Marinette's body finally unlocked the moment Adrien slid to his knees at her side, his hands fluttering over her in anxious worry, checking for any obvious sign of harm. He continued his frantic appraisal until she laid a hand against his cheek and his hands came to rest on her knees, eyes turning to look up at her in a million questions she didn't have time to answer.

"I'm fine," she whispered, prompting him with a look and he smiled up at her.

"Me too," he lifted a hand to hold hers closer against his face and she felt in his touch all the ademendums he hadn't added. Now that I see you...Now that I'm here...Now that you're close...Now that I know you're okay…

Then his eyes fell to her wrists as he noticed the cuffs there.

"These need to go," he muttered, lifting her wrist delicately and analyzing the accoutrement for any obvious opening point. The metal was seamless, laying perfectly against her skin in a continuous band. His brow furrowed and she knew he was weighing the benefits of freeing her with the possibility of harming her.

"Just do it, chaton," she whispered, cognisant of the increasing tension between Gabriel and Nathalie behind Adrien as they argued, and feeling a fight eminent. "I'll be okay, but get these things off of me."

He looked up at her, reading what must be a desperate note in her eyes and nodded. Extending just one finger, he started giving short and pointed bursts of destruction all around the cuff. It was painful, each shock reverberating through Marinette as the band was practically melded into her arm at this point, but as she watched the metal slowly deteriorating, she grimaced through it. When the first cuff fell away, Adrien looked up in triumph, only for his face to fall when he saw the cold sweat that had broken out across her brow.

"Bug-"

"Keep going," she demanded, not allowing for his self doubt. "Please," she pleaded and after a moment he did, though she felt his power much more restrained, the process taking twice as long as before.

"You shouldn't have come back," she said after a moment and was rewarded by a sarcastic roll of his eyes. She smiled, brushing a thumb across his cheekbone. "But I'm glad you did."

He didn't look up at her, focused on his task, but did lean down and press the lightest of kisses to the center of her palm. The contact of his lips doing more to heal her throbbing wrists than any pain medication ever could.

"I will always come for you, M'Lady. You're my partner. No matter where you are or how badly I messed up-"

"Stop," she demanded. "I will not have you blaming yourself for this for the rest of our lives. You were an ass, but you did not cause this," her voice was low, but she watched his shoulders lose some of their burden at her words. Then he looked up at her with his customary smirk.

"The rest of our lives, huh? I could get used to that," he gave her a wink and she was too relieved to see him, the true goofy and flirty boy, that she couldn't even manage a witty retort before he was back to work.

Marinette stared at him: the charming set of his mouth, the strong angles of his jaw, the iridescent shine of his eyes...After only a month, he was as familiar to her as her own reflection-as her own heartbeat-and she knew she'd have come back for him, too. They were inexplicably connected, but she'd choose him regardless. He was right. They were partners: in life, in war, and in love.

So when she felt the temperature of the room drop, she knew it wasn't the result of a sudden cold spell in the compound. She looked up, her eyes drawn to Nathalie's as she saw the gun pointed directly at Adrien's back. Jumping to her feet, she felt the last of Adrien's efforts as the cuff fell away and shifted without a moment to spare, throwing a protective field around her unsuspecting partner and waiting for the impact of Nathalie's gun.

It never came.

Marinette opened her eyes and gasped. She wasn't the one who saved him.

She dropped her shield and watched as Adrien turned to the scene that had just unfolded behind him. Taking in a stunned Nathalie and his father lying on the floor, clutching his abdomen in a slippery grasp, the floor around him stained crimson.

Adrien turned his eyes back on Nathalie and released hell.

His aura lit up the room in the most blinding paradox: the pulsing green of springtime and the inky black of midnight. It was magnificent and it was terrifying and Marinette didn't dare even to breathe as it consumed Nathalie before breaking off in Adrien's sobs as he fell to his father's side.

It must have lasted only a moment, only traversing the amount of time that it took her to shift back to human, but Marinette watched as if it unfolded in slow motion. Her eyes darted to Nathalie's form, crumpled on the floor, but didn't dwell on the question of whether she was dead or alive, her focus turning to Adrien as his body shook where he kneeled next to his last surviving family member.

"Adrien," Gabriel's voice sputtered, weak already from the amount of blood he'd lost, but as Marinette regarded him, she realized that for the first time the man seemed whole. As if in knowing he was at the edge of his life, he'd finally found balance within the shattered version of himself he'd become.

"Shh," Adrien hushed, his hands laying on top of Gabriel's and providing the pressure on the wound his father's feeble strength couldn't manage. "Don't talk. Save your strength. Help is on the way."

"No," his father moved his head to one side, unable to turn it back in his attempt to shake his head and Marinette heard Adrien's breath hitch as he realized help would not come in time. "I need to say this to you."

Marinette watched the two as Adrien nodded, willing herself not to intervene in the last moments Adrien would have with his father, no matter how her gut was telling her that these final words would be as manipulative and painful for Adrien as the last decade of interactions with his father had been.

"Your mother," Gabriel started. "I did this all for your mother… And you," he added, swallowing painfully before continuing. "You heard...what I said to Nathalie. You must know. They killed Adeline...The statiques...for being what we are. She was strong, like you," he looked at his son in a rare moment of tenderness, but Marinette was not prepared for his next words. "A protector...determined to guard over their lowly lives, and they... killed her for it."

Adrien visibly started, a chill running through his body as he tried to process this piece of information. Marinette yearned to go to him, but stayed back. As shaken as Adrien was, he didn't move away, didn't release the pressure, and didn't interrupt.

"Your mother," Gabriel emphasized in his failing voice. "It's all for Adeline. If the world were different, if métamorphes were respected as the superior evolution we truly are, she would still be alive. She would still be here. With us."

Gabriel lifted a hand and rested it where Adrien's still applied pressure to his abdomen and the blonde boy turned to look into his father's eyes with such sadness and longing Marinette felt it deep within her own soul.

"We have to do it for her, Adrien. No métamorphe should die just for being who they are."

Marinette watched as Adrien looked at his father, his whole world spiralling with the onslaught of new information as he held his father's life just beneath his hands, and she could see him vacillating. As much as she didn't want to, she understood. She couldn't imagine the pain of losing a parent, and then discovering the reason to be filled with such hatred. Combine that with the bearer of this news bring a dying father who had manipulated you for your entire life, and Marinette was sure she'd hesitate too. But watching Adrien now, she started to truly fear. This was the exact reason she hadn't wanted him to come back. His father still had too much of a hold over him, and she knew denying him, especially now as he pleaded with his dying breath, would rip Adrien apart. He deserved more than that. He'd suffered enough already.

"Please, son," Gabriel spoke again. "Finish what I couldn't. For her."

Adrien shut his eyes, squeezing them against the decisions he was weighing, before speaking.

"You're right," he said finally. "métamorphes shouldn't live in fear or in hiding." His father smiled but Adrien was looking past his father and up to her.

"Adrien…" she whispered, but he smiled softly at her and she stopped, letting him finish. This was still his moment.

"But you and Nathalie are both wrong about the how. Mass genocide or subjugation of the statiques just dooms history to repeat itself. And you know what?" He looked sadly down at his father. "Mom wouldn't have wanted it. She was a protector. Like me. Like us," he amended, looking up at her as she smiled down at him warmly.

"I'm sorry for the hate you've carried all these years, Papa. But I will not take it from you. It ends now, and so does your control over your army. Release them. You know this is not what Mom wouldn't have wanted."

Gabriel started back up at Adrien, disbelief apparent in his features for all but a moment before the cold fury Marinette had come to know well took hold of his expression once more.

"No."

His singular statement, quiet but final, hung heavy in the air between father and son and Adrien just hung his head in resignation. Leaning down, he placed a kiss on his father's forehead.

"Okay."

His whispered acceptance of his father's fate echoed through the room for a moment. The only sound. The calm before the storm.

Then the doors opened, and the silence stopped. They were no longer alone.