The scream of Alya and Nino must certainly have been heard throughout the neighborhood. Disconcerted looks turned to them, curious to understand what was going on.
"WHAT?" They exclaimed in a perfect ensemble.
"Wait wait wait!" Alya cried, raising her hand in a peremptory gesture. "You announced Hawkmoth's arrest fifty-seven days ago. That means you've been living together for almost TWO MONTHS and I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT IT? "
Marinette laughed at the stunned expression of her friends, while Adrien cracked a wide smile worthy of Chat Noir's greatest days.
"I must say we did our best to be discreet," he replied in a falsely casual tone, hand outstretched in front of him to pretend to admire his fingernails. "No one knows about it except our parents. "
"We explained the situation to mine and Adrien's father was surprisingly… accommodating," Marinette summed up briefly.
"I think he's trying to make amends, in his own way," Adrien conceded. "Well, it's not like he really has a choice either, given what we've got on him," he corrected, waving his hand in the air. "But let's say he let us do it without too much difficulty. "
"We have a little studio at the back of the bakery," Marinette continued. "That way, Adrien has his own bedroom, his own bathroom, and even a small kitchen area…"
"… Which serves no purpose other than to store indecent amounts of Camembert," Adrien completed with a mischievous smile, simultaneously triggering puzzled glances from his friends and a laughing chuckle from Marinette. "But I'm really only there to wash and sleep. "
"The rest of the time, he lives with my parents and me," Marinette concludes.
Her mouth gaping, Alya stared at her two friends.
Her brain was clearly still struggling to accept that no, she was not dreaming and that yes, her two closest friends - her two heroes - had just told her that they lived together with as much phlegm as if they were talking about the weather for the next day.
"Well, this is temporary," Adrien said, resting his chin in the palm of his hand. "As soon as my mother has regained enough strength, we will take an apartment to live there together. "
The look Alya cast on him could clearly be called dumbfounded. As for Nino, he probably wouldn't have looked more flabbergasted if he'd been hit hard on the head.
Their minds were still assimilating the information that already, stunned clamours were escaping from their mouths.
"… Your MOTHER ?"
"She's ALIVE ?"
"Shhh!" Adrien prompted them immediately.
"Adrien Agreste," Alya hissed angrily through her teeth. "You can't tell us quietly 'oh, by the way, my mom is alive', and hope we stay calm!"
Adrien chuckled at his friend's reaction.
"You're right," he conceded. "So yeah, my mom is alive," he continued, ignoring the "of course I'm right" Alya mumbled. "It's a long story, but in short, she had fallen into a sort of magical coma because of the Peacock miraculous. It was to try to revive her that my father sought to get our miraculouses. Bringing them together would have allowed him to wish what he wanted. "
In Alya's eyes, surprise had given way to a curious mixture of curiosity and apprehension. It was as if she wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer to the questions she was asking herself while still burning to know more.
"And that wish…" she asked in a hesitant voice. "Did you… did you do it?" "
"Absolutely not," Adrien retorted, brushing the space in front of him with the back of his hand, indisputably indicating that he would never have stooped so low. "There is an ancient order that has been in charge of the miraculouses for centuries. The Guardians. They are the ones who intervened to heal my mother. "
"Apparently, this was not the first time they had dealt with problems caused by a faulty miraculous," Marinette intervened. "I don't know how they did it exactly, but it didn't take long for them to wake Adrien's mother. "
Puzzled, Nino mechanically readjusted his cap on the top of his head.
"So everything your father did could have been avoided by simply contacting these 'Guardians'?" He asked.
Marinette and Adrien exchanged a thoughtful look.
It was a question they had asked themselves before, and they weren't sure they could answer it.
"Honestly, I don't really know," the young man finally admitted, passing his hand mechanically on the back of his head, bristling a few blond locks in the process. "The Temple of the Guardians and its occupants were lost a long time ago in a accident, and we brought them back somewhat by chance by restoring the damage caused by one of my father's supervillains. Before that, the only Guardian we were in contact with hadn't finished his training, so I'm not sure he would have known what to do for my mother. "
"He might have figured out what to do, but maybe not," Marinette added with a wary pout. "We'll never know. "
Alya and Nino nodded silently, processing this new mass of information.
"So where is your mother now?" Nino finally asked, turning to his best friend. "At the Dupain-Cheng's, with you?"
"No," Adrien replied, shaking his head. "She's still a little weak after all this time in a coma. She is resting in a private clinic, run by an acquaintance of Marianne - the person we mentioned earlier, the one who has already helped us with the money and the psychologist".
"When I said she had a lot of influence..." Marinette pointed out, nodding knowingly.
"Yes," Adrien confirmed. "My mother was transferred there as soon as the Guardians were able to revive her. They take good care of her. And it is a... discreet place. They don't ask us questions. It's better, given the circumstances. "
"So does your mother know about your father?" Nino asked timidly.
"She knows about everything," Adrien replied flatly.
Though silenced, the evidence floated in the air.
My mom knows about everything.
About Hawkmoth.
About Chat Noir.
About everything my father did.
"And… what does she think of that?" Alya asked, curious.
"She's mad at my father," Adrien said without hesitation. "Very, very mad. In the end, I think that's the worst punishment he could have had," he added, gently shaking his head. "He sacrificed everything to bring back the love of his life and now that she is finally here, she's terribly angry with him. "
The feeling of waste in his voice was palpable.
"He had to think about it before he became a supervillain," Nino muttered mechanically, unwittingly bringing up a faint smile on his friend's features.
Nino's low esteem for Gabriel Agreste had visibly ended completely disappearing after these revelations.
"She was already not happy that he had used his powers to terrorize Paris," Adrien confirmed. "But he also put me in danger and that, that's too much. I'm not even talking about the fact that I'm Chat Noir. For that, he could not know - "
"- although that does not excuse anything," Marinette intervened fiercely.
"We agree," Adrien growled, a dangerous glint in his eyes.
The protective hand he tightened around Marinette's fingers left little doubt as to the precise point for which his father would struggle the most to obtain his forgiveness - if he ever did. After all, Chat Noir was known to cherish his Lady more than his own existence. Impossible for anyone to deliberately attack her without suffering his righteous anger.
"But anyway," the young man continued after clearing his throat. "I'm not specifically talking about Chat Noir. My father put Adrien in danger. He akumatized people in my neighbourhood, in my school or in my classroom. He even picked some of his victims from those present at events he knew I was attending. He knew my schedule perfectly well. He couldn't not know."
Alya's pursed mouth betrayed all the contempt she felt for Gabriel Agreste's actions, and her gaze burning with anger suggested that the famous designer might consider himself happy not to be in front of her at this precise moment.
"I understand that your mother is angry," she said brutally. "If I were her, I would also have resented your father."
"So are your parents going to break up? " Nino asked with a lack of tact that caused him to have his foot crushed by Alya under the table and to give a yelp of pain in return.
Adrien and Marinette gave their friend a startled look before the young man answered.
"I… to be honest, I don't really know," he confessed, spreading his hands in front of him, helplessly. "It's complicated. She still loves him, but she can't quite forgive him for what he has done. He went too far. And can you imagine the shock she might have felt when she woke up?" He continued in a distraught voice. "She discovered that the man she loved was a supervillain, that he had almost killed her son on several occasions, that he had terrorized Paris for years, that she had remained in a coma for those same years… That's a lot to take. I know she and my dad spoke to each other a few times, but I guess it will take time. And it will also depend on me. "
"On you? What do you mean?" asked Alya.
"Well, my mother doesn't want to impose anything on me," Adrien explained, mechanically tapping the table with his fingertips. "She told me that whatever happened between her and my father, she wouldn't force me to bring him back into my life if I wasn't ready. "
"Would you want it?" Alya insisted, raising a questioning eyebrow. "To let your father be part of your life again?" "
Adrien remained silent for a moment.
Gazing into the distance, he waited without saying a word, as if hoping that the answers to his most existential questions would magically appear before his eyes. Finally, after a handful of seconds, he snapped out of his torpor and gently shook his head.
"I don't know," he confessed with a faint apologetic smile. "I'll see. For the moment it is still too early, too much has happened," he added, mechanically turning his ring around his finger.
He paused for a moment, his eyes glued on this precious jewel which had both offered and cost him so much, before looking back to his friends.
"At least he's trying to make an effort," he admitted with a shrug. "Well, I suppose?" He corrected himself immediately. "He doesn't really have any reason to oppose us anymore, but it's hard to be sure of his motives since we blackmail him into obeying our demands... Anyway, I think he could make things more difficult if he wanted to. "
"I agree," Marinette added. "We asked him a lot of things. Giving money, letting you leave his home, leaving you alone, cutting ties with Nathalie, seeing a psychologist…" She listed, raising a new finger each time. "He could easily have dragged all this out under one pretext or another, without going so far as to push us to report him to the police. Still, he did everything in record time. "
"Exactly," Adrien confirmed. "He even makes sure he's available if I ever need to speak to him - although I'd rather avoid having to do so for now," he clarified, grimacing. "But is he really sincere? Or is he manipulating us into believing he has changed? I don't know," he sighed defeatedly. "You can't really say he's trustworthy. "
"You can say that," Marinette muttered.
A weak smile of encouragement on his lips, Nino put a compassionate hand on his best friend's shoulder.
"At least if he leaves you alone, that's a good thing," he told her in a splendid burst of optimism.
"Yes," Adrien approved fervently. "Whether he's sincere or not, he... he gives me time. Space. He's not trying to come back to my life. He even spontaneously paid a pension to Marinette's parents to help them take care of me. "
An amused chuckle escaped the young man's lips.
"I don't know how much he thinks I cost to raise, but he pays them way too much money. Tom and Sabine offer to give me the surplus each time. I don't want it, so they put it on an account they opened for me. They tell me that it can always be useful to me later, to help me pay for my education or my first rents. "
"They're not wrong," Alya agreed, while Nino nodded vigorously. "It can be helpful. "
While Marinette gratified Adrien with a look I-told-you mixed with you-see-that-I-was-right, the young man broke into a slight smile. But almost immediately his face darkened again.
"Even if my father tries hard, that doesn't mean I'll forgive him one day," he told his audience. "I don't know if I can do it. I... I would like to. I would really like to be able to. But… it's complicated," he sighed, running a weary hand over his face. "On the one hand, I always wanted us to be closer. Now that my mom is back and that he seems determined to change, I figure it might be possible. My family could become what I always dreamed of. But on the other hand, I… I can't forget what he did. Every time I see him or talk to him, I think back to Hawkmoth and to what he was ready to do to get hold of our miraculous. "
Eyes a little too bright, Adrien pinched his lower lip between his teeth to contain his emotion.
"In fact, I love him and I hate him at the same time. So I don't know. It will take time," he concludes in a dejected tone.
A long silence followed this statement.
Marinette kept her eyes on Adrien, Adrien admired his ring with a falsely casual expression, and Alya and Nino tried again and again to come to terms with the enormity of all the revelations their friends had just made.
Finally, after several interminable minutes, it was Alya who spoke again.
"I still can't believe you live together," she said bluntly, resolutely changing the subject.
A general feeling of relief seized the four teenagers.
Enough about Gabriel and his terrible actions.
It was high time to make room for more lightness.
"And yet it is," replied Adrien with a grateful smile.
Elbow on the table and chin resting in the palm of her palm, Alya let out a hum of approval. She was staring at Marinette and Adrien with a piercing, incisive gaze, as if she was trying to read more juicy news on their faces that they could have hidden from her.
"So you two… are you dating?" She asked in a falsely innocent tone, betrayed by her eyes sparkling with mischief and her voice vibrating with curiosity.
"No," Adrien replied flatly. "Really," he insisted in front of the incredulous expressions of his friends. "It's not that we don't want to, I… Marinette knows how I feel about her," he continued, glancing at his teammate with a look of adoration, to which Marinette replied with a solar smile.
"… And Adrien knows how I feel about him," she completed, placing her hand tenderly on his.
On Nino and Alya's faces, scepticism had given way to frank perplexity.
"But then… why?" Alya asked, confused.
"Tom and Sabine prefer we avoid dating as long as I still live with them - with Marinette, especially," Adrien summed up briefly. "It will wait. "
Alya slumped into her seat and let out a disappointed sigh.
Clearly, her friends' response was not what she hoped for.
"So there is nothing going on between you? Not even a little kiss every now and then?" She teased them anyway.
"As long as we live together, we promised my parents that there would be no such thing under their roof," retorted her best friend immediately.
A small smirk stretched Adrien's lips.
"On their roof, on the other hand..."
"Kitty!" Marinette said indignantly in a burst of laughter, while giving her companion an affectionate pat on the forearm.
Alya let out an ecstatic gasp.
"Marinette Dupain-Cheng! Are they telling me that you are kissing Adrien - Chat Noir - on the roof of your bakery?"
"I won't deny or confirm anything," Marinette retorted, sticking out her tongue mischievously, while Adrien tilted his head back to burst in laughter.
But official or not, their intertwined fingers and the loving looks they exchanged left no doubt about to the real nature of their relationship.
For now, Alya was not asking for more.