Chapter 14: Take a bow 'cause you're the winner

Even in the most dire of circumstances, waking up from the depths of unconsciousness was a slow process. Chat Noir groggily blinked open his eyes, hazy with fog, as he grappled to make sense of why exactly he'd been unconscious in the first place.

Falling. He'd been falling from the Eiffel Tower.

He couldn't remember colliding with the water below. But he could certainly feel the aftermath enough to know it had happened.

His limbs throbbed like he'd been hit by fifty different trucks, his lungs burned as if they'd been crumpled up and then yanked taut again, and the concave of his ribs felt out of place; bones and ligaments scratching against things they shouldn't be. Fire blazed through his chest every time he took a breath.

But he had yet to be melted by the lava. In fact, he wasn't even in the Seine anymore.

Ladybug. She'd pulled him out. Held him close. Whispered reassurances in his ear.

Or had she? His memories had been wrung out and distorted, leaving him in a dreamlike mangle of fantasy and reality. Unable to tell what was real and what was not.

Ladybug wasn't here anymore. That much he was sure of. Her arms had been his sanctum, warm and safe. But now he was alone, lying on the divots of rubble and dust.

Well, maybe not entirely alone. Haziness fading away, his slitted eyes focused on the purple butterflies surrounding him, screeching with ire. Not attacking him, but seemingly preserving him. They swarmed by the hundreds, flying around his vicinity in some sort of circular pattern, and conjuring up just enough of a gale-force to ruffle his hair.

The insects provided too limited of a view for him to figure out where he was. All he could see was the derelict pavement.

And the one other person inside the circle with him.

Their violet-clad physique blended in so well with the butterflies, Chat almost missed them completely. But the figure was fast approaching, scepter clunking across the floor along with their footsteps.

The villain from the Tower, he noted uneasily. The one who'd completely trounced him in a matter of seconds.

The man crouched down by his side and Chat clammed up, heart thudding painfully against the cavity of his chest. If he pretended to still be unconscious, maybe he'd survive whatever happened next.

"I'm sorry," the man said softly, reaching for Chat's hand. The one with the ring. "I need your miraculous. I need this Wish."

Hawk Moth.

The realization struck him so abruptly, he almost drowned all over again.

No wonder he hadn't stood a chance. No wonder Ladybug had tried to stop him from engaging. He was an idiot, and soon to be a failure. Ladybug deserved better than him, and Plagg—

Oh god.

If Hawk Moth stole the ring, the kwami would be dragged along with it, and Chat would never see him again. He couldn't allow that, he couldn't lose Plagg, he couldn't afford for his heart to take anymore punctures—

He felt the smooth metal sliding up his finger. The magic coursing through his suit briefly flickered, threatening to break away, and panic spiked through him. His wrist twitched, itching to throw out its final bout of defiance.

Just as the ring reached his knuckle, Chat wrenched himself away from Hawk Moth's grasp. "Cataclysm!" he barked, a heavy voltage sparking through his hand. And with his remaining strength he swiped at the man's cheekbone, right below the eye.

Hawk Moth reeled backwards, roaring in pain. In impulsive retaliation, his fist shot out and crashed into Chat's face with a deafening crack, harder than any akumatized victim had ever managed to do. Blinding agony shot through his skin, hot as stars and numb as space, the momentum slamming his head into the cement beneath him.

The noise of the shrieking insects pulsed through his ears in jarring rhythms, stuttering from loud to muted. Empty black smudges crept along the edges of his vision, but he could still see Hawk Moth stooping down toward him.

The man's hand snagged around the bell attached to the front of Chat's suit and he yanked him off the ground, holding him level with his own height. The sudden vertigo left Chat's head spinning, and before he could react, Hawk Moth drew back his arm and hit him a second time.

"You little shit!" he seethed, fist slamming into Chat's face again and again, each impact spasming fire through his nervous system. And the only solace Chat could find was at least he couldn't bleed when in the suit.

He doubted it was about revenge anymore. But instead some horrible, twisted attrition; just a way for Hawk Moth to weaken him and grab his miraculous without the risk of disintegration.

He hated that it was working. His final cataclysmic throw had been strenuous enough, and he had absolutely nothing left to give, nothing left to fight back with. All he could do was try to feebly block the attacks with his forearms, and wish he had enough air in his lungs to scream.

Even after the punches stopped, Chat could barely keep his head up. His bandwidth felt drained, bled dry by his inflamed injuries, and by the knowledge that he wasn't winning this fight.

Hawk Moth would succeed and leave him for dead, Ladybug wouldn't be able to save the people who'd inevitably died tonight, and Plagg was about to be ripped away from him; along with the final spatters of hope in his heart.

A few months ago, he hadn't even wanted this ring. And now, he was ready to protect it with his life. Even if his life wasn't enough.

"Please... don't do this," he managed to choke out, wincing against the burn in his face. "There'll be a terrible price to pay if you..."

Hawk Moth glared at him, a furious glint in his icy blue eyes, and his mask caked in blackness where the cataclysm had struck.

"There's no price too high for me," he sneered, before his grip clamped onto the ring.

"No... NO!" Chat tried to keep his fist clenched, but his strength was no stronger than paper, and the tug of war was over before it had even begun. "Cata—!"

Hawk Moth wrenched the miraculous off his finger and released his hold on the bell. Magic buzzed across him in sparks of green as Adrien hit the ground hard.

The supersuit diluted pain. It always had. But now there was nothing left to protect him; no enhanced energy or endurance, and all the agony Plagg's magic had been warding off came crashing through. It suddenly felt ten times worse, like he'd been mashed and squeezed through machinery and then dropped out on the other side, morphed into a broken shape.

He couldn't so much as lift his cheek off the jagged concrete, so he just lay there completely motionless, frigid wind biting at his exposed skin. Unable to find the will to even sob, he let silent tears trail down his face and drip off his nose, as he watched Hawk Moth's shoes from his pathetic vantage point.

What happened now?

Did he even care?

There was nothing more this man could take from him.

But the shoes weren't moving. They stayed locked to the floor like tree roots, perfectly frozen. Hawk Moth didn't walk away. Nor did he try to hurt him any further.

As confusion crept into the crevices between fear and pain, Adrien wondered if this was just a sensation that happened right before death. Maybe time slowed down, and Hawk Moth was actually about to drive his scepter straight through his heart. Or something equally as grim.

He let his eyes fall shut and he waited for everything to end.

But as the moments stretched by and his chest remained intact, his theory started to crumble into fallible nonsense.

What was happening? Why wasn't he dead?

"Adrien?"

Hawk Moth's voice sounded different. No longer teeming with hatred or malice, but instead with something akin to utter disbelief.

"No... No, no, no, no, NO! This is a trick!" He heard the villain sink to his knees beside him, and then his hands were gently (gently?!) grasping at his shoulder blades. "You can't really be..."

Adrien thought he'd had no fight left in him, but sudden adrenaline lit itself alight.

"GET OFF ME!" he screamed, rolling onto his back and writhing away from the touch like it was poisonous.

"It's me! Adrien, it's me." He heard the man mutter something under his breath which, judging by the purple light that flashed across his eyelids, was probably a detransformation phrase. "Please, son, please just open your eyes."

The 'son' was enough to pause his futile escape attempt. And he realized the voice had gotten eerily familiar. He felt his stomach clench, snakes biting at him with razor sharp teeth.

He almost didn't want to look. Why shatter the remains of his ruined world when he could live in ignorant bliss?

Why couldn't Hawk Moth have just driven that scepter through his heart? Surely, that would've hurt less.

Against all his better judgement, he warily cracked his eyes open.

The hurricane of butterflies had dispersed, the little winged insects having scattered in all directions. The mauve blanket of clouds above had slipped away, revealing the natural deep black sky.

And Hawk Moth's mask had fallen, leaving behind the pallor of Gabriel Agreste's gaunt face, glasses askew and hair disheveled. The anguish in his eyes had thawed the iciness he'd seen in them only moments ago.

Adrien froze.

Pure horror lurched through his chest and frost flooded his lungs, consuming him with a numbness that was almost more painful than everything else, and his mind grappled to turn nonsensical madness into rationale.

Because surely, the sight in front of him couldn't be real. Hawk Moth must've fled and left Adrien's worried father in his place, and the charred flesh that maimed one side of his face in the exact shape of his cataclysm was just a coincidence—

"Son..." Gabriel's trembling hands hovered above him, as if he couldn't decide how best to help him. "No, this is... This isn't how it was supposed to happen! Chat Noir can't be..."

And Adrien knew deep down that reality had finally won out over fantasy.

"Dad?" a hoarse voice that came from his own throat asked. "It's you? All this time... we were fighting you?"

"Look at you." Gabriel stared at him with shining eyes, his flailing hands falling still. "What have I done? My little boy..."

The initial pain had dulled slightly. But moving in any capacity still sent bolts of lightning through his nerves. Regardless, Adrien slowly pulled himself off the ground with a wince, until he was sat upright on his heels, now able to look his father in the eyes.

"But... why?"

The question felt ridiculous; so utterly redundant and underwhelming against the heavy situation he'd found himself in. But he couldn't think of anything else to say.

Gabriel merely shook his head. "I… I never wanted it to come to this."

Adrien felt a wave of clarity wash over him.

"Oh," he whispered. His mind rattled faster with each new realization, as it struggled to siphon all this information at once. "Oh god. The Wish is for Mom. You... You did all this... to try and bring her back."

His father might've been bearing the mark of his scorn, but it still felt like Adrien had accidentally thrown that final cataclysm into himself instead. His insides were slowly dissolving, as if he were made of ice and a sack of grit had just been thrown at him.

"I know what you must think of me. I ignored the Butterfly miraculous for months, because I knew the consequences would be... awful." Almost to prove his point, Gabriel gestured at the devastated street and the crackling fires that surrounded them. "But we didn't deserve to have her taken away from us like that. There was no other way!"

Adrien's hands gripped at the rubble in front of him, sudden anger sprouting from the muddied depths of his chest.

"You chose this," he said, voice still barely above a whisper. "You chose to be... Hawk Moth. You chose to let me f-fall to my death—"

"I didn't know it was you! If I had, I never would've—"

"Stop it." He shook his head, his lip trembling, his eyes itching, his heart seizing. "You can't just... Even if I wasn't your son, I was always going to be someone's son! If I was anyone else, you would've..."

His head snapped up, eyes wide, as his gut roiled with dread. "Where's Ladybug?"

He watched his father's face flicker with an unreadable emotion. "I didn't kill her."

Fear slammed into his heart like thunder and his eyes frantically scanned the empty street, desperate to catch sight of a red and black figure among the fiery debris.

"LADYBUG!" Shouting sent waves of white-hot pain down his chest, but that hardly mattered. Not when his partner was still unaccounted for. "Ladyb—!"

"Adrien!" Gabriel grabbed his shoulder and turned him so that they were once again looking at each other.

Adrien pulled himself free, suddenly feral with hatred. "What did you do to her?!"

"Nothing! Please just let me talk to you. You don't understand—"

"Stop telling me I don't understand! I finally... I finally understand all too well." He let his tense shoulders fall as he stared at his dad's face. At Hawk Moth's face. At the man who suddenly made a lot more sense to him than he ever had before. But who had simultaneously become a stranger. "I... I should've known. You've never been able to just let things go, have you?"

"I didn't do this for me!" Anger flashed across Gabriel's expression. "You were right, Adrien. I have been avoiding you."

The anger immediately fled, both from his eyes and from his tone. "I couldn't stand the look in your eyes. I hated that you were hurting so much, and I hated feeling so... so helpless. Becoming Hawk Moth was my one chance to fix what was broken. But after talking with you last night, I realized I needed to stop wasting time. I needed to finish this once and for all. I knew if I managed to bring your mother back to you, it would..." His words faltered off, wrecked by emotion. "You've always needed her more than you needed me. I wanted us to be a happy family agai—"

"You really think that's how it works?" Adrien asked flatly.

He couldn't find it within himself to empathize.

Maybe on the day of the first akuma attack, he would have. Back when Gabriel had knocked on his door, asking to talk. If only he'd let him in. Let him come clean about what he'd done. Adrien would've forgiven him instantly, would've hugged him, would've said they could get through this together.

But now? The door was locked, and the world was on fire.

"You... You think we'd go back to being a normal, happy family? Even if you brought her back to life, you can't take back the damage that's— that's already been done. Not on h-her, or on me, or hell, even on yourself!"

Adrien's volume steadily rose to a shout, adamant to be heard now that he had nothing left to lose, and nowhere left to hide. And no one was around to witness their altercation. "You can't take back what you've done to this entire city! All the people you hurt because you couldn't move on! Because you didn't even stop to think about anyone but yourself, you selfish bastard!"

Gabriel said nothing. He simply continued to stare at him, dark-eyed and steady and completely opaque.

But despite how much his father deserved to feel the wrath of an entire city, Adrien couldn't seem to refrain from making it all about himself, too.

"Mom might've been gone, but I was still here!" He slapped his own chest for emphasis. "I was still... right here, and you... You never saw me... never even cared."

As his voice cracked, so did the remainder of his composure. Because Gabriel being Hawk Moth apparently did little to change how desperately he still wanted his dad's attention and approval.

With a throbbing pressure in his gut and a crate of stinging nettles in his heart, Adrien hunched over on himself, head resting in his hands. He squeezed his eyes shut as simmering tears finally spilled over, burning his cheeks like hot magma. Heaving sobs overtook him, and the world thudded through his senses in disjointed gloops and blurs.

But was still very aware of the hand that came to gently rest on his back.

"Son—"

"Why was I never enough for you?!" he blurted, every mask cracking apart and every barrage bursting open. "I always tried... I always tried so hard! To be perfect! To be everything you wanted me to be! To do everything right so that you'd accept me! But it didn't matter how hard I tried, you..." His breath shuddered through a series of hitches. "Do you know why I needed Mom more than you? It's because she was actually there for me. But y-you never loved me. You were only ever embarrassed by me!"

"What? I've always been proud of you." Gabriel said it with such a lack of vehemence, that Adrien was almost convinced he meant the exact opposite. "I do love you."

"Well, I never felt it!" He pulled his head upright to meet his dad's stare, teary eyes be damned. "And even if you loved me to some extent, it was only because she did! And she was… the only thing that ever mattered to you."

"Of course she matters to me, but—"

"Just admit it!" he spat, because every time he let Gabriel speak, it felt like his heart ripped another shred of itself off. "You're not doing this for me. You wish I'd died instead of her!"

Maybe it was a little hypocritical of him to be upset by that.

Maybe they were just as bad as each other.

Gabriel looked at him in horror. "I wish no one had died!"

Adrien bit down on his vexation. This is bigger than you, he reminded himself. So much bigger. Stop acting like an insolent child.

"Yeah?" He pulled his legs out from under him in favor of sitting on the ground, and rested his arms on his knees, head hung low. The exhaustion that warped through his body and soul alike felt heavier than a hundred neutron stars.

"Well, I bet the mother from your last terrorist attack wishes you hadn't killed her children. I bet every single one of your akumatized victims wishes you hadn't taken advantage of them. I bet Ladybug wishes you'd stop making her work to the bone cleaning up your messes." His fists tightened. "And I bet if she were alive, Mom would wish she'd never fucking married you."

The distant roaring fires were deafening in the silence that followed. Eventually, he heard Gabriel stand up.

His heart skipped a beat.

Maybe he was going to kill him, after all. Maybe he'd realized that his son was just a liability in his grand plan. And once he had his wife back, he could just make a new son anyway—

"Perhaps you're right," said Gabriel, in the tone that Adrien had come to recognize as the 'calm before the storm'. The one that made him want to flee from the situation as quickly as possible, before all hell broke loose. But now, all it made him want to do was furiously scream to the high heavens. "There's a chance she would've thought that. But we'll never know, unless I make the Wish—"

"SHE'S GONE!" Adrien, with no threshold left to speak of, slammed his fists into the ground on either side of him, splitting the skin on his knuckles. "SHE'S GONE, AND SHE'S NEVER COMING BACK! Why can't you just accept that?!"

Gabriel stared down at him, eyes burning with what Adrien could only describe as pure loathing. "How are you able to accept that there's a way for you to see her again, but you won't even consider it?"

Adrien sniffled and wiped the back of his hand across his wet face, realizing too late that he was probably just creating a smudgy mess of tears and blood.

"I thought about it," he said, voice shaking. "Of course I thought about it. But h-how could I sacrifice someone else in her place? Someone who might also be a parent." His eyes flitted upwards to his father's face. "That would be... monstrous."

The corners of Gabriel's frown deepened, but not much else changed about his expression.

"I thought it might work if I just... sacrificed myself instead." Adrien shrugged his aching shoulders. "But then I realized... I'd just be waking Mom up into her worst nightmare. Either way, I couldn't do it."

Gabriel shook his head. "I couldn't do that, either. I would never..." He sighed heavily, as if this were a normal father-son fight and he was growing tired of Adrien's antics. "Nobody else in our family needs to die."

Adrien glared at his own shoes. "But someone will."

"I know this is a difficult decision. It is for me as well. And I understand that Chat Noir has an obligation to protect Paris. But you know the truth now. And you need to choose right." Gabriel's eyes darkened like clouds over the sun. "You owe her."

Adrien frowned in puzzlement. "What?"

"Don't you remember that day in the car?" his dad asked, as if Adrien had ever been able to forget a single detail of it. "It was your coke we went back for."

For a second, Adrien's heart stopped, and a vacuum of suffocating emptiness crashed over him.

The statement wasn't new to him. He'd always been painstakingly aware of it. Aware that if they hadn't turned back for his stupid drink, their car wouldn't have been on that exact road at that exact time and then maybe everything could've been avoided.

But his own father voicing that accusation so readily was one strike too many, and suddenly he was falling apart at the seams. His stomach convulsed with the overwhelming urge to throw up, and his brain tore any sense of coherent thought to shreds.

In his despair, he nearly forgot one crucial fact.

One that was so deliriously ironic, it was almost funny.

He caught hold of this fact before his mind could spiral any further, and gripped onto it like a lifeline. His chapped lips stung as they stretched into a twisted sort of grimace, a dark chuckle firing through his chest.

How was Gabriel supposed to know that trying to blame his own attributions on his son would backfire so spectacularly?

Drunk on the throes of hysteria, Adrien threw his head back and laughed. He didn't feel like laughing and it hurt to jar his ribcage so aggressively, but he barely felt in control of himself anymore.

But that didn't mean he couldn't take back control of the situation.

Hysteria dissolving away, he set his eyes on Gabriel again, still grinning manically.

"We only went back because you forgot to order it."

Gabriel bristled. "She's your mother, Adrien," he said, shifting his strategy. The strategy Adrien could see straight through, like glass that had finally unclouded. "Don't you love her? The rest of this city doesn't mean anything to you! You won't miss someone you've never met."

"Stop!" Adrien gritted his teeth. "Just stop it! I'm not murdering anyone!" Never again. "You're not going to convince me!"

His eyes fell to the pocket on his dad's lapel, bulging with the density of three magic jewels. And he realized he was just prolonging the inevitable.

The impasse they'd reached was completely gridlocked and they both knew it. There was no crossing that final barrier they were divided by — that final locked door. There was no understanding each other's perspectives.

(A part of him wished he could understand. He wished that unlocking the door was easier than banging against it and screaming at the top of his lungs.)

"But I guess," he said slowly, "I'm not going to convince you, either."

His dad smiled, in a way that was almost fond. "She was right about you."

Adrien didn't bother asking for elaboration. He simply continued to glare daggers, waiting in burning anticipation for his world to collapse, metaphorically and literally.

As if reading his mind, Gabriel reached into his pocket and pulled out the handful of jewels. He glanced down at them as they pulsed with magical energy. "I wanted this decision to be unanimous."

Adrien scoffed. Like his father had ever considered his opinion before.

But then he realized what was making this whole situation so bizarre.

That being: for the first time in his life, his opinion was being considered. His dad wouldn't have tried so hard to persuade him if he didn't deem it to be important.

And while it made absolutely no sense to him, it also meant he wasn't completely out of options. He still had one more card he could play. One more chance to talk his father down from the ledge.

It seemed he was still desperate to supply some sort of olive branch. Even now.

Adrien sluggishly climbed to his feet, ignoring the way his limbs seared in response. He wobbled on unsteady legs and Gabriel's arms flew up towards him, ready to catch him if he fell.

The show of support almost made Adrien burst out laughing again. Where were these fatherly instincts when he was plummeting from the Eiffel Tower?

Regardless, he ignored the offer and took a deep breath, gearing himself up to enact a convincing ultimatum.

"Dad, if you go through with this... If you make that Wish, I swear to god, I will never forgive you." His voice caught, as if he were afraid of the words escaping his mouth. "I swear that, one way or another... you will lose me. No matter what, you won't get your perfect little family back."

Gabriel's entire physique stiffened. Only his eyes continued to move, seeming to sift through a myriad of emotions one after the other. Shock. Confusion. Disgust. Contempt.

When they finally widened in realization, Adrien knew his dad understood his implications. Thinking he'd gotten through to him, he felt his heart hammer just a little more forcefully.

But then Gabriel's face hardened. He glared down at his son with such intense fury, it reawakened the snakes coiling in his stomach.

"You would do that to your own mother?"

The knife that slashed through Adrien's chest threw the world into a bloody blur, cracking open the hurt harboring inside the deepest chamber of his heart, and flaying him to the bone. Roaring waves rushed through his ears, and the tears in his eyes fell so suddenly, that his vision was clouded by an instant waterfall of distorted colors and shapes.

It turned out that the only one being pushed off the ledge was him. And he wholeheartedly deserved it. His dad might've liked to toy with the threads of manipulation, but Adrien was no better. In fact, he was worse. His threat wasn't empty, but it was still a threat. Still a horrific thing to proclaim.

His mother didn't deserve to have such an awful son. And his father was perfectly content to watch him fall into the icy depths below and drown.

He realized he no longer had any reasons left to fight his way back to the surface.

Like a marionette with half its strings broken, Adrien turned and staggered away from his dad, hand grasping at his chest as if he could somehow push his cracking heart back together.

He heard Gabriel's footsteps approach him from behind, and then a hand was fastened around his arm. "Wait— Adrien, wait! I'm sorry, I didn't mean that—"

"No, don't TOUCH me!" he sobbed, lethargically trying to wrench himself free. "I HATE you! I fucking HATE you!"

His futile resistance only resulted in his knees buckling, as the last of his strength instantly drained away.

Gabriel lurched forward and caught him around the waist, tightening his hold until he was the only thing keeping him upright. And Adrien choked on every single type of pain at once.

"Look at me, son." Gabriel spun him around, hands clasping tightly onto his biceps, to make sure Adrien didn't even have a goddamn choice. And he couldn't fight him off if he tried.

"You said you've never felt like I loved you?" Gabriel asked. One of his hands fell away, and Adrien felt a small collection of metal trinkets being pushed into his palm. "Here."

Blinking away the blur, he glanced down at the objects he was holding.

Shining back up at him were three jewels: an amethyst in the shape of a brooch; surrounded by four gossamer wings, a pair of red-and-black spotted earrings, and his own ring; as familiar as the hand he always wore it on.

The roaring in his ears faltered, only to be replaced by a high-pitched ringing. Bouts of confusion bled through all the other emotions raging within him.

"They're yours," his dad's voice cut through the noise. "All of them."

"Wh-What?"

Adrien watched as each miraculous began to glow brightly; the sharp primary colors of red, black, and purple intensifying until they burst to life in miniature explosions.

Three kwamis morphed into existence above his palm. Tikki — who looked exactly how he'd expected her to — glanced at him with kind and depthful eyes, as she collected her twin earrings in her tiny arms. She took off in a simmering glitter of pink, no doubt on her way to hunt down Ladybug.

The purple kwami — Nooroo, if he'd remembered the name correctly — offered him a shy smile, before scooping up his own miraculous and following after Tikki.

Only Plagg stayed behind, his little cat-ears flicking sporadically as he observed his surroundings. He said nothing, but when his green feline eyes met his holder's, Adrien almost sobbed with happiness.

Hands shaking, he pushed the ring back onto his finger, overcome with the feeling that he'd gained back a limb he had lost.

Plagg flew up to perch on his collarbone, paws gently sinking into his flesh, as he started up his usual rhythmic purr. It took Adrien a moment to realize that the vibrations thrumming through his skin weren't actually purrs this time, but growls.

Growls that most definitely weren't directed at him.

Gabriel's eyes briefly flitted toward the seething kwami, before landing back on his son.

"Dad, why are you—?" His voice wavered dangerously. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because..." His grip on Adrien's arms tightened, but not enough to hurt. He leaned forward slightly so that they were more eye-level. "That's the last thing I can give you. The police are going to arrest me, and I don't know if I'll ever see you again."

"Wait..." Adrien blinked several times, still reeling from the sudden whiplash in his father's attitude. "Wait, no, that's not—"

"If you don't want to bring your mother back, I'll respect your decision. But I can't let you think that..." His eyes shone with enough intensity to burn straight through his son's retinas, and yet he couldn't bring himself to look away. "Adrien, listen to me, I promise I have never wished you'd died in her place. That would be the only thing worse. You have every right to hate me, but I'm not going to lose you, too."

"You..." Adrien numbly shook his head. This had to be a trap, another scheme, another strategy. "You're lying. There's no way you—"

"I love you more than anything." Gabriel's words managed to punch straight through a heart that was barely there. "And I'm sorry I've hurt you, so many times in so many ways. I should've made up for it when I had the chance. I'm sorry I'm leaving you without a mother and a father. I'm sorry I made you feel like you're worthless. I'm sorry it's taken me this long to realize how..."

Adrien almost wanted him to go back to striking him in the face. Because this was too much. Too little, too late, too overwhelmingly impossible to listen to.

"Stop it." His tears were falling and his voice was cracking and the rest of him was surely about to follow. "Stop it, stop it..."

"You deserved so much better than what you got," Gabriel said, strained, as if he were aware of the effect he was having on the crumbling boy in front of him. "You're such a good kid. You always were."

Adrien inhaled sharply.

He'd waited his whole life to hear those words. And now, here his dad was, offering him everything he'd ever wanted on a silver platter without expecting anything in return. His wish, the one he'd craved like an addiction, was finally being answered.

But at some point along the way, the silver platter had splintered apart. And each shard he tried to grab hold of sliced through his skin, leaving gaping wounds that bled like tears and burned like heartbreak.

"You're gonna grow up to be an amazing person." Gabriel smoothed down Adrien's mussed collar with unfamiliar affection. "Because that's what's going to happen. You're going to carry on living. Even if your mother is gone. Even if I'm no longer around. That's what she would've wanted." He paused to draw in a deep breath. "And it's what I want, too."

But Adrien's thoughts were spiraling.

He was still banging against that locked door, knuckles bruising and throat running itself ragged. He wanted so badly to break through it, wanted so badly to understand his father's reasoning.

Because it didn't matter what his dad tried to claim.

Adrien knew with every fiber of his being that Gabriel Agreste did not love his son as much as he loved Emilie.

So why, why, why was he throwing away everything he'd worked for? He'd had the miraculous in his hands, he'd finally had the power he'd fought so hard to get. Why hadn't he brought his wife back, why hadn't he let Adrien die, why had he ever even entertained the idea that his son was the one worth saving—?

Desperate for answers to his frenzied questions, he asked, "How can you just... change your mind so quickly?"

Gabriel's eyes finally dropped away from his. "I haven't. I'm always going to want to make that Wish and reverse my mistakes. But I won't do it at your expense. Or at Emilie's. I have to live with what I've done to our family. But absolutely none of this is on you." He took hold of his son's shoulders again and lightly shook him, almost for emphasis. "Don't blame yourself for the decisions that I made. Promise me you won't do that, Adrien. Promise me I'm not going to lose you."

Adrien felt his heart finally shatter.

Its bloodied remains dripped all the way down to the soles of his feet, coalescing into weighted anchors.

Because despite all his big talk of everyone being better off if he wasn't in their lives, he'd never been able to shake the fears that had lurked deep inside him ever since that fateful day in the car.

He had so many reasons to rejoice at the prospect of never seeing his father again. But none of them were enough to overshadow the cold, harsh reality that would leave him in.

"I don't..." He swallowed thickly. "I don't want to be alone."

Gabriel's face crumpled, remorse winning over false bravado. His mouth opened, then closed. Words he'd been so full of only moments ago seeming to run dry.

Then he caught sight of something behind Adrien, and the faintest hint of a smile tugged at his lips.

"You won't be."

Adrien blinked his damp eyes, mouth struggling to form the shapes of words. "Wh-What do you—?"

"Chat Noir!"

The voice rang through his soul like the bells of Notre Dame, and he turned so fast his neck audibly cracked.

Ladybug, completely unhurt and alive, was rushing across the darkened street toward him, pigtails flailing around her shoulders.

Her blue eyes, shining with deep concern, bore into him. They lit his chest up with warmth, melting away some of the ice still festering in there, and he ached with the urge to throw his arms around her and never let go.

Then her eyes fell on Gabriel and her sprint slowed to a stop, fear sinking across her features.

Adrien spared a glance back at his dad, his reflexes torn between staying right where he was, and running straight for the girl across the road.

Gabriel nodded in Ladybug's direction. "Go."

Adrien's paralysis clammed up even tighter, heart loudly thudding to make up for every step he couldn't take. "But you—"

"Adrien, go." He gently pushed his son forward. "Everything will be okay. I promise."

Adrien didn't move for many torturous seconds, anchored by the bloodied clumps at his feet and frozen by the shards of glass in his skin. He watched his dad's eyes for any sign of deception, any sign that this was all some elaborate ruse. But all he found was warm assurance.

Nothing was okay. That much he was sure of. His world was in ruins, and the thinly-veiled guises of fantasy he'd always tried to hide behind were no longer enough to protect him.

But then his eyes briefly flitted toward the red and black figure in the distance.

And he realized that despite everything, maybe he still had enough reasons to fight his way back to the surface, after all.

Cinching together all the scattered dregs of courage he could find, Adrien turned away from his father, for what would probably be the very last time. And his chest clenched with an emotion that felt far too familiar for his liking.

He shoved down the bursting pain that came with moving, and ran — or more accurately stumbled — towards Ladybug. His sanctum, his home, his partner.

He didn't so much as glance back once.