It was a familiar dream. She clutched the ring in her fist as if it were a lifeline, as if it still maintained some connection to Adrien. It didn't. Plagg was asleep within the dormant miraculous, and she didn't have the heart to awaken him. Guardian or not, she knew that he'd have a few choice words for her if she ever woke him up. She didn't have the heart to deal with it. Her own kwami was similarly distressed, but she'd understood. Now that the threat was over, the miracle box needed to leave Paris. They'd been too active. This would be the first place anyone else seeking the miraculous would look. It, and she, needed to go into hiding.

Then there was the matter of Adrien's parents. The Order of Guardians was going to find a cure for Emilie, but they needed her. She'd made connections in Shanghai that could help as well. She'd abandoned the love of her life for duty, but she would see his parents through to the end. She owed it to Adrien.

Tikki was now sleeping as well, safely ensconced within the miracle box that sat in her carry-on bag. The flight to Tibet was going to be long with lots of stopovers. Kaalki had taken the ladybug's place. The glasses, together with her newly shortened hair, made her look more mature, like a woman in early adulthood instead of the scared and troubled eighteen-year-old that she was. She was lying again. Everyone thought she was going to Shanghai…

She experienced her first episode of morning sickness in Tibet in front of Gabriel Agreste, while in costume as Epona. She had just finished delivering supplies to the monastery and blamed the nausea on motion sickness. The third time it had happened, the ex-villain pulled her aside. He didn't know who she was. Hadn't known that she'd been Ladybug. She'd been so worried that he'd found her out. Instead, he told her about Emilie. How she was when she carried Adrien.

Twins. She was going to have twins. How was she going to explain this to her family? Her friends? Adrien… Adrien couldn't know. The only ones she ever told were her family. She officially moved to Shanghai. Started a new life. Had her family. She thought she'd lost her heart in Paris, but she found it again in Shanghai, as strong as ever.

When Emilie woke up a year later, she, as Epona, introduced the twins to her and Gabriel. She was a widow, she claimed. It was close to the truth. Chat Noir was gone and not coming back. (Even if Adrien was still in Paris.) She told Emilie that Emma had been named in her honor. (She didn't say it was because she was the grandmother.) It was selfish of her, and risky, but she wanted them to meet. Emma was a bald baby, but she'd been born with a head full of dark hair, like her brother. (The nurses had told her that was common when the child was going to be blond.) The older couple loved them. Her old enemy, the parents of the love of her life, loved the babies.

It was selfish of her. She wanted that. She wanted more than that. She wanted Adrien. By all the gods that ever existed, she wanted Adrien. But as ever, duty came first.


At thirty years of age, Marinette Dupain-Cheng knew when her children were up to no good. It had been their common state of being ever since they learned to walk and talk, in fact. For the past week, however, they had seemed to be especially in cahoots. Plotting, ever since that close encounter with Felix. She'd thought that they would have calmed down once they got back to Shanghai but no such luck.

She sipped her coffee and reclined on the porch swing, sketchpad propped on her knees while she watched her children out in the garden with a distrustful eye. What would it be this time? Frogs in the wash? A pet porcupine? It was unlikely they'd try any of the old stunts they'd pulled before. Her children were at least inventive. Never before had they been so attached at the hip as they had been this past week, though. Emma especially was acting strange. She hadn't heard a single argument between her and Louis all week long. That boded especially ill. It was bad enough that they were plotting, but if they were one-hundred-percent on the same page? The world was not ready.

Never had she been more thankful that at that time that neither of her children had even heard of a miraculous.

The trip to London had been enjoyable, though, the unexpected run-in with Felix aside. It had been a nice treat to take her children with her abroad for a change. Now that they were a bit older, that was an increasingly appealing possibility. It was probably a good time to take the kids to visit her parents in Paris. Maybe over the summer?

She broke from her pondering and realized that in the brief lapse of her attention, the twins had vanished. "Oh, no…" she said under her breath, briefly contemplating taking out Baark, before shaking her head of the thought. People had been raising children for ages without needing to resort to miraculous use. She stood and shaded her eyes from the sun, scanning the garden for her stray troublemakers.

"Hello, Mama," her son spoke up from behind her, making her jump with a yelp.

"Louis!" she scolded, rounding on both twins while placing a hand over her heart, waiting for her pulse to get out of her throat. "I should put a bell on you two."

The twins exchanged a creepily coordinated smirk before turning back to her. "Emma and I have some questions for you, Mama."

"Sure do, Mama!" Emma echoed.

Marinette raised an eyebrow at that, slowly sitting back down on the porch swing. "O-kay," she drew out, suspicious.

They nodded at each other again before standing in front of her. She noticed that both of their hands were behind their backs.

"First off, Mama…," Louis began.

"Who is this?" Emma finished. They both pulled pictures from behind their backs.

Marinette paled. Her children, the devious little demons, had found the remnants of her Adrien collection. A collection that she kept under lock and key, no less! "A-gah-How-hnn-you…" she eloquently answered. "No one! Absolutely no one!" God. She was blushing in front of her kids. How embarrassing.

"Hmm," Louis turned his pictures around to look at them closer, pursing his lips while he made a show of contemplating them. "I dunno, Mama…" he held the pictures up to frame Emma's face. "I can see a similarity."

Emma did the same with her pictures. "You know, Louis, if your hair was blond and a bit neater, this could be a picture of a slightly older you." She then turned to Marinette. "What do you think, Mama?"

"Hnng," she answered, before snatching the pictures out of their hands and holding them to her chest.

They both gave her the same unimpressed look.

She glared back.

This went on for a full minute before Marinette took a deep breath and exhaled deeply. "He's really no one. Just my grade school crush. It was really silly of me to hang on to these old pictures, actually." She forced a laugh, retreating inside to hide her shame. She paused, turned heel, and added out the doorway, "And where did you little monsters learn how to pick locks?" she shook her head. "You know what, I don't think I even want to know."


Once his mother had retreated, Louis shared a frown with Senti-Emma. "Time to escalate. Here is what I need you to do…"


"Mama, can I talk to you?" Emma asked tracing a toe on the floor, eyes downcast. "I'm sorry about teasing you with Louis. I told him it wasn't a good idea, but… I have some questions now."

Marinette looked up at her daughter in concern, removing her reading glasses and putting down her stylus. This was new… and very out of character for her headstrong, tomboyish daughter. "Well, I've already forgiven you, dear heart. What do you need to ask?"

Her daughter blushed, not making eye contact. "Well… I was wondering… do crushes go away?"

The older woman blinked. "Do you, do you like someone, Emma?" Inside, she was freaking out. Oh my god, it was finally happening! Her daughter's first crush! She wasn't ready! Surely she had at least another two years… Who was it? Shen Xue? Wen Qiang? The Shào boy at school that she'd heard about that one time? She wasn't ready!

The girl petulantly pursed her lips. "It's not like I want to!"

It was so cute! Now that was more like her daughter. Marinette smiled and leaned back while Emma pulled a chair around. She waited for her daughter to settle before answering. "In my experience," she started, thinking back to the beginning, "You don't get to choose who your heart falls for. I myself held a single all-encompassing crush for the last five years of school." She thought of Chat Noir, "There were times when I tried my hardest not to like him. I even dated a musician once! It didn't end well." And she still felt bad for Luka, to this day.

"And what happened? To your crush?" Emma asked again.

"Hmm," Marinette considered. "It evolved. He was the love of my life, but it wasn't meant to be." She gave her daughter her biggest smile. "And then I had you two troublemakers!" She pounced, pulling the girl into her lap and attacking her with tickles. "You guys are the loves of my life now!"


"I love you, mama," Louis said quietly, leaning against the door frame while he eavesdropped, hearing Senti-Emma repeat his same words inside the room.

This was good.


"Was he our father?" Emma asked out of nowhere. After their earlier conversation, Marinette should have expected it. Her kids were intelligent, and they had probably connected the dots when they found those pictures. If they knew where to look, it wouldn't be too hard for them to figure out his name.

Marinette paused. Silence reigned for several moments, while she thought frantically. When they got older, she wouldn't be able to stop them from hunting down their biological father. And when they did that, he'd then know who she was. He'd know she was the Guardian. It was already amazingly awkward to see him during Fashion Weeks, but if that ever happened, she'd have to disappear more permanently or find someone else to name as Guardian… that would cost her all of her memories, though! She'd forget her children, all that had happened, him…

Her family members all thought that the twins were the result of a one-night-stand in Shanghai with a suave foreigner, as embarrassing as it had been to admit that. She'd have to convince her children of the same thing. Buy some time at least for a few years longer. Then she'd be able to come up with a better plan. "I'm sorry, dear heart, no."

Emma didn't look convinced. "But wasn't he the one in the pictures? The one that Louis and I look so much alike? Surely…"

"Emma, this isn't easy to say but…"

"Why are you lying, Mama? He's…"

"He's not your father! I didn't…"

"Then why do you still have…"

"Enough, Emma!" Marinette snapped at her daughter. The girl stopped talking in a wide-eyed shock like a switch had been turned off. It broke Marinette's heart to see it. "I'm sorry, Emma, I…"

Emma left the room wordlessly. Not running. Not angry. Not crying. Just walked away, almost robotic. Marinette plopped back down in her office chair, causing it to free spin while she tangled her fingers in her short locks in frustration. God, how was she going to handle this?


Louis rubbed the butterfly miraculous pinned inside his shirt pocket, feeling the ache while he and Senti-Emma retreated back to their room to reformulate. This wasn't good. What was it about their father that made Mama hurt so very much? She'd been embarrassed before, and then happily reminiscent, but right now he could feel her anguish. She was struggling with her feelings.

"Nooroo," Louis called out for his kwami, who came out of hiding.

"Yes, Louis?" The butterfly god answered, then noticed his face. "Oh, dear! How can I help?"

"Do you, by any chance, know why Mama might be avoiding our father?"

"Maybe because she is the Guardian of the Miraculous?" he hazarded a guess. "My last master wasn't good like you, Louis, and your father is his son."

He frowned while Senti-Emma sat on Emma's bed. "But Bà was a superhero also. Couldn't he have helped her?"

Nooroo shrugged. "I don't know. I'm sorry, Louis." He landed on the boy's shoulder, giving him a pat. "If it's any comfort, I think your mother still loves your father."

The blue-haired boy nodded. "She's just trying not to." He sat heavily on his own bed and chewed on his thumbnail in thought. He had a running hypothesis now. Adrien Agreste was his father. Mother was willing to lie and deny it even when faced with evidence. She still loved him but didn't want to. His father, according to Emma, was a good man. Wonderful, in fact. A Hero. That really only left one reason why she'd fled Paris.

The Miracle Box.

So… if the miracle box wasn't an issue, then Mama might return to Paris, and then she and Bàba would fall madly in love again and get married, and finally give him and Emma a baby brother, a dog, and a hamster- no, TWO hamsters.

He could work with this. "Nooroo, I have some questions about my powers…"


It was almost evening, and the sun was beginning to sink below the tree line. Louis and Senti-Emma were standing in a tree away from the house.

"Louis, I don't think this is a good idea," Nooroo worried. "I know you have good intentions, but using the miraculous for your own benefit rarely turns out good." The little kwami looked nervously at Senti-Emma. "Juno has already taken a big risk."

The blue-haired boy took a good long look at Senti-Emma with a contemplative frown. She was already the embodiment of his desire to have a whole family. She was essentially made of his and Emma's emotions. He still had his amokatized item; a lucky charm bracelet made by Emma. She had a matching one made by him, which Senti-Emma also had a copy of. This was going to work.

"Nooroo, wings rise."

Zhuangzi took his staff in hand, materializing a white butterfly in the top bobble. He took Senti-Emma's hand and deposited the butterfly onto the bracelet, where it sank in. "Huli Jing, I give you the power of the fox spirit. With it, you can help me steal the miracle box and hide it away forever so that we can all be a family again. Do you accept?"

Senti-Emma smiled. "Yes, Zhuangzi." A white chrysalis-like aura overtook the Sentimonster, then exploded, blowing the both of them out of the tree.

Zhuangzi took a moment to reorient himself. Luckily, the magic of his suit protected him from the fall damage she should have taken, but it still stung a bit. "Huli Jing!" He called out frantically, then remembered he could communicate with her directly. The butterfly mask appeared before his eyes. "Huli Jing, are you okay?"

"I'm okay, Master. I feel… alive," she responded.

He wasn't too sure he liked being called 'master'. "O-kay," he answered, not entirely sure what she meant by that, but was probably a good thing, regardless. His pin beeped. That was right… he only had five minutes before he transformed back. He remembered Nooroo's warning. If he transformed back before recalling the akuma, he'd lose control of it until he transformed again. Best to avoid that.

"Okay, Huli, game on!"


Marinette took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. She hadn't been able to focus on anything since the conversation with Emma earlier. In retrospect, it had probably been a set-up by Louis. She loved her son, but he was such a schemer. Regardless, both kids seemed to be avoiding her now. She pondered, and not for the first time, if she should start dating again, find someone for her twins to call "papa".

'Sure, that would be easy, wouldn't it?' she thought sarcastically to herself with a scoff. Because of her successful and growing fashion label, she would not have a hard time finding a husband, but take that away and she was just the eccentric half-Chinese lady, mother of the Demon Twins. Any man she found would have to be a saint, and those were in low supply.

"Did I do the right thing?" She wondered out loud, letting her head hit the back of her chair.

"Perhaps a bit miscalculated, Guardian, but not entirely incorrect. You are keeping all of my brothers and sisters safe, after all," the tallow and tan horse kwami answered.

She groaned. "Then why does it feel like I seriously messed up?"

A crash from her bedroom interrupted the conversation.

She dashed out of the office and down the hall, her momentum and sudden stop causing her to slide slightly past her bedroom doorway. Her heart stopped. The floor panels under which she kept the miracle box hidden had been pried up, and standing in the middle of her room was a person dressed in purple, holding her box, and riding a large, white, three-tailed fox.

"No," she nearly whispered in horror. "Kaalki! Full Gallop!"


"Oops!" Zhuangzi panicked, they hadn't meant to break the vase, but Huli Jing's tail didn't know that. He tucked the egg-shaped box under his arm and dashed for the open window as Huli took the shape of a large fox. He jumped on her back, just as they heard a curse in the hallway. "Go, go, go!" he spurred Huli Jing on. They dashed into the night.

They had it! The miracle box! Now they just needed to get away and… actually, Louis realized with dawning terror, he hadn't thought this far ahead. How were they going to get rid of the box now that they had it? His miraculous gave out the fourth chirp. "Huli, Fox Fire!" he called out. The akumatized sentimonster spat out a series of fireballs, that formed a wall of (illusory) fire between them and the house, before dashing back farther into the woods. "Stop, stop, stop," He called once he thought they were far enough away. He slid off of Huli Jing's back. He had less than a minute. "Can you make her forget about the box?" he asked as the large fox shape-shifted back into a fox-like version of his sister.

She shook her head. "Not powerful enough."

"Damn," he cursed, then recalled his white butterfly, trapping it back in the staff just as the last chime rang. His and Senti-Emma's transformations faded, just in time to hear the most dreaded sound in the world.

"LOUIS ATHANASE DUPAIN CHENG!"

He looked up in horror, as out of a portal stepped what could only be his mother in a brown and white leather jumpsuit. The visor hid her eyes, but he knew she had to be glaring super hard by the set of her lips.

He gulped. Mother was going to kill him. He held his hands up. "I surrender."


Things were tense in the Dupain-Cheng household. The miracle box sat out in the open on the coffee table, along with Nooroo, who was sucking on a honey stick, and Kaalki, who was munching on apple slices. Louis and Senti-Emma sat on the couch, directly across from Marinette.

"Explain. Now."

There was no arguing with that tone. His life was on the line. Deciding that honesty was probably the best policy at this point, he went ahead and spilled the beans. It wasn't all lost. Emma was still with Bà in Paris, and there was no way that Mama could avoid going there. They could work with this. And so he told the whole story; from finding the pictures to finding the miracle box, and getting Nooroo's and Duusu's pins. He conveniently skipped over the part about Emma being… not Emma and explained why he had tried to take the miracle box, complete with his conclusions about their father.

"So, you see, Mama… In a roundabout way, this is actually your fault for not being honest," Louis finished.

"Excuse me?" His mom replied with a hard glare. "What was that I just heard? 'Ground me for another two months'?"

He wisely kept his mouth shut.

Marinette sighed deeply and held out both hands. "Okay, I've heard enough, hand them over." Neither child moved, other than to look at each other, somewhat worriedly. "Well?"

"I… ah… don't have it," Senti-Emma replied. "I'm… ah… not actually Emma."

"What."

Louis scratched his cheek, pointedly looking anywhere but at his mother, while Not-Emma gave her a worried little half-smile.

Marinette counted to ten. Then she counted backward from ten. Then she repeated that one more time under her breath for good measure.

Finally, in a calm, measured voice, she asked, "Where, may I ask, is your sister?"


Adrien and Emma were sitting on the couch, critiquing the latest superhero movie and throwing popcorn at each other when Duusu woke up and excitedly flew to her owner. "Oh, oh! You have a call!"

"Okay," she said, then looked at her father, who nodded. She excused herself and went into her room. "Duusu, spread my feathers," he barely heard her say through the thin door. There was a flash of blue under the door, then muffled conversation, after which, she came back out, still transformed.

He was curious but happy to see she looked nothing like Mayura had. Normal colored skin, same blond hair. Also more covered than Ladybug had been. At least Juno had a peacock patterned tunic on over her superhero jumpsuit. Her eyes were wide under the blue mask she wore, though. "Everything alright?" he asked.

She nodded, shook her head, then shrugged. "Depends. Mama wants to talk to you." She handed him her communicator, then sat on the edge of the couch, whispering "we are so dead" to herself.

He looked at his daughter wide-eyed, then at the communicator. He wasn't ready. Taking a deep breath, he put on his best Chat Noir smile and faced the person on the other side.

"Hey, there, Bug-a-boo… long time no see." If he didn't sound entirely happy, he couldn't be blamed.


AN: Let me just be honest for a moment here: I do not condone this Marinette's decisions. Were they smart? No. Did she make good choices? No. Does this make her a bad person? Probably not. Do I hate Marinette and just want to watch her suffer? Not really. I mentioned in a comment on AO3 that the premise of the Parent Trap movies themselves was kinda sketchy. I mean, it's kinda crappy to split twin siblings like that, just so you don't have to see the other person ever again for no good reason. Neither of the parents in those moves was "bad people", they just wanted to get on with their own separate lives, and for some reason, didn't mind never seeing one of their twins ever again. Take that as you will.

I still liked the moves, though.