"Well, well, well," Ladybug smirked, twirling her yoyo as she and Chat Noir advanced upon a cornered Papillon. "Looks like your time is up, Papillon."

Frantic beeps echoed off the stone walls of the cavernous lair; for once, they were neither Ladybug's nor her partner's. No, the beeps were coming from Papillon himself, just as Tikki had assured her they would, claiming that Nooroo, the stolen kwami, would do everything in his power to drop the transformation as soon as he sensed a friendly presence.

Papillon's snarled "No!" was drowned out by the beating wings of a thousand butterflies as they suddenly took to the air, startled by the blinding purple light emanating from their master. Ladybug's yoyo came to a standstill; beside her, she could hear Chat Noir's sharp intake of breath as they both waited for the reveal that had been a decade in the making.

A short eternity seemed to pass before Papillon's face was revealed to them.

And when it was, Ladybug almost wished she'd never found out.

"King Gabriel?" The man fixed his eyes firmly upon the ground, refusing to look up and grant them a clear look at his face, but there was no mistaking him. Ice raced down Ladybug's spine and settled somewhere in her middle, curled around her heart and incapacitated her limbs. The king had been Papillon all along – the king she worked for, the king she'd known all her life, the king who was Adrien's-

"Father?" Came a whisper from her right, prompting Gabriel to finally lift his eyes from the ground and turn to Chat Noir instead. His features, previously a twisted mask of anger and defeat, now rearranged themselves to express shock and horror instead. Some part of Ladybug's mind wondered if maybe her eyes were a mirror of Papillon's in that moment, that one terrible moment when all the puzzle pieces finally fell into place and clicked in her mind. Going against every single cell in her body that screamed at her to keep her eyes on their enemy at all times, Ladybug turned around to focus on her partner instead.

"Adrien?" She asked, only to hear the name echoed by the king a millisecond later. His eyes – still green but too green, no wonder she'd never suspected a thing – seemed to flit between his partner and his father, never settling on either for more than a second. Somewhere in the cavern, a steady trickle of water drip-drip-dripped in time to those eyes, a single drip reaching her ears every time Chat's- Adrien's – eyes settled on her. The lair was silent but for those drips, all three of its occupants stunned speechless. It took Ladybug a minute to recover from the shock of learning both her enemy's and her partner's identities within seconds of each other.

Unfortunately, it took Papillon less than a minute.

Chat gasped as his eyes settled on the blank spot where his father had stood just a few seconds ago, and the sharp inhale was enough to finally snap Ladybug out of her stupor.

But it was too late. Papillon had escaped into one of the many tunnels built under the castle, and the king never emerged from the underground labyrinth ever again.

Frantic beeps of a far more ordinary kind pull Marinette back into the land of the waking, dragging her out of the dark, endless network of tunnels her dreams send her to each night. It's been six months since she'd last set foot in the subterranean network of tunnels built under the castle, but still her mind has her reliving the memory of her fruitless search each night.

Silencing her alarm, Marinette gets out of bed and makes quick work of washing up and getting dressed, bracing herself for another day of pretending – pretending that everything is okay, pretending that she isn't Ladybug, pretending that Gabriel Agreste is dead and not just a cowardly villain hiding from his kingdom.

Pretending that Adrien is not her leather-clad partner, just her king.

"Good morning, my lady!" A familiar voice greets her as soon as she steps out of her room and into the hallway, and Marinette winces at the nickname.

"Rose," She frowns at her friend and studiously ignores the knowing look in her eyes and the implications it carries. "How many times have I told you to stop calling me that?"

"Too many," The cheery girl grins. "Would you prefer 'my queen' instead?"

"Rose!"

"Speaking of queens and kings-"

"Of which I am neither," Marinette mutters, though she's not sure if it's more for Rose's benefit or her own. A reality check a day keeps old dreams away.

Rose goes on undeterred, her ever-present smile firmly in place. "I was just coming to see if you were awake. The king wants to speak to you."

"Oh," Marinette says, patting her pockets for her phone. Sure enough, there's a message from Adrien, asking her to join him for breakfast on his favorite balcony. "Thanks, Rose. I'll see you later?"

"No problem," Rose waves, already making her way down the hall. "Have fun, lovebirds!" She calls out just as she turns a corner, her tinkling laughter still audible even as she disappears from sight.

As Marinette makes her way to the balcony overlooking the queen's gardens, Tikki decides to chance an appearance, popping her head out of the bag by Marinette's side. "Are you okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Marinette replies easily.

"Marinette," Tikki frowns worriedly, "you haven't been sleeping well ever since-"

"They're just dreams, Tikki. Product of my subconscious mind. Or was it unconscious mind? Either way, I'm sure I'll get back to dreaming of hamsters and dresses in no time!" Her tone is overly cheery and blatantly forced, and they both know the Marinette who used to dream of pet hamsters and wedding dresses is long gone, but one of the things she loves most about Tikki is that her little kwami always knows when to drop things.

"And cookies!" Tikki adds with a little giggle before she dives back into her nest of sorts, emerging only once they've made it to the balcony and the coast is clear for her to join Plagg at the cheese-and-cookies corner of the breakfast spread.

"Good morning, my lady," Adrien rises with a smile, unknowingly echoing Rose's earlier words.

Marinette pushes aside the memory of Rose's persistent belief that they're a couple and takes her seat at the table with a smile. "Good morning, minou. You wanted to speak to me?" She watches as Adrien's smile immediately dims at the reminder, and her stomach begins to tie itself into worried knots that leave no room for breakfast.

"It's just… I've been thinking – about all of this, about my fa- about Papillon," Adrien quickly corrects himself, even though no one else is around to overhear. "And… where do we go from here, bug? What can we do?"

Sometimes Marinette stays up at night and wonders how she went from royal seamstress to unofficial advisor to the king. But then she remembers that the king is Chat Noir and the old king is Le Papillon and really, nothing in her life has made sense for the past decade, anyway.

"I still dream about the tunnels every night," she admits, pouring herself a cup of tea just to give her hands something to do. "No matter how I try, I can never find him."

"Those tunnels lead to at least three dozen different exits," Adrien sighs. "There's no telling where he ended up, or if he's even still in the country."

"He can't be far," Tikki speaks up, floating over to join them. "The butterfly's champion – or akuma, in this case – must draw strength from the miraculous itself. As long as he keeps sending akumas, we know he's nearby."

"Do you think he could be hiding in plain sight?" Marinette wonders out loud, stirring sugar into her tea. "I mean, most people don't even know what he looks like anymore." Even if time hadn't taken its toll on the king, fifteen years without his wife has turned the man into an unrecognizable shell of the person he used to be. Add to that the fact that the king has rarely been seen by anyone outside of the castle ever since the queen's disappearance, and it's entirely plausible that Gabriel might be living in one of the handful of towns right outside the capital without anyone recognizing him.

Adrien frowns, but pauses to consider the possibility anyway. "I… guess it's possible. But highly unlikely," He adds.

Silence follows as Marinette carefully weighs her next words, knowing that this will most likely end badly. Tikki, perceptive as always, takes one look at her holder and wordlessly leaves to return to Plagg.

"What if…" Marinette hesitates, steeling herself before meeting Adrien's curious eyes. "What if we passed out posters? We wouldn't have to tell anyone who he is or why we're looking for him-" She hurriedly adds, knowing that she has mere seconds to convince Adrien, knowing that she's already lost the battle.

"No," Adrien says, a single word infused with finality. "It's too risky. Someone's bound to put it together. My money's on Alya," He jokingly brings up the castle's head of public relations, hoping to soften the blow.

"Adrien," She ignores the mention of her best friend and the silent plea on his face for her to drop this. "You can't keep protecting him. I know he's your father, and I know you still want to leave something for him to come back to, in case we ever get through this…" She knows there's no going back, knows that Gabriel is too far gone after fifteen years of stewing in his desperation and heartache, but that's a conversation for another day. "But you're the king now, and these are your people he's putting in danger. At some point…"

Adrien shakes his head, and his eyes darken as if a storm has rolled in and hidden away all the warmth and light they usually hold. "No."

"Chat, please," She reaches across the table for his hand. "I know this is hard for you, and I hate that we're stuck in this situation, I hate that someone's going to get hurt no matter what we do, I hate that you might be that someone. But it isn't going to go away just because we keep ignoring it."

His features soften at the combination of her words and her touch, and some part of Marinette can't help but feel as if she's defused a bomb; she hates the way they get when they argue, hates how often they've argued about this.

"We'll talk about this," Adrien promises, squeezing the hand still entwined with his. "I promise. Just… not today, Mari. Please, not today."

"But soon," Marinette insists, looking him square in the eyes before she withdraws her hand.

"Soon," He agrees with a heavy sigh, and they return to breakfast as Marinette finally helps herself to the food available next to Plagg's empty cheese platter and Tikki's half-finished plate of cookies. She lightly scratches Plagg's bloated belly and rubs Tikki's head with a fingertip before returning to Adrien.

"I just wish," Adrien says after a few minutes of companionable silence, "that he'd stop, just for a while, just long enough for me to think. I can't think, not when he keeps sending us akumas and threatening the kingdom. I can't think of him as my father when he keeps behaving exactly like the villain we've fought all these years. I can't think of him as my father when he keeps attacking me as if he doesn't even care that it's his son under the mask."

"Minou," Marinette murmurs, setting down her fork to reach for his hand once more, running her thumb across the inside of his wrist in a repetitive motion meant to soothe. "Of course he cares. Haven't you noticed that the akumas have been much less dangerous lately, especially compared to the last few he sent before… before the cave?"

"What do you mean?" He asks, hope gleaming in his eyes and coloring his tone.

"Those akumas were trying to kill us," Marinette reminds him, even though she prefers to keep her memories of those particularly bloodthirsty akumas hidden somewhere deep within her subconscious, locked away so that not even her dreaming mind can access them. "Compared to those guys, these last few akumas we've handled are fairly tame. They're here to steal, not kill."

"And you think that's because of…?"

"I know it is," She assures him – and maybe herself. Ladybug knows that there's no saving Papillon, that there's no cleansing that kind of corruption. But Marinette… Marinette desperately wants to believe that there's still hope for the king who used to catch her doodling dresses, for the king who confided in her that he'd had an interest in fashion as a young man, for the king who sent her to be the royal seamstress' apprentice as soon as she was old enough to sew and always made time to compliment her work.

"That just makes things even more complicated," Adrien sighs. "How do I know which one is the real him when both of them are calling the shots? I just… I need some time and space away from him to think about this, but those damn akumas just keep coming."

As Marinette considers Adrien's dilemma, she happens to catch sight of one of the hundreds of white butterflies roaming freely in the garden below.

"We could…" She pauses for a moment to consider the idea. "Okay, hear me out: Papillon needs something to infect his victims with, right? And it needs to be something important to him, something that has enough emotional significance to hold his magic."

Adrien looks at her warily, certain that he knows where she's going with this.

"If we rounded up all the white butterflies and, I don't know, locked them away for a bit-" She looks so hopeful that he almost doesn't have the heart to interrupt her.

But-

"We can't. I can't," Adrien says firmly. "Those butterflies are my mother's legacy. If we lock them away, there's no telling what might happen to them. And I can't risk them dying out. Mari, they're all I have left of her," He implores.

Marinette shakes her head. "You are your mother's legacy, Adrien," She tells him, hoping to change his mind, hoping to make him see that he doesn't need anything else to remember his mother by when he is the embodiment of everything that was good and kind about her.

"The butterflies stay," He insists.

They lapse into silence once more, until-

"I can't do this anymore."

The scrape of her chair against the tiled floor of the balcony sounds particularly ugly to Marinette's ears, ten times worse than nails on a chalkboard.

"I hate this situation. I hate it, and I hate that there's nothing we can do without someone getting hurt, and I hate that there's nothing I can do without you getting hurt," She rants, her voice getting progressively louder as she paces the length of the table.

"Mari, I'm-"

"I can't do this. I can't keep trying to fix this and giving you advice when I know you're just going to shoot all of my ideas down," Marinette stops then, looks Adrien in the eyes and gives him a small smile meant to reassure him and relieve him of the guilt she knows he feels. "And I don't blame you, Adrien. If it were my parents…"

"Mari," Adrien tries again, this time moving from his side of the table to hers.

"I don't blame you," She repeats, stopping Adrien in his tracks. "I don't blame anyone. Sometimes I ask myself if anyone's really to blame for this situation. I can't even blame Papillon, not really, because I don't know if I'm strong enough… if I would be strong enough to resist the path he chose, if I were to lose someone the way he did," Her voice has dropped to a whisper by the last part, but somehow Tikki hears her anyway.

"Oh, Marinette, of course you-" The kwami hurries over to comfort her holder, knowing that Marinette has finally caved under all the stress of the past six months, of the past ten years.

"No, Tikki," Marinette smiles even as her eyes glint with unshed tears. She holds a hand out for Tikki to land on and pets her kwami's head. "If I lost you… or my parents… or…" Her eyes land on Adrien, looking helpless and guilty as he stands mere steps away from her.

She closes the gap between them and watches as her free hand softly curls around the side of his face. "I loved you once, you know. When we were younger, more hopeful and less broken. When things were easier."

Adrien closes his eyes and brings a hand to cover her own. "I love you still."

Marinette laughs even as a sob threatens to choke her. "We always did have terrible timing." Years of missed opportunities and almost-reveals, years of half-confessions and akuma interruptions, years and years of falling in and out of love with each other at all the wrong times.

"What now, bug?" Adrien whispers, blinking away the threat of oncoming tears.

His question could be referring to a dozen different things – to Papillon, to the constant-stream of akumas, to their lives together, to their lives apart – but Marinette finds only one answer to all of them.

"I don't know."

I wrote this way back in 2016, turned it into a series in 2017, and have yet to finish the third and final part even though it's now 2018. It'll be done eventually. In the meantime, maybe check out Masquerade, the second part of this series.

P.S: if this seems familiar, you probably read it on AO3 when I first posted it way back when.