This boy, Marinette thought, was in the same position that Chat Noir was.

It was nice, to have that sort of insight. She liked it. Adrien was a nice person, sure, and she liked him for who he was, absolutely - but she watched him a little too long, sometimes, when he leant into the people around him. He came alive with the people around him, straightened right up when Nino spoke to him or Alya pushed him away with her foot, annoyed he had won this last game - Adrien Agreste was touch-starved and loved that these three were not afraid of him, of being with him. More often than she didn't, Marinette found herself in the corner of the couch on game night, patting Adrien's hair as he made himself comfortable against her, beneath the blankets that her mum came to heap on them when she realised the night was winding down, and they were tired.

More often than not, Marinette found herself reaching to answer him, because on some base level she recognised that. What a coincidence; Adrien had the exact same streak of lonely in him. Was this why Chat tried so hard - were his circumstances like Adrien's, was this the sort of thing that made him grab at her, like he had, that night, when she'd hugged him and wanted him and he'd cried like nobody had celebrated with him, before that?

Marinette wasn't a selfish girl. She was less selfish than she had been when she was young, at the very least - Chat had taught her a lot. Her heart ached for Adrien, and all of the things that he had been missing in his life up until he had been able to come to a public school. But she wondered, idly, sometimes, about Chat Noir - thought to compare these two boys with their new lungs and shared laughter, which tasted like windchimes - and she was doing it, now, cuddled in the cushy corner. Adrien's breaths were slow and even. He was smiling. Marinette combed her fingers through his hair, still, and wondered if it was her place to ask any of this, at all. Adrien had come to a few game nights, now. He was still busy in the week - being an international top model came with a full schedule - but he made time for this, and school, and he always seemed happiest when he could just… be there, with people. What did she even want to ask?

What she wanted was to know why he deflated, every time he checked his phone, like he was in some perpetual state of waiting on a call from someone who just sent texts about what photoshoot he had scheduled next week, instead.

"Adrien?"

"Mmm?" he was very content to fall asleep on her. It didn't occur to either of them that this was strange - their bodies knew each other, if they themselves did not.

"Why…" how could she put it, really? Why are you so sad? "We all really like having you here, Adrien."

He breathed. Chat did this, too; she didn't have to ask, to know, because she had asked Chat, before. Sometimes, he just liked to breathe, and focus on that feeling, whatever it was, which undid something in his chest, and filled him up, and made him happy. Marinette did not stop patting his hair. She waited for him to almost finish this, this feeling that he did (where that's what he did - he just deliberately felt), and then she added, "I really mean it," because it made her smile, to watch him hide his smile into her shoulder. He swallowed the whine of complaint, but she heard it, anyway: how could she do this to him? She couldn't keep being this nice, he was going to explode.

"You had someone, before us, right? You weren't alone?" that's what she wanted to know. Marinette wanted to know that it wasn't just… that she hadn't missed anything.

Adrien hummed. He pulled away from her, now, and she felt the loss of him, but Adrien stretched out with his head at the other end of the couch. He took the blankets with him. She only realised, belatedly, that she should have been holding onto them, if she wanted to keep them.

He breathed, for a while longer (she knew what it was like to listen to Chat breathing, now, so she listened to Adrien's easy breaths with something of the same awe), until Adrien said, "My father never wanted to be involved, really. But I have a girl."

"A girl?"

He was sleepy. He yawned, and stretched out like a cat, and pulled the blanket up so that he could use it a little bit like a pillow, only the rest of it was still draped over him, diagonal. "She's the best."

"The magazines never said…" it seemed like such a silly complaint. Marinette had read the magazines, yes, but they had not shown her this side of Adrien Agreste, so what could they have told her about his love life?

"She doesn't want people to know." This was true enough. Adrien rubbed at one of his eyes. Sleepy. She could hear his thick swallow, only it sort of stuck something in his throat - it must have - because when he spoke again, it was with some sleepy catch which, in the future, she would learn was one of her absolute favourite kinds of Adrien Agreste's voice. For now, she just felt something tight and warm flip over in her stomach, because of it, and she pulled her legs up onto the couch with her, so she could sit in a little ball, listening. Adrien continued, "She's everything, though."

Marinette wondered what it must have been like, to be loved in that way. To be loved by someone who spoke about you like that, who had obviously given up trying to find words, who knew that there was nothing they could say to even come close to all of the things they wanted to.

She said, "Oh," because she had not known that Adrien Agreste did love somebody, in that way.

"I wouldn't be here without her." His breaths were getting slower. More even. He was drifting off.

Marinette thought about Chat Noir. He'd said similar things, before. She wondered about it. Them. "You would. You're the one who beat it, Adrien." His girl had had very little to do with it.

"Maybe," Adrien whispered back, tiredly - "but I don't think I would have bothered."

Marinette felt very small.

By the time she had thought of something else to say, Adrien had already drifted off, content to be lost in the little snippets of Ladybug he could draw into his mind's eye: her smile. The way she flicked her hair back when she had a razor-sharp pun to shoot at him. The catch-me-if-you-can, kitty! Attitude he was so in love with.

Marinette rapped several times on the mansion's front doors.

There had been a gate. She had ignored it, because the lady working the gate over the intercom hadn't seen fit to let her in. Honestly - if they didn't want people climbing it, they shouldn't have been so stingy with who they let open it.

Her knock echoed all the way into the very depths of Agreste Manor, which - she would discover, soon - was as hollowed out and empty as either Adrien or Chat were, on a bad day.

She didn't know what she was doing here. She knew her idol, Gabriel Agreste, was back in Paris, at last. She knew that he was in the manor because she'd seen the reports of it. She also knew that Adrien had been scheduled for a photoshoot in Giverny this weekend, which just so happened to conveniently align with Gabriel's time here, and she just - what was she going to say to him? Be a better father? Surely, Gabriel was trying.

Surely, because parents couldn't be so bad as to be - to be wrong, like that, surely he was trying. She was just going to … tell him how to try better. That was her job, as Ladybug. She was here because her job, as Ladybug, Paris' superhero, was to help people to live happier, healthier, better lives, and neither one of the Agrestes could be happy about how they lived with each other, could they?

Marinette sort of had an entire speech prepared.

Then the door opened, and it wasn't Gabriel Agreste (thank goodness - she might have lost her determination altogether), it was Nathalie - Gabriel's assistant. "Yes?" she asked, snappy.

Marinette blinked at her. She had her school bag with her, clutched tight in both hands, the worn leather feeling extraordinarily out of place, already. As empty as this building was, it screamed of luxury. It could have been a warm, inviting home, if there had been any life in it. Marinette could see the sweeping staircase, past this woman, and the chandelier - she could imagine people making something of this empty house. But at the moment, it was a house. Maybe even a mansion. It was not a home.

That was everything Marinette was processing, so she said, "Iiiiieeeeeeeee," accidentally, and then she shoved the bag forward, into Nathalie's stomach, because Nathalie did not see fit to retrieve it from her - "I'm a friend! One of Adrien's. Friends, that is. I wanted to talk - speak - no," she snatched the bag back, because Nathalie had reached for it, "I'd like to speak to Monsieur Agreste I mean I'm really a huge fan and you're Nathalie! We've spoken on the phone, I brought the homework?"

All of this, in her head, sort of made sense, put together. Ish.

Nathalie frowned at her, but Marinette did not turn the 'homework' in her little leather bag over, so Nathalie stepped aside to allow her entry. "Monsieur Agreste doesn't take guests. You may leave Adrien's homework with a member of the staff. Someone will be along shortly. Please wait here."

"I want to talk to him about the surgery," Marinette said. She was very upfront with it, because - again, surely - surely - this woman, who had known Adrien for as long as his father had, would have thought about fixing that relationship, before.

"If you would like to arrange an interview time with Adrien, you will have to -"

"No," Marinette said, "no, I mean - Monsieur Agreste. I know he's here. It will only take a minute, but he has to want to learn about how his son is now, right? It's been months. Adrien says he hasn't visited, once, in years -"

"And why do you think that is, Ms Dupain-Cheng?"

"Because he's scared." The implication was that Gabriel did not care, but Marinette just didn't believe it. Flat-out, and with that same stubborn nature that had made Chat Noir fall for her, she did not believe that somebody could think like that about their own son. "Adrien is doing well. He should see him - I have videos of him laughing, M. Agreste would want to see -"

"You have taken unauthorised footage of my son?"

Gabriel stood at the head of the stairs. He looked down at the pair of them, the two ladies in the doorway of the mansion, until Nathalie stepped aside to greet her employer appropriately and Marinette used it as an excuse to slip over the threshold, and push the door shut behind her. "M. Agreste, I understand you're afraid because of what happened to your wife, but Adrien -"

"'What happened to my wife' was her death, Miss…?"

"Ms Dupain-Cheng is a friend of Adrien's, from school," Nathalie provided.

"I did take footage of him, M. Agreste, I have it here." Marinette moved up the stairs, phone in her hand - "Please," she said, "he's beautiful."

Gabriel raised a brow, because to him this was hardly new information, but he leaned over the girl's shoulder so that he might peer at her phone screen. Of course he knew what his son looked like; Gabriel received all the latest from the photoshoots, so that he might pick and choose which to include in the next edition of the magazine. The footage wasn't anything special. One of the other students caught him around the shoulders, and said somethingsomethingsomething DUDE which the camera didn't quite catch, and then Adrien laughed. The way the sun caught him was pretty, Gabriel supposed, but the footage did not mean anything special to him.

Marinette realised, with some sinking feeling, that Adrien had been telling the truth: nobody really knew him before the surgery. His father did not have any reason to notice the difference that Marinette had assumed he would - she'd assumed it would be as real and sudden as when she had first heard Chat laugh. She'd assumed…

"Ms Dupain-Cheng, what are you doing here?"

"Your son misses you," she challenged.

"I will take the commentary of a seventeen-year-old highschool student who has climbed my gates and barged into my home with all the respect due to it. Nathalie," Gabriel inclined his head, and Marinette felt the cool night air behind her: Nathalie had opened the door again.

"The exit is this way, Ms Dupain-Cheng."

"But he's your son," Marinette argued. Emptily. Because that should have been enough to conquer all of that - it should not have mattered how she'd gotten here to tell him that, he should have just … just wanted…

"And you are unwelcome on these premises. I do not solicit parenting advice from teenagers."

Marinette went home that night with the new-found knowledge that you should never meet your idols.