Standing in front of the window of his hotel room, Adrien looks quietly at the sleeping city that spread out at his feet. His eyes linger on the headlights of passing vehicles, on the dark clouds he guesses in the night sky, on the massive outlines of the buildings around.
Adrien runs his fingers mechanically through his blond hair, then sighs.
Two days.
It has only been two days since he returned to Paris after almost three years of absence.
The young man is still struggling to find his marks, divided between the impression of having left only yesterday and that of having disappeared from the capital for an eternity. Here, nothing seems to have changed. The buildings, the food, the streets he knew so well that he could trace them by heart... Everything remained almost identical to his memories. From where he is, Adrien can even see the slender silhouette of the Eiffel Tower, which reminds him that he is back home.
Yet the young man feels oddly disconnected from reality, as if he were now a stranger in this city that saw him grow up. Over time, this painful feeling will certainly fade away. But in the meantime, Adrien finds himself in a gloomy mood which he would have gladly done without.
In absolute terms, things could have been much worse.
Adrien dreaded this moment from when he made his decision to return to his hometown. Coming back to Paris was like jumping into the void with your eyes closed. Like diving into deep black water, without knowing if you are going to float or drown permanently. The young man was afraid of exploding with rage, with sorrow, of sinking again at the bottom of this ocean of despair which made him flee to the other side of the Atlantic.
He feared violent feelings.
Instead, he only feels a sweet, insidious melancholy, which wraps around him like mist and gently cuts him off from the rest of the world.
Somewhere in the room, his phone rings.
Probably Nino, or Chloé, or both.
His two friends keep checking up since he set foot in France. Every hour or so, they call him, send him a message, try to find out if he's okay. At another time, Adrien might have laughed at this extra attention, but he must admit that he has given his friends good reasons to worry about him in recent years.
Adrien lets out another sigh and his gaze becomes cloudy as he recalls the moment when his life turned upside down. This fateful day is engraved in his memory like a mark made with a hot iron.
He remembers everything.
The smallest seconds, the tiniest details.
Absolutely everything.
As in a bad dream, he can still see Hawkmoth crashing down heavily to the ground after the two heroes have given him a final attack. He vividly remembers the relief he felt, the joy and pride that immediately overwhelmed him at the thought that he and Ladybug had finally succeeded in carrying out their mission.
And this moment. THE moment when everything changed.
He visualizes the scene as well as if the events were happening before his eyes again.
Ladybug approaching Hawkmoth. Ladybug who extends a trembling hand towards him and snatches his miraculous. Then the costume of the enemy of Paris which vanished in a cloud of purple sparks, revealing the horribly familiar features of Gabriel Agreste.
His own father.
When Adrien discovered the identity of Hawkmoth, the shock was incredibly violent. Devastating.
The young man remembers with frightening precision the horror and incomprehension that immediately take possession of him. The feeling of having his heart torn, the terrifying sensation of suffocation that seized him as surely as if he had been thrown into an ocean of icy water. And as if he was going to drown, his first instinct was to fight back. To float. To survive.
To stay here, to contemplate the fainted face of his father, was to continue to sink slowly into the depths of the nightmare into which he had just fallen with unspeakable brutality.
So Adrien fled.
The place of the confrontation, first of all.
Then Paris and France.
In two days, his decision was made.
After the final fight between him and his opponent, Adrien has spent endless hours alone locked in his room, watching his life irreparably shatter.
Hawkmoth. His father was none other than Hawkmoth.
Although he saw it with his own eyes, Adrien was slow to accept the reality. To admit that his sworn enemy was none other than the man to whom he had until then had boundless affection, and that he sent his own father to prison for the next few years to come.
Sacrificing in passing this family happiness to which he longed so much.
After so many years of protecting the people of Paris, the hero's reward has been terribly cruel. After the initial shock, Adrien has rebelled against so much injustice. He has screamed in rage, has cried all the tears of his body, has devastated his father's office in search of the tiniest bit of explanation.
Then, drunk with fatigue and sorrow, he has collapsed again on his bed. In his now-deserted mansion, he has lay there for hours on end, brooding more and more sinister thoughts while listening to the shrill ring of his phone ringing incessantly. Driven despair, he has conscientiously ignored the pleas of journalists, the worried appeals from his friends, and Plagg's vain attempts at comfort. His world was falling apart in front of him, and no one could do anything about it.
And quickly, Adrien has realized that he could hardly hold on for very long.
We had to go. Go as far as possible. Go away from Paris, from his father, from this stifling hell that was becoming his daily life.
It had become a matter of survival.
Heartbroken, Adrien has returned his miraculous to Master Fu, then he has flown to the other side of the Atlantic. There, he could make a new start and forget his past, his hopes, and his father.
He could breathe freely, finally.
But in the United States, the return to reality has been harsh. Adrien might have fled thousands of miles, his thoughts never let go of him for a single moment. They have tormented him endlessly, inhabiting his nights with nightmares, drowning his days under storms of dark emotions. Even today, Adrien painfully remembers that horrible feeling of being trapped in a raging sea and of being relentlessly lost in it.
The feeling of suffocating. Of drowning in the depths of his own despair, over and over again.
His father is Hawkmoth and this discovery has dug a gaping hole in his heart.
The days passed, and Adrien has continued to sink, deeper and deeper.
Thousands of times he has relived the moment he found out the truth about his father. And just as many times, the memory had only exacerbated the feelings of betrayal and abandonment that exhausted him a little more every day.
The reality was too harsh.
And, one day, Adrien has cut himself off from the world. No longer responding to his friends, his acquaintances, no one.
Exhausted from fighting against these thoughts that dragged him to the bottom, he finally has let go. For days, he has stayed locked in his hotel room, sometimes not even bothering to open the shutters to enjoy the sunlight.
After all, what's the point of worrying about the outside world when your universe collapses around you?
He has thought of his father over and over again. Of how this man whose love he has always sought has tried to destroy him countless times. With sickly doggedness, he has remembered every fight, every hateful word uttered by Hawkmoth. And each of the times he almost died on the battlefield.
These dangerous dives into his memories have left him nauseous and stunned with grief. Thinking of his father hurt, so bad that he felt like his rib cage was being cut open to rip his heart out. But every time he has tried to hold on to something else, to distract his mind, his brain has relentlessly pulled him back to cruel reality.
He is the son of Hawkmoth, and he nearly died dozens of times by the hand of his own father.
The pain was such that Adrien thought he was going crazy. Sometimes, when he woke up in the morning, he forgot for a few happy seconds that he was no longer in Paris and that he had lost the only family he had left. Then memories flooded in relentlessly, crushing him with new waves of despair.
Although the very origin of the storm that Adrien was going through, Gabriel Agreste has not been the only one to cloud the young man's thoughts. Many times, his mind has also tried to venture towards Ladybug. Towards his extraordinary teammate and love of his life.
And almost every time, Adrien has tried with almost desperate determination to push his thoughts away from her. It was too early. Too hard. Remembering his partner was at least just as heart-breaking for him as thinking about his father, albeit for totally different reasons. Unlike his father, Ladybug never betrayed his trust.
No.
On the contrary, it was he who failed her.
Adrien has many regrets. That of not having understood the infernal spiral in which his father was engulfed. That of having put in prison this man who meant so much to him. That of being still today torn between hatred for the one who made his life a hell and the love that he bore to him in vain for so many years.
But if these have finally faded over time, that of having abandoned Ladybug remains as painful as a raw wound.
During these dark hours spent locked in his room, the young man has felt the guilt gnawing at him to the depths of these bones while thinking of his teammate. He has blamed himself for leaving Ladybug without even saying a word to her. For being the son of their worst enemy and not to have had the courage to confess to her. For running away from her, as he did for everyone else when she should have been his lifeline.
He should have gone to her. Seek her help, her support. With her, maybe things would have been easier.
But he was scared. He was ashamed.
Traumatized by his father's betrayal, he has refused to let his Lady see him in such a state of weakness. He was lost. Horrified. Terrorized. And worst of all, in a lack of lucidity that he blames himself every day since, he has for a moment questioned the confidence he had in her. If Ladybug had had to reject him because of his affiliation with Hawkmoth, Adrien is certain that he would never be able to recover.
However, she would never have pushed him away, it's obvious. Their friendship was way too strong for that.
But Adrien did not find the strength to stay in Paris, and he has preferred to stay drowned in his grief rather than confide in Ladybug.
He has abandoned her. He has betrayed her.
Somehow, he didn't do better than his father.
Day by day, Adrien got stuck more and more deeply in the despair that had become his daily companion.
Sleeping had become torture. Thinking was a torment.
Even today, Adrien cannot hold back a shudder of horror remembering this impression of inevitably sinking, without knowing how to one day regain the surface. Over time, guilt, horror, grief have accumulated, weighing down on his chest. To the point of suffocating him. Of drowning him. Some days the young man even felt so heavy that he didn't have the strength to get up from his bed.
Then he let himself be drawn into the depths, until he lost his breath and his sanity.
Adrien still does not know how long he stayed prostrate in his room, paralyzed with despair and praying for his suffering to end.
On the other hand, he vividly remembers the sharp knocks on his door, and the surprise that has left him standing stock-still when he saw the familiar faces of Nino and Chloé. Consumed with anxiety, his two friends had ended up crossing the Atlantic in their turn to come and meet him.
To talk to him. To help him.
To understand.
As soon as Adrien has opened the door, Nino has fiercely hugged him, screaming his relief. Obviously upset with her childhood friend after so many agonizing days of silence, Chloé has broken down in tears the moment she saw him, before grabbing him by the collar to shake him with all her might while calling him a complete idiot.
After this slight moment of crisis, Chloé has quickly regained her composure. She has arbitrarily installed Nino in one of the rooms of the suite occupied by Adrien, while she herself has reserved accommodation on the same floor as the two young men.
Then the three friends have spoken.
A long time. A very long time.
At first, Adrien was particularly reluctant to open up. Of course, he suspected that he needed help. But a part of him still refused to accept the unconditional support of his loved ones. Out of shame? Out of pride? Out of fear of having to revive his wounds, like someone who would reopen a wound in order to heal it better afterwards? He didn't know, but he has stubbornly rejected any attempt to speak of his father for a long time.
It was his problem. Only his problem.
Then, by dint of persevering, his friends gradually have broken his defences. They have insisted, hour after hour, day after day, too worried for Adrien to leave him in such a state without doing anything. And, after a while, the young man finally has given in.
He has agreed to speak. About his father. About the betrayal, the horror, the infernal spiral that has made him relentlessly sink since the day he discovered the identity of Hawkmoth.
And he remembers with perfect precision the moment he has decided to confide a little more.
That day, the three friends were sitting on Adrien's bed, speaking once again of the moment when Gabriel Agreste's double life had come to light.
"I do not even imagine how hard it was to see on TV that your own father is Hawkmoth", has said Chloé, after long hours of heated dialogue. "But know that we-"
"I didn't see it TV", has cut Adrien in a tired voice, while pressing his fists against his eyelids. "I saw it in person. I was there. I even helped stop him. "
Adrien will probably always remember the shocked expression on Chloé's face the moment those words slipped from his lips, and the incredulous look Nino has given him. Turning his eyes to the window, he has let out a bitter laugh.
"Chat Noir", he has blurted out. "I was Chat Noir. "
From that moment on, it was as if a dam had given way somewhere in the young man's brain.
Without the slightest restraint, Adrien has spoken of Ladybug, of Hawkmoth - of his father. Of how the man whose approval he sought so much for was in reality the one who was bent on trying to destroy him. Of the pain he felt at having been betrayed this way. How, too stunned with grief to have the strength to stay in Paris, he has given up his role as hero and his precious teammate.
And slowly, his friends have taken the full measure of the ordeal that Adrien was going through.
For days and weeks, Nino and Chloé have kept his head above water, helping him whenever he threatened to sink again. They have listened to him for hours when the urge to confide was so strong - so vital - that the words escaped Adrien's lips without him being able to hold them back. When the pain was so big that the young man was only a shadow of himself, they have hugged him and comforted him by promising him a better tomorrow.
With them, Adrien has tried to regain a taste for life.
He has left his room again, has tried to resume a normal rhythm of life. At the instigation of his friends, he has enrolled in physics courses in order to prepare for a future engineering degree. To think about the future rather than being suffocated by his past.
He has bought dozens of books and video games to distract himself when his thoughts got too dark, too uncontrollable. Not in order to escape reality, but just to give himself time to channel his mind before taking control of the situation.
And, little by little, he has began to regain a foothold.
When, finally, Chloé and Nino have had to return to France, they have made Adrien promise never to leave them more than a few days without news and to call them whenever he felt the need. The young man has complied with these conditions without even trying to argue, moved beyond words by the dedication his friends had shown and more grateful that he would ever manage to tell them. Then, after heart-breaking goodbyes, he has let Chloé and Nino go back to their homeland.
In the months that followed, Adrien has experienced new difficult times. Anxiety attacks that left him breathless, nightmares of unspeakable horror, consuming guilt and a feeling of loneliness even greater. Each time, true to his promise, Adrien has warned his friends. And each time, he has managed to recover from this umpteenth ordeal.
Then, over time, Adrien has started to get better.
The nightmares have faded away, the feeling of being trapped at the bottom of an ocean of despair has reduced. Adrien has begun to slowly rise to the surface, to breathe again. Then, one day, he has realized that he missed Paris. A little, first. A lot, then. His homesickness only grew and it quickly became impossible for her to deny the obvious.
It was time for him to go home.
And now, after months preparing for his return, here he is back in his hometown.