Chapter Text
Adrien knew he’d crossed a turning point when becoming Chat Noir was no longer fun.
For years, such an idea would’ve been impossible for Adrien to conceive. Chat Noir had been his outlet, his escape, his mask to hide beneath for a couple hours and forget, for so long. He never really had to think about this fact, it just was. In fact, even six months ago, if you asked him why he enjoyed Chat Noir-ing so much, Adrien wouldn’t have thought enough about it to give you a straight answer. Maybe it was the fact that he got to see Ladybug whenever he was Chat, he might say. Then mention saving Paris, throw a few puns and a wink. You know, the usual act.
Or, what used to be the usual act.
Now, though…
Well, you know what they say about never truly appreciating things until they’re gone.
Now, Ladybug was using him less and less, relying on Rena Rouge and such a wide assortment of other heroes to fight her battles that Chat wondered what he was even needed for. Now, akuma fights went by so fast—nothing more than a blip in the course of his day—and he barely got to see his Lady, much less have a second to talk to her—or any of his other superhero… friends?… acquaintances?…
(On too many days, he couldn’t even bring himself to even try and like them. It hurt that they were good people. He didn’t want them to be—he wanted to hate them, because Ladybug trusted them more. What happened to their partnership? Their balance? The promise they made—the two of them against the world? Their—
Well, who was Adrien kidding? He was never going to be lucky enough to make his Lady see they were soulmates.)
Anyway. Now that Adrien’s time as Chat Noir was dwindling, and his energy for keeping up the frankly ridiculous Chat act was waning as well… and now that he spent more time alone, more than ever… he’d had time, far too much time, to analyze it in the back of his head, now that it was gone.
Why he’d liked being Chat so damn much.
His memories of those first couple days, the days in which he first cemented the Chat side of himself—or, if he was being more cynical, the Chat persona—made it all hard to sort out, where everything had even come from in the first place. All he’d known then was a sort of manic energy, a childish excitement bursting at the seams, and it had just… sort of… come out like that. In puns and pick-up lines and dorky dances and lopsided grins. Later on, Adrien had just subconsciously decided to maintain that image, of the fun-loving goof, because that’s what the citizens were expecting, what Ladybug was expecting… and in truth, because he could sense a hidden value in it. Humor kept the mood light, kept both the civilians and the heroes themselves from thinking too hard about the terrible danger they’d be in if the heroes failed. His image also caused the enemy to underestimate him, or to become annoyed enough to target him first—and as long as he was protecting his Lady, he didn’t mind.
But also, most of all—goofing off was fun. Now that Adrien had thought it through, he’d realized he’d been going over-the-top with such reckless glee because he’d been free, free to act as he pleased, for the first time in his life. In regular life, he was trapped. Father—(who he was feeling less charitable towards, now that his overall patience was dimming, and perhaps that’s why he was only realizing this now)—Father controlled every aspect of his life. What he wore, what he ate, where he could go, what he did with his time, even who he made friends with. Although, who was he kidding, his father didn’t want him to make friends—advantageous connections to be mutually exploited later, preferably with the Agreste family name coming out on top, was more like it. So, after years of living in this glorified cage, Adrien had perhaps understandably gone to the opposite extreme with Char Noir. He could fit all the jokes he’d suppressed, all the silly dances Father could never catch him doing, all the impulses he had that lay squarely outside Father’s narrow definition of decorum, enough for the whole day, into two hours or less. And he’d loved it. At first. For years, actually.
But then Ladybug had been named the new Guardian, and everything had changed.
Or, perhaps that would have been an easier, simpler answer to put forward. If Adrien was being truly honest with himself, it was more complicated than that.
(Everything was more complicated than that. Too complicated.)
The truth was, his obligatory jokes had started tasting like ashes in his mouth even before that. His energy had been waning even then. And, around the same time, he’d noticed a new trend beginning to grow within his mind. A thrilling, dangerous fascination with the… well, here, Adrien couldn’t avoid sounding emo if he tried, but again, he had spent too much time alone with his thoughts not to be honest with himself. A fascination with death. The void. The beyond. Not existing.
And akuma attacks gave him an all-too perfect theater in which to run his experiments. It was the perfect setting—life-threatening danger, but with the likely (though not certain) possibility of revival. A perfect excuse—Ladybug was the only one who could purify an akuma, so he had to be the one to make the sacrifice play. And the stakes gave him just enough adrenaline to be brave enough to try it.
(Though Adrien was starting to wonder if it was really bravery, or just cowardice, that lead him to take these… risks. But he’d gotten so used to how terrible a person he was, how pathetic he was, that the difference didn’t matter all too much in the grand scheme of things.)
Well… anyway… the results of the experiments were always the same. After a brief, scary couple of moments, maybe even some blinding pain, he knew nothing, nothing at all, for an indeterminate stretch of time. And then the world would come back, and Ladybug would hug him, tell him how much he needed him… and even if it was just because she’d almost lost him, and she’d never tell him that otherwise, he’d take it.
So, yeah. This was what happened, every time… and he secretly relished in—no, perhaps relished was the wrong word. Felt vindicated in his pain? Was… addicted. Addicted to that feeling of sweet nothingness… and Ladybug’s attention afterwards.
Of course, Adrien knew it was wrong. It was very wrong, and there was something wrong with him that he continued to do so even though he knew it was wrong, which was just another reason why he sucked. But the tendency just grew, and grew, and he couldn’t make it stop. And it had started far before Ladybug had become the Guardian. But that event has certainly exacerbated things.
These days, it felt like the most order, the most sense Adrien could make out of his shitshow of a life, was to categorize it by everything that made his energy for jokes dwindle, and his fixation on the void grow deeper. Every time Ladybug excluded him from a plan. Every time Father didn’t deign to show up for dinner. Every time Lila didn’t take “no” for an answer. Every time he watched Chloe backslide into her bullying ways, and he couldn’t do anything about it. Every time Nino was too busy joking with Alya to realize Adrien’s “I’m fine” was a lie. Every time someone implied Chat Noir was annoying, not to be taken seriously, and never useful in a fight—especially when it was Nino. Every time Plagg whined about cheese instead of taking Adrien’s emotions seriously.
Actually… scratch that. Everything fit into that same category, these days. It was all moving in one direction, now—downhill—and Adrien had long since given up the thought that anyone was going to notice. That anyone was going to stop him.
So it was in this way that he found himself standing on a lonely rooftop on the opposite side of town, somewhere Adrien knew he and Ladybug had never visited on patrol, so she would never check. He was transformed, but didn’t consider himself to be Chat Noir, not now. Especially not now. No, he was only in superhero form, power all charged up, because…
Adrien took a deep breath. The sounds of the city throbbed in his ears. He wished it would be quiet, that it all would be quiet.
He stared at his ring. At his claws. Thought of the power they could hold.
If you’re going to give me a sign, universe, now would be the time.
And then...it did.
Miraculously—oh hah, seriously, had his brain just made a pun? Now?— right at that moment, something did happen. Something big. Something in the form of a giant, glowing portal, out of which jumped the form of Bunnix, and… and…
Was that…?
“Can’t believe I’m having to do this,” Bunnix grumbled, drawing all of Adrien’s attention back to her. “You,” she said. She strode closer, jabbing a finger in his direction, and Adrien would have flinched, except he felt frozen to the spot, his face and body clenching up. “You’re important, and you are not allowed to throw your life away like that.” She strode even closer, so much so that all Adrien could see was her big, looming, very mad face. “And before you start being smart with me, it’s not just the stupid timeline that you’re important to. You’re important for your own sake, because you’re you, you dummy—“
Adrien only had the time to take vague offense, somewhere in the back of his hazy mind, before Bunnix suddenly turned on her heel and threw up her hands. “Ugh, never mind. You deal with this shit. It’s why I brought you, anyway.”
“As you wish,” the figure behind her said with a tone of drawling amusement, and Adrien snapped his gaze to him in shock and sudden understanding.
That was him. Him, just about ten to fifteen years older. Genuine, bona fide, Chat Noir from the future.
His older self looked good, was the first thing Adrien could think. He was taller, still built with lean muscle, and more handsome than ever, if Adrien did say so himself. (What? He may have been insecure, but he wasn’t blind enough to deny that, of all things.) But the truest difference was the smile he wore, one that looked more genuine than anything Adrien had seen in the mirror in months. The smile was easy, half-lopsided like any good Chat Noir grin, but had an underlying sympathy, gentleness to it, as if he knew what Adrien was feeling. Which of course, he did. He did, and he was already past it, already beyond it, got to know how it all worked out.
Adrien was instantly jealous.
“Hey there,” Future Chat Noir said. “I think we need to have a chat.”
He gave one last nod over his shoulder to Bunnix, and with that, she vanished.
And Adrien was alone with his perfect older self from the future.