Cat Noir, Ladybug, and Dragon Fyre get to the Agreste mansion, only to find the main hall is a complete mess - someone, likely Gabriel Agreste, absolutely trashed it. Busts knocked to the ground, pictures destroyed, glass shards everywhere, even the furniture didn't escape his wrath.
Ladybug gasps at the carnage, while Cat Noir stares at a picture he drew at seven-years-old for his father sadly - ripped to shreds, like the man wanted to rip him apart - Dragon Fyre, meanwhile, frowns at the entire room. It seems…perfect….too perfect, actually.
And then she makes a shield around them, making it too solid to see through in case the man can read lips, and asks "What if this is all staged?" There's no way Agreste Sr. hasn't got cameras all over the place, and she does not want him hearing or seeing this.
Both her partners blink and look at her, and Ladybug asks "What?"
"What if he faked all of it? The anger, the destruction…I think all of it is to put on a show for us…and this is his stage."
Cat Noir wishes he could say his sister is wrong, but…his father is wicked-smart. He seemed furious, and started demolishing everything in the room…but, since he's Hawk Moth…it was probably all just an act. Him taking the book and then the older man getting Akumatized is probably just a convenient excuse to cover himself and keep his identity from getting out.
The detail that he's never seen his father particularly emotional after his mother disappeared - hasn't seen his father much at all after his mother disappeared, really - makes it all the more plausible. Fake getting angry, Akumatize himself, pretend to be a disoriented victim if they manage to beat him. And, if they don't...well, he wouldn't need to pretend, he'd have their Miraculous' anyway.
Ladybug's eyes widen, and she says "If we pretend to believe he's not Hawk Moth…" They'll have an advantage over him, he'll eventually get cocky and slip up. Right?
Before any of them can complete the thought, though, there's a thumping sound and they look over to see the Collector standing there with his book in hand once the shield is lightened.
Dragon Fyre drops the shield as he says "Ah, Ladybug, Cat Noir, and Dragon Fyre. How nice of you to join my collection!" He throws his book at them, and they all leap out of the way and start fighting.
The fight is one of the most frustrating they've ever had, mainly because that book of his is ridiculously fast and moves much like a cross between a homing missile and a boomerang. Oh, and he can call it back to his hand if he loses it - Cat Noir manages to kick it out of his hand, but before they can react he'd already summoned it.
Collector backs Cat Noir into a wall, but when he gets the book a mere inch from the blonde boy ropes made out of fire suddenly wrap around his arm and torso. "You're a shit parent, Agreste, you know that right?"
Cat Noir rolls out of the way as his father gets thrown into the nearby staircase much like a ragdoll, and Ladybug joins him as Dragon Fyre starts going off. Cat Noir mutters "Something tells me she's wanted to do this for a while, M'Lady…"
Ladybug nods, saying "Oh, you've no idea. I've got an idea for how to beat him, though." Cat Noir stares at her expectantly - when his Lady or his sister comes up with a plan, it's almost guaranteed to be a success. "What if we complete his collection?"
"You have a son who thinks the world of you, who would move heaven, hell, and everything in between to make you proud of him, yet you blew up at him over a damned book?!"
Cat Noir and Ladybug cautiously peek their heads over the top of the banister, having leapt to the second floor to regroup, and they see Dragon Fyre advancing on Collector while flinging broken bits and pieces of stuff into his book with flicks of her wrists. She is mad, and even Gabriel Agreste isn't stupid enough to not go on defense when she's on fire like this. Literally on fire, at that.
Ladybug calls down "Keep him distracted, I've got an idea!" They don't stick around to see if she acknowledges that, just head to Adrien's room to find more ammunition to fill that damned book with. To Cat Noir's horror, his bed is gone, along with the piano - did Collector come in looking for him? To collect him?!
Dragon Fyre keeps flinging broken items up as Collector keeps throwing his book at her, fury running through her veins as hot as the fire she can make, and yells "My parents were always busy before they were murdered, my mom started up her flower shop from scratch when I was four and my father was a fireman! They both worked long hours, he was eternally on call at any given time, yet they always made time for me!" Her mom would pack her lunch and drive her to school every day, and her dad would tuck her in every night he was there to do so. They told her every damned day they loved her, and she misses them desperately.
So Gabriel Agreste, with his 'inability' to even have a breakfast with his son…he really pisses her off. And that was before she found out he's Hawk Moth. All those times he'd flake on Adrien, the times when he'd do something cruel such as destroying Simon Grimault's chance on that game show, he was making Akumas. He decided being a magical terrorist was more important than his son. He decided to put his son in danger instead of spending time with him when he could.
She's going to rip him to shreds, with words then her sword, and if the Miraculous Cure doesn't put him back together then too damn bad. She doesn't have it in her to care, right this instant.
"Yet you, the owner of a multi-million-dollar fashion company who sets his own damned hours, can't even be bothered to have breakfast with your son or see him out the door! You barely spend any time whatsoever with him, and then it's only ever to express your disappointment in him! You leave him alone day after day, not even bothering to ask him how his day went, and then you dare to get upset about some stupid book?!" It's why he ran on Christmas, why he spends so much time with her, why they latched onto each other so fast. Once they've hit eighteen, they plan on moving in somewhere together - become roommates in an apartment, perhaps. Anything to not be alone.
Collector gets out of the way of another fireball, internally wincing when it goes straight through the wall and leave a large scorch mark around the hole. He doesn't know what exactly his son means to her, or how much she actually knows of their relationship, but what she does know is far too worrying. Especially given the detail that it seems personal for her - dead parents who loved her, so she apparently takes great offence when someone else's doesn't outwardly show that they do. "It's none of your business, little girl!"
Call it a hunch, but he's betting the three thorns in his side are teenagers. They don't seem that tall, after all - and, knowing the effect the Miraculous has on a person's appearance and how it's concealed by magic when in the suit, he can rather safely guess that their heights are because they haven't finished growing. It's as disconcerting as it is frustrating, to have a decent guess that he's fighting teenagers, children, and still lose to them on a daily basis.
Even if one of them has magic unlike anything Nooroo can tell him about in any kind of detail - the most the Kwami can say is that she seems similar to a long-lost island of magical ladies that originally created the Miraculous' at the Kwamis' request so they could interact with the world.
Dragon Fyre continues to tear into him, somehow making the grown man feel about two inches tall by the time she's through, and then leaps up onto the second floor and lures him to Adrien's room. He's then bombarded by a veritable mountain of cd's, forcing him to 'collect' them so he doesn't get buried underneath them. Or have his eyes taken out by one heading straight for his head, which was likely Dragon Fyre's work. And then, the book gets ripped out of his hands as soon as it's filled and Cat Noir promptly shreds it with his claws.
Ladybug purifies the Akuma and it flies out - the three heroes promptly split, as soon as possible without seeming suspicious, two of them going to transform soon and the third having places to be. After listening to Gabriel Agreste 'panic' about his son's whereabouts and how he's not in the room after the Ladybugs put everything back to normal.
In actuality, they meet up a few rooftops away, Dragon Fyre having recharged their Miraculous' before he got into the bedroom. "It's definitely him. He kept going on and on about his plan and how it worked perfectly as he was talking about his son." About how precious Adrien is to him, about how nothing can happen to him. It made her want to deck him hard enough to eat some teeth and demand to know where that's been all this time, what with how many Akumas originate in his own classroom.
Ladybug bites her bottom lip, then asks "At least we know, right?"
Cat Noir sighs, looking out over the city towards the Agreste mansion, and says "Yeah, at least we know."
Ladybug frowns, and opens her mouth intent on getting Cat Noir to spill about whatever's been bothering him all this time, but Dragon Fyre shakes her head and says "Not this time, Spots. This isn't something even the Cure could fix."
Ladybug frowns even more, then puts a hand on her kitty's shoulder and says "if there's anything I can do…" Cat Noir shakes his head, even as he puts his hand over hers.
Dragon Fyre waits until Ladybug's gone back home, then says "Brother, look at me. We can do this."
Cat Noir looks at her, and whispers "I don't think we can, Sis. I don't think I can."
And then he's turned so he's facing her, and Dragon Fyre says "Yes you can. Because the both of us are going to help you every step of the way."
He'll have to pretend every single day that he doesn't know his father is Hawk Moth. He'll have to force down his feelings about the man all the time - the betrayal, the disgust, the all of it all the time. It sounds impossible, it feels so much more than impossible. He thinks he might just break within a week.
Dragon Fyre seems to know exactly what he's thinking, though, because she says "Just think of it as another mask, Adrien. Just like the ones you have to wear all the time. Instead of 'model son with perfect grades' it's 'unsuspecting model son with perfect grades.'"
Cat Noir lets out a wet chuckle, sounding like even he doesn't believe that - she tried, at least - and says "If only it was that easy, sis."
"Hey, look at me, Brother." When Cat Noir looks over again, he sees one of her most serious expressions - the same one she had when she came running up to him in the park, the same one she had when they told Ladybug Hawk Moth's identity. "We're going to make this work. You're not alone for this. You've got me. You've got Ladybug. And Nino, your best friend. Even Chloe would side with you if this came out."
Cat Noir runs a shaking hand down his face, and says "I know…" His sister made it a point to drive it through his thick skull after the Christmas incident, how many people care about him. A point as sharp as her sword, at that. Still, that doesn't mean it's going to be easy.
Plagg's voice in his head, saying he'll gladly be on Akuma-watch if he ever needs some time to just feel, makes him feel a bit better though. As does the knowledge that his sister would undoubtedly be right there with him, burning any butterflies Plagg misses.
They…they'll find a way through this, somehow. Likely with his sister blasting and burning a path herself, if he's being entirely truthful.
When he gets back to his house as Adrien, after Dragon Fyre assures him that she'll hide him away with her if it gets to that point, what follows is probably the hardest thing he's ever had to do - and that includes hearing his father tell him his mother is missing.
He stands there, and he says what he did 'wrong' - maybe he shouldn't have taken it without permission, yes, but there was no possible way he could've known it was so important to the man he barely recognized as his father before learning he's Hawk Moth! - and dredges up his sadness over the reminder of his mother - how dare he say that book was a gift from his mom?! Even if it does make for a convincing reason as to why he went off like that, it's no excuse for trying to guilt-trip him like that!
Hugging the man when he says Adrien is allowed to go back to school once more makes him want to be physically sick - preferably all over Gabriel's expensive clothes - but he forces the urge back in favor of wondering if his sister managed to wring this out of the cold-hearted man with her rant to him about how he's such a terrible father.
Thankfully, he's back at school the next day - out of that house, somewhere filled with people where he can slip away if necessary - and after getting literally swarmed by everyone that missed him yesterday. Chloe jumps him, wrapping around him like an octopus and burying her face in his neck like she's trying not to cry.
Nino hugs him as well, saying they heard about Collector and they were all worried after seeing Nathalie's picture on a page right before the screen went black.
Marinette greets him and says she's glad he's back. With her face bright red, even as she stammers and looks away.
Bloom, though, just grins as she says "Good to see you, Sunshine. You doing alright?" Translation: how is it going, and do you need me to hide you away?
Adrien gives her a smile, and says "I'm alright. Better than yesterday, anyway."
Relief flashes across her face for a moment, and then they're all heading to classes.
AN: Hey, everyone! Our poor kitty needs some therapy after all this. I know I would - even in canon, Collector tried to get to Adrien. And I firmly believe that, since he was a willing Akuma - not to mention there wasn't anyone talking in his head! - he was fully aware of himself and his actions. Whether it was to teach Adrien a lesson or to make it more believable that he'd been Akumatized, it doesn't matter. He still tried to 'collect' Adrien, he still tried to trap him in that book - potentially forever, if he wasn't beaten.
Father of the year, huh? No wonder he's such good friends with Audrey Bourgeois - the two of them are made for each other! One's a self-centered witch, the other's a guy who thinks it's perfectly acceptable to put his child in danger every other day of the week! I honestly can't imagine how a kid of theirs would turn out - emotionally-repressed, or a witch like Audrey? I'm just glad we don't have to find out.
Enjoy! More updates coming soon!