Past

PowerPrincess214: Sorry about my mother. She had no right to act like that.

PunsterPrince: Isn't your fault. Tomoe's always been…

PowerPrincess214: Insensitive?

PunsterPrince: I was gonna say blunt.

PowerPrincess214: It's different than usual. She's steadily been getting worse since the death of your father, more desperate. She has less control over this new initiative with Mr. Moth than you'd think; and Tomoe Tsugi never allows herself to have anything less than total control.

PunsterPrince: It sounds like you know more than you're telling.

PowerPrincess214: I do. I know… Too much.

PunsterPrince: But you can't tell me.

PowerPrincess214: I'm sorry. I want to.

PunsterPrince: I understand. How worried should I be?

PowerPrincess214: They're planning something big, and they're gunning for Team Miraculous.

PunsterPrince: Ooo, they're ambitious.

PowerPrincess214: Just try to keep your head down, Adrien. I mean it. Put yourself as far from this mess as possible. It's better that way.

PunsterPrince: Sorry, Kagami, but I was never good at running away.

PowerPrincess214: I know. Just be careful.

Looking at Luka, with his hair grown out, his face more defined and a few more inches gained, it was the first time Adrien realized just how long it'd been since he'd last seen Luka. After Monarch fell, life had only increased in activity, with Paris undergoing massive changes, everyone stumbling about to work with the new education system, the endless paperwork and meetings his father's death brought him – the last year had been utterly hectic.

There'd barely been enough time to regularly meet up with the people in his class, let alone the new up-and-coming hotshot musician who never stayed in Paris longer than a few weeks at a time.

So, Adrien didn't know what to think when he pulled himself from the limo to find Luka leaning against his front gate. The sombre, tense expression just looked unsettling on a man as chill and easy going as Luka. And that sensation only grew stronger when Adrien realized that Luka wasn't alone.

Su-Han stepped into view, his eyes solemn and heavy, greeting Adrien with a bow. "Hello, Chat Noir. We have much to discuss."

Adrien's gaze narrowed with his transformation phrase on the tip of his tongue, his muscles tensing – ready for a hit that never came. Interactions with Su-Han had been few and far between, but never pleasant, and never comfortable enough that Adrien trusted the man. He always assumed was a mutual distrust since Su-Han always seemed to take any business he had to Ladybug alone.

"If you're here to take back the miracle box or the ladybug earrings, you can walk right back wherever you came from." Adrien blurted out the words without much forethought. He'd just finished wasting his patience on Tomoe, he certainly didn't have any left to spare a man who only ever seemed to appear to threaten his and Marinette's place as heroes. He didn't care if Su-Han was technically the guardian now.

However, Adrien found himself flinching when, in place of Su-Han's usual rhetoric and stubborn zeal, Su-Han's face fell, casting a shameful gaze to the floor.

"Let's keep things chill here." Luka moved between them, hands up defensively. "We come in peace, Adrien."

But there was no chill to be find despite the cold weather, tension seeping from every pour of Adrien's body as he nervously shuffled his weight between feet. "Did… Did you tell him my identity?"

Luka's sigh came out as a sad whistle. "Not intentionally." He shook his head. "It just sorta slipped out during my training with him… Sorry."

Training. It took a moment for Adrien to remember that, after leaving Paris to protect Adrien and Marinette's identities, Luka and Jagged Stone had somehow ended up training with the guardian order. He had to admit, the thought that Jagged god damn Stone got to get professional training to help fight Monarch but Chat Noir and Ladybug were basically left to fend for themselves, it did sour his mood a bit.

Adrien scratched the back of his head, yawning as he pushed his way past the gate. "Look, I'm real tired at the moment. I don't know if you heard, but I-"

Luka's hand came out to stop the gate from closing, wearing a slight grin. "Had a bad run in with a metal biker?" He said, "I was there, remember? Stuck in a giant cube?"

Adrien blinked.

Adrien thought for a moment.

And then suddenly, he felt completely stupid.

"You're Viperion?" He said so fast and so clumsily he almost literally spat the words out.

The outburst left Luka reeling back with wide-eyed confusion. "You sound surprised."

Adrien recognised the look that flashed through Luka's eyes, that split-second of second guessing a fact you were so certain was true, and what you just let yourself say and do under the presumption of that fact. It would have been so funny if it didn't make Adrien feel so guilty. "Weren't you the one who recommended me to Ladybug?"

"I…" Adrien paused to inhale sharply, "I don't remember that day very well."

Well, that was technically a lie. He remembered that day, that month, that half a year, very well. A particular segment of it simply overpowered any other detail in the memory. He remembered being beaten over and over again. Watching everything fall apart over and over again. Watching himself fail Ladybug over and over again.

And then he gave up, he collapsed and thrusted that burden upon the first person he could think of.

Dredging up that day was enough to make him flinch, as if the memory slapped him. "I was stuck watching you all get taken by the akuma, on loop, for months. Watching Ladybug- Marinette-"

His breath hitched, cutting off his words with a sharp dry heave. That day, he was left imagining all the horrible ways Ladybug could lose in the wake of his failure. But none of those nightmares compared to seeing it happen, to be hit with the raw reality that it's real. Only this time there was no one else for him to hide behind.

"I'm sorry I wasn't at the funeral." Luka pulled him away from his thoughts, boring into Adrien with a hardened, even if shaken, gaze. "I just… Couldn't face it. Y'know?"

Adrien hadn't noticed Luka's absence that day. He hadn't noticed anyone. Other than Marinette's parents, his only thought was holding back the urge to crumble right there on the stand. A petty part of him wanted to hold that against Luka, as it was suddenly so easy to find things to be petty over in recent times, but he knew that, if it were an option, he'd never have been able to muster the strength to be there.

"I get it." He nodded, "I had bury her twice, Adrien and Chat Noir got to have their own personal eulogies. If Nathalie wasn't here…"

Luka lightly slapped his shoulder, falling back against the gate with more enthusiasm than either party had. His smile was back to being a playful one, one he'd use when trying to talk someone through a particularly obvious answer, one he'd use when it was just a casual chat between friends. Like it was just a normal day, and not one in the shadow of tragedy.

"Hey, most of us can't shoulder the burden for one life. You had to shoulder it for two. I think you did pretty well."

It was a comfortable little moment there, the two friends standing on the cusp of Adrien's only remaining safe haven, wondering if things had changed too much, too quickly, for Adrien to let the other inside.

His father always said that they kept their hearts locked within the walls of the Agreste mansion. The outside world was a dangerous, ruthless, rancid place that would prey upon Adrien's every insecurity and vulnerability. That's how Gabriel would explain it, why they can never trust anything outside these walls, why their hearts must be locked up tight, where it's safe, where it can't be exploited.

And his father never wavered from that. He locked his heart away so deep that not even Adrien could glimpse it, denied even the warmth from entering these hallowed halls, pushed everyone away so that even on his death bed he was alone. Even Nathalie and Adrien, in the end, became an outsider. He was dying right before Adrien's eyes, but he was to deep in denial to let anyone, not even Adrien, see it.

Adrien sighed – He wasn't the only one who lost Marinette, the world didn't revolve around his relationship to her, nor his family. He may be his father's son, but he was not his father.

He nodded towards Su-Han, "Alright, what's he doing here?"

As Su-Han stepped into the light Adrien was taken aback by how frail, how old, the man looked. The usually abrasive man looked sickly, all his colour and vigour sucked away by shame.

"I know I have not treated you fairly, and that I have given you little reason to trust me." He said quietly, "I have come to pay respects, and perhaps make amends."

Luka jumped to his feet, grabbing hold of Su-Han's arm, both physically and emotionally supporting Su-Han. "He's being honest, Adrien."

It was the first time Su-Han looked like an old man. Maybe there was some measure of catharsis in seeing someone who'd been none too kind to him in such a weak state, but even Chat Noir couldn't find it.

Instead, Adrien moved forward to Su-Han's other side, mirroring Luka in carrying the old man's weight. Together, the two started towards the front door, carrying the man inside.

"I'll hear you out, but I'm getting something to eat first."

The Ladybug earrings, in their dimmed civilian form, sat on a slim black box adorned in red ribbons – like a particularly grim present. Tikki curled up beside her miraculous, hoping that the memory of Marinette now stored within them would be enough to offer warmth.

Luka lightly brushed his thumb over Tikki's head, unable to tear his eyes away from the sight. He'd grown so used to seeing this miraculous adorn Mariannete's ears that seeing them on their own, without a holder, just felt wrong. "She's really gone, isn't she?"

Adrien stood in front of the tv screen, mindlessly flipping through channels, each click on the remote slapping him in the face with Ladybug tributes. He sighed. "I keep expecting to turn around and see Bunnix pop in, telling me that this is all just one time travel screw up we can correct."

It couldn't be right. The streets should be alight with happy people celebrating their hero. The news should be steeped in the latest petty Chat and Ladybug speculation. He should be hearing her sigh about how their work is never done.

Instead, all he finds is his reflection over Paris' mourning. The only tributes are to her memory. Ladybug gone, and yet Chat Noir still stands – A kitty all alone without his lady. How could this ever be what was supposed to happen? How could this be anything more than a future fractured?

Sick of torturing himself, he threw the remote down on the sofa before he slumped down to join it. "You know, after the run in with Time Tagger, I always thought we had a safety net." He admits bitterly, "I mean, how can we lose if Bunnyx fights with us in our adult years, right?"

He felt petulant as soon as the words left his mouth. Was that what carried him through the hard times, the delusion that his future was guaranteed? It was shameful to consider, that maybe he'd have played the coward easier if he didn't have such assurance.

But it makes sense, that annoying voice in the back of his mind chided. You charge in like you're playing the meat shield, but that was when you had Ladybug to reverse the damage. The words manifested as a cold, wet sensation dragging across his body, down to the arm, the arm that was now throbbing with the memory of his cataclysm. The rest of his body was a site of scars erased by Ladybug's magic, but his arm? The damage remained in all the ways that mattered.

His safety net was gone, and he was already in freefall.

His hand gripped the aching forearm, squeezing it, wringing out the pain like a wet cloth. This wound was a lesson, a wakeup call – He'd leaned on Marinette in more ways than he imagined while he left her to stand on her own. Adrien always felt so alone in all this, but now he had to wonder just how much he'd been taking advantage of others to support him all this time.

Luka's hand shook him from his thoughts, pulling Adrien's forearm free from the self-afflicted grip. His eyes raked over Adrien's lost expression, brows tightly knit together, trying to comprehend what Adrien was doing.

"Not like this, Adrien." He said softly. "Your tune may be off, but that's no reason to snap your strings."

He sat himself on the arm of the sofa, fiddling with his fingers. Luka emanated a chill vibrance, one that didn't belong in such a dreary and dull place as the Agreste mansion. "The future's always in flux. You can never be sure where it's melody is going to take you."

The TV spoke up, as if in protest, at that very moment. The people of Paris, organised via various clips across the screen, sharing their thoughts with local reporters. Some of the faces he recognised as former akumas.

"Still can't believe Ladybug's gone."

"Yeah, who's my daughter gonna look up to now? Chat Noir?"

"Don't get me wrong, kid's easy on the eyes and good for a laugh, but everyone knows Ladybug was the one who did the actual hero work."

"That clown had a whole team backing him up and still needed to be saved from some metal thug."

"Did you see those new guys in town?"

"Tsugi's gonna replace the police force, I hear."

"Yeah, those guys look like they know what they're do-"

"You can't let them get into your head." Luka said as Adrien turned the tv off, "I heard the same junk when people thought I was trying to replace my father. Everyone gets real dead set on defending their heroes, even from their heroes' allies."

Adrien turned his frustration on the furniture, digging his fingertips into the material of his cushion until his knuckles flushed red. "I'm not exactly proving them wrong, am I?"

God, he really hoped Nathalie and Su-Han hurried up with those drinks. Being alone with Luka was awkward.

"I just got back from a meeting with our new Task Force buddies, and they're already gearing up to use my screw up in their advertising campaigns." He let out a dark, hollow chuckle, "Bet it would've been a gold mine if they saw me snapping at you like an ass."

Luka's eyes narrowed, his voice made for a low bass – the closest thing to aggression Adrien had seen from the man since Truth. "Don't do that."

Silence wrapped around them with a cold grip. Adrien let the chill weigh down on his head, his gaze falling forward to study the floor as Luka's shadow shrank away. Moments like this made him wish he could read people's hearts like Luka could, to see the truth behind the expected words and proper smiles.

He was a direct sort of man who longed for clarity, but he was left at the mercy of whatever Luka decided to expose.

When he raised his head again, he found Luka in front of the fireplace, looking into the flickering flames and finding their raging, vibrant rhythm reflected in his eyes. "You know, back at the mall, I… I saw it all happen. Again, and again."

Adrien knew that look, staring dead ahead in the abyss, into all the failed second chances looping for eternity. "You think with infinite chances you could find the solution to any problem, but no matter how many times I played that scenario back, I kept losing her."

Luka fell against the fireplace, clinging to the frame. He was weak in that moment, trembling under the weight of the memories. "I could never find out what was killing her, what was causing the explosion, what I could do. The few times something doesn't stop me from getting inside the building to get to her, it's too late. Either the timer's about to run out, or I… I arrive just in time to see the body."

Second Chance was a unique form of cruelty when Adrien really thought about it. You were compelled to find a perfect solution; you had an infinite amount of tries, so anything less than perfect would be a fail state. Even if you were lucky and found that solution, you had to have seen the bad end one time too many before you gave up.

If you weren't lucky, you were stuck in a never-ending loop. And the true insidious nature of such a loop, of a five-minute timer, is that you can never settle. You have time to be relieved, you have time to think that if you just changed one more variable everything would turn out alright, and then you get to watch everything unfold in a way that's different enough that the pain still feels fresh.

The shadows wrapped around Luka's features, darkening his eyes, hollowing out his skin until his face looked sunken in and haggard. Like his body was finally catching up with his internal age. Adrien had the question on his lips – 'How long were you stuck in that moment?' – but he dared not bring the answer into this world.

"Sometimes you're there too. You bust in without hesitation, or you're in front of her trying to stop it, or you're there lying beside her." Luka's shoulders shuddered, but couldn't rip his gaze away from the flames. Adrien could see it playing out in Luka's eyes, Ladybug and Chat Noir's bodies speared by a pyre. "You do everything you can. But you never save her. I never save her. The day couldn't be saved."

Luka's eyes close, and so the fire dies right then and there.

He sighed, turning back to Adrien. "Even we can be left powerless, Adrien. Don't forget that."

Watching Luka's breath return to a steady rhythm, and his shoulders sag as he finally relinquishes the weight pressing down on them; Adrien knew that Luka wasn't just directing that towards him.

Shaking his head, Adrien got his feet. "That doesn't excuse me snapping at you." Adrien said softly, "I'm sorry."

"Don't sweat it." Luka waves him off, that familiar grin returning, albeit in a weaker state. "Hell, I might not have thought to come here if you didn't."

"Really?"

Luka nodded, "Being a temp hero is stressful, sure, but it has it's benefits. I knew you and Marinette's identities and you knew mine. I knew that if I had any problems, or doubts, I could go up to you and get it sorted."

He moved back over to the pedestal, to what remained of Ladybug. "If I didn't want to be Viperion, or wanted a break from all the pressure, I could trust you two to give Sass a good home."

Adrien froze, the tone setting off all the alarm bells in his head. "Are… Are you resigning?" He asked, his voice deathly quiet, hoping Luka couldn't hear the twinge of desperation creeping in. He was barely holding it as it is; he couldn't imagine another person leaving his life, not now, not ever.

"Nothing like that."

Relief blossomed in Adrien's chest, overtaking the cold rot that taken root.

Then he felt Luka's eyes on him again, soft, but contemplative. Under Luka's gaze it felt like all the light drained from the room around them, leaving only the whites of Luka's curious eyes burrowing through every mask Adrien had ever worn.

"It's just when you snapped at me, it made me realize that… You can't do that, can you?" Luka throws up his arms, pulling every daunting face hanging over Adrien's head into focus. "You can't just leave Chat Noir behind, you can't get someone else to help you with that weight, and even before Marinette's passing it wasn't like you could confide in her without holding back half of your story."

He knew this. His own voice had told him this. Only, when his thoughts mirrored these words, they spoken of with distain, as a shameful secret he wouldn't dare let free. Of course, Luka could hear it, the strings of Adrien's heart belting out a muted tune, a weakness – only Luka didn't say it as a point of failure.

Adrien would have continued trembling, would have let his knees buckle and fail him, if Luka didn't cross the distance and steady him by the shoulders. It wasn't another way that Chat Noir and Adrien failed to live up to their partner. It was just… Another point of existing.

"You're all alone." Luka said softly, "And you can't afford to be all alone anymore. None of us can. Not with sentimonsters going out there, wearing our skin, pretending to be human."

Pretending to be human.

Chat Noir agreed with Luka, yet Adrien couldn't help but feel a sickening, unidentifiable revulsion at those words.

"Chalot made a similar point." Adrien nodded, pushing that feeling aside. "It's hard to think that a sentimonster could be right under our nose without us knowing."

"The new Hawkmoth wants us isolated and paranoid." Luka pulled his hand back, pressing the snake miraculous bracelet into Adrien's palm. "I respect Marinette's decisions, but I don't think we can afford to keep secrets no more. You needed to know you could trust me."

It took a moment for Adrien to register the action, staring down at where both their fingers wrapped around the artefact, the question left unspoken.

Adrien couldn't help but burst out laughing, the answer was so obvious as he pushed Luka's hand away. "I already trust you, Luka. You left your home and kind of became a magical monk just to help me and Marinette stay safe; that means something."

For the first time ever, Luka looked stunned, helplessly blinking at Adrien before stuffing his hands back in his pockets. "I, uh… Of course."

Muffled voices crept into the room from behind the kitchen door and were soon followed by the door opening, revealing Su-Han side-by-side with Nathalie, both cradling a tray of tea and snacks in their arms.

"Ah, Su-Han." Adrien moved to relieve Su-Han of the tray, placing it down on the coffee table while Nathalie followed suit.

Su-Han's expression was heavy, but he managed a weak smile as he bowed. "Thank you for welcoming us into your home, Adrien."

Adrien nodded, leading the man over to the fireplace. "Thanks for helping Nathalie with the tea."

When Nathalie had first suggested preparing refreshments for their guests, Su-Han had absolutely insisted that he help her. At first Adrien had thought it was a stalling tactic, or an attempt at getting into his good graces, that Su-Han still had some doubts he needed to take care of before biting the bullet and talking.

Now, Adrien wondered if Su-Han simply wanted to give Adrien and Luka space to clear the air. On that thought, he could imagine Plagg in his ear whispering 'You're overthinking this, moron.'.

Su-Han poured out a few mugs, filling the room with a new pungent, earthy odour. The smell, combined with the foggy green shade of the liquid, made Adrien feel like he'd just walked into a rainforest.

"It's a special brew. It should help ease your muscles." Su-Han told him, handing a mug over to him.

Adrien shrugged and took a sip. It felt thicker than water, dripping down his tongue like sludge, and the taste was akin to cough medicine. It did not feel good to drink, but the moment it made it down his throat, a new sensation took hold of him.

A warmth, soothing and gentle, took root in his chest and spread across his body. It took him back to the end of a fight, Ladybug throwing up her lucky charm and sweeping up all the damages with miraculous ladybug.

It wasn't just healing or reversing the damage, but it called to him on an emotional level, putting his body at ease, telling him that everything would be alright. When the sensation reached his aching arm, the pain was pushed away, replaced by a flow of something better.

Adrien breathed a long sigh of relief, the tension and jilted air rolling off of him. "So, what brings you here if it's not to pick up Marinette's stuff?" He asked pointedly.

Su-Han shifts uncomfortably in his seat, his lips struggling to move against the tense strings holding them down. "With the death of Ladybug, her mantle of Guardian is now up in the air."

"I won't take her place." Adrien said instantly, "I… I just can't. 'Sides, I think the guardian shouldn't also be a field hero; and I could never give up Plagg."

Su-Han eyes closed as his entire body hunched together, like a man who'd just accepted his death. "I understand."

Nathalie asked, "What happens with the mantle then?"

A pause, long and silent enough for Su-Han to down his tea like it was a shot of whiskey. His skin had taken on a sickly green shade, similar to the drink, by the time he attempted to speak. "By default, the mantle would automatically fall upon me as I was originally meant to be if not for the Feast incident."

Adrien looked between Nathalie and Luka with a furrowed brow. Promotions were good, right? And Su-Han always wanted the mantle, didn't he? "That's something to celebrate then, right?"

"I used to think I'd do anything to get this position, convinced myself that Fu stole it from me." Su-Han stared into his now empty mug, at what remained, and he didn't like what he saw. He frowned, disgusted. "I never expected to hate how I got it."

Chat Noir may have never gotten along with the guy, but he didn't blame Su-Han, nor did he harbour any serious ill will towards Su-Han. At the end of the day, they all wanted to help people, they just didn't agree on the best way to do it and were stubborn to the end.

"Hey," Adrien started softly, "I'm sure Marinette would have been happy to give it to you eventually, if it didn't come with that memory loss clause."

"I will strive to be half the Guardian she was, and to make right all the wrongs my stubbornness has wrought." Su-Han sat up straight, a new determination glinting in his eyes. "And I intend to start that straight away."

He directed Adrien's gaze to the boxes he and Luka had dragged in with them, the prominent symbol of the guardian order indicating that it was more than luggage contained within. Together, the occupants of the room all rose and circled around the boxes, Su-Han pushing one open with the tip of his foot.

Inside was what Adrien could optimistically refer to as organised chaos. Ancient parchments wrinkled with age inconsistently stacked as unstable towers, hand carved trinkets balancing on smaller boxes, and fancy baubles threatening to spill over. Adrien didn't expect a box of ancient valuables to look like untamed clutter.

"In the wake of Monarch's rise, me and the rest of my order scavenged our archives for anything that could help." Su-Han explained, "We hunted down artefacts, knowledge and history we long since thought lost after the temple's collapse."

That sounded like a lot of valuable artefacts that should be in a museum or a vault, not at the feet of an irresponsible young adult.

"You're giving this to me?" Adrien asked.

Su-Han pulled a tome forth from the clutter, spitting dust over the floor. "I still need to finish translating many of these documents, they were made even before my time after all, but yes. I'm sure that they hold many techniques that will be useful in the fight ahead."

Taking the weighty book in hand, Adrien tucked in into his elbow to flip through the pages. He couldn't make any sense of the coded language of the writing, but the various depictions of miraculous heroes unleashing powers beyond that of their miraculous gave him a good idea of what was being explained.

To further this point, Su-Han drew his finger over the pages mid-flip, stopping Adrien's journey on a page showcasing a Cat Miraculous user. The man was adorned in patchwork robes and sandals, looking to be around early first century peasantry. In the image, he was focusing the crackling energy of a cataclysm into his fingertips. However, he wasn't unleashing the energy upon a foe, he was pressing it against the temple of a blind man.

That's what it looked like anyway, but Adrien told himself he had to be mistaken. Plagg's powers were of destruction, so unless the page was a tale about a sadistic Cat hero finding new ways to murder the physically disabled there had to be something he was missing.

"You and your fellow champions are formidable; but you are still only scratching the surface of what your miraculous are capable of. If allowed, I would endeavour to help you unlock this potential."

Adrien couldn't tear his eyes away from the image. What potential did this Chat Noir unlock? Could it be that the power of destruction could be utilized to heal somehow? Eventually, Adrien closed the tome and passed it back to Su-Han, watching the man's eyes loom over the guardian symbol.

"Your powers aren't as simple as you think. Destruction is not just a hand that breaks what it touches. They embody the entirety of a concept, limited only by your human perception of them."

"I don't know what to say."

Su-Han ran his fingers over the symbol, his gaze wavering between a frustrated glare and hopeless frown, as if he were staring into a puzzle he'd been stuck on for hours. "The Guardians always followed strict rules and limitations, most importantly in how we interact with our champions, how much we're even allowed to train them, expecting them to be a weapon that fights without any need for justification or reason."

Delicately, Su-Han placed the tome back in it's rightful place. Crouched down, his position gave him the perfect angel to line up Adrien, Luka and Ladybug's remains in his view. "These past few years have made me re-think many of these rules, and that maybe…"

His fingers stained themselves gripping the edge of the box. His voice fell to a low, pitiful whimper spat out through gritted teeth. "Maybe some of these unfortunate events would have been avoided if I'd learned to bend them."

Adrien could have pushed all his guilt, all the blame on Su-Han. He could swear that the battle would have turned out differently if Su-Han had done his part to train Marinette correctly, to give her all the tools she could ever need. His mind raced with the countless what ifs that could have saved Marinette's life, and some of them were probably right.

But he looked to Luka, then back to Su-Han, a man ready to crumble right then and there. Luka's words play in his head as a booming echo; 'You do everything you can. But you never save her. I never save her. The day couldn't be saved.'

Marinette didn't die that day because she was overpowered – she died because she was alone, because her good nature drove her to protect an innocent, because she was tricked. She died because she was a hero, and no extra power would have stopped her from being that.

"Thank you, Su-Han." Adrien beamed down at Su-Han with his hand held out, watching the man's expression peer back, hesitant. The man was waiting for the spite and bile he'd come here for, but found his apprehension melting away to a relieved sigh, taking Adrien's hand and shaking it firmly.

It was a new… Something. Adrien didn't know what to name it, but it was certainly something new. For both of them.

Adrien cocked his thumb back in Nathalie's direction. "Just so happens that Nathalie has a rich background in archaeology and ancient languages, I'm sure she can help you translate these texts."

In a matter of minutes, Nathalie was leading Su-Han up the stairs, looking for a good room to move all the artefacts into. They seemed to hit it off quickly, the two chatting incessantly about ancient cultures and historical factoids Adrien's brain hurt just from hearing the names of.

Adrien had turned the TV back on in the meantime, feeling more confident in facing whatever report is thrown at him or Chat Noir. At some point a grin had found it's way onto his lips. He'd started this journey alone, afraid he'd have no one, nor should have anyone, to lean on. Now, suddenly, he'd managed to gain three people to share the burden of his secret with.

Suddenly, everything felt more bearable. The pressure didn't let off, the weight didn't lighten or anything; but now none of it felt like a balancing act. He liked the idea that, if he fell, there were now people to pick him up. He never liked working alone.

On the screen, there was another report of someone being revealed as a sentimonster, a member of the police force who was suddenly snapped away when someone stepped on their amok. A bold headline fearfully asked who could turn out to be a sentimonster next. Who could you trust when facing a monster who could take any shape they want?

"I know that face." Luka said from the sofa, and without even glancing Adrien could hear the matching grin in Luka's voice. "What are you thinking, Adrien?"

"I'm thinking that you're right, Luka. Trust is going to be crucial for what's coming." Adrien looked down at his ring, "And Chat Noir is thinking… It's time we open up."

Next Time - There's Something About Zoe:

"Thanks." Zoe replied, not a hint of emotion in her voice.

The only indication that Chloe heard the reply was the way her eyelids twitched, a modicum of restraint stopping her from fully cringing in pain. Chloe continued on like nothing happened. "Did you like the tea? I heard all the best actors raving about this stuff, it's like…" She looked down at her hands, her smile creasing as she fiddled with the thought. "Filled with inspiration or something."

"Cool." Once again, a deadpan reply, not even worth looking up from the expensive-looking hairpin twirling between her fingers.

"To be honest, it kind of tastes like soap to me, but…" Chloe forced out a chuckle, her voice hitting a high pitch before petering off. She shifted in her seat, letting her arms drop on her lap and curling her body to look even smaller. "I don't know where I was going with that."

Zoe nodded. "Uhuh."

Nino let out a whistle, cringing. "This is painful to watch."

Adrien pressed himself tight against the corner, as if it would make it any less obvious that the two men were spying on the girls. "I feel like we shouldn't be watching."

"We shouldn't, but I can't look away." Nino said, eyes glued to the scene like it was a television screen. "Never seen Zoe so dismissive before. Even when she's pissed at someone."

"There's a first time for everything." Adrien shrugged, "And Chloe's pretty good at bringing out the worst in people."

Nino tilted his chin up slightly with a light scoff, the closest he could get to looking towards Adrien without looking away. "Geez, I thought you said she was trying to be better?"

"Trying still means she has bad habits left to curb."

Minutes rolled by in silence, a social trainwreck unravelling before their eyes. Too gruesome to look away, but too big to intervene. That didn't stop Nino from speaking up though.

"Should we like… Help?" He reached out, exasperated as he watched Chloe spilled her coffee cup over with no reaction from Zoe. "Chloe looks like she's dying out there."