Hey everyone! Sorry it's been so long since I've updated. Holidays happened, but before that my hard drive died and I lost all of my files (since I was silly and didn't back them up on the cloud. xD ) So now, I've mostly recovered but there will still be delays on Noir and Rehabilitation, so consider those on hiatus for now. Additionally, I love season two so far. Season one was fun, but two has so much more depth for the characters so far. I hope they can keep it going. Anyway, thanks for sticking around. I hope you all enjoy this chapter.

Chapter 14: Curiosity Killed the Chat

Adrien discovers Hawkmoth's secret chamber.

It had been by complete accident. Adrien had been mulling over the idea of asking his father for permission to take part in an off campus field trip. He had been standing just outside his father's office, debating what to say and how to present his case. Gabriel Agreste had proven to be unsupportive of extracurricular activities that weren't already part of his son's repertoire, and field trips were the worst offender of them all. That's why Adrien continued to pace behind the slightly ajar door to the office when he heard a strange 'click'. He told himself he shouldn't snoop. After all, it was none of his business. But he let curiosity get the better of him, peeking into the space between the double doors to find Gabriel pressing his fingers against the portrait of Mrs. Agreste in an peculiar fashion. A portion of the floor in front of the painting then opened up to reveal a circular hole to which a platform rose up to occupy. Gabriel stepped onto the platform to then be sucked into the depths of the floor to who knows where.

Adrien watched as the hole closed again after Gabriel's decent, restoring the floor to a plain surface with nothing unusual about it. Except there was something unusual about it, and Adrien couldn't help but wonder where the secret passage led to. And so the blonde haired boy thought about his discovery throughout the remainder of the evening. Thoroughly distracted through the entirety of his solitary dinner, Adrien couldn't shake the scene that had played out before him in the previous hours. Plagg wasn't the least bit helpful either. The kwami simply fed his curiosity, musing about the potential contents hidden therein, saying it would be easy to sneak into at night when his father was asleep. The teen disregarded him however with a shake of his head saying that if his father had a secret, it was probably kept that way for a reason and they had no business poking their noses into it. So he dismissed himself and got into bed at the usual time, pulled up the covers, and shut his eyes.

But he couldn't sleep.

The curiosity within him had become all but insatiable causing his to toss and turn relentlessly. The only way to rid himself of his nagging thoughts was to give into the troublemaking cat kwami's pleads and incessant whining and actually go check it out. So they did. Adrien quietly creeped out of his his room after a couple of hours had passed, closing the door gently behind him before tiptoeing silently down the hall. As he'd assumed and much to his relief, not a soul was about the dark, spacious mansion. The staff had gone home for the night, and the door to his father's room was shut indicating he had retired for the night as well. Adrien stealthily snuck into the office finding the light of the moon to be just bright enough to illuminate the painting. Playing the memory back through his mind, Adrien copied the position his father's fingers had been in with his own and pressed, causing a small click to resonate through the otherwise unoccupied room.

As before, a small, dark, circular space opened up and a platform rose to greet him. Plagg and Adrien stared at the small opening for a moment and Adrien's stomach churned excitedly. The black kwami stared up at him momentarily before hissing something about taking forever, so Adrien swallowed the lump at his throat and stepped onto the platform. Almost immediately after he had straightened up, the elevator sunk below the ground. After dropping what felt like a couple of stories, the platform zipped along an extremely narrow hallway, clicking in place when it met another dead end before shooting upward again. Adrien looked up to find a rapidly approaching ceiling which retracted once he reached it, opening up into a large, dimly lit room. A small stream of moonlight shot into the room from a tiny opening in the center of the far wall, faintly illuminating the surroundings. Adrien squinted around what appeared to be a round room, devoid of any furnishings with the exception of a single pedestal. Plagg darted from the inside of Adrien's shirt pocket.

"Maybe he just comes here to meditate?" the entity suggested with a snarky chuckle.

Adrien didn't reply but continued to walk about the area, combing all sides of the pillar for any trace of a hidden button or something. When he didn't find anything, he moved to the edge of the room, dragging his fingertips along its surface as he made his way around the room.

"But why would he have a hidden room with nothing in it?"

Adrien cut his remark short when a sudden whirring sound started up behind him and the elevator platform suddenly disappeared. The teen cursed under his breath as he darted to the edge of the room, as far from the light as he could get. It was plenty dark in the room so if he remained still, he was pretty sure he could remain undetected. He wanted to transform to enhance his night vision, but if he was found, Chat Noir would never be able to use the same excuse that Adrien could possibly get away with.

"Father is up, at this time of night?!"

"Hey, if it's your old man," Plagg whispered, "we might get a chance to figure out what he does down here."

Adrien hissed sharply to silence Plagg who ducked inside the edge of his overshirt turning to peek out from his cover when a tall figure emerged from the elevator entrance. The man strode to the center of the room, seemingly mumbling to himself as he did so. The voice was clearly that of his father. Adrien held his breath, straining to hear past the rapid heart beat resonating against his chest as he waited with mounting anxiety. Plagg felt even quieter than any other time he had been silent, making Adrien all the more jittery. The faint light of the moon showed Gabriel pressing something at his feet to activate the small window to expand into a large circular opening like the aperture of a camera. Now lit with the full light of the moon, pulling the lapel of his blazer back as if he was going to take it off, something not much larger than the size of a tennis ball floated in front of the man.

"Nooroo," the father's voice came.

Plagg's eyes bulged from his head but Adrien didn't notice, being fixated instead on the man and what he could have that could possibly levitate. Whatever it was had a name and that was eerily disconcerting.

"Transform me!"

The exclamation came as Gabriel raised his fists into the air, spread at an angle that almost appeared like wings might sprout from them and he'd lift into the air. A bright purple flash washed over his figure and Adrien watched in mute horror as his father warped before his eyes. 'Transform me'. He knew those words all too well. They were the two words Adrien used on a daily basis when he changed into his superhero alter ego. Why his father would ever use them when Adrien knew there was no way the man was Ladybug meant there was another hero in town whom he hadn't met. But that made no sense. Why would his father have a kwami and still be unknown to either him or Ladybug.

Adrien's confusion suddenly became all too clear.

Before him, despite the light of the moon, it was apparent that the man was now dressed head to toe in a deep purple. A cane that had appeared from out of nowhere now rested in the man's gloved hands as the central gap in the window let in a mass of white butterflies which filled the room with light now glistening off their tiny wings.

"Father!"

Adrien's voice came from him before he could stop it, and he found himself extending his hand toward the man, suddenly stepping into the light toward him. He felt sick. His insides churned madly when the startled man turned to face him, light glinting off the butterfly shaped broach at his collar. The man was none other than Hawkmoth, the villain Adrien and his Ladybug had been fighting to stop for the past year. And Hawkmoth whose identity had remained a long kept secret up until this point now stood before him, revealed without a shadow of a doubt to be his own father. Ladybug had supposed the man to Hawkmoth a little over a month ago, and now he had confirmed his worst nightmare- was the truth.

"Ho- How could you, how is this-?"

His voice caught at the back of his throat as memories of all the fights over the past year of his life flashed through his mind. All the times his friends and classmates had been threatened, the many occasions he or Ladybug had been injured. . . all of the people who had suffered from the influence of Hawkmoth. It had all been at the hands of his own father. The man he strove to reach out to, only to be pushed away. How could he possibly be accountable for all the evil that had taken place in the recent past? Adrien felt tears gather at his eyelids, threatening to spill over with a choking sob as Adrien felt himself crumble, collapsing to his knees unceremoniously before the man could respond.

"Adrien," the man replied evenly, his demeanor far calmer than the teen had anticipated.

The blonde looked up through the gloss of the tears, daring to hope that by some chance he had been wrong. That by some chance, the man standing before him wasn't his father but an invader, and unwelcome guest who just sounded like him. But as the man stared back at him, Adrien could see his eyes were the same. They contained the same gray, timeworn sadness that haunted those of his father's day in and day out. And those eyes that were full of hurt cut Adrien far deeper than any knife ever could. The tears spilled down the boy's cheeks as he looked up at the man in dumbfounded disbelief, shaking furiously with adrenaline that was the only thing keeping him from screaming.

"Adrien," the masked man said again, stooping down to the boy's level to brush the tears from his cheek. "I know you don't understand, but everything will be okay. I will make it all okay."

Adrien gaped at him, shaking his head mutely in denial, pulling himself back in order to separate himself from the man who had once been his father. Gabriel frowned at this before reaching to a shimmering white butterfly sitting next to the boy, scooping it into his palm.

"You can help me," he continued, placing his other hand overtop the butterfly, and Adrien watched as dark energy collected between the man's hands. "Together, we can make this right."

An unearthly black butterfly now sat in the man's hand, flitting calmly before Adrien.

"N- no."

Adrien's voice came weakly, broken with his will, it was all he could say before the butterfly departed from Gabriel's hold, fluttering toward the silver ring on his finger. The teen stuttered backward in a futile attempt to avoid the insect's grasp, but a moment was all it took for the insect to touch the small metal band. Then, the unthinkable happened. The butterfly brushed against the object only to be repelled as if by some invisible force. Father and son watched as the butterfly fluttered about, returning again to its target only to be denied a second time. Gabriel's brow knit in confusion as he stared at the faulty akuma, then to the ring, and back to the eyes of Adrien. Gabriel's lips rounded to form a question, but the boy interjected.

"I will- I will not help you, father," Adrien replied again, this time stronger, his fear and grief dissipating into the cool night air. "You don't need help. You need to be stopped."

With that, he stood suddenly, feeling braver and more resolved than he ever had. Glaring down at the man crouched at his feet, he blinked the remaining tears from his eyes and whipped his hand to his side.

"Plagg, transform me!"

Bathed in a green light, Adrien watched with fleeting satisfaction as Hawkmoth's expression fall when his transformation took place. The man he loved as his father now tainted by power, fell to the floor in witless awe to the revelation of Chat Noir.

Crashing through the observatory window, Adrien plummeted with the ringing of shards of glass to the ground below. Sticking his landing, he ran into the night, not looking back for fear his resolve might shatter. Adrien still didn't know what drove the man to such lengths, but as Chat Noir, he would put a stop to it. All of it. He wouldn't return until he was certain he could save him. He would break his father of whatever spell possessed him, with the hope that he could free and return him to the man he once was.

More tears escaped him as he ran away that night. There was no consolation to be found in the moment or even the near future, but hope kept him running. The hope that someday, by some means, his father Gabriel Agreste would be stopped and restored to the father he loved.

So, this is definitely one of those chapters that could have a follow up. Let me know in the comments if you'd like to see more to this plot or let me know if you have any ideas or scenarios you'd like to see me write. Thanks for reading. :)