I feel like there's this sense of "Adrien's mother was such a good mother you can tell because Gabriel is an ASSHOLE and Adrien adores his mom"
Like
She's only been gone a year who do you think was keeping Adrien stuck in the house while Gabriel is busy with being the CEO of a massive company?
5 year old Adrien ran around the garden with his arms out to the sides, making plane noises, barely tripping over his own feet. Passing his mother, he grinned and veered away, heading for the front of the house. When he got to the front walk, and the giant gates that separated them from the rest of Paris, he dropped his arms.
"Maman, why can't we go out?" he wondered, turning to his mom, who'd followed him as he "flew" to the front. "I want to go to a park, like I've read in my books."
"Oh minou, it's too dangerous out there," she said softly. "I don't want you to get hurt."
"But… I get hurt here when I trip?"
His mother smiled softly. "Please trust me minou. It's different out there."
He opened his mouth to question her again, confused, but then shut it. He supposed she would know better than him. She was his mom.
He figured he was lucky being out in the garden, he didn't get the chance to play outside much at all.
A few months later his mother announced that he was going to get a new friend. He looked at her in surprise. He'd never met any other children, how was he going to make a new friend?
"Are we finally going outside?" he asked, eyes wide.
His mother froze, then smiled and ran her fingers through his hair. "Oh no minou. They're coming here!" she said, delighted.
"Oh, okay… Who are they?"
They turned out to be Chloé Bourgeois, a very pushy child Adrien's age and the daughter of the mayor of Paris. However he didn't mind bending over backwards to please her. After all, she was the first friend his mother had allowed him to make, he didn't want to drive her away. And she was nice enough, in her own way.
The first time Adrien went outside the walls of the house wasn't really what he'd planned on. After all he was simply ushered into the car and taken to another building. Not very exciting really.
The media ate up this appearance though. Everyone knew the Agrestes had a child, but had never seen him before. And with headlines such as "Like Mother, Like Son," what wasn't there to love?
It wasn't everyday when a secluded 10 year old child showed up out of nowhere to become a child model after all.
He saw the actual city of Paris though, so the attention was worth it.
It took three years before the novelty of going out of the house wore off, and the stifling feeling came back, this time in the form of too many photoshoots, in his opinion.
Whenever he brought it up to his mother, she'd remind him that it was his idea, and that he'd be stuck in the house all over again. So he'd nod and go back to the work his tutors gave him.
It wasn't so bad he reasoned. He got to see both his parents more, Chloé doted over him with every new spread (not that he cared much about that, but it was nice he supposed), and the other models were decent enough.
And he wasn't holed up anymore.
It wasn't until he was almost 14 that he realized he might be a bit in over his head.
It's not like one wakes to a screaming father every day, especially a father like Gabriel Agreste.
He fumbled for his phone so he could light the way without turning on any lights and alerting his father that he was awake. He crept through the halls until he came to his father's study. The door was ajar, which explained why he could hear his father all the way from his room.
"I told you to call me when you'd gotten a lead, not to tell me you're giving up!" Gabriel's tone had dropped, though it was heavy with barely recontained rage. "I don't want excuses I want out to find my wife!" he snarled before slamming his phone onto his desk.
There was a platter and both Gabriel and Adrien jumped. Gabriel spun around to face his son, while Adrien glanced down to find that his phone had slipped from his hand. "Père
what...where's Maman?" Adrien whispered, voice unsteady.
Gabriel inhaled sharply before striding over to his son and wrapping him in a hug. When Adrien realized his shoulders were shaking, his own eyes began to tear up and he felt a whimper escape.
If his father was acting like this that meant…
His wail of anguish rivaled the sound of his father's earlier yelling.
A dark part of Adrien's mind exalted in his mother's disappearance, figuring that he'd no longer be stuck between the house and modeling. Adrien hated that part of his mind. How dare he think like that!
And that voice quieted soon enough anyway. Not too long after he found out she was missing, his workload increased and his father practically vanished from his life.
It was as if Gabriel was pretending that his wife was still there, but she obviously wasn't.
When Adrien first attempted to escape for school, he was more surprised that his father bothered to lecture him.
And when Plagg showed up in his room… He just couldn't listen to his mother anymore. It's not like her strict ruling of not going out unless necessary helped her in the end.
And the pain of losing a mother was worse than anything that could happen to him out there anyway.
Do I want Adrien's mom back?
Er, honestly I don't know. I want to learn more about her first