Adrien sat in his car in the jail parking lot. He had his fingers tangled in his lap and his thoughts were spinning. Marinette had wanted to come and show his father their new daughter, but he had insisted that they stayed home. He wanted to do this alone. Had to do this alone.
Adrien took a deep breath and stepped out of the car. He shut the car door and pocketed his keys. The steps to the front of the place felt like it took forever. His footsteps felt heavy and his heart sped up. He threw open the door with a shaking hand and stepped inside.
"I'm here to see my father, Gabriel Agreste." His words got stuck in his throat and he choked slightly on them.
The officer at the front looked at him with wide eyes and nodded, before letting him in and through to the room where people met inmates.
Adrien rubbed the back of his neck nervously and was lead to a table. He sat there and looked around the room at all of the other people meeting with family and various loved ones. Fathers meeting their kids for the first time, women meeting up with their husbands, family spending birthdays together… It was like a rare moment of happiness around him. Yet, there he sat about to speak about the worse thing he could think of. He wanted answers. He was filled with questions.
Adrien peered up when he heard someone sit in front of him. His father's face was tired and he appeared to have a black eye.
"What-" He wanted to ask what happened to him, but stopped short and pressed his fingers to his lips. He wasn't sure why he cared, really.
"Someone punched me for what I did to you. I know you're not really asking, but I can tell you're thinking it." Gabriel's voice was hoarse.
Adrien nodded and held his arms around himself and looked down and away. His words escaped him.
"I also know, that you're probably here to ask about the letter from your mother." Gabriel sighed and leaned back.
"Not exactly." Adrien finally got the words out and ran a hand through his hair.
"What is it then?" Gabriel raised an eyebrow at him.
"I opened the Tibet brochure that was in the- the safe…" Adrien swallowed hard and looked his father in the eyes.
Gabriel sighed and took his glasses off to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I thought you might find that, but I was hoping you wouldn't."
Adrien slammed his palm down on the table. "Why didn't you tell me?! Why did you hide it?! Why did you make me believe she'd come back some day?! Why did she make me believe she was going to come back in that letter?! Why didn't she come back?" His voice went from being strong and powerful to cracking and broken. Adrien grabbed the front of his hair with his elbows on the table between them and his shoulders sunk.
"Adrien-" Gabriel spoke with thought. He didn't know whether he should sugar coat it or just tell him the truth. Gabriel had lied to his son for years, but he didn't know if he could anymore. He sighed and leaned forward onto the table with his fingers intertwined. "Do you want the sugar coated story or the truth? Although, I know which one you prefer."
"The truth." Adrien looked up with puffy eyes and a hopeless expression.
Gabriel sighed and his voice got quiet. "I'm Hawkmoth. When we were in Tibet, we stumbled upon two miraculouses. They're these wearable objects that give you powers…." He spun his hand in the air and rolled his eyes, as he explained it, but he really didn't have to because Adrien knew what they were.
Adrien spun the silver ring around his right ring finger and his world spun. "I'm s-sorry. Y-ou're who?"
"The villain. The one that releases and causes the akumas that get turned into beautiful white butterflies." Gabriel explained like it was a natural fact. "Your mother had the peacock miraculous."
Adrien fell back into his chair, dumbfounded. His heart hurt deeper than before and he was left questioning whether he was good or not. Whether he could be like his father and created an army of people that felt horrible pain from something going painfully wrong in their lives.
"She couldn't do it anymore. She loved being peacock. She loved the freedom it gave her from my, our, life. Adelina was beautiful normally, but as Peacock? She shined." Gabriel smiled at the memory. "But one day, during a battle…"
"No. NO!" Adrien pushed his chair back and stood up suddenly slamming his hands on the tabletop, causing everyone to turn in their direction. Adrien glared at them and they instantly turned back to what they were doing. "Don't say it."
"Your mother thought she could fight this man that was harassing this woman in a alleyway. She thought she could save her. Stop the man from taking advantage of her." Gabriel's voice cracked at the memory. "I tried to hold her back. Tried to keep her from going, but she got out of my grasp on her wrist. She told me 'I have to do this. I'll never forgive myself if I don't try.' And so my grip loosened and she was gone."
Adrien's eyes pooled with tears and they slowly fell down his cheeks and his bottom lip quivered. It all sounded too familiar. Too similar to him and Ladybug. How he was always react now, think later and she would always stop him.
"She was doing good. She was on top in the fight, but then a second guy came out and within moments your mother was on the ground." Gabriel didn't want to go back to that memory. Didn't want to think about it. It was the one memory that haunted him for years.
Rain cascaded down around Hawkmoth and Peacock. They heard a woman scream and a man's deep voice coaxing her.
"Did you hear that, Hawk?" Peacock looked at him with worried green eyes. "We gotta find her."
"It's not safe." Hawkmoth tried to pull her to reason, but the screams were getting muffled and Peacock's heart was racing.
She ran forward and Hawkmoth's hand reached out and caught her wrist. "No, it's not safe. Think before you fly."
"I have to do this. I'll never forgive myself if I don't try." She peered at him with loving eyes and he let go.
Peacock smiled at him and jumped down into the alley where they had heard the commotion.
"Hey! Let her go!" Peacock pulled out her fans and swung them around her body.
"Who are you?!" The man had the woman pressed against the wall with her dress hiked up.
"Someone you wish you hadn't met." Peacock smirked and swirled her fans around, slicing into him with force.
The man jumped off of the woman and ran off.
"Merci, Madame Peacock." The woman smiled with tired eyes, but they widened when they spotted a second man behind the superhero.
By the time Peacock turned around it was too late. By the time Hawkmoth had a chance to back up his wife. It was too late. She found herself lying on the floor, blood pooling around her, and the last words that fell from her lips were…
"Tell Adrien, I'm sorry. Tell him I love him. Tell him I wish I would have stayed." Gabriel spoke her words sullenly and swallowed hard. "Even in her last moments, all she could think of was you."
Adrien's eyes burned from the tears that wouldn't stop. His bottom lip was read and indented from his teeth worrying it and his nails had bit into his left upper arm from holding it to himself so tightly.
"I couldn't tell you. I wanted you to believe that she had just simply walked out. I wanted to instill hope of her coming home. If not for you then for me. Some false hope that she hadn't died. I removed her miraculous, before calling the police."
Adrien couldn't think straight. He suddenly wished that he had picked the sugar coated story. The one that would make him feel better.
"I began to make akumas and I began to send them out to retrieve the miraculouses of creation and destruction. I had heard that if you happen to control both then you get a wish. Any wish you want and it would come true. I wanted to wish for my wife back, for your mother back." Hawkmoth raked his medium length hair with his hand. "So, I went on this journey. A journey to bring your mother back, but then this happened. Everytime I looked at you, I saw her. I saw so much of her in you. I see so much of her in you. It hurt and it still hurts."
Adrien nodded and peered at his father. "You do know what happens when you get that wish, don't you?"
Gabriel nodded, but then suddenly shot him a look. "How do you know about that?"
"Someone told me. I happen to be really good friends with people better than you." Adrien glared at his father with hatred. "You lose something of equal or greater value. If you got mother back? You would have killed me. And you don't even care, do you?"
Gabriel sighed and peered at the table. He said nothing and Adrien shook his head.
"Hm." Adrien made a short chuckle and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I should have known."
Gabriel went to say something and reached his hand out, but Adrien was standing up from the table and beginning to walk away within seconds.
Adrien peered over his shoulder with a lifeless expression and he gripped his hands into fists at his hips. "Emma was born the other day. You have a granddaughter." With that he walked out of the room with his father's voice calling out to him, but he kept walking with one foot in front of the other, until he got to his car.
He sat in the driver seat and slammed the door. His fists pounded on the steering wheel and he screamed. He gripped the front of his hair and rested his elbows on the top of the steering wheel and sobbed. Sadness and anger filled him and he was confused about how he should feel. Which emotion should he feel more? He tried to calm down, so that he could drive home, safely.