Chapter Text
It had to be a dream: or rather, a nightmare.
Or maybe he’d stumbled into an alternate universe.
Or perhaps this was some terrible world dreamt up by an akuma.
The only thing that Adrien knew for sure was that this couldn’t be happening.
He tightened his grip on Marinette, pressing her against the floor and flattening his body on top of her. It was a position that Ladybug and Chat Noir had been in many times, but it had yet to happen between Marinette and Adrien. As a brilliant flash of light lit the room, he squeezed his eyes shut, knowing that it shouldn’t have happened this way. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
They were supposed to reveal themselves on their own time. They were supposed to stop Hawkmoth together. They were supposed to win.
Not this.
The light seemed to last forever. Behind him, he could hear what sounded like his father’s voice. But the words made no sense to his brain. Maybe it didn’t work? Or maybe his father –
No.
Not his father.
Gabriel.
Maybe Gabriel had realized he needed to transform and combine the miraculous, not just put them both on. But the way this light was shining seemed to indicate that something was happening.
It took Adrien a few seconds to fully process that the light had finally died away. When he dared to open his eyes, at first all he could see was a bunch of black spots. He blinked rapidly and squinted to see past them, taking a cautious glance around the room. He was ready to slam his eyes shut again if the too-bright light returned, but it didn’t.
“Adrien?” Marinette whispered. She’d shut her eyes too, but she opened them now and turned her head to look up at him.
Her blue eyes were so familiar.
He couldn’t believe he hadn’t figured it out before.
But then, she had asked him not to – and he had always, where he could, done as his lady asked.
“I don’t know,” he whispered back. It was the only answer he could give when he felt like he didn’t know anything anymore. Too many revelations had happened in too short a span of time. Gabriel Agreste was Hawkmoth, Nathalie was working with him, Marinette was Ladybug, his mother might or might not have been dead… it felt like the whole world had been turned upside down and it was just too much to process.
When nothing had happened for a few more seconds, Marinette squirmed underneath him. Adrien belatedly realized that he was squishing her against the floor and quickly lifted himself up. But he stayed near, cautious of the fact that Hawkmoth and Nathalie (probably Mayura now that he thought about it) were both nearby and that neither of them had their miraculous right now. Only once Marinette had sat up did Adrien dare to look around.
The first thing he saw was that the glass coffin was open.
The body inside was sitting up.
His heart stuttered in his chest and he held his breath.
“Adrien,” Marinette breathed, reaching for his hand. He let her take it and clutched onto her hand desperately.
Émilie looked a little confused, which wasn’t unwarranted by the situation. She patted at her legs, her thighs, her stomach, her chest, and then both arms, before reaching up to her touch her hair and face – like she thought that a part of her might have gone missing. She blinked slowly, her lips forming an ‘o’ through which she exhaled loudly, and Adrien could have cried.
Somehow, it was her.
Sometimes, when Adrien was missing his mother the most, he would lay on his bed with her picture and try to imagine what she would look like today if she were still alive. Would her hair have gone a little greyer? Would it be longer, or would she have made the impulsive decision to cut it shorter? Would her face have a few more wrinkles or laugh lines?
All of those hours spent imagining had been for naught, he saw now. Émilie Agreste looked exactly the way she had on the day she disappeared, as though she had leapt, hale and hearty, straight from the memories that Adrien kept closest to his heart.
“Adrien,” Marinette said again, lower and more insistent this time. That was Ladybug’s ‘something is wrong here’ voice, and, reluctant though he was to look away from his mother, it made Adrien snap to immediately. He tore his gaze away from her - his mother! to look at Marinette, but she wasn’t looking back at him. She was staring at something to his left.
Slowly, Adrien followed her gaze. It felt like his heart dropped straight through the floor when he saw what she was looking at.
The body of Gabriel Agreste.