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kasienda · 11 months

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A Miraculous Reveal - Representation

Spoilers for Representation (5x24) Link to Ao3

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Chat Noir swings wildly at the akuma who is his father. Adrien is almost glad Ladybug has yet to show up. He doesn’t have a plan, he almost doesn’t want to fix this one. It just feels good to lash out, to hurt this man and send him crashing to the ground, for every blow to make solid contact against the man who seems bent on stealing every good thing in his life.

As Chat Noir, he doesn’t have to listen to his father. He can resist, he can fight. He can cataclysm anything that stands in his way as many times as he needs to!

He can do all the things he can’t do as Adrien.

Why can’t he fight as Adrien?!

“I feel sorry for your son!”

“Don’t be. He’s very happy,” Nightormentor replies.

Adrien is thrown by the statement. Was his father referring to the fact that he’s in love with Marinette, or does he actually think Adrien is happy locked away in some tower with an arranged relationship not of his own choosing a five hundred kilometers away from the most important person in his life.

The akuma broke past his defenses, knocking the wind from his chest. He coughs as he inhales the sparkling dust of his father’s power. The magic settles around him, clinging to his eyes and throat. Reality dissolves around him.

Everything is silent like his ears are clogged with cotton. He turns frantically in every direction. Everything is destroyed. The moon split in half, every building a crumbled skeleton of what it once was. Human-sized statues made of ash surround him as far as his eyes can see.

He looks down, and Marinette is there in his arms, as black as his cataclysmic power. He jerks backwards and her form dissolves into ash and dust in his arms.

“What happened?!” he demands, trying to push back his rising panic. Where’s the akuma? There had to be an akuma somewhere to have caused all of this.

“The same thing that always happens when a child can’t control their anger.” It’s the same voice. The deep foreboding voice that Adrien can never block out, can never escape.

He did this? No!

“No! It’s not real!” he screams, clutching his head.

Next thing he knows, Kim’s hovering over him. “You okay, there buddy? Because we could really use your help right now.”

But Adrien isn’t sure how much help he can be. He’s never stood up to his father and won.

He doesn’t include this time as an exception even when Nightormentor’s staff dissolves under his cataclysm because it was The Resistance that defeated this akuma.

Not Chat Noir.

He flies to Marinette’s balcony as soon as it’s safe to do so, letting his transformation fall the moment almost the moment he lands. He’s not sure what he wants to say to her, but he needs to see her. Just once if not every day.

He’s about to knock on her skylight when the nightmare strikes a second time.

He clutches his head and falls onto his knees as the vision sweeps through him again.

“No,” he sobs. “It’s just a nightmare. It’s not real! I would never do this!” he insists.

Plagg purring at the crook of his neck brings him back to himself once again.

“Plagg! I don’t know what to do. I miss Marinette so much even though it hasn’t even been a day. But I can’t disobey him. And I’m also scared of putting her in danger. I could—“ he clutches his hand into a fist, imagining the power of cataclysm crackling at his fingertips. “—destroy everything.”

“Adrien, you've just come into your own as the holder of destruction!” Plagg says. “I know you will find a way to break free of your chains. All of them.”

Adrien shakes his head. How can he do that when he can’t even say the word no to his father, let alone actually defy his orders?

It all feels so impossible.

The trapdoor window to Marinette’s room opens.

He tenses, still uncertain what he wants to say. He shouldn’t have come here. As much as he wants to see her — needs to see her, he can’t protect her, he can’t explain how he’s there without putting her in danger.

She startles when she sees him, then approaches him slowly.

“Adrien?”

She’s wearing a flowing white dress with intricate pink flowered embroidery that he’s certain she hand-stitched herself. Her eyes are puffy, red, and underlined with dark streaks of mascara running down her cheeks.

It kills him that she’s been crying. He knows it’s his fault because he couldn’t say no to his father. It’s just another example of his weakness, of his selfishness that he wants her love anyway even though she deserves someone who can stand up for her.

In spite of himself, he reaches out for her. She takes his hand, and he pulls her against him, feeling shaky. He buries his head into her shoulder.

“Is it really you?” she asks.

“Who else would I be?” he asks absently.

“Felix.”

He tenses and pulls away, gripping her at the elbows tightly, searching her face for jest and finding none. “What did he do?”

She waves away his concern. “He led me on a wild goose chase through the city. But in the end he only told me a story.”

“A story?” he repeats, confused. “What story? Why?”

Marinette put a hand on his chest. “Adrien, take a breath.”

He does as she says, feeling some of the tension within him bleed out. It always does when he’s in her arms. An experience he’s had on precious few occasions. If only he realized his feelings for her sooner.

“I’m really happy to see you,” he whispers.

“Me too,” she says back, leaning her head onto his chest. “I feel like I’ve been looking for you all night. How are you here?”

He tenses all over again, unsure of how to answer that question. He knows what he wants to tell her. The truth, and all of it! But the vision of Marinette’s ashen form cradled in his arms flies through his head and he’s terrified.

It’s just a dream, a nightmare sent to him by an akuma. It wasn’t real. That wasn’t going to happen. He was careful. He would never hurt her.

He would never hurt her.

“Are you okay?” she asks when he doesn’t answer her question.

He shakes his head, tears falling down his face of their own volition.

She squeezes his hand. “Whatever it is, we’ll get through it together,” she promises.

And some part of him melts. She really believes that, but he can’t see any way to win.

Even Chat Noir couldn’t stand up to Nightormentor. Not on his own.

“My father wants me to stay in London. He wants to control every aspect of my life. And I tried for so long to earn his admiration and approval, but it’s impossible. And what has it ever gotten me? It’s never enough and I can’t do it anymore. I can’t.”

Her grip tightens around his hand. “Shhh, it’s okay.”

“But I can’t get away. It’s like, the second he’s in the room, I can’t… I can’t disobey him, Marinette. I don’t know why. I try, I think I’m going to, and then I just do what he wants anyway. I’m sorry that I’m so weak.”

Tears break past his battered defenses and he drops his head into his knees. He’s shaking so hard, but Marinette never lets go. If anything, she clings to him harder.

“Adrien, does he… does he have a ring that he always wears?”

He glances up, completely thrown by the random question. “Uh, yes. He has his and my mother’s wedding ring. Nathalie has been wearing the other. Why?”

“The story. The story Felix told me! He said that the two princesses gave birth to two boys who were as similar as their mothers. You and Felix. Felix – he was controlled by his father all his life through a ring, and he was only able to break free once his father died and he had the ring for himself. It sounds like it’s the same for you.”

Adrien blinks several times, his brain trying to understand what she’s saying.

Then the tears come back full strength, and he’s trembling like an earthquake.

“Adrien?”

But he’s crying in relief. He wasn’t weak and spineless. He was literally being controlled like a puppet on strings.

And then he was angry.

He looks up into Marinette’s concerned crystal blue eyes that seem to pierce straight through him. “I don’t understand. How?”

Her hands tighten around his and his clings to the lifeline that she’s providing. He fears that he’s weighing her down, that he can never give her everything she deserves, especially if he literally can’t go against his father.

“Felix said his mother and yours were infertile. They tried and tried to have babies, and they never could.”

Adrien stares at her. This was new information. Why had Felix told Marinette all of this? And not him?

“So your parents found and used the peacock miraculous–”

He hissed in a breath.

“--and their desire to have a child to create a pregnancy.”

“So I’m… I’m… some kind of sentimonster?”

She shakes her head violently. Her hands on either side of his face. “No, you are not a monster. You are the kindest, most beautiful person I have ever met.”

He held her hands and wrists against his face, needing to feel her holding him as his stomach dropped.

“But he can literally control me?”

She nods. “I think so. Felix asked me for help. He has his ring, and Kagami has hers.”

“Kagami too?” he whispers.

She nods again.

Kagami - forceful, ever confident, and never-hesitate-Kagami who he looked up to - could be controlled with a ring.

He could be controlled with a ring, snapped out of existence with the peacock miraculous.

No wonder Felix had been willing to trade all the other miraculouses for it.

He can’t breathe.

The vision of a shattered moon on a red sky, surrounded by destruction and decay flashes through his mind’s eye again. A new dark heavy presence stands behind him, controlling every movement, directing his miraculous powers against everything Chat Noir is supposed to protect, against everything that he loves.

The nightmare suddenly feels all too possible.

If his father ever learns his identity, he can make Adrien destroy anything his father disapproves of.

Like Marinette.

He scuttles backward from her, his back crashing against the railing of her balcony.

“Adrien! What’s wrong?” Marinette asks, standing over him like an avenging angel. She reaches out to hold him, but he holds a hand out and shakes his head. She stops, but tears are falling silently down her cheeks. Her dress is fluttering around her, and strands of her hair have fallen from her updo, framing her face. Her eyes are like shining lights in his darkness.

God, she’s so amazing, so strong.

And he can’t ever be what she deserves. Not when he isn’t his own person.

He buries his eyes under his fists. The rest of him crumples like tissue paper. She wraps around him like a warm blanket on the coldest of nights, and he lets himself fall into warmth and love. This might have to be the last time, so it will have to last him forever.

“I love you,” he says through his devastation. “So much.”

“I love you, too. Talk to me please.”

He untangles himself from her embrace and struggles to collect himself. It shouldn’t be that hard. He’s done it so many times before.

“Marinette,” he starts, slipping his miraculous from his finger with a broken sob. It feels like he’s tearing off a limb, but he would do anything for her. He opens her palm, places the ring in her grasp, and closes her fingers around it. “You have to take this from me, keep it safe so I can’t ever hurt anyone, so I can never hurt you.”

She looks down into her hand, her eyes frozen on the now-black ring in her hand. Her gaze darts up to his face, and then back down to the ring.

“You’re Chat Noir,” she breathes.

“I’m Chat Noir,” he confirms. “I was going to use it to come visit you, so we could stay together even if I was exiled to London. I figured I had to come back for akumas anyway, but… but if my father can literally control me, I can’t keep it. He could discover it, take it, and force me to betray Ladybug and everyone I love. I can’t go through that! Will you please keep it safe for me?.

“No!” she cries, trying to shove the ring back towards him. “You can’t give this up!” she insists. “You can’t!”

He caresses the side of her tear-streaked face, and smiles softly. “I need you to take this for me, Marinette. There’s no one I love or trust more than you.”

Her fist pounds on his chest. He grabs her arm and pulls her against him.

“Please?”

She shakes her head. “No, you don’t understand. I need you.”

“I’m sorry. I wish there was a way for us to be together, but if he ever found out–”

“He won’t!”

“Marinette, he could literally just order me to reveal all my secrets and it’d be done. He could order me to give him my miraculous. He can’t have it. Not ever.”

Her eyes well with tears. He kisses the top of her head.

“What about Ladybug?!” she demands.

“I think I’m only a liability to her right now. I’m a sentimonster. You’ll–”

“You’re not a monster!” Her voice is shrill.

He smiles again, feeling strangely at peace. “You’ll be an amazing partner to Ladybug in my stead.”

“No! I can’t take this from you. It’s yours! It’s your freedom! And I can’t be Ladybug’s partner anyway.”

“Of course you can!” he reassures. “I remember Multimouse. You had every miraculous in the box. You were amazing! You could use any of them.”

She shakes her head, tears pouring from her eyes.

“Marinette,” he begs. “Please!”

“I can’t be Ladybug’s partner,” she says again, her voice suddenly clear and firm. She looks up at him, and he can’t breathe at the depth in her swirling blue eyes. “She needs you. I need you.”

His mind is swirling, on the precipice of something grand, he knows it, but he can’t grasp onto it.

“Tikki, spots on,” she whispers. And in a sparkling wave of pink light, Marinette is gone, transformed and it’s his partner sitting before him with tears in her eyes. “Please Chaton,” she begs. “I have told you over and over, I can’t do this without you. You are irreplaceable. You are perfect. I will never ever abandon you. Please, please don’t abandon me.”

He can’t move, he can’t speak.

She takes up his hand, and holds up the ring, but she pauses her eyes on his, waiting for his permission.

“I don’t want to be turned against you,” he says weakly.

“Whatever he makes you do,” she snarls, “you will never actually be against me. You will fight him, I will fight for you. And neither of us will rest until you are free, truly and completely free. Please, please be my partner again.”

And he is already in love with her. He fell for Ladybug a long time ago, the day they met for a moment almost exactly like this one. He fell for Marinette more recently, slowly after another thousand instances of her standing her ground again and again.

But in this moment, looking at her with determination and love shining from every pore, he falls in love with her all over again.

She can’t conceive of a battle that she can’t win no matter how much the deck is stacked against her. And really, he can’t conceive of a battle she can’t win either. Chat Noir has always had the front row seat to watching her come out on top again and again through creative genius, persistence, and a fierce determination to protect everyone she loves.

Her cause is right, and her sense of justice is stronger than her doubt, and her love is stronger than her fear.

And so he can’t deny her. With his lips stretched into a watery smile, he nods his permission.

She slips the ring back onto his finger and it feels like coming home after being lost in a blizzard.

Their arms are around each other in an instant, and he knows that as long as he has her, as long as she cares and believes in him, he will always fight anyone and everyone that stands against them.

Even his father.

And with her by his side, how can they ever lose?

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