Past

Adrien awoke from his nightmares oddly calm. No cold sweat, no gasping awake as his body involuntarily thrashed, no increased heartbeat, just a sudden distaste for how large and empty his room was.

The nightmare was a familiar one planted by Monarch during his final days through his father's akumatized form, Nighttormentor. An insidious visage of Paris in ruin, the sky overwhelmed by the smog of the destruction below it, and among the rubble sitting Chat Noir amidst a sea of corpses turned to rusted statues by his cataclysm. It preyed on the true realization of the potential of the power he wields, the fear of how easily he could unleash such devastation if he lost control for even a second, and the knowledge that such thoughts only empowered a hungry akuma.

It had been a year since he last had this vision. A factoid that had unnerved him somewhat at first. In light of his father's passing, the demise of the man who so thoroughly represented control and discipline in Adrien's mind, he expected such fears to swallow him, but they never came.

Despite how long it had been, he still remembered the dream as if it had been a constant in his daily routine. Enough so to note how tonight's version had been modified. Destruction still surrounded him, everything was still lost, the dead still fell around him; but he did nothing. He didn't hold Ladybug in his arms, he didn't tear the citizens of Paris asunder with an uncontrollable blast, he did nothing.

He sat there, at the epicentre of all this carnage, yet detached from it. Ladybug stood away from him, looking over the destruction, slumped over in defeat. His Father stood over her, his face completely missing. Nathalie hid her face in her hands. Nino reached for a sinking Alya. Families' huddle together. Friends were ripped apart.

They weren't turned to stone, they weren't dead; but they couldn't be called alive. The people weren't moving around, nor were they still. Their limbs and faces transitioned in slow, flickering images sliding across his vision, like animated spites switching between different frames.

Everybody, no matter the angel, looked away from Adrien. They were avoiding him, avoiding what was behind them, what was done. They were ashamed of something. The world was crumbling around them, and they looked away, too scared to acknowledge it.

The world was crumbling around him, and he did nothing, could do nothing. It was if he wasn't there, wasn't real, just a figment of their collective shame existing only for the function of watching their end.

Then he was in his room, asking himself if he was real.

"You alright, Kid?" Plagg hovered over Adrien's cheek, the scent of fresh camembert strong and foul on Plagg's breath. You knew Plagg was really concerned when he interrupts his dinner to talk to you.

Adrien lifted his hand up to Plagg, lightly brushing his thumb over Plagg's forehead. "How'd you know I was awake?"

Plagg shrugged, "I know my kitten."

"How's Tikki?" Adrien asked, stifling a yawn as he sat up.

"Sugarcube's about two boxes into the sweets Glasses brought up earlier." Plagg's voice was playful, but Adrien could see the small twitch of the kwami's eyes that betrayed the worry underneath. "Trying to eat the pain away, but… Well, it's just reminding her of how she's gonna miss Pigtails' cooking."

"I'm not eating my feelings away!" Tikki's high-pitched voice, hoarse from its intensity, snapped as she materialized through Adrien's bed. "I'm making sure I'm fully energized. Just in case."

Adrien found his voice caught in his throat as Tikki's tiny body rushed to press against his chest, a familiar, protective and desperate glint in her eye. As if to silently say 'I'm not losing another one.'

"It wasn't your fault, Tikki." He said gently, stroking her back.

She let out a quiet, muffled sob. "You don't know that."

"I do," He stated firmly, "I know that you and Plagg always give it your all. If there was something you could have done, you'd have done it."

They sat there under the gentle, soothing rhythm of the rain tapping against the window, Adrien doing his best to cuddle the being 1/8 his size while Plagg did his best to look disgusted by the act. "Life doesn't always give us days where the best outcome is the one where everybody gets what they want. Sometimes we just have to accept a bad day."

"He's right, y'know!" Plagg dashed back over to his plate of rancid cheese, stuffing his face as he yelled over to them. Adrien suspected this was to mask whatever true emotion was threatening to break through, one that wasn't as comforting for his crimson partner. "'Sides, the time you're gonna spend beating yourself up is time you should be using laying the smack down on that cowboy creep."

Tikki didn't reply, but, after a time, Adrien did notice that the sobbing died down and she'd curled up in his hand, a softer breath blown against his stomach. He couldn't begin to imagine what she was going through. It was one thing to simply witness a loved one die in front of you, but kwami weren't just bystanders, they didn't sleep or become spectators when a holder transformed.

Adrien didn't know exactly where he ended and Plagg began, but he knew that Chat Noir wasn't just him in a suit, it was him merging with the God of Destruction. What that entailed was left up to the imagination, Plagg never liked to explain details like that, but he had to imagine that the sensations, the adrenaline, the fear; they felt it all as one.

So, in his mind, Tikki didn't witness Marinette's death, she was there, fighting Defect with Marinette, experiencing the same dawning horror of the trap laid before her and, finally, she died with Marinette. Only, kwami's were immortal beings, so she got to experience death without the end. She, more than anyone else, knew exactly what Marinette was feeling, thinking and doing in that final moment.

At some point during that thought, Plagg had returned to float beside Adrien's ear, staring ahead into space. "Are you gonna follow your own advice, Kid?"

On any other day, Adrien would deny his guilty feelings, would stuff it down somewhere deep and let it boil over. Today, he just didn't have the energy to keep it bottled up. "I don't know, Plagg…"

"I'm here for you." Plagg's voice was uncharacteristically soft. However, there was a slight strain to his voice from keeping himself staring ahead, laid-back and not-at-all emotional. "You know, as long as you have enough camembert to keep me awake." Even his attempt at snark and a chuckle sounded fake.

Part of Adrien wanted to follow Plagg's lead, to hit back with a joke about Plagg's love being so conditional, but he couldn't. The topic of Tikki's unique pain brought up a question that he never thought to ask before, a morbid one, but one that stoked his curiosity all the same. "Plagg, can I ask you a question?"

"This is one of those serious, mushy questions, isn't it?" Plagg sighed, turning to poke Adrien's cheek, pouting. "Fine. Go head. But no romance-centred ones, for pete's sake!"

Adrien would have laughed at that response, but his question was far too grave to muster his usual humour. He hesitated, sucking in a deep breath, trying to expel the unsteady pressure in his stomach in the exhale. "How many holders have you and Tikki lost?"

The question didn't phase Plagg, and Adrien didn't know whether to be surprised or not. On one hand, such a morbid question should instinctively stoke sad enough memories to get a reaction. Yet, on the other hand, when you lived long before time was even counted and had gone through generations upon generations of holders; wouldn't it simply have just become an inevitability?

"Depends what you mean by lost, I guess. Never really thought about it." Plagg threw his entire body back, 'lying' on the air with his paws stretched upwards. "Don't remember any that died on the job. Most just retired or had their miraculous taken from them."

Adrian's eyes widened slightly. That was quite honestly an unexpected tidbit. Yeah, he wasn't hoping for a huge fatality rate, but he just sort of naturally assumed that, with so many holders in a field that revolved around putting yourself in life-threatening situations, there'd have to be some deaths in there.

Maybe the previous generations were all just straight up beasts.

Plagg took another lump of cheese in his hand before continuing, speaking through a full mouth. "When me and Tikki are passed down to someone, it's usually cus those people are survivors, you know?"

"Oh, that's good at least."

Plagg swallowed and, for a split second, his ears dropped, and his lips tightened, as if he were tensing in preparation of something hitting him. "To you, I'm sure it is."

Adrien's eyebrow rose, "But not you?"

Plagg spread his arms out again, a lazy shrug to try and keep the 'not a big deal' act up. "Death's real morbid, I get that, but it's definitive." He slowly floated down to Adrien's finger, placing a paw over the ring. He stared right into it, past the material, past the magic that bound the kwami to it, past the mechanisms, peeling back all the layers until what remained was the bond between him and Adrien. "When you let go of that miraculous, I'm gone. And when I come back again, I'm meeting a new guy who has no idea who you are or what happened to you. All I have left is a memory you leave on my ring."

Adrien had never seen Plagg look as weak, as lost as when he sat down on the ring, hunched over in a limp gesture while his bulbous head fell back to gaze up at Adrien through eyes burning green with regret. "Maybe it's because destruction is my whole deal, but I'd rather see how it all ends instead of spending the rest of eternity wondering."

Tikki stirred in Adrien's hand, turning herself around to send Plagg a sympathetic look. "We never get to see anyone's happy ending, do we?"

"Marinette was happy in the end, that's gotta count for something." Adrien said quickly, only for doubt to creep in after the words left. There was so much he might not have known about Marinette, or how she viewed their relationship; especially when she didn't know he was Chat Noir. "She was happy, right?"

For the first time that day, Tikki managed to giggle, and to scoff. "She was head-over-heels and seeing stars."

Adrien sighed, feeling a weight he hadn't even realized had settled in his chest fall away. "Good. I just-… Good."

"Adrien?" Tikki hovered up to perch herself on Adrien's nose, making looking at her rather awkward, but Adrien rolled with it.

"Yeah?"

Tikki paused, her eyes listing off the side, guilting rolling off her in waves before continuing. "I wanted to apologise."

Adrien narrowed his eyes, quick to respond, to assure her. "We've been over this-"

"N-not about that. But for doubting you."

"Huh?"

Tikki tapped the tips of her paws together, which Adrien likened to a nervous person twiddling their thumbs. "When… When you found Marinette, and you unified me and Plagg. I was afraid you'd call on the wish to try and heal her."

"Oh." He said with a blank face. It took a second for his brain to catch up and put together what Tikki meant, the untapped power of Plagg and Tikki unified hadn't crossed his mind, he barely ever thought about it, not since that fight against his parallel universe double. "Honestly, I didn't even think of that in the moment."

"And now?"

In that moment, with Marinette's lifeless body in his arms, all he could think about was 'fixing' everything, and that Tikki always fixed everything after the akuma was beaten. Charm after charm exploded over him with the energy of creation, and charm after charm failed to undo was done, to fix the new, empty hole in his heart. In that moment, it simply felt wrong, against the very laws of nature that someone as kind, as loving, as heroic as Marinette was abandoned by the same power she used to save so many.

He felt his shoulders buckle, the pressure of that temptation mounting atop them – that simple idea that everything broken could simply be pushed back together. All he had to do was unify the two kwamis, they couldn't stop him, nobody could stop him. He could wield the power that Hawkmoth spent years hunting down, all by accident.

But some things couldn't be fixed.

He breathed outwards, the pressure, the temptation rolling off him like a gentle breeze. There'd been enough mistakes today, he wasn't going to add another one on top of it. "I always used to think about it. The wish could bring my mother back. But I could never go through with it. I won't take away someone else's loved ones just so I can have mine."

Adrien smiled up at Tikki, a weak one, but a smile none the less. "You don't have to worry about that, Tikki. We didn't beat Monarch just to take up his mission."

Tikki was about to make some heartfelt reply, but any attempt to keep up the wholesome and emotional mood was drowned out by the grumbling of Adrien's stomach. So, instead, she just giggled, returning to hover above his head as Adrien slipped out of bed.

"On that note, you guys chowing down is reminding me that I haven't eaten since getting home." Adrien groaned into a half-hearted yawn.

Plagg made a move to scoop up another unappetizing clump of oozing cheese, graciously presenting it to Adrien. "N-No!" Naturally, Adrien's poor, poor nose and the rising bile in his throat pushed back any instincts to be polite.

"Plagg, if you put that stuff anywhere near my mouth, I'm replacing you with Tikki. I'm serious! No more stinky socks for you!" He could hear Plagg howling with laughter as he scrambled out of the room on one foot, barely stopping himself from tripping over the head of the staircase.

As he descended the stairs, he caught sight of Nathalie down by the entrance, standing over the intercom set up by the door. It connected her to the mansion's front gates, allowing her to assess visitors before they're allowed passed the walls. Even before he reached her, he could see the scowl she was directing down at the screen, so intense he imagined her manifesting heat vision just to melt down the screen.

"-or the last time, you are not welcome here. Please vacate the premises or I'm sending security out to deal with you personally." Speaking through gritted teeth, her glasses sitting lopsided on the end of her nose and her voice barely clinging to her usual polite, neutral cadence; it was clear Nathalie's professional demeanour was being given a run for its money.

Adrien tried to peer down at the screen, hoping to see just who was trying to get in, but Nathalie's shoulders blocked his view. "Are the paparazzi flocking to our doorstep already?" He asked.

Nathalie's body jerked around with a light, strained gasp. "Adrien!" He must have caught her deep in thought, because Nathalie didn't hear the loud stomping footsteps of his approach echoing off the walls. Her eyes roamed his form, looking for anything she needed to worry about.

Seeing him manage a smile, and hearing his stomach growl, allowed her to regain her composure. Her body stiffened, lining up her shoulders, her stare and her legs in that stiff, perfectly symmetrical, professional pose. "I'm afraid it's far worse than that."

"Listen here, you glorified secretary." An arrogant sneer with the texture of sandpaper, wrapped up in the entitlement of a very familiar voice, came over the intercom's speaker. "Open the cage you're locking my Adrikins in, otherwise I'll tell my driver to start ramming! Chloe Bourgeois is welcome everywhere she goes."

Adrien pressed his palm to his head with a drawn-out groan. Suddenly, he felt like a child who just got a list of chores a mile long. "…Chloe?"

He heard an excited squeal, as well as the sound of her hands clapping together in quick succession. "Adrikins!" The leather material of her seat whines, and the speaker catches the scratched audio of her breath, as she pulls herself closer to her microphone. "Tell your assistant that just because she used to sit on your father's lap, doesn't mean she can boss me around."

Adrien pulled his hand down to fully cover his mouth, unsure whether his face would give way to offense or laughter at the sudden insult, but quite sure he didn't want Nathalie to see. From the corner of his vision, he could see the lens of Nathalie's glasses had fogged up completely, hiding the expression of her eyes as a shade of red splashed over her cheeks.

"…Permission to wring her neck, Sir?" She said quietly, slowly, precisely; like a hunter lining up a shot.

Adrien decided to avoid giving an answer. He wanted to assume that Nathalie wasn't being serious, but what little expression he could make out spelled out 'murder' in big bold letters. His father had been the sole expert at reading Nathalie. Which was ironic considering how unsociable a person he turned out to be, while his better half, the ever popular socialite Emilie who was born ready to mingle, had trouble deciphering Nathalie's mood even on a good day.

Instead, he leaned past her and spoke into the intercom. "As far as I'm concerned, Nathalie is the head of this house and can order around whoever she damn well pleases." He looked back at Nathalie, watching that little twinkle of pride pass through the fog. "I'll take it from here, Nathalie."

"Are you sure?"

It was a perfectly reasonable question. After all, the last time Adrien had seen the Bourgeois heiress, the two hadn't been on good terms; she'd taken over the city as a tyrant and imprisoned half the population simply to sate her ambitions and ego. Even before the hostile takeover, he'd officially cut her out of his life after realizing she'd never apologise or make amends with the countless people she'd hurt over the years, Marinette included.

By all accounts, he shouldn't want to see her again. He should send her away before she ruined the memory of the girl she bullied relentlessly. The best he should give her was some strong, hateful words that he could only hope would hurt her half as much as the pain she'd inflicted upon others.

"Might just be the cat in me, but I'm curious."

Maybe it was just because he was stuck in a vulnerable moment. Maybe a part of him still yearned for the friendship the two had back when they were kids. Maybe he thought pushing people away, insulting them or abandoning them, even those who maybe deserve it, would disrespect Marinette's memory more than he feared. Maybe he simply wanted confirmation that Chloe wasn't depraved enough to come all the way to Paris just to gloat.

"Let her in."

"As you say, Sir." Nathalie nodded, "Just know that I'll be on standby with a stiff drink and blunt instruments if required."

Adrien slowly turned his head away from Nathalie, unsure what to make of just how natural that sounded to her. Did his father regularly have her waiting to beat some of the people he met with? "Thank you?"

A few minutes later, the twin doors burst open, and there she stood.

Drenched from head-to-toe as she huddled under a broken bright yellow umbrella, rain pounding down on her, designer clothes damp and dishevelled, and yet somehow, she still looked ready to take on a fashion runway. She pulled off her golden shades, showcasing the sneer etched into her face, looking over the inside of the mansion as if she'd just entered a dilapidated bathroom.

"Why are you here, Chloe?"

Ever the storm of personality, she rounded on Adrien like a whirlwind, her face utterly aghast as she got a good look at him. Her chest twisted away, directing her nose in an upturned position as she threw her hands up to shelter her mouth in horror. "Oh Adrikins, you've really let yourself go." Not even waiting to give him a moment to be offended, she swung herself around, prowling towards the living room while dismissively waving over her shoulder. "Please tell me you're going to clean yourself up before we start our movie marathon."

There were so many competing thoughts he wanted to verbalize in that moment, but only one that managed to escape the dogpile was "Our what-now?"

He heard the 'tch' sound of her lips smacking together in irritation, and he could visualize her ever condescending eye roll even while looking at her back. "My limousine broke down outside your house. Naturally, you'll be entertaining me until it gets fixed."

She forced herself into his house, after he told her he never wanted to see her again, after the worst day of his life; and she had the gall to order him around like she was some guest of honour without even a lazy apology?

"Oh and be a dear host and fetch us some ice cream while you're at it. You know my favourite flavour."

And the worst part?

"…I guess I've got nothing better to do."

For reasons Adrien himself couldn't quite discern, he was gonna let her.

Plagg was right, he really was a chump at heart.

Two hours in, Adrien had already gone through a tub of mint choc chip, Christian Slater was getting blown up on the flat screen, his eyes were squinting through brain freeze, and he was no closer to understanding what the hell was going on. All he knew was that his stomach was going to hate him tomorrow morning.

"You call this a couch? This is barely bigger than the one I had back in London." Chloe snapped, sitting across from him. At some point she had decided to sit upside down, her legs flung over top of the couch while her head dangled over the edge of the cushion; and yet her hair managed to remain immaculate against the oppression of gravity. "Honestly, you need to be spending your fortune better."

There had not been a quiet moment since Chloe walked in, to the point that it was a wonder that Chloe still had enough air to breathe with how much she blew out. First it was the clothes he hadn't changed out of from yesterday, then it was how the interior decorating was too depressing and gawdy, then it was horror that his ice cream collection was all supplied by an 'inferior' brand, then there was some tangent about him needing to get a pet and the precise feeding habits of an iguana.

There was not a second of peace. There was not a moment where the void was not filled with a quick story about how Chloe managed to get an amazing deal for her shoes from a seller that was trying to scam her. There was noise, noise, noise, everywhere. It rattled around in his brain worse than the brain freeze, numbed his senses until he perceived the world in blurred pastel colours and undecipherable nonsense. Until it hurt to think, until he couldn't think.

And honestly?

He was kind of thankful for it.

He'd spent all day, whether awake or in his dreams, stuck in his head. Everything revolved around that moment, of everything that went wrong and all the way he could have avoided it, of all the days that would be missing the light of his life. It didn't matter what Chloe talked about; it all just filled the void with noise. Simple, overwhelming noise he didn't need to question, or think about, or relate to his current situation. In a way, Chloe's voice languishing over the petty details that only she cared about was soothing.

The deepest thought that her chattering brought to mind was memories. Memories of old times, better times, simpler times. Back when they were innocent little brats huddled up on this very couch, long before death and the miraculous would come along and complicate everything, back when their biggest fear was their parents catching them watching a movie that had swearing in it.

He smiled at the memory of his father being on the receiving end of an earful from his mother as Gabriel tried to argue that Rambo was a perfectly fine movie for a ten-year-old, and that she can't just keep Adrien on a media diet of solely Muppet movie adaptations. Emilie managed to be convinced in the end, but only if they watched it as a family, with Adrien protected on her lap while Gabriel painstakingly explained how no one actually dies in the movie (that one man who fell out of the helicopter just had a rough landing, that's all).

To him, it was an increasingly important memory. Not only because it was warm, comfortable and nostalgic for him, but because it helped keep him aware of what his life used to be. In the year since his father's death, it had become easier to remember him as the cold, almost robotic man he had become in the wake of his wife's death. A man you only saw, could conceive of, in the process of work.

All while it was frighteningly hard to remember the man he used to be, a man who would argue with his wife over quaint, meaningless things, who had hobbies, who you could actually believe would watch movies, much less something as 'lowbrow' as an action flick. A man who'd grunt and grumble over the first Rambo movie being described as a mere action flick.

When those memories slip away, nothing will stick with him but the bad times; then his father would truly be gone.

A spoon, slick with ice cream sludge, smacked him across the nose, jolting his body up in his seat. "What's with the big dopey grin?"

"Just… Thinking about something."

She let out a deep, guttural groan, waving around the spoon with no regards to the flecks of cream being launched across the room. "The point of eating ice cream until our brains explode is so we stop thinking."

Is that what you want? To stop thinking? Adrien appraised Chloe with a little more thought, eyes taking in the edges of her rotten, arrogant exterior, and seeing flickers of strain tugging at the façade. He considered if maybe that senseless oversharing, at least for today, was more of a front. And the day that Chloe Bourgeois needed to put active effort into being a brat was a strange day indeed.

"Why are you really here, Chloe?" He asked, steeled eyes assessing the woman before him in a new light. "I thought our last conversation was pretty conclusive on where we stood."

For a split-second, she flinched, exposing a raw nerve, before rapidly covering it up with a sneer. "The dumb blonde look just isn't for you, Adrikins. Obviously, your stupid girlfriend brought me." In quick succession, she stuffed spoonfuls of ice cream past her lips to plug the hole in her defences. Now speaking in muffled groans. "She's ridiculous, you know? Utterly ridiculous."

"No one forced you to leave your luxury summer home in London." He said. He didn't snap, like his heart instinctively wanted him to do, he just said it with an edge sharpened by his mind's suspicion.

Chloe rolled her eyes, "Oh please, I wish I had a summer home to go back to."

It was clear she wanted to end that line of questioning there, but Adrien's gaze didn't let her budge. It pinned her down and asked the question again and again amidst an awkward silence.

She relented with a dramatic heave of a sigh. "If you must know, they stuffed me in some cramped hovel with all the other rejects of society. Home for Forgotten Children." She stops herself, rolling her wrist forward in a dismissive manner. "Miss Starling says I shouldn't call it that, but that's what it was."

Adrien leaned back, sinking into the cushions as the reality fell into place. All he'd heard about Chloe's fate after the Mayor Bee fiasco was that she was heading to London with her mother. He'd always assumed it was just her jumping to a new mansion with the parent she had more in common with, but now it sounded more like she was shuffled out of sight and mind. Like Chloe's sister had been, if he was remembering correctly. "You got shipped off to some boarding school?"

Chloe scoffed, "Not exactly. Some worthless community program for 'troubled teens' where we 'dedicate ourselves to the life we deserve'." She quoted that tag line with such distain, it almost seemed natural, but she laid it on a fraction too thick for Adrien to buy it. "Which just means a lot of boring mushy talks in a circle, ick."

"Your Mom approved that?"

"I wouldn't know. Haven't seen her since I got off the plane."

Her face tightened, the forced smile withering under trembling eye and an involuntary sniff. Nothing was cold enough to numb that open wound.

"Oh." Despite all that had happened between them, Adrien's eyes softened. After all, he more than understood the pain of feeling like an old trophy tossed aside by a loved one, like his parent had given up on him. "So, this was all your dad's idea then?"

"Pffft, like he could ever have that much initiative." She laughed. A force, rough, choking laugh. "After the whole Mayor Bee mess, after Daddy managed to stop me from getting time behind bars, we went to see some 'professionals' and some stupid know-it-alls put it in his head that our relationship needed fixing, that we needed time apart so I could 'de-ve-lop' in a 'sup-portive' environment and work on my independence."

He saw how her grip tightened, crushing her tub until it bled rocky road over her knuckles. He imagined her and her father sitting before what he assumed was some sort of family therapist, every truth spoken about their less than healthy relationship like knives digging into her pride. It was hard to accept that you failed. It was even harder to accept that someone you loved, someone you know is supposed to know better, failed you.

Chloe slid further down the couch, her head now resting against the floor as she continued her upside-down rant. "I mean, my dad and servants would give or help me with anything I wanted. If that's not a supportive environment, then what is?" She threw her arms out in a wide, disbelieving arc, smacking Adrien's knee aside. "And why does Daddy have to take some stupid tests to prove he can be a parent? What, do we get parenting licences now?"

Chloe never outwardly showed any strong feelings towards her father, the only time you'd catch her mentioning the man is when she's showing off her wealth or threatening to weaponize his political power to get her way, and he enabled and encouraged such behaviour.

Yet here she was, offended on his behalf, in a way that wasn't framed as a slight against her. A rare, genuine moment brought out by a bad situation. In a way, it could be called bittersweet.

Adrien pushed himself off the couch, dropping to the floor to put himself on her level. "Do you talk with your dad much?"

"Well, he calls every week." She scoffed, crossing her arms and making sure her face was angled out of Adrien's view. "But the programme just keeps me so busy that I never have time to answer the call, is all."

It managed to stun Adrien for a moment. Looking back over his history with Chloe, he'd never known her as one to avoid confrontation. She was a social wrecking ball, you either got out of her way or accepted whatever earful she was gonna give you. In the best and worst ways, there was no stopping her when she had something to say.

"Sorry to hear that." He said, genuinely. It was harder to hate Chloe completely, not in such a nostalgic, such a personal, setting like the old couch. It made her look more and more like that abrasive, obnoxious, but also kind of caring (in her own way) friend he used to have. "Sounds like you've been having it rough."

"It's not all bad…" She said quietly, daring to turn over to bare her eyes to him. There was a small note of joy peaking through a nervous shell, like she had a shameful hobby she was nervous about revealing. It was such an alien expression for someone like Chloe to have.

"I mean, I guess Miss Starling is pretty cool. Turns out she knows a lot about fashion." She tugs on her sleeve, the ice cream tub left forgotten and leaking on the floor. Her voice, barely audible with all the syllables smashed together. "And I like talking about myself during circle time."

Her eyes don't follow Adrien, but not out of active effort anymore. Instead, as she pulled her legs off the cushion and sat up, she was lost in a memory. One that had a small smile front and center. "One time, they had us painting some rundown building, and I got to pick the colour scheme. I made those walls look amazing."

And suddenly, the energy was back, buzzing between her fingers as she clapped her hands together. Chloe, unabashed, unashamed and oddly giddy, was beaming. "Oh, oh! And I'm, like, super into laundry now."

Adrien could not stop himself from gasping out the first half of a full-on giggle fit. Every man had his limits. "W-What?"

Her cheeks puffed out as her lips pushed outward, trying to find the middle ground between pouting and scowling. "Don't give me that look, I'm serious!" She pulled her hands back and pushed her arms outward, making the shape of a square between her thumb and forefinger, inviting him to look at her 'world' through this frame. "Dividing everything into their own little piles, fiddling with all the buttons and dials, watching everything go round and round; it's kind of fun."

The sharp, guttural snigger couldn't have been contained even on Adrien's best days. "You watch the spin cycle?!"

A whine escaped Chloe's throat as she stabbed a finger into his chest. "Hey, I find it soothing, thank you very much."

Despite her protests, Chloe succumbed to the mundane bizarreness of it all, her body quaking with a viscous laugh. Soon enough, Adrien's laughter broke free and joined in, filling the empty halls of the mansion with childish, desperate, throat tearing giggles. They couldn't breathe. They couldn't think. All they could do was let their bodies lead them into a thoughtless, comfortable, warm space.

It was a fine moment. A sorely needed reprieve, but ultimately, a short lived one. Their chests slowed to a gentle calm, the cold numbness of the ice cream was now sinking into the carpet, the harsh pitter patter of rain drew them back to reality, and those pesky thoughts returned stronger than ever.

The high had worn off, leaving them to relapse into everything they were running away from.

Chloe was the first to crack, glaring out the window, into the downpour that encroached upon their warm sanctuary. They could keep the cold at bay, but they could never forget that it was there. "Figures that I come all this way to rub how good my life is going in Dupain Cheng's face, how much better I've gotten, how jealous she should be, how-" Chloe interrupted herself, delivering a frustrated kick to the couch.

"Then she up and dies before I get here." She crosses her arms and scoffs, like it was all some terrible joke made against her. "On top of that, she decides to one up me by revealing she's the hero of Paris. God, that's just cruel. I bet she thought it was so funny."

A bitter fury rises in her chest, every word a spit take. "She turns all my friends against me, kicks me off my pedestal, spews all that emotional junk at me, and she has the gall to die before… Before…" The pause is punctuated by her trembling sigh, before she quietly adds "Before I could tell her that she was right."

Then she turned on her side, glaring not at Adrien, but whatever was in front of her, whatever was in her way, keeping her there. Her voice goes up an extra octave, loud and boisterous, crying out for someone, anyone, to give her a target. A desperate plea for someone to take responsibility for this pain in her heart. "You can bet that everyone else is gonna find her joke so fucking funny, and they're gonna start pulling it on me too."

Adrien's arms were around her before she even finished, pulling her up to rest against his chest. "It's not like that, Chloe." He whispered softly.

Chloe told herself to push him away, but her body betrayed her, sinking into his embrace and letting her weak, pitiful sobs be heard. "Sabrina won't return my calls. Zoe is ignoring me. Everyone looks at me like I'm diseased. And I can't-" She found herself wheezing as her breath drew short, desperately clinging to his shirt. She was child again, more vulnerable than she's ever been and hating every minute of it. "I just can't."

They didn't know how long they sat there in each other's arms; time lost all meaning as they leaned on each other to carry the weight on their shoulders. All that mattered was having someone there, someone who understood and shared the moments that would never get to be.

Somehow, Adrien found the strength to talk, his voice shaky and quiet. "After my father died, I was terrified that everyone around me was going to follow suit, Marinette especially." His molars grinded together, a bitter pill drawing out a humourless chuckle. "Though, I guess my fears were realized in the end."

He looked down at Chloe, finding her eyes wide and desperate that renown Adrien Agreste optimism for any silver lining. "She wanted to tell me something important before we all got that damn akuma alert. I'll never know what it was, not for sure. I'll always be kept guessing." His best efforts fell short, cracking his voice in two to make way for tears. "There's so many things I wish I had said to her, to my dad, to… To everyone who's left us behind."

He'd never get to celebrate his and Marinette's anniversary. He'd never get to surprise her with a hamster. He'd never get to groan about his future day job with her. He'd never get to buy an apartment with her. He'd never get to retire with her. He'd never get to tell her that their super hero days were over, that all their fighting did mean something in the end. He'd never get to show Marinette how utterly in love he was with both sides of her, and that realizing his lady and his love were the same person was the best thing he could ever imagine.

Marinette would never get to know that she was his hero.

"I'm never gonna get the opportunity to hear them again, to tell them what I need to. So, I understand that fear you're feeling, Chloe." Slowly, but surely, his voice gains some stability. It strengthens until he grasps her shoulders firmly, staring back into her eyes with a fierce, determined gaze. "But you're still here, Chloe. They're still here. You've done a lot of things wrong, but you still have a chance to repair the damage, to leave behind more than just your mistakes."

He paused, lost his confidence and looked away. "That is, if you're willing."

Wiping away her tears, Chloe sighed. A smile, one he'd never seen from her before, broke through the anguish and lit up the entire room. "God, I can't believe I was ever attracted to you; you and Dupain Loser are utterly perfect for each other." Despite the insult, there wasn't a shred of malice in her voice, just a sense of peace washing over her. She lurched forward, wrapping her arms around him and burying her head in his shoulder. "What would I do without you two dunderheads?"

A rare, genuine moment brought out by a bad situation. How perfectly bittersweet.