something inside of him that padre kept breaking. the woman knelt in front of him, sending him a small smile. her eyes softened in a similar way maman’s eyes did whenever she talked to adrien. “your dad is trying his best, adrien. he’s just a little busy because wants to help your mom, okay?”

adrien wouldn’t say padre was a little busy, no, he was completely unavailable, as if he was a stranger. adrien couldn’t help but feel neglected. he knew père loved maman and that everything he was doing was for her. 

he just wished his dad would put half as much effort to take care of adrien. but that wasn’t the case and he was well aware of it. he knew maman was more important and he was gonna be patient with his father, even if it hurt. 

even if his father’s love seemed to be as unreachable as the man himself. 

he remembers the technique nathalie would use in that kinda situations, to make him forget he was ever even upset — distraction. 

“why don’t you go to your room, adrien? we can play board games together. you can help me unpack? i’ll tell you about the cities we visited” nathalie proposed. it was a nice thing to do; adrien loved hearing about her travels and she always made them sound so cool, but that day, he was not in the mood. she was kind and adrien appreciated the gesture, but he wanted to go back to his mom. 

nathalie must’ve guessed what he was thinking, because her expression changed to something adrien couldn’t name. „she needs to rest, adrien”

adrien gritted his teeth. she needed medicine. she needed a cure that pére and nathalie were supposed to find and once again hadn’t managed to, even though he knew they were trying their best. he couldn’t expect more. he didn’t believe in miracles. 

so adrien was going to be cool. he nodded, smiling at nathalie softly, even though it felt like his insides were being ripped apart. he was a forgiving person. maman taught him forgiveness was a good thing, and that he should never hold a grudge against others, especially loved ones. 

and adrien forgave gabriel once again. he would take what pere was giving — even if that something in reality was nothing. he would pretend that it didn’t hurt when his dad ignored him, that his chest didn’t tighten as if his heart was being ripped out of it. 

obedience is something adrien has been familiar with since what feels like forever. 

he believes people have free will; as an atheist he doesn’t think there is really any higher power deciding for him or others around him. still, there are moments in his life during which he is absolutely certain he is strapped from the ability to consciously make his decisions. it feels like there is always something or someone altering his beliefs, like there are circumstances under which free will is taken away from him. 

he knows it’s ridiculous. if there is no god, no supernatural beings (besides little divine creatures that can give human powers — he very much believes in those, given that one of them is quite literally his), then it’s not possible for him to not be able to decide for himself. 

yet, adrien agreste could never shake the feeling that there are forces under which he is absolutely vulnerable. that something, or someone, has made it impossible for him to do what he wants, to give into his desires or make his own choices.

well, that was the case, anyway, until very recently. until his father’s death, actually. 

"you can’t disobey your father, but you can choose how you look at things”, nathalie said when she wanted to let him know she noticed his struggles and didn’t agree with gabriel’s decisions.  

"adrien, i am your father and i decide what is good for you”, pére said when he knew something was going to hurt adrien, but he made the choice for him anyway. 

“listen to your dad, mon chéri”, his mom used to say with that expecting face expression on her face, eyes soft, but firm. 

adrien knows good children listen to their parents, so that’s what he has been doing his entire life. he’s gotten used to completing impossible tasks, attending overwhelming interviews, posing in front of intimidating cameras and forcing smiles while he politely agrees to autographs and photos with fans. 

that is what was expected of him. he was the face of the GABRIEL brand, a public figure, his father’s most prized possession and most importantly, an agreste. 

and as an agreste, he had expectations to meet, people to impress and chores to do. and he would not disappoint his father, not under any circumstances. 

it not only felt like something he was supposed to do — no, it was something he had to do. obeying his father was a rule he was obligated to follow, not a suggestion. 

adrien was a good son. a decent one, at least, and so he did. he listened to gabriel, even when he barked his orders, when his words had a hateful undertone and when the commands went against everything adrien believed in and stood for. 

but he had to do what his father wanted him to — even when in some moments, adrien was convinced he was turned into a puppet, and gabriel had controlled the strings. 

“you can’t disobey your father” was a sentence adrien has heard a lot in his life — from his mother, nathalie, nino, félix, marinette and gabriel himself. 

he also heard it in his mind, sometimes. 

it’s not something adrien was ever able to explain — he still isn’t, not even now that he’s free of his father’s commands and rules. 

it’s also something he deeply believed in. disobedience against gabriel agreste felt like a life sentence, like something unreachable and something that was not possible to accomplish. after his father commended him to do something, adrien’s chest would go tight and his heart would beat faster. his mind always went blank and suddenly all his thoughts were screaming the words that gabriel directed at him. 

even now, with gabriel dead, he could still hear the echo of that voice — his voice — threading through his mind, twisting respect and love for his father into something heavier, something that was insanely hard to fight. the quiet absence made it almost obligatory to remember, and somehow, that made it worse.

adrien doesn’t have his father around anymore, no taunting voice, no firm obligation to follow orders and no letting others control his life any longer. 

but there still is a lingering feeling of shame; a regret that sank deep into his heart, poisoning his organs with guilt — regret of ever letting his father tell him what to do, what not to do, who he isn’t allowed to love. like loving marinette was a sin, something that would cast an ugly shadow on the agreste name. like leaving his house without supervision would make him get his face forever scarred and he would be unable to model anymore. 

like if adrien for once deciding for himself would make him vanish and the respect for their family would dissolve into thin air. yet still, adrien would do what pére wanted every single time. 

it didn’t matter that his skin was clammy and itchy, hands sweaty and stiff from curling them into fists. he’d go breathless, words of disagreement would die on his tongue and every attempt of protest stayed deep beneath his bones. disobedience was never an option — not when gabriel was the one speaking. 

adrien could never disobey his father.

adrien émile gabriel donatien athanase agreste.

that was the name he was given when he was born; he thinks a lot about how he only resonates with the first one. he thinks about how it’s immediately followed by his parents’ names: how they’re a casted shadow adrien can never get rid of. 

émilie and gabriel. 

his gaze uncontrollably flickers to his left hand; his eyes focus on the graham de vanily twin rings — a supposed proof of his mom and dad’s love.

adrien furrows his brows as he rubs his parents' wedding bands. the evidence of their marriage, their relationship, their love. 

he thinks children usually are the proof of those things; he also thinks about how he never quite felt like his own person, but like he was a copy of his mother, a weird and twisted combination of her appearance and his father’s qualities. 

he’s the last person in the agreste family line. he thinks about what his last name means to him, to the people around him, and to the world. 

about how when people see him, their minds always whisper his father’s name and bring up his mother’s face. how he is always a designer’s achievement and actress’s son, their best collaborative work, before he is his own person. 

adrien, his mother’s little copy, his father’s greatest design, the agreste’s line continuation, the famous model, the unbeatable fencer, the chinese speaker, the boy with no autonomy and no say in his own life. 

adrien was always what others wanted him to be, who his father created him to be, who his mother shaped him to be; so who he was now that they were both gone and he suddenly gained the ability to decide who he is?

adrien had spent years being shaped by expectations, by his mother’s absence, by grief he wasn’t allowed to talk about out loud, by a father who treated him like an trophy instead of like a son. adrien agreste had been a face on billboards, eyes green and smile wide even though there was no real happiness behind it. adrien agreste was a name attached to magazines, highlighting countless fashion events. 

adrien agreste was nothing more than the names given him at birth; he was a boy put behind crystal clear glass for other people to admire, even when he doubted that there was anything beneath the polished surface worth looking at.

adrien émile gabriel donatien athanase agreste was never anything more than his parents’ perfect creation. 

so who is he now that they’re not here to shape him anymore and unable to decide who he is supposed to be? now that he holds his own destiny in his palm?

gabriel agreste was a man of many faces, and sometimes adrien wondered which version of his father was real. it’s like he was many people throughout the time adrien has known him; and even more before he did. 

“when i was a kid, he could always make me laugh” adrien said to marinette while taking care of all the things from his childhood, his entire past packed in boxes and labeled with numbers. adrien thinks denial clouds his judgement sometimes; he so badly wants to remember his father as a good man that he forgets he never really knew him as one. 

gabriel agreste didn’t make him laugh. he made him cry and wish he never existed. he locked him in an empty, cold house and made him live in solitude.

gabriel must’ve been a good person in the eyes of others — but not in adrien’s. not when he experienced his sickening desire for control, his ruthless commands and set expectations impossible to ever meet firsthand. 

adrien can’t force himself to remember gabriel in a good way, no matter how hard he tries to. it’s like as if any good thing he ever did is something adrien made up in his head. 

he thinks about the last interaction with his father, the akumatization altering his appearance. he closes his eyes and pictures the shade of purple gabriel’s face took on and how anger erupted in his chest when he saw him. he thinks of the way he spoke to him — as chat noir, but deep down as his angered son — and how his chest felt heavy and light at the same time. 

“need a little parental counseling?” because he quite literally couldn’t stop his negativity towards his father and how it changed shape, creating words that abruptly left his tongue before he was able to realize he was actually saying them.

he remembers the irony of nighttormentor asking where adrien was — not knowing his son was the one under the mask of the black cat, actively fighting him. adrien was just so angry at his father — how could he send him to another city without asking him if that was what he wanted?

“what kinda father are you?!” it felt freeing, somehow; to be able to scream into gabriel’s face what has been stuck on his tongue for the past years, words never able to properly form into a coherent sentence that he could say out loud. 

adrien wouldn’t admit it to himself or anyone else, but deep down, some part of him was satisfied that he got to fight gabriel. chat noir is not a violent person — he might be the wielder of destruction, but he is not a furious person and he does not think of abuse as an option. 

some fucked up voice in his head couldn’t stop whispering that he is finally able to get back at gabriel for all the coldness, roughness and lack of affection. for the silent treatment, constant avoiding and communicating through other people. 

he didn’t know whether it was the power of destruction, flowing through his veins and sending trembles from the black ring on his finger down to his toes; if it was what made him ferocious, and so, so angry. or maybe if it was something else — something he’s carried deep under his skin long before the black cat miraculous was given to him. if it was something human, not connected to magic at all, something as mundane as hatred, resentment and grudge he unknowingly held (and still holds) against his dad. 

“i don’t think i’d like having a father like you” because he didn’t. gabriel agreste was a pretty shitty dad.

“you can’t always make decisions for other people!” he yelled in the face of his akumatized father. he stuck one hit after another, fingers wrapped around his cat-stick in a firm grip. years of fencing classes, time spent fighting akumas, practice with ladybug and karate and kung fu he did, enabled him to fight in combat. his reflexes were faster than nighttormentor’s; the numerous tournaments father forced him to take part in gave him impeccable agility and specific understanding of spatial awareness. he knew how to twist his staff in a way that would throw his opponent off balance. his skills made him better at hand-to-hand battle. extensive martial arts training as well as just being chat noir has taught him how to blow his punches and land his kicks in a way that would make him blow off some steam. 

and he could make them hurt, too. 

he continued smacking his father in the chest with the cat stick, anger taking over and making his fingertips in his right hand stiffen and itch in a way he couldn’t understand. he fell into a trance, where all the negative feelings he’s collected towards his father for years seemed to finally leave his burnered heart and make it out to the outside world.

“that to have a child is to help them blossom, to grow, to find themselves and to be free!” it’s not like he knew who chat noir is. and it’s not like he’d remember a single word that was exchanged between them once the akuma was cleared of monarch’s power. 

and it felt good to get it off his chest, not having to held back his tongue behind his teeth for once. 

he kicks the akumatized man in the chest; he goes flying off the roof to a one below them. 

“you’re insolent” his father said, angering chat noir more. he had so many things on the tip of his tongue that he wanted to spit out, hoping their toxic undertone would hurt the man laying below him. 

he chose on saying the same thing back to him, not trusting himself in that moment to form a sentence on his own. he was too angry; he was risking his identity and being sent back to london.  

“cataclysm” he murmured out through rage and gritted teeth. the black sparks dance around his fingers, when he called it into life, the power crackling as he made a fist. the energy in his hand spasmed, a sudden flare that tightened the air around his fingers. “i feel sorry for your son”

and he did. adrien felt sorry for himself; he felt horrible about his position in the agreste house, about his obedience, about how easy it was for gabriel to crush adrien under his flawless shoe every time adrien tried to stand up for himself. he hated it. 

"don’t be, he’s very happy” that threw him off — gabriel couldn’t seriously believe that his son was happy. he wasn’t, and père was aware of that; so why did he think it was funny to say it out loud, even though it couldn’t be farther from the truth?

the kick chat noir received in the stomach was a blow almost as painful as the man’s words. 

before he managed to get up, his ears and nose twitched, and then he was hit in the face with the magical powder and suddenly, he was living his biggest nightmare. adrien doesn’t wanna relieve that ever again —  that tightness of his chest and throat, the way anxiety pushed oxygen out of his lungs and left him breathless. 

but most of all, he never wants to think about what his father made him see — the motionless statues of parisians, terrified expressions embodied in stone from when the destructive death wave struck them. the choking ash all around him, stuck in his airways and on his tongue, making him unable to breathe. the blinding white of his suit and the ruins of a city he once loved. 

and worst of all, the dead, weightless corpse of the girl he loved most in the world — her stone cold body disappearing into ash in front of his eyes. 

in reality, that is all he ever thought about, even long after all of it was over. adrien is terrified of his power, even though he learned how to live with the burden of it, how to control the crackling black sparks that felt almost alive when they sparked around his fingers. he studied them carefully, long and hard enough to be precise with his power, to be able to contain it in his pointing finger without it getting out of control. 

it took a lot of his strenght and even more of his willpower, but he was chosen as the holder of the miraculous of destruction for a reason. he is a responsible wielder of the black cat jewel; he might not be perfect, but he is good enough to at least be in command of his power. 

at least, that’s the case most of the time. 

he thinks about the possibility of ever hurting someone with a cataclysm (like he did uncanny valley and monarch) and it makes him sick to his stomach. 

cataclysm doesn’t just destroy — it hurts and takes away, it makes things disappear and causes great harm to human beings. it’s not just the power of destruction, but pain, chaos and death. he wonders somehow why master fu has chosen him as the black cat. 

it couldn’t have been purely a coincidence; and it couldn’t have been an outcome of helping him up from the ground once, either. the power of destruction is powerful and tempting; chaotic and unpredictable in a way nothing else is. adrien ponders what made the guardian of the miraculous give one that dictated the chaos and destruction itself to a boy whose life was all about said things. it made no sense; still, he was mostly thankful for it. he can’t imagine his life without being chat noir. 

it makes him face upsetting moments, too — he thinks about how he called gabriel a bad father and how it was one of the last things he’s ever said to him. 

“you don’t seem like a very nice father!” because he wasn’t. he wasn’t, he never was, not even back when émilie was still alive — because a nice father wouldn’t do things gabriel agreste did. 

sometimes, adrien dares to think that gabriel agreste was too scared to spend time with his sick wife, to watch as her illness was taking away more and more of that spark in her eyes.

he thinks about how the last words he ever said to pére was "coward". he thinks he shouldn’t stand by it still… but he does. he thinks that gabriel agreste is a coward. he was supposedly brave enough to defeat monarch, but not to look in his son’s eyes?

how was facing a supervillain less scary than his own son?

so, yes, adrien thinks his father was a coward. 

he is grateful for the fact that ladybug is still alive today, maybe only thanks to gabriel agreste, but it still doesn’t sit right with him. it is chat noir’s job to protect his lady, not gabriel’s. and if the man hadn’t locked him in a confined space that felt like an inescapable cage, then he could’ve helped ladybug and gabriel would still be alive. 

but no — he was closed in a small room (equipped in white padding, soft enough to ensure that if someone locked inside would attempt to hurt themselves, they wouldn’t be able. adrien gets sick to his stomach whenever he thinks about it and how his father must’ve planned it; how he had prepared a square, harm-proofed room for his son) and unable to help his best friend. how she was forced to face their biggest enemy alone and how she was seriously harmed in the process. 

he inhales sharply as he thinks of her dead body in his arms — it might’ve been a vision created by the akuma, but it still came out from the darkest part of his mind; where he held his fears buried deep, hidden away from reality. 

cat noir did take care of nightormentor himself, but it wasn’t before he got blasted by the akuma’s power and struck with his worst nightmare. nevertheless, he managed to defeat him and capture the akuma for ladybug. it didn’t change the fact that adrien’s mind gets haunted by vision of a boy in white leather, holding a dead girl in his arms. 

his father’s power was strong not because he was; but because chat noir’s fears were and still are. 

nightormentor was the last version of gabriel agreste adrien got to know in his life. some weird part hidden deep beneath adrien’s skull sends whispers that roar through his mind, implying that maybe, that was the real gabriel agreste.

cruel, violent, with control issues and a tendency to argue… adrien can’t help but wonder whether that variant of his father was his true self. 

gabriel agreste had died and left behind a legacy, a influential brand, an empire built on strict rules — but no love and no warmth. all adrien feels when he thinks about his dead father is guilt and very little care that had already fractured long before his death.

adrien hates his house. he hates the lack of color. he hates the lifeless rooms, huge ceilings and the cold stairs. he hates the way his house was designed like a soulless, colourless mansion that felt like an inescapable prison. 

he hates the huge photograph of him and his father in the middle of the stairwell. he hates how miserable he looks in it, as if spending time with his father was a punishment, when in reality it was a rare occurrence he always tried to make the best out of.

the framed picture is like a giant reminder that they've been grieving — as if adrien's grief ever needed proof, as if it being put out for people to see would validate it. 

he always wondered who did his father try to impress? nathalie, who seemed to care more about emilie being gone than his father ever did? adrien’s guardian, who didn't ever even voice his thoughts?

maybe adrien himself? a reminder that he was never allowed to be happy again, not with his mother’s body deep in the ground. like it was needed to prove that his father did love his mother. 

or maybe that his parent’s death overshadowed his life and grief dictated the course of it; that the happiness in his life was gone and he was to never regain it again. 

there is something about his father’s sacrifice that makes him feel uneasy; like he’s being crushed down by the weight of it, expectations he will never rise high enough to meet clouding his mind. 

marinette told him he doesn’t need to be like his father; that he only needs to be himself. (as if being like gabriel agreste was a bad thing — adrien can’t say he disagrees.) what his girlfriend doesn’t understand is that a bunch of his father’s expectations and dreams tied together is all adrien ever was. 

by sacrificing himself and saving lives in the process, gabriel had set a high standard; created a path impossible for adrien to follow. 

he could save people as chat noir, but that is his job. it is his duty as a superhero to help people out; he might be praised for it, but in some twisted way, it is expected of him. 

because he’s not a civilian, because he has powers and a magical jewel and everyone acts as if that itself makes him obligated to risk his life daily. chat noir doesn’t mind the whole fighting-with-evil thing, because it makes him happy and it brings him freedom. and adrien agreste could never give up any fraction of freedom, even if it came with the obligation of wearing a mask and a possibility of getting hurt. so chat noir risks his own self being for the sake of others and does not dare to complain about it, even if it weights on his chest so heavily he thinks of the black cat ring as a burden. 

and his father’s death… that didn’t set an expectation on chat noir — to be a better superhero, and it wasn’t a sign to do better — but on adrien agreste. the standart was set and suddenly adrien is expected to be as heroic as his father was, if not more. 

the irony of him being chat noir doesn’t count, because people don’t know. all they focus on is the huge abyss between the heroism of gabriel agreste and adrien’s stillness and cowardice.

adrien had always felt himself inwardly shrink beneath the suffocating shadow of his father, completely eclipsed by the man’s presence whenever he was near him. that seems to increase after his death; now gabriel agreste is a firm and an immovable statue. 

metaphorically and quite literally, too. 

chat noir is standing in front of the statue of gabriel agreste that was created by — adrien gags by just thinking about him — théo barbot. city installed it in the place louis xiii of the place des vosges to pay homage to gabriel and celebrate his sacrifice. 

he doesn’t really know how he ended up here. he remembers not being able to sleep, insomnia’s weight laying on his chest, exhaustion heavy but still not strong enough to actually make him fall asleep. he was sitting on his mattress, back against the cold wall, staring absently into the darkness of the night. his mind was being taunted by constant, negative thoughts he couldn’t stop. 

and so he did the thing he always does when his thoughts are too messy, heart too heavy and his life too hard to live; he chose to be someone else, even for a short period of time. 

he remembers whispering the transformation phrase and the feeling of the leather surrounding his body. it felt familiar — safely grounding, making him somehow aware of his own existence. he briefly recalls leaving his empty room through the open window, jumping on the closest roof, into the embrace of the chilly night. he knows he ran shortly after, legs weak from the lack of food, but he pushed through the tiredness and the 

his apathy casts a weird blur over his thoughts, making him unable to focus. he lets instinct take over — lets the weakened muscles lead him and trusts the night vision, even when there’s black dots creeping in the corners. his stomach is hollow, and his chest seems to be too. it’s like someone carved a hole in it and carefully removed his heart when he wasn’t looking. the only thing left was the lingering feeling of an organ that once had a heartbeat, leaving adrien as a walking corpse. 

he should’ve eaten something. 

he takes a shaky breath, then another, and another, until his breathing steadies and the black dots don’t obstruct his vision anymore. 

the statue of gabriel agreste gazes down at him, a towering behemoth with eyes as empty and as cold as they were when the man was alive. the metal that the statue was carved from was a dark silver, its polished surface almost glowing in the dark.

chat noir is used to people looking at him with adoration in their eyes, the gratefulness written all over their faces whenever he passed by them, the happy giggles of kids and teenage girls when he waved at them from rooftops. 

chat noir is happiness; he’s safeness, insurance, hope, protection. people of paris looked at him and felt cared for and like no supervillain could cause them harm, even though the masked protagonist is nothing more than a teenager in leather. chat noir is freedom. 

adrien is not any of those things; yes, he is admired, but not for what he does or who he is, but for the image that his father and his brand created of him. adrien agreste is nothing more than an illusion, a perfected version of a lonely boy, trying to hide his eternal sorrow behind a wide smile and a public persona. 

adrien agreste is a carefully created pretension; a crafted role and a polished trophy. the consequences of that is the constant staring of curious people, the fans’  high-pitched screaming and camera lenses pushed in his face by reporters and journalists who do not know the concept of boundaries. 

the point is, he is used to judgemental eyes and people looking down at him like he’s a piece of art they don’t quite understand nor like. rough stares and angry eyes under which he shrunk to the size of an ant is something he had to stomach because of living under his father’s roof and the public eye. 

chat noir takes a deep breath, pushing out the memories out of his head and he makes fists, claws almost painfully stabbing the inside of his hands. he puts his chin higher, wanting to make himself stand taller, chest expanded, back straight. father hated slouching — it only feels fair to have a presentable posture when facing him, even as a statue. 

the storm gets louder and so the thoughts in his head; the rain gets heavier, as so does chat noir’s heart. he tries to breathe through it, to not let the thunders and lightning affect him. he succeeds, he stands still and firm, unmoving in a similar way as the gabriel agreste’s posture embroidered in metal in front of him. 

the roaring thunder used to make him tremble in fear as a kid, reminding him of his father’s angry voice — when the sounds of an ongoing storm reach his ears now, he barely even flinches, even though fear assembles in his chest and presses down on his lungs, making the oxygen flow roughly. 

“i wish you could know me” he whispers, words barely making it out through his tight chest and chapped lips. "and i wish i could know you much more sometimes” he confesses. "i wish i could see you as the hero everyone else does and not doubt that you did the right thing for once"

he wishes he got to know his father enough for him to be able to see a good man in him. he wishes he saw in gabriel agreste the hero that paris does. he feels like a piece of shit for not being able to. 

his eyes are dry, his vision not even slightly as blurry as he thought it would be. it makes him feel bad — shouldn’t he be crying when seeing his father?

adrien thinks grief is a very complex thing. he’s never fully understood it — he doesn’t believe human mind is able to comprehend grief. but it was such a weird feeling, to be aware that someone you knew is gone and that they’re never coming back.

he understood the science of it — he studied human anatomy back when maman was getting worse (which, she always was. she had good days, but she never quite did get better). 

death is a scientific term; something that can be explained as the end of life. adrien knows about the irreversible cessation of the organs, the way they shut down and make it impossible for the organism as a whole to work anymore. 

in most cases, death is a process more than it is an moment. that’s how it was with émilie agreste, too — the entirety of adrien’s life was a process of maman’s body slowly shutting down rather than her just being gone in an singular instant. adrien was preparing for her heart to stop all while pressing his hear against her chest to hear her heartbeat. émilie didn’t leave rapidly; she left a little bit every day, tiny fractures of her being escaping through adrien’s grasp like water slipping through fingers. 

death is a cascade of biological events that unfold in stages — adrien has seen it with his own eyes, watching as his mother got worse with each year. the world he saw from the window bloomed; trees blossomed and flowers grew, presenting their colorfulness. maman didn’t blossom; she decayed as if she was anticipating her own demise. 

his mom always used to say that aging is a disease, and adrien never understood it. her delicate wrinkles were pretty; even though barely visible, they proved she lived through a lot and that she was still strong enough to move her face muscles and smile. the young kid that adrien used to be didn’t understand that they represented a proof of longevity, but also the eventual ending of life. 

to émilie, death was an inevitability rooted in human biology; to adrien, death was a heavy knowledge of eventually having to lose everything. it was a burden that fueled his young heart with denial, anxiety and grief. 

the fear of his mother ceasing to exist was one he carried beneath his bones since a very young age. mortality back then felt like an unjust concept and a brutal sentence put unfairly upon his loved one. and so he was mourning her mother years before she took her last breath. 

and then pére happened — his death sudden, unexpected, an event adrien had not prepared himself for in the way he did with émilie. his mom’s death didn’t have a number nor a date — but it was inevitable and it offered clarity. it didn’t cloud his mind with doubt; it made him learn and recognise the limit of time. 

grief is a whole different thing from death. one could think he’d be prepared to deal with the consequences of losing a parent, after already doing it once before. 

but pére’s death… it isn’t like what happened with maman, though. 

because adrien was grieving emilie agreste long before she was dead. deep down, he predicted her ending long before it happened. adrien wasn’t stupid — he might’ve been kept in the dark when it came to the name of her illness, but he was by his mom’s side every day. he could tell she was getting worse each time he crawled into her bed to sleep with her. 

he found his own room cold and unwelcoming — the size was intimidating, the bed too huge for his small body. he felt alone in the silent, dark room upstairs. he much more preferred to spend the nights with his mom, even when her constant coughing made him jumpy and his sleep was light and shallow. 

he enjoyed their time spent together. he can still recall the softness of her voice when she read bedtime stories to her — how much he loved listening to her even when her voice crackled or when she had to take frequent breaks so she could take a round of deep breaths. 

he found comfort in her gentle, smooth way of talking, the way her voice sounded like it was bathed in honey, as if she was an angel that took a human form. he always knew that her death was the most possible outcome. it didn’t change the fact he never not missed her, forever mourning her kindness and the love she had for him. 

adrien misses his mom terribly every single day. émilie agreste never failed to make feel adrien happy. even when he was deeply sad about her condition, she had a way of projecting her own positive attitude on him. 

his mom always made him feel wanted. like he was an actual person, and not just an expressionless face in the tons of photographs his father ordered to be hung up all over the agreste house. like he was a part of this family, and not just a decoration to the colourless mansion. 

the truth is, his father became as unreachable as the possibility of adrien experiencing his love and all adrien had left was his mother until she was gone, too. 

and then less than two years went by and père… père was perfectly fine one day and dead another. it was a matter of— 

(adrien doesn’t really know how much time passed when he was in that room. he lost trajectory of time, haunted by the visions of killing his partner and her body turning to ash as he held her. he wasn’t really able to feel the time passed when his perception of reality was negatively altered by nightmares)

the thing is, gabriel agreste didn’t die a hero. he died violent, suddenly, and adrien was in no way prepared for it. he hadn’t seen it coming — how could he?

maybe he should’ve somehow braced himself for it: his mom is already dead. losing père shouldn’t have been a ridiculous concept. 

but it was; and adrien was naive enough to believe that universe would not want him to become an orphan. clearly, he was wrong, because, here he is: parentless, with his dead father’s assistant as the only parental figure. adrien loves nathalie and he’s grateful for her, he always will be — it’s just not the same.  

nothing ever will be the same. 

“you know” he starts again, voice hoarse as the rain slowly wrenches him. “i think about you all the time” he confesses softly, voice as steady as the pattern of the rain. 

he’s alone here, solitude his one and only long term friend — which is miserable, if he actually thinks about it.

he can go back home, to nathalie. she keeps saying he can talk to her; maybe he should take her up on her offer. he can go to marinette and spend some time with her, he knows she wouldn’t mind. he could go both as adrien — then he wouldn’t have to explain anything, he knows she’d hear his “i can’t sleep” and let him rest next to her — and as chat noir, even if that would’ve been a short visit, it still would probably make him feel better. 

he can also get in touch with ladybug. all it would take is one phone call, one simple “hi, can we meet at our spot?”, and he could talk to her. they could also sit in silence — he knows she wouldn’t ask questions. she’d let him sit next to her, breathing in her floral scent and she’d support him without persisting on asking what’s wrong. 

adrien doesn’t have to be alone — he has places to go and people to rely on. he doesn’t know why he chooses to avoid his loved ones, why he picks solitude even when he doesn’t have to. 

he realizes he blames his father for that — for teaching him it’s only ever possible to depend on himself and never allowing him to be vulnerable with anyone else. he hates how his father never created a safe space in their house or an emotional bond between them. he mourns the lack of expanse in where he could put the capacity of his emotions. 

apathy leaves his heart and makes room for anger. just looking at his father’s statue fills his chest with an indescribable sadness and rage that he can’t explain. 

his mouth opens and the words leave through his lips faster than the thunder roars through the night sky. 

“you were never even good to me” chat noir laughs, but there is no happiness in him. the irony holds his throat and squeezes the air out of it, making him choke on his sarcastic laugh. “i fell for the person you could be — that good father who made me pancakes every morning, asked me how my day went and allowed me to see my girlfriend whenever i wanted to”

“but that person doesn’t exist and he never did” chat noir states, closing his hands in a fist, tight enough for his fingertips to stiffen. he almost manages to tears his claws through the material of his suit. “neither does that heroic version of you ladybug is trying to push into my head”

his eyes focus on the words on the silver memorial badge installed below the statue —"gabriel agreste, the hero of paris, who sacrificed his life in order to defeat…”

"hero", adrien whispers under his breath, the word filled with a sarcastic undertone. he scoffs. gabriel agreste a hero?

chat noir grits his teeth, ignoring the way his fangs stab into his tongue. the pain stables him, makes him feel present in the moment. he recognises the metallic taste of blood on his tongue as he makes the final decision. 

"cataclysm" he murmurs, words barely uttered and getting lost in the loud pattern of the heavy rain. he takes one step forward, then another, and another, until he’s running. his knees are close to giving out, but he pushers through. he jumps up, and the he’s face to face with his father’s face embroidered in silver. his hand shoots forward with no hesitation, and a second later the tall posture of the paris’ hero turns into a pile of dark ashes under chat noir’s feet. 

he lands on trembling legs, breath quick, his brows furrowed and lips parted. he turns around and stares silently at the black dust — the leftover proof of his father’s heroic sacrifice adrien can’t make himself believe in. he knows rain will wash it away and that it will go down the drain — just as his père’s meaningless death.

"you’re no hero, gabriel agreste" he murmurs, thunder roaring above his head as he slowly walks away from the place des vosges, consuming anger burning in his chest.