Summary: Adrien and his father address the repercussions of his defiance. He may not have his toys any longer, but soon, he may not need them. Has the time come to put aside childish things?

Of Men...

Hello, Adrien. I just wanted to say that you seemed a little upset this afternoon, and I'm really sorry if you were hurt by something that was said in class today. Some people really don't know how to keep their mouths shut, right? But if you're feeling down, or need help with anything, just let me know, okay? It's no trouble. After all, what are friends for?

- Lila

As he lays out on his bed, reviewing the email that Lila had sent only an hour after their final class let out, Adrien thinks that he should feel something, expect something. If Plagg's reaction, a bevy of curses that echoed through the room, hissing growls, and discontented purrs, was anything by which to judge, the little guy was and is angry enough for both of them.

All Adrien feels, though, as he finally tosses his cell phone to the side and rolls over to flop face down onto his pillow, is stupid.

He is stupid, after all.

No thought had been given to any step that he took along the way; just the unconscious permission to allow himself, as ever, to be carried away by what felt right in the moment: buying the figures as if he had the chance to really hide them, as if any part of his life was his own, castigating Chat Noir, customizing his little Lady, apologizing to Marinette, pleading for a return of Multimouse.

There was no logic, order, or scheme at work, just the frantic thrashing of a fish, impaled through the throat with a hook, being reeled in. The net motion was always inevitable.

It's impossible to forget, even when he needs to, when all those special places can so easily be ripped away.

Then all that's left is to admit it: this was the only conceivable end.

Maybe he had always known that this was going to happen, but accepted it, unconsciously believing that it was better to strive, to try, to seek something out and enjoy it for however long he could clutch the shifting sands in the palms of his hands, even as the fine grains slipped through his clenched fingers, grit scraping away layer upon layer of skin as they fell.

The shelves stand utterly empty; of course rows of books remain, alongside a plethora of DVDs and video games, thousands of dollars of merchandise and gifts.

Every element of his display – the Original Series Transformers, his X-wing with Luke and Han, the Majestia figure that used to bear his mother's voice in those early days when she still played with him – is gone.

It's a feeling that he knows. All those empty spaces where something precious to him used to reside, and if he squints in just the right way, sight and memory blur until he can almost see them, almost keep his imagination alive.

But there's only empty space that sets his chest aflame, the fire crawling up his throat so that he has to rise and guzzle down a bottle of water from his fridge. Plagg shouldn't be raging for him; no one should.

Affluence and privilege have given him more than most could ever dream, more than all those people who needed the help granted to them by the Ladybug and Chat Noir charitable donations could imagine, really.

What right does he have to complain about the fact that some member of the cleaning staff took away his toys?

That really is kids' stuff.

It doesn't matter.

That's what his father is telling him, what he has to tell himself.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't.

He polishes off the rest of his water.

If the toys haven't already made their way to the trash compactor, perhaps he can convince Nathalie to give them to charity.

Just like they don't matter, he doesn't deserve them.

More than anything, he wants to run, bursting out of the wide bay widows that gave him a glimpse of the outside world, teasing and taunting. He has to run, sweat slicking the costume to his body, and race shadows of himself until he's heaving and there's not enough air, his lungs torn apart by a flurry of ice, and keep running nonetheless.

He can't, of course.

Adrien has to wait.

Eventually, after an interminable wait that burns and itches, Chat Noir desperate to flee his room but imprisoned by Adrien's mind, the knowledge that his father will call on him, he receives a phone call from Nathalie.

Plagg stops fussing to dart into view just before Adrien departs, jabbing a nub into his nose and telling him that a single good cataclysm could bring this entire place down to its foundations.

Just in case he ever needed to know.

For whatever reason.

Just bragging about his powers, of course.

It would even leave the cheese unharmed. Plagg could make sure of it!

Adrien laughs, and needs the laugh.

Nathalie can't get out of bed.

Can't come to get him, this time.

They make him go to them, and as he enters her room, she's in the midst of one of her coughing fits.

Today is a bad day.

He hadn't meant to disturb her like this, but he has unsettled her and exacerbated all of the thick tension that pervades the mansion like a miasma. Stress and anxiety often trigger the attacks, something else that is usually locked up in this room and forgotten, kept out of sight, never acknowledged.

Where had he gotten that tendency from, after all?

Shocking that he can see it for once.

Great heaving shudders rock her body, her expression reserved but split open and raw in a way that's unique to the regularly taciturn woman – one part pride, one part concern for herself or for him as he watches and sees his mother, wasting away, and so much embarrassment.

The bedroom is spartan overall, just like Nathalie, but like his mother's room during the agonizing crawl of her decline, it bears the marks of its occupant, a long-term tenant. A work desk lies in the corner, topped with an old computer monitor, unpowered, but every free inch of the table bristles with itemized papers in neat stacks. Pill bottles with expansive labels that Adrien can't quite read lie next to a lamp on Nathalie's bedside table. Before the table sits a padded chair. It's possible that his father might sit there, sometimes. For whatever reason, he's allowed to care for Nathalie, but not love her. There's only-

"I am thoroughly disappointed in you, Adrien."

Nathalie's coughing fit having abated, at least for the time being, she's raising up the tablet in her hands.

Prim and perfectly coiffed, suit immaculate, tie not even slightly askew, his father is on the screen. Adrien has always thought that the tablet did his father no justice. It makes him seem small and stretched out, almost like a caricature of himself, but one that's mocking the world, everything that's not shown on the screen.

There is no scowl; everything is controlled, precise; not a single wasted movement, not a single twitch unconsidered, and this is where Chat Noir comes from, really. Not just from Adrien's favourite anime and the heroes that he always wanted to be, suave ladies' men and farmboys with a special destiny and a million other sources of inspiration.

Chat Noir is the antithesis of his father.

"I understand, father," Adrien grants.

"Do you, truly?" Gabriel's eyes narrow; hands rise up from outside of the frame and steeple together, hiding his mouth. "What is it that you've done, Adrien?"

"I – I bought those Ladybug and Chat Noir action figures."

His father's nostril's flair like he's not able to get enough oxygen, like Adrien's sucking out the air in the room even at this distance. "Do you think that they really matter?"

"They-" He wants to say that they mattered, and matter to him, even if every one of them but his little Ladies is probably in a trash compactor, but he has no idea what his father wants to hear, what the right answer could possibly be. Why couldn't life be like physics, or even English. Learn the rules of composition, dot your eis, put your commas in the right place, perform the calculations properly, and you'd get the right answer.

Maybe there is no right answer.

And maybe that's the one real answer that's only just come to him, through a lifetime of education.

"No?" he offers tentatively.

"Correct." The fingers strum together, but all that Adrien sees is the slight tremor in Nathalie's arms and the slow shake of her head. "Now why?"

"I... I don't know." What is Nathalie trying to say, seated behind his father, wielding the tablet like a shield or a prop, a stand that's just there to carry his father? Sweat is caught up in her brow.

"You disobeyed me." It's as close to a sneer as he's ever seen from his father, the only referent that moment when Adrien suggested that it would be okay to move on from his mother, as if either of them could.

"I- that wasn't-"

"Wasn't what you intended? Wasn't what you were thinking? " A scoff crackles through the tablet's speakers, and Adrien doesn't flinch. He has to hold still, stand there, be the man that he's not and just take it. Never let his posture falter. That's another failure. "That makes it worse. I explicitly forbade you from doing something, and in flagrant disregard of my wishes, you did so anyways, aided, I understand, by that boy."

"Nino?" As he locks his arms behind his back, the tight clutch of his fingers to the bony protrusions of his wrist bruise, squeeze out feeling.

"Yes," his father affirms through the screen. It's just a blur; everything is narrowed down, focused, on the pressure on his arm, in his chest, in Nathalie's reddened face. "I have already expressed my misgivings about him, and it seems that they were well-founded, though I did misjudge your bodyguard."

He can't touch his neck. His father doesn't like that. It's unseemly, so there's just the crushing pressure that creeps up his arm and radiates down to the bone, keeping him there.

The toys suddenly are meaningless – worthless. Why would he need to burrow into the past and try to revisit and reshape it if it cost him the present?

"Is- what... what's going to happen to him?"

As if it's utterly meaningless, like small talk about the weather, his father recites, "We are discussing his current contract and the application of the relevant punitive clauses as he's abdicated several of his duties."

"What?"

Now both their eyes are focused, locked. "He was seen touching you in an inappropriate fashion."

"That- he didn't do anything! I – the hug-" How can he object when that's not true? His bodyguard, his friend, did everything in that moment – everything that Adrien realized that he'd needed for so long.

"That doesn't matter, Adrien." There's a crinkling of his father's brow, something drawing away his focus. "What matters is the appearance of things – possible ways in which those actions could be misconstrued."

Adrien is familiar with paparazzi, the frothing fans that have chased him across Paris and the gossip-mongers who dissect his life, but surely something like that – in front of an entire schoolyard of departing students – couldn't be...

"I am frankly disappointed in your selfishness, Adrien. The world does not revolve around your every transient whim, your every random desire or thought."

"Of course not. I-"

Plucking his glasses from his nose, such a rarity that Adrien almost gasps at the enervated stranger who's rubbing bloodshot eyes, Gabriel looses a reverberant sigh before raising his gaze. It's like he can see everything, pierce through the dividing line between flesh and muscle, scrape him raw.

"You both need to understand that your actions have consequences." It sounds so resigned, so aggrieved as if Adrien's placed a burden on his shoulders, made him suffer through this. "Throwing a fit in class like the Bourgeois girl, making a scene, your interactions with your bodyguard, and your collusion with him- all of these things have natural and necessary results."

"I – I understand, father. It's just that those are my fault. Other people shouldn't suffer for them. He- he was just doing what I asked, when –" He can't make it worse, can't say anything about the toys in the dashboard that Lila can't really know about. Why is everything in life a fencing match? Why does he have to watch each word? "All of it was my fault."

"Be that as it may, you are an Agreste. As such, your actions will always affect those around you. Me, the shareholders, the employees and all their families who depend on them,

"It... it was just toys and – and a hug and a-" what was it that he'd requested of Lila? What was it really? He doesn't know, and for whatever reason, shame and sickness like he'd just guzzled milk mixed with orange juice froths inside of his gut. His father is staring down at him, even from the tablet screen, looking for an answer that he can just shoot down.

Adrien doesn't have any.

"It was just disobedience, just impropriety, and just selfishness."

"I'm sorry." It's a whimper, like that of a beaten dog who has nothing else, can only limp away, holding up a broken leg and praying that someone will have mercy on him for the wound. Not hit him again. As he flinches away, thinking of his bodyguard and the subtle smell of the spiced cologne that wafted up from his chest, the sensation of being enfolded in flesh and muscle, the scent of Marinette's hair, her slender arms around his back, the steady rise and fall of a chest against his own...

As he lies and tries to escape into those lost sensations, the worst feeling of all is that he really means it.

He really is sorry.

"I believe that you are," Gabriel says from the tablet that wobbles in Nathalie's hands, though Adrien's stopped looking at him, just as his father has turned away to attend to some other matter, something off screen. His eyes are unfocused, voice trailing off, absent, but all that Adrien sees is the pinching of Nathalie's throat, the quiver of those iron hands that once seemed so strong, the stoop to her shoulders and the riffling around her mouth, all repression and pain, chest shuddering..

It's harder than you might think to learn how not to love someone.

"Your bodyguard will be docked pay in accordance with the relevant articles in his contract, but he will not be replaced at this time." The shuffling of papers sounds out from beyond the screen, Gabriel still glancing away. "All of the items on your shelves will be withheld for two weeks as punishment, and the Miraculous toys have already been disposed of. Also, you will be eating lunch at the mansion or in the presence of miss Rossi from this point forward."

"I understand."

"Considering your defiance of my explicit instructions, you should be grateful that Nathalie advocated on your behalf. Do not make me waste time on this kind of childish outburst again, Adrien."

"I won't, father."

"Good." Without any warning, the connection drops, and so does the tablet, Nathalie's arms clutching over her chest and stomach as whooping coughs wrack her entire body. He's by her side in an instant, seated on the edge of her bed, stroking his hand in smooth circles between her shoulder blades, doing everything that he can, which is, as always, nothing, to ease her through the attack.

"Are you..." stupid "okay?" he asks, and knows that this was another thing that he'd been forgetting. Of course he'd want to revisit and rewrite the past when they were living it out again in the present.

Face split with pain, Nathalie still smiles and nods, eyes compressed into slits behind her glasses. "Of course, Adrien. I'm just having a bad day."

There are too many bad days for too many people in this house.

"I'm really sorry that I made things worse for you."

"I know, Adrien."

And, obviously, she does.

She knows in the same way that he does the expression on her face, the gravel in her voice that's all that she can offer to conceal a rasp.

Adrien flees from Nathalie's room.

Chat Noir flees from Adrien's prison.