The first time they had collected a cursed weapon, they had been seventeen.
They had been facing Candy Warper, a teleporting enemy who had forced the three of them to run all over Paris for six hours straight, as she popped from candy store to candy store to create herself an army of murderous sweets.
She had not followed the most basic rule of teleportation, which was 'do not transport yourself to a location you cannot see'. It made for a gory death. She had warped herself to the roof of a store, unaware that construction materials such as beams and sheet metal had recently been stored there.
Queen Bee had been the one to locate her. She had warned them that it was not a pretty sight, but Alice had still heaved and gagged, Ladybug persona or not. Gabriel had more of an aptitude to detach himself from a situation. He had winced and circled Candy Warper's body, looking for the corrupted candy cane the Akuma had nested in.
"Think you can fix this?" Bee had asked to a wheezing Ladybug, who was resolutely looking away from the dead supervillain.
"I'll… Try," Alice had gasped out. "Where's the candy cane?"
Chat Noir had crouched next to Candy Warper and picked the fetish up.
"Here," he had said, attempting to snap it in two.
The candy cane had resisted. Bee, hovering above Chat's head, had snatched it from his hands.
"Lemme, you wimp."
Gabriel had watched her try to smash the fetish, over and over again, while he quietly extended his left hand and prepared a Cataclysm. Anne-Laure had handed him the candy cane without a word. He had closed his fist around it and watched the dark magic glow and slide over the red and white candy bar, only to fade into nothing, leaving the fetish intact.
Alice had patted her earrings to revert her transformation, keeping her back turned to Candy Warper.
"Tikki, what is going on?"
Her Kwami had hovered between Chat Noir and the dead girl, remaining silent for a while.
"Her soul was sucked into her weapon," she had said. "It merged with it. There is nothing we can do now."
"WHAT?" Alice had yelled. "There has to be something we can try!"
Tikki had shaken her head.
"When something like this happens, the Akuma devours the victim's soul," she had explained in her darkest voice. "It's irreversible. This girl's powers are forever sealed into the weapon. You will have to give it to Fu so he can store it. The next time the seven Miraculous will be gathered, we will purge it, along with the others."
"There are others?" Gabriel had asked, his priorities always ever so slightly wrong.
"Two," Tikki had replied. "They are kept hidden for safety. We have been waiting for an opportunity to cleanse them."
"I thought Firebird's Miraculous had been lost," Queen Bee had commented.
"It was. Zharr will resurface. We always do."
"We can't bring the girl back?" Alice had cut in, her voice growing shrill.
They were all so used to fixable losses. They had seen people die during battles, of course, but Tikki's powers had always repaired all of the damage. They had never found themselves in a situation where capturing the Akuma was not an option.
"I'm afraid not, Alice," her Kwami had replied.
"There has to be a way. There's always a solution. We are not thinking hard enough. That's all!"
Her entire purpose was to come up with solutions. Gabriel was the planner, she was the "spur of the moment", "stroke of genius" problem-solver. For all of the power behind her Lucky Charm, it would have been useless without her resourcefulness and her unwavering belief that they could save everyone.
Chat Noir knew better. When he went home, it was to hear an endless flow of medical terms, from chemotherapy to morphine patches to metastases. Surprisingly, they did not pertain to chain-smoker Elise, but to her husband.
Gabriel was not a dreamer. Some battles could not be won. It was not for lack of trying.
He had wrapped his arm around Alice, careful not to let his claws scratch her. It had calmed her down a little. Still, the bubbly teenage girl with ponytails, who had never lost anything worth caring about, had changed. There had always been steel under her sweetness. It had been a shield, just like the red buckler with red dot her pouch turned into. On that day, that inner steel had become jagged and sharp, a step closer to the blade.
"I can still stop the magical army, right?" she had asked after taking the deepest of breaths.
"Your magic should work on that, yes," her Kwami had replied. "And on the damage to the city."
"Well, then. Tikki, transform me!"
###
Adrien had gone home, found the place empty, and made his way straight to his bedroom.
There, armed with the amazing powers of google, he had investigated Joa, the superhero who had replaced his mother as Ladybug. There was nothing to be found about him on the internet. Even his fights against Akumas had gone unnoticed. Mostly, they had happened in the forest, or in tiny villages that were not even on the map. Ladybug's (or in this case Joa's) ability to repair any damage after a battle ensured there would be no signs of the Akuma's presence. As for the villains themselves, they had been local children or teenagers, who had gone straight for Joa. They would not have been taken seriously, if they had come home with wild stories of turning into monsters.
As far as Adrien could tell, there was nothing in those answers that could help his father track down Hawk Moth: no physical description, no mentions of him being seen, no names, no nothing. The butterfly watch was much more of a worry to the teenager. Tikki's answers, instead of cementing Gabriel's decision to track down Hawk Moth in Paris, were more likely to send him to Brazil to investigate the battles she had mentioned.
Any delay was good.
"Plagg," he asked his Kwami after a solid hour of reflexion. "Should I give him?"
The black cat stared at him and winced, his tail swinging in nervousness.
"Oh," Adrien murmured. "Sorry. You can't discuss that."
He would have to figure out what those seals were and how to lift them. He would ask his father, as Chat. If that failed, Fu would have a lot of answering to do.
Plagg huffed and dropped down on the desk. He had been watching the screen and listening to Adrien thinking aloud without a single comment, but was clearly curious. The teenager gave him a little scratch on the back of the neck.
He could not imagine being forced - and magically, at that - to remain silent about someone he cared about. The more he thought about it, the angrier he grew. He felt like Plagg was seen as a danger by the other Kwamis and Miraculous holders, and that was not fair.
"Let's go to the kitchen and see if the cook has purchased more cheese," he suggested. "I bet we can find something you like."
"Camembert?"
"Roquefort. Herve cheese, maybe."
Plagg lit up like a child in a candy store. Adrien chuckled, letting him hide under his shirt so they could wander the house without risk. They were halfway to the kitchen when the doorbell rang. Adrien kept walking, since someone was bound to open the door. Then the doorbell rang again, and again, and he realized Nathalie was not at her desk and no one was filling in for her.
He hurried to her office, pressing the first button on the interphone to see who was waiting at the gates.
It was Marinette.
"Come in," he told her, trying to figure out which button out of the twenty-two unlabelled buttons on the pristinely white interphone opened the gates.
He pressed all of them, peeking through the window to see if something had worked. Then he raced to the main doors. When he walked out, Marinette was making her way to the stairs.
"Hello," he greeted her, slightly wary. He still smiled.
Plagg groaned, but she couldn't hear that.
"H-hi," his classmate replied.
She froze at the bottom of the stairs, then took a deep breath, raised her chin a little, and joined him at the door.
"Hi," she repeated, this time in a confident voice, without the slightest hint of her usual panicky awkwardness. "I came to apologize. For going to your father behind your back."
Adrien blinked, then took a step back and gestured for her to enter the house. He was not quite sure of what to say to her, past a 'please come in' he did not manage to voice anyway. He could not quite bring himself to smile either. Years of modeling should have taught him to fake any emotion at the drop of a hat, but he still felt betrayed, so he was still angry.
Marinette walked into the house and stopped three steps away, fidgeting. He closed the doors, turned to her, and crossed his arms.
She studied his face, saw his frown, and breathed in again. When she spoke, the shy and clumsy girl she turned into whenever she talked to him had vanished.
"It was wrong of me to confront him without taking your feelings into consideration," she said. "I should have talked to you about it. I should have asked your opinion before doing anything."
Adrien listened to all of that and realized that, while she was apologizing for not consulting him, at no point had she said she regretted arguing with Gabriel. She was only concerned about the impact on Adrien himself.
"Yes, you should have!" he snapped. "You don't know anything about my family. You don't know anything about my father, as a matter of fact! I don't know where you got the idea that he was some kind of monster..."
His own words started him. Something nagged at him. He filed that away.
"But he's not the man you think he is!" he continued. "I don't see why you'd think he's so bad! He has only been nice to you! He took time he doesn't have to mentor you during your internship! He liked you!"
She took a third deep breath, this time an exasperated, huffy one.
"I don't care how someone treats me and how much they like me if they can't be nice to others!" she retorted. "Do you think anyone who cares about you missed how he treats you? Do you think we missed that Chloé had to introduce herself during that fashion contest when she is your oldest friend? Do you think we missed how he never showed up for parents day and how you slipped out to call him? Nobody at school but Nino has ever seen the two of you in the same room, and that was when he threw Nino out! That is not how a family works!"
Adrien hardened, taking a step back.
"So you thought you'd stand up for me?"
There was a bit of panic in her eyes. It snapped her out of her anger, if only for a moment.
"N-no. Yes. No! I just wanted…" - She raised her hands in irritation, left them there, and balled her fists and looking to the tiled floor. - "I thought maybe he didn't see what he was doing. I thought he wouldn't know, because you are so nice you would never tell him." - Her hands fell back to her sides as she looked up. - "I just wanted to tell him, to put things into motion, so he could fix things if he wan-"
He knew that look on her face. It was not just that she was defensive, or angry. The way she gestured, the way she had narrowed her eyes and was so lost in thought that she was staring into the distance… But also the disgusted turn of her lips, her frown, her everything.
There was self-righteous fury and disdain there, and maybe even hatred.
"Wow, you really hate him," Adrien cut in.
She froze and winced.
"I… No. I. It's not that!"
He shook his head, that something that had nagged at his mind earlier hitting him with full clarity.
"It was you. The one who told Ladybug my dad might be Hawk Moth."
Marinette went absolutely still. Adrien sighed.
"I should have guessed. Ladybug rescued you from Mylene, I knew she knew you."
"I'm sorry," she murmured. "It was never meant to get back to you, you were never supposed to be told he was suspicious or anything."
"And that makes it okay? You go off and cause trouble behind my back and think it's fine as long as I don't find out about it? He's my FATHER, Marinette! And, for the record, he's not Hawk Moth."
Who was so 'nice', now?
His classmate lowered her head, looking genuinely remorseful. His anger abated and, not a second later, he felt more sorry than her.
"I… I didn't come here to argue," she said. "I, uh, I… I'm sorry. I shouldn't have…"
She hesitated for a while, and Adrien tried to finish her sentence. 'Accused your father of being a supervillain'? 'Gotten involved in your family's private issues'? 'Done any of that'?
"Come," she finished. "I-I just made things worse, I didn't meant to, I-"
She went silent as they heard a door open upstairs, and the clicking of heels coming in their direction. They both turned towards the noise. On top of Nathalie's footsteps (the heels were a dead giveaway), they could hear Gabriel's quiet voice, though his words were hard to distinguish.
Adrien wished he could forget the floor plan, because there was nothing but bedrooms in the direction they came from.
By the time Nathalie answered, they were close enough for her words to be clear.
"I do not care about the resources you have at your disposal, nor about the variety of improvements you are able to come up with, sir," she was saying, with mild annoyance. She arrived on the stairs' landing, stopped there, and turned back. "All the creativity and careful planning in the world is beyond pointless when you are. Manufacturing. The. Problem!"
Adrien gaped.
She had never, in his life, raised her voice at his father.
Gabriel walked out of the corridor, eyebrows raised. As usual, he was the picture of propriety, with his back straight and his hands behind his back. His suit was a little crumpled. On the topic of clothes, Nathalie's jacket was folded over her arm.
Stop paying attention to details like that, Adrien told himself.
"I was merely suggesting-" his father started.
He trailed off when he noticed the two teenagers staring at him.
"Miss Dupain-Cheng," he said, with a polite smile. "Nice of you to visit."
To Adrien, he gave a nod.
Nathalie just walked down the stairs, ignoring everyone in the most dignified fashion. Her heels were clicking a little louder than usual. She passed next to Adrien and an uneasy Marinette with barely a glance, but stopped at the door to turn back to Gabriel, whose eyes had followed her.
"Anything else you'll need today, sir?"
"No. Have a nice evening, Nathalie," Gabriel replied.
She nodded, then looked at his son.
"See you tomorrow, Adrien."
"See you tomorrow. Good evening," the boy said.
Nathalie gave him a fake, thin smile, then walked out. She did not slam the door, but it felt like she had.
"I… I should go," Marinette exclaimed. "Sorry again, Adrien."
He nodded and opened the door for her, sending her on her way with a 'bye' and a 'see you at school'. He was only too aware that his father was observing their every move.
"What did she want?" Gabriel asked when Adrien closed the door, after watching Marinette hurry to the gates.
Adrien looked at his father and felt a pang of worry. His face was gaunt and livid, and you could not miss his exhaustion.
"To apologize," the teenager said.
"Clearly, that did not go so well."
"I… No, father. Not really."
Gabriel sighed, looking up and mulling over Adrien's words.
"She'll learn," he commented. "Are you free for some fencing?"
###